The Political Economy of Archaeological Cultures: Marxism and American Historical Archaeology
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2002
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Social Archaeology
Abstract
The application of Marxist theory in American historical archaeology has expanded greatly over the past 20 years. More than just a theoretical tool, the rise of Marxism reflects an emerging consciousness within historical archaeology that its subject matter is capitalism, an interest obviously shared with Marx himself. We propose, however, that historical archaeology has proceeded to study the emergence of the modern culture of capitalism without engaging Marx's critique of the political economy of cultural production in any direct way. Instead, much of historical archaeology reifies past cultural formations in place of maintaining a focus on the dialectical social processes through which those formations emerged. We illustrate how a Marxist approach to cultural production improves the foundational historical archaeologies of the colonial American state and African-American ethnogenesis and is the basis for archaeologically-based critiques of dominant American society.
DOI
10.1177/1469605302002001599
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Matthews, Christopher; Leone, Mark P.; and Jordan, Kurt A., "The Political Economy of Archaeological Cultures: Marxism and American Historical Archaeology" (2002). Department of Anthropology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 54.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/anthropology-facpubs/54