Archaeological ethnography: a multi-temporal meeting ground for archaeology and anthropology

Archaeology and anthropology, despite their commonalities, have had a rather asymmetrical relationship, and the periodic attempts for closer collaboration resulted in mutual frustration. As both disciplines have recently undergone significant changes, however, with anthropology embracing materiality and historicity, and archaeology engaging in contemporary research, often invoving ethnography, the time is ripe for a new rapprochement. Archaeological ethnography, an emerging trans-disciplinary field, offers such an opportunity. Archaeological ethnography is defined here as a transcultural space for multiple encounters, conversations and interventions, involving researchers from various disciplines and diverse publics, and centered around materiality and temporality. It is multi-temporal rather than presentist, and while many of its concerns to date are to do with clashes over heritage, it is argued here that its potential is far greater, in that it can dislodge the certainties of conventional archaeology, and question its ontological principles, such as those founded on modernist, linear and successive temporality.