Against functionalism: review of the Pietrele Archaeological Project Cover Image

Against functionalism: review of the Pietrele Archaeological Project
Against functionalism: review of the Pietrele Archaeological Project

Author(s): Radu-Alexandru Dragoman, Oanţă-Mărghitu Sorin
Subject(s): Archaeology
Published by: Editura Cetatea de Scaun
Keywords: Pietrele-Gorgana; Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI; Eneolithic; tell-sites; burnt houses; “paths”/”domestic waste areas”; functionalism; academic politics; reflexive archaeology

Summary/Abstract: The present text is a review of the German-Romanian archaeological research of the tell of Pietrele-Gorgana in southern Romania. As we show in this paper, the functionalist interpretation and the Fordist organization of the archaeological practice at Pietrele are interdependent. Both draw their legitimacy from the same functionalist paradigm criticized in the social sciences as an ideology of maintaining and reproducing the system, stating that functionality is a natural, universal state. In our opinion, archaeology, as the discipline of “the other”, should fight the dominant discourses colonizing the past and implicitly or explicitly promoting the reproduction of hierarchical systems.

  • Issue Year: 2007
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 105-133
  • Page Count: 28
  • Language: English
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