Archaeological Semiotics

This interdisciplinary book examines archaeology's engagement with semiotics, from its early structuralist beginnings to its more recent Peircian encounters. It represents the first sustained engagement with Peircian semiotics in archaeology, as well as the first discussion of how pragmatic anthropology articulates with anthropological archaeology. Its central thesis is that archaeology is a distinctive kind of semiotic enterprise; one devoted to giving meaning to the past in the present through the study of materiality. It compliments standard studies of linguistics and reformulates contemporary theories of material culture.

Author: Robert W. Preucel
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 05/03/2010
Pages: 354
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781405199131

About the Author
Robert W. Preucel is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Curator of North American Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught previously at Southern Illinois University and Harvard University and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge. He is co-editor of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory (with Ian Hodder, Blackwell 1996).