Suchergebnisse

This article was presented as the Distinguished Lecture in Archeology at the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, December 4, 1992, in San Francisco.

Intro -- Contents -- PREFACE -- Military Space -- The Fortress -- The Monolith -- Typology of the Fortifications of the Atlantic Wall -- Albert Speer -- Cartography -- Chronology -- War Landscape -- Anthropomorphy and Zoomorphy -- The Monuments of Peril -- Series and Trans formations -- An Aesthetics of Disappearance -- Afterword 1945 / 1990 -- Glossary -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- BIOGRAPHY.

The core of this article was first presented as the Distinguished Lecture in Archeology at the 88th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 17, 1989, in Washington, D.C.

Kant argues that the "discipline" of reason holds us topublicargument and reflective thought. When we speak the language of reasoned judgment, Kant maintains, we "speak with a universal voice," expecting and claiming the assent of all other rational beings. This language carries with it a discipline requiring us to submit our judgments to the forum of our rational peers. Remarkably, Kant does not restrict this thought to the realm of politics, but rather treats politics as the model for reason's authority in all the provinces that rational beings inhabit.

Archeologists create and interpret the past. Attempts to arrive at the "best explanation" of that past are misguided, ignoring the differing perspectives of those who are looking backward, as well as the imperfections in our cognitive abilities. The latter is the focus of this article: How do we best relate our models, as metaphors, to a presumed real past world? Archeological thought is argued to be embedded in traditional Western dichotomies by which we view the world in general. Different models are not necessarily in competition; rather, they provide different modes of understanding. Several models for the "origin" of agriculture are examined in this light and are then applied to the prehistory of the American Midwest.

The land! don't you feel it? Doesn't it make you want to go out and lift dead Indians tenderly from their graves, to steal from them—as if it must be clinging even to their corpses—some authenticity.