Marxist approaches have also had a profound impact on our understanding of the role that archaeology plays within the modern capitalist world. Archaeologists in colonialist contexts have been confronted by well-organized First Nation and descendant communities who have led us to questions ‘archaeology for whom’? Marxism provides powerful tools to deal with this question by focusing attention on class, inequality, and exploitation. In North America, Bruce Trigger and Randall McGuire used a Marxist approach to examine the way that mainstream images of Native Americans functioned ideologically to support colonialism and the modern capitalist state. Archaeologists are today scrambling to engage various descendant communities in a dialog that seeks to move beyond these past injustices.
Marxists have also approached the archaeological study of the present through Critical Theory. Mark Leone’s research in Annapolis is a prime example. Leone focused on ideology as people’s taken-for-granted beliefs that mystify the true nature of social relations to uphold dominant power relations. To promote struggle and change, the Annapolis public education program introduced visitors to the contradictions and social inequalities of the capitalist system evident in landscape, architecture, and material culture.
Other archaeologists have applied an explicitly Marxist class analysis to the structure of modern archaeology, making strong connections between archaeology and American socio-economic and class relations. These studies have demonstrated that archaeology is an inherently middle class practice, evident in the kinds of questions asked about the past, the kinds of knowledge that are privileged, and the nature of the interpretations that are constructed. We have also learned that archaeology is as plagued by a class structure defined by inequality and exploitation as any other arena of the modern capitalist world.
Patterson has argued that for the past 70 years, archaeologists have been engaged in a conversation with ‘‘Marx’s ghost’’. While most of this engagement is hidden, there are few burning questions in archaeology that have not been informed by Marx’s ideas.
Archaeologists have engaged ‘‘Marx’s ghost’’ through a variety of concepts - class, state formation, inequality, power, ideology, etc. Acknowledged or not, Marxism is a vital part of archaeology’s theoretical development. Marxist archaeologists have made valuable contributions to our knowledge of the past as well our role in the construction of knowledge in the present.
See also: Colonial Praxis; Economic Archaeology; Historical Materialist Approaches; Political Complexity, Rise of; Social Inequality, Development of; Social Theory; Social Violence and War; State-Level Societies, Collapse of; World Systems Theory.
World History
