Ianir Milevski & Thomas E. Levy (eds.), Framing Archaeology in the Near East: The Application of Social Theory to Fieldwork. Series: New Directions in Anthropological Archaeology. Sheffield, Bristol, Equinox Publishing, 2016. X+146. ISBN 978–1–78179–247–6. Hardback: £80.00 / $100.00; Paperback: £30.00/$45.00

Abstract

Almost 30 years ago, in a passage of their influential book Social Theory and Archaeology, M. Shanks and C. Tilley discussed Borges’s archaeological-themed short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” as illustrating “a desire for the past in itself and for itself; a desire for an objective past, for primary originary objectivity, the essence of the past, the essential meaning, an ideal presence of the past.”1 The appropriation of social theory by archaeology since the 60s and 70s has been instrumental in supplanting such merely positivist approaches to the past, and more specifically, to retrieving and processing excavation data. The present volume illustrates and legitimizes in turn the diversity of approaches to Near Eastern archaeology, whether cognitive or cyberarchaeology, processual or post-processual. This is all the more welcome since Mesopotamia and the Levant (each the focus of three papers) are known to be lagging behind in this respect.