Interpretative Archaeology

This fascinating volume integrates recent developments in anthropological and sociological theory with a series of detailed studies of prehistoric material culture. The authors explore the manner in which semiotic, hermeneutic, Marxist, and post-structuralist approaches radically alter our understanding of the past, and provide a series of innovative studies of key areas of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists.

Contents: C. Tilley, Introduction: Interpretation and a Poetics of the Past - T. Yates, Frameworks for an Archaeology of the Body - J. Thomas, The Hermeneutics of Megalithic Space - M. Edmonds, Interpreting Causewayed Enclosures in the Past and Present - C. Richards, Monumental Choreography; Architecture and Spatial Representation in Neolithic Orkney - T. Kirk, Space, Subjectivity, Power and Hegemony: The Megaliths and Long Barrows in Earlier Neolithic Brittany - J. Thomas and C. Tilley, The Axe and the Torso: Symbolic Structures in the Neolithic of Brittany - M. Johnson, Notes Towards an Archaeology of Capitalism - J. Thomas, Discourse, Totalization and the Neolithic - C. Tilley, Prospecting Archaeology - C. Evans, Digging with the Pen: Novel Archaeologists and Literary Traditions

Christopher Tilley Professor of Anthropology, University College London.