Alice Beck Kehoe, archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and author/editor of 21 books, provides an eye-opening overview of methodological and ethical issues in American archaeology in the last 30 years through her broad-ranging, previously unpublished essays. She explores archaeology’s history, methods, and concepts through discussions of archaeological fieldwork, ethnohistorical analysis, feminism, and postcolonial anthropology, presenting remarkable insights and providing a course for American archaeology to follow to include underrepresented scholars, consider diverse interpretations, and engage Indigenous peoples.
Kehoe pulls no punches in describing the male-oriented academia she navigated, struggling to find employment at a major university in the 1960s. Her historical science framework was rejected as “soft science,” and she was essentially muted, as were many other female scholars, along with women as subjects of research and the First Nations of our continent, for decades. Kehoe eventually gained acceptance as a historian of American archaeology and is now an established critic of American anthropology, presenting this essential collection of her previously rejected and overlooked essays, published as part of the critical studies section in the History of Anthropology series and organized around four concepts: archaeology makes history, archaeology is a historical science, archaeology lives in social contexts, and the themes that bind. She challenges archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnographers to make their biases explicit, calling for a revisionist anthropology—a wake-up call to colleagues and students to “throw off the shackles of tradition” and open their eyes to the diversity of data sources, such as collaborations with First Nations. Her consciousness-raising book, while not light reading, is about archaeology as a historical science, and shines a critical light on the unacknowledged colonialist attitudes that still permeate the discipline and the broad range of data and interpretation that American archaeology should embrace.
