Phantoms, factoids and frontiers : Social anthropology and the archaeology of Palestine

Archaeology, we are taught, is the ‘study of the human past through the medium of material culture’ ( Thomas 2004a : 1; Boivin 2004 ). This statement presents as a rather unproblematic definition; one that ascribes to material culture a defining role as the primary data source of the discipline and thus the focus for the associated practices and principles of the archaeologist. It is equally clear however that the past these material items imply access to is not reconstructed in any straightforward manner. Long gone are appeals to the deceptive simplicity of von Ranke’s positivist dictum and with it any understanding that the past is something that exists for the purposes of objective examination. Rather, much of the recent literature that has come to represent our field sits both comfortably and confidently within a broad hermeneutical tradition which acknowledges that the past is that which is mediated through the work of the historian ( Collingwood 1946 ; Carr 1961 ).

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