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Relativism, objectivity and the politics of the past

Beyond caricature and polemics and towards a healthy archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Philip L. Kohl
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Abstract

In their jointly authored paper ‘Relativism, objectivity and the politics of the past’ which was published in Archaeological Dialogues 4.2 (1997, 164–184), the ‘Lampeter Archaeology Workshop’ argued that there has been an increasing tendency for authors to characterise ‘post-processualists’ as proponents of relativism, understood as the inability to evaluate different versions of the past or present. This naive view of relativism as ‘anything goes’ (known philosophically as judgemental relativism) was rejected in favour of a more nuanced understanding of different forms of relativism and the criteria which archaeologists can and do use to evaluate versions of the past. They also discussed the relationships between epistemologies, ethics and politics in this context, and suggested that there are implications for the ways we might engage in archaeological debates. This paper was commented on by the philosopher Diederick Raven and the archaeologists Ulrich Veit and Ian Hodder in Archaeological Dialogues 4.2 (1997, 185–194). Below, more comments are provided by the archaeologists Philip Kohl, Reinhard Bernbeck, Susan Pollock and John Bintliff. Finally, the Lampeter Ar

Keywords

relativismarchaeologypost-processualpoliticsdialogue
Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , July 1998 , pp. 30 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1998

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