Reading Meskell and Preucel 2004, here are some discussion questions that came to my mind:
- What are the central concerns of “social archaeology” according to Preucel and Meskell? How are the conceptual categories (a) temporality (b) spatiality (c) materiality understood in reference to archaeological evidence? Let’s consider Gordon Childe’s definition of the social structure as “a network of organic, self perpetuating social relations” with cultural traits. How are the social relationships related to material things, artifacts? How does this definition evolve in later archaeological theories?
- What are the benefits of integrating archaeological evidence and textual record in the reconstructions of the past? Why do you think the archaeological “context” of texts so crucial? How does this reflect onto the ethics of archaeological research, practices of collecting and the antiquities market?
- Let’s discuss the issue of materiality of texts (the idea that first and foremost texts as material things) and the textuality of material evidence (the idea that material culture can be read as a text). Think of some examples to discuss in class. How does one “read” architecture or a landscape?
- What do you think are various ways through which we perceive time and temporality outside abstract technical measurements/segmentations of time? What is social time in ancient/traditional societies and for the contemporary world?
