This important book examines archaeology’s engagement with semiotics, from its early structuralist beginnings to its more recent Peircian encounters. Its central thesis is that archaeology is a distinctive kind of semiotic enterprise; one devoted to giving meaning to the past in the present through the study of materiality. It compliments standard studies of linguistics and reformulates contemporary theories of material culture.
The author develops his thesis by first introducing Saussure and reviewing his legacy across structural, symbolic, and cognitive anthropology. He then introduces the Peircian alternative and highlights its influence on pragmatic anthropology. Of special interest are the discussions of the interrelations of structuralism and processual archaeology, poststructuralism and postprocessual archaeologies, and cognitive science and cognitive archaeology. He then provides two innovative case studies, Brook Farm and the Pueblo Revolt, to demonstrate how a semiotic approach can contribute novel insights regarding the material mediation of social orders.
Throughout his analysis, the author emphasizes the close links between archaeology and other social sciences, but also contends that archaeology, by virtue of the powerful ideological character of the past, opens up new spaces for discourse and dialogue. He proposes that, in this way, archaeology can make an original contribution to contemporary semiotics.
