assemblage 4 -- An Emancipatory Archaeology

P. Duke and D.J. Saitta, An Emancipatory Archaeology

ENDNOTES

1. Of course, we appreciate that people are not dupes, and that ideological mystification is never seamless or complete. People in all class positions are knowing, thinking subjects capable of understanding, manipulating and, if need be, subverting the relationships that organize their lives. (back to text)

2. Compare with Saitta (1989, 1992) who defines class as the process of producing and distributing surplus labour in society. His definition contrasts with those in which class refers to differential access to quantities of wealth, property, or power (Resnick and Wolff 1986). On this definition, all societies are class societies, in that every society requires the production and distribution of surplus labour if it is to exist (Cook 1972; Harris 1959; Wolf 1966). This notion of class as a transhistorical category, however, is still perfectly capable of capturing the different ways that surplus has been appropriated in human history, accounting for the rise of exploitative (as opposed to communal) class relations, and explaining changes in the nature of exploitation over time. (back to text)

3. One reviewer of this paper -- Bill Frazer of Sheffield University -- also usefully points out that even where class is acknowledged by historical archaeologists as a subject of inquiry it is treated as an a priori taxonomic category, with little effort directed at exploring how class is created and reproduced through material culture. (back to text)

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Philip Duke is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Department at Fort Lewis College, Colorado. He may be reached by e. mail on <duke_p@fortlewis.edu>.

Dean J. Saitta is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Denver. He is on the Executive Committee of the Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists, and the Board of Directors of the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to working at Ludlow, he conducts archaeological fieldwork in the Zuni area of west central New Mexico. He is currently writing a book on the political economy of ancient North America. He may be reached by e. mail on <dsaitta@du.edu>.

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