Marxist archaeology
Marxist archaeology interprets archaeological information within the framework of Marxism. It was developed by archaeologists in the Soviet Union during the early twentieth century. Marxist archaeology has been characterised as having adopted a materialist base. It holds that societal change comes about through class struggle.
About Marxist archaeology in brief
Marxist archaeology is an archaeological theory that interprets archaeological information within the framework of Marxism. It was developed by archaeologists in the Soviet Union during the early twentieth century. Marxist archaeology has been characterised as having adopted a materialist base and a processual approach whilst emphasising the historical-developmental context of archaeological data. Marxist archaeologists in general believe that the bipolarism that exists between the processual and post-processual debates is an opposition inherent within knowledge production. Many Marxist archaeologists believe that it is this polarism within the anthropological discipline that fuels the questions that spur progress in archaeological theory and knowledge. The theory argues that past societies should be examined through Marxist analysis, thereby having a materialistic basis. It holds that societal change comes about through class struggle, and while it may have once held that human societies progress through a series of stages, from primitive communism through slavery, feudalism and then capitalism, it is typically critical of such evolutionary typology today.
The Marxist conception of history—which originated within Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State —holds that society has evolved through aseries of progressive stages. Marxists believe that there are in fact two more social stages for human society to progress through: socialism and then communism. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which labour is carried on.
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This page is based on the article Marxist archaeology published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
