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45
G
ustavo
G. P
olitis
Reflections on Contemporary Ethnoarchaeology
PYRENAE,
núm.
46
vol.
1
(2015)
ISSN: 0079-8215 EISSN: 2339-9171 (p. 41-83)
what is currently called ethnoarchaeology. Neither should we include the research carried
out in the Beagle Channel in Argentina by Assumpció Vila and Jordi Estévez, and their
research team (Estévez and Vila, 1995; Vila and Estévez, 2000; Vila
et al
., 2007; but see
García Roselló, 2008: 36-37 and Lane, 2014: 137), because its main goal was
[…] tanto depurar la metodología arqueológica como verificar modelos explicativos o leyes
generales del Modo de Producción (cazador en este caso) […]. Así, utilizamos técnicas arqueo-
lógicas en el estudio de objetos etnográficos, usamos datos etnográficos para verificar hipótesis
metodológicas arqueológicas y datos arqueológicos para refutar o validar informaciones etno-
históricas. (Estévez and Vila, 1995: 19)
3
Moreover, in the definition of what is not, strictly speaking, ethnoarchaeology
(regardless of the interest of the studies in question), several examples of Spanish works
that have defined themselves as ethnoarchaeological are included. However, they use
ethnographic and historical data about religious beliefs and practices to understand the
mythology and the rituals of prehistoric societies (Arizaga Castro and Vila, 2007; Moya
Maleno, 2010, 2012).
What I call ethnoarchaeology does not cover the series of works on the Guaraní people
done by Brazilian researchers either (such as Rodrigues and Alfonso, 2002; Catafesto de
Souza, 2002), who have attempted to use analogy and to compare data obtained from
three different sources: archaeological sites with Guaraní pottery, colonial documents, and
published ethnographic research (Catafesto de Souza, 2002: 212). This set of works does
not provide original data about living populations, although, in many of them, ethnogra-
phic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological data from the indigenous populations of Latin
America are combined in very productive and interesting ways.
These cases show the complex use of ethnographic and historical data in the process
of archaeological investigation, but they lack one of the defining elements of ethnoar-
chaeology: the gathering of original data among living people. Nevertheless, it is not my
intention to create a solid line separating what is and what is not ethnoarchaeology. The
frontier between disciplines and approaches are arbitrary, increasingly permeable, and
labels and definitions only represent some kind of consensus that is worthy basically for
communication purposes and mutual understanding.
Other related approaches that have emerged in recent years are the archaeology of the
present (González-Ruibal, 2008a, 2014; Harrison and Schofield, 2010; Harrison, 2011) and
archaeological ethnographies (Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos, 2009). They should not,
however, be taken as synonymous, since they present a critical view of current ethnoar-
chaeological practice and have proposed novel perspectives that engage past and present
3. “…both polishing archaeological methodology and verifying explanatory models or general laws about the Mode
of Production (hunting, in this case) […]. Thus, we use archaeological techniques in the study of ethnographic
objects, we use ethnographic data to verify methodological or archaeological hypotheses in order to refute or
validate ethnohistorical information”.