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The beginning of wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

M. Parker Pearson
M. Parker Pearson*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, England
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Extract

It is the best of times and it is the worst of times. On one hand, there are more resources and people involved in archaeology than ever before; there is considerable public and media interest in the subject; and there have been exciting developments in archaeologists’ uses of social theory. On the other, competition is intense for locally scarce funding; most field research is constrained by non-archaeological considerations; and fragmentation, insecurity and disenchantment are rife. The split between theory and practice has certainly widened since David Clarke’s day, whilst theory has become not so much Clarke’s unifier within the morass of empirical detail but its own basis for division and often bitter disagreement within the profession.

Type
Special section: David Clarke's ‘Archaeology: the loss of innocence’ (1973) 25 years after
Information
Antiquity , Volume 72 , Issue 277 , September 1998 , pp. 680 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1998

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