ABSTRACT Analogical reasoning has long been identified as an unavoidable component of archaeological interpretation. Ethnoarchaeology is understood to be a specialized subfield within archaeology that conducts research on the “source side” of the analogical equation to discover and build interpretive security for the various inferences archaeologists use to make history. However, much of the current literature continues to associate ethnoarchaeology with research among so‐called “premodern,” “traditional,” or “precapitalist” societies because these are thought to be similar to the ancient settings archaeologists study. In this discussion, I argue that ethnoarchaeology's future depends on a thorough rejection of this temporal trope. Rather than a search for the vestiges of ancient lifeways among coeval peoples, ethnoarchaeology is better understood as the self‐critical analysis of archaeology's standpoint limitations. Redefined through the lens of feminist standpoint theories, ethnoarchaeology has the potential to become a vital component of a postpositivist archaeology.
ABSTRACT Measuring ethnoarchaeology's impact only by its contribution to archaeology sells the field short and is a poor fit with what actually happened during my three decades as a cultural anthropologist connected to archaeological projects in Greece. The modern period did indeed contain insights for the past, but the reverse was just as true. The power of ethnoarchaeology lies in being a connector: a multidirectional crossroads that fosters conversations among archaeologists, anthropologists, local communities, and others that rework assumptions, open unexpected veins of information, and provoke new ways of relating to both past and present.
ABSTRACT Some of our previous ethnoarchaeological research involved a cross‐cultural analysis of gender dynamics and subsistence systems in four Circumpolar societies. We developed a three‐way collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, and on‐site Indigenous consultant‐colleagues to decipher the structure and meaning of the latter's artifactual remains and built landscapes. Building upon that methodology to envision a future direction for ethnoarchaeology, we propose a comparative living archaeology of pilgrimages. A preliminary research design is offered for a four‐society, controlled cross‐cultural comparison of contemporary pilgrimages in Old World and New World cultural settings. Pilgrimages may offer insights into a variety of gatherings and extraordinary, dense, short‐term bursts of social interaction and their materializations on the landscape. At the same time, we seek an ethnoarchaeological strategy for thinking creatively about the processes that generated pilgrimages and pilgrimage‐like socioreligious gatherings in the longer run of human history. [Ethnoarchaeology, Pilgrimage dynamics, Indigenous collaboration, Cross‐cultural methodology]
