In my view, the inability of conventional archaeology to interpret the majority of the excavated evidence from prehistoric sites, in particular postholes, has led to development of “New” archaeology, where academics study and become experts in those aspects of culture we don’t find. In those countries like Netherlands and Germany, where their archaeology is better understood, their narrative of the Neolithic is generally about agriculture, while in Britain it is more often expressed in terms of the perceptions, beliefs, rituals, personhood, and cosmologies.
In a clear case of counterfeiting in the knowledge economy, New Archaeologists are employed in publicly funded Universities to teach students what they know about the things we don’t have any evidence for. Sadly, anyone who claims that they know how prehistoric dead people perceived their world either is mentally ill or a fraud, and quite possibly both.
New archaeology as projection
The relevant definition of Projection;
…..8. a. [Psychology];
The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others:
"Even trained anthropologists have been guilty of unconscious projection of clothing the subjects of their research in theories brought with them into the field" (Alex Shoumatoff).
Clearly, New Archaeologists are just projecting ideas in their own minds into the minds of the long dead - who inevitably demonstrate a remarkable unanimity and prescience in their perception of their own archaeology. To what extent, in creating a narrative of how the dead perceived themselves, their dead, the landscape, structures, and even materials like stone and wood, New Archaeologists are fooling the University authorities, funding bodies and ultimately the tax payer is an interesting question, but the crucial psychological issue is to whether they are they fooling each other and themselves.
Do they realise that by projecting their own intuitions into the minds of people evidenced only by skeletal remains they are simply fabricating a mythology . In short, are they fully cognisant of their own conceit? Notwithstanding they teach the courses, review each other’s papers, choose research projects, set and mark the exams, shouldn't somebody have stopped them creating this imaginary past?
And what of the real victims, the students who go to study archaeology, to be taught to dig holes and think like the archaeologists they see on Time Team?
They will have their rationality challenged and undermined by the intellectual demagoguery of a faith-based pedagogy characterised by lexicographic prestidigitation and decontextualized-asymmetrical-cross-cultural-anthropology masquerading as a methodology for the conceptualisation and analysis of archaeological data. Lucky people.
http://structuralarchaeology.blogspot.c ... ogist.html