2024/07/02 by Simon Radchenko · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies #Postmodernism in Literature and Education #Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00293652.2025.2452292
openalex publication_date 2024/07/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
As of today, archaeological theory is represented by numerous simultaneously developing approaches. Some of them feature the ways archaeological theory conceptualizes the past. Others are self-reflexive and explore the political and social dimensions of contemporary archaeological practice. However, these different ways to discuss today’s archaeology rarely approach it in a holistic way, while recent advances in the studies of arts and culture, namely metamodern studies, suggest another perspective and foster looking at archaeology as a whole, drawing connections between the philosophical aspects of archaeological knowledge and the social and cultural features of archaeology as practiced by 21st-century scholars. This paper tests metamodernism as a theory capable of structuring and coherently describing contemporary archaeological practice. After outlining the most prominent structures of feeling of the 20th century – modernism and postmodernism, – it introduces metamodernism as a theoretical framework that describes the culture and society of 21st century. While this framework does not present any novel paradigm or suggest any new way of conducting archaeology, it aims to structure the existing practices more clearly. This paper explores the capacity of metamodern concepts to bridge posthumanism, actor-network theory, and epistemic scaffolding and reveals their logical connection to the structure of today’s archaeological research.