Anthropology and archaeology : a changing relationship /

Gosden (Oxford Univ.) teaches in a joint archaeology-anthropology program; this book is basically a text for an upper-level course outlining the tangential histories of the two disciplines in Britain and the US. Part 1 presents colonial origins of the disciplines, contrasts fieldwork (focusing more on ethnography), and highlights major figures, relying primarily on George Stocking's work. Part 2 discusses the contemporary scene, asking how the disciplines presently "embody" social practices in material culture and landscape, and how they deal with postcolonial globalism. Bourdieu is Gosden's preferred theorist (with Mauss behind him), with case examples drawn primarily from British work in Melanesia, Australia, and England. Gosden closes with postcolonialists Said, Spivak, and Bhabha, pointing out that "there are objective conditions of exploitation and repression" as well as symbolic discourse, concluding, "an archaeologist would say that for many parts of the world there has never been a purely local culture." Anthropology and archaeology are drawing together now, he believes, "around the body, aesthetics and practice." An American observes that Gosden gives space to Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology ethnographers via Hinsley yet seems unfamiliar with their data. Useful as a text or for review. Upper-division undergraduates and above. A. B. Kehoe; University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee