i sort of have some qualms about the post-pro viewpoint, in part because i think these wider viewpoints were there at the beginning, but largely suppressed by conservative elements from the 1860s on -
there was a large influence by a german social historian named niemayer (spelling?), and john carman for one has written something on how lubbock & the boys pushed a conservative prehistoric agenda to undermine a liberal, popular medieval undercurrent (think arts & crafts movement, roycroft campus out near buffalo, religious revivalism of the later 19th century, etc.) sort of similar to the contemporary gothic/celtic "new age" revival, etc.
but that would be beside the point, if it didn't underline one of the arguments i've been working around, and that is that the post-processualists (& just about everyone else for that matter) don't really know enough about the history of their own discipline; post-pros just seem to take pride in their anti-scholastic stance...
my secret belief is that a lot of post-pro relativism reflects a sort of intellectual laziness: my interpretation is as good as yours, even though you have facts and comparative data to support your arguments, etc., coupled with the enfant terrible syndrome, and a market that promotes celebrity (including notoriety)
which is sort of fine if you're just playing academic mind games, or fighting your way to the top of the academic pyramid or whatever, but, as you say, it don't work with levees or pre-emptive strikes
so there either has to be a difference between where relativism is applicable (anyone's opinion about the past is valid) and where it isn't (everyone's opinion about how to do brain surgery is equally valid), or you have to say that, based on some defining set of criteria, some opinions are better than others
archaeologists might be kind of weak in the great scheme of things, and the results of our work might not seem very significant (who cares what we have to say about global warming?), but... have we really tried?
there must be some reason why environmentalists are taken seriously and we aren't (sense of purpose? solidarity? better lobbying savvy...?), but when i think about all the temporal references orwell makes in his novels, especially 1984, with the arguments made that 19th century geologists invented those dinosaur bones, i think there must be some untapped source we haven't done enough with yet...
anyway: sorry for rambling

"David Babson" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb:
> Re:  Archaeology, and "the truth"
> 
> One tenet of post-processual archaeology has been to present archaeology
> as a constructor of narratives about the past