While conducting ethnoarchaeological research in Spain and Ethiopia, I have been faced with the theoretical and practical shortcomings of this discipline, too deeply rooted in modernist concerns and prejudices. This paper arises from an insatisfaction with the great divide created between past and present, selves and others, people and material culture by ethnoarchaeology. I propose a return to archaeology tout court, symmetrical in character, in which present and past are not hierarchically conceived – the former in the service of the latter or vice versa – nor strictly separated, and in which the relationship between humans and things is properly problematized.

Return to SAA Symmetrical Archaeology Session

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