Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts to lay the basis for a holistic reprise of Marxism. We argue that post-processualism threw out a humanist Marx with the deterministic Structural Marxist bathwater. If we want to transcend this error and tackle the unwanted relativistic and under-determined features of our theory, then we must reconnect with Marx’s core concepts of ideology, materiality and a dialectical history. This paper will ask: why has British archaeology become so thoroughly disengaged from Marxist ideas? On what basis were Marxist/Marxian approaches to society dropped from the post-processual programme following the volumes edited by Spriggs, and Miller and Tilley (both 1984)? What might a humanist Marxist archaeology look like? In confronting these two questions our paper will set out a critique of British archaeology’s current attitudes toward Marxian perspectives in the discipline, arguing that this is no longer epistemologically or ethically responsible.

Paper long abstract:

We begin with the historicist conviction that V Gordon Childe's Marxist inspired rejection of Collingwood's philosophical idealism and particularistic approach to history, hold important clues to why Marx continues to be resisted in theoretical circles. For example, in Ian Hodder's Reading the Past series (1986, 1991, 2003) contextual and interpretive initiatives in archaeology are traced squarely to Collingwood's tolerance of relativism, and especially his contextual and particularistic view of history. Similarly, we believe much of the antipathy to Marx derives from post-processualists' mistaken interpretation of cultural determinism and vulgar materialism in Childe's work.

This theoretical confusion can be traced in the conception of the relationship between space and society in approaches to early prehistoric monumental landscapes. Current models invariably loose the dynamic character of social space's historical being because they choose either an historical idealism (structuralism) or an ahistorical materialism (phenomenology, structural Marxism) upon which to base interpretation (i.e. society → space or space → society inferences). A more productive and epistemologically sound approach can be found in Hegelian Marxist dialectics (see McGuire 1992, A Marxist Archaeology; i.e. a space ↔ society relationship). What follows is an exploration of Henri Lefebvre's spatial dialectical model of society (1991, The Production of Space), which serves to show case what a humanist Marxist archaeology can achieve.