Read e-book online Against Typological Tyranny in Archaeology: A South American PDF

The papers during this booklet query the tyranny of typological considering in archaeology via case experiences from a number of South American nations (Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil) and Antarctica. they target to teach that typologies are unavoidable (they are, finally, tips to create networks that supply meanings to symbols) yet that their tyranny may be triumph over in the event that they are used from a severe, heuristic and non-prescriptive stance: serious as the complacent angle in the direction of their tyranny is changed by means of a militant stance opposed to it; heuristic simply because they're used as capacity to arrive substitute and suggestive interpretations yet no longer as final and convinced destinies; and non-prescriptive simply because rather than utilizing them as threads to stick to they're particularly used as constitutive elements of extra advanced and connective materials. The papers incorporated within the e-book are assorted in temporal and locational phrases. They disguise from so known as Formative societies in lowland Venezuela to Inca-related ones in Bolivia; from the coastal shell middens of Brazil to the megalithic sculptors of SW Colombia. but, the papers are comparable. they've got in universal their shared rejection of proven, naturalized typologies that constrain the best way archaeologists see, forcing their interpretations into renowned and predictable conclusions. Their imaginitive interpretative proposals flee from the safe convenience of venerable typologies, many suspicious due to their organization with colonial political narratives. as a substitute, the authors suggest novel methods of facing archaeological data.