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'Kuzmanovic Z, Vranic I, 2013: On the reflexive nature of archaeologies of the Western Balkan Iron Age: a case study of the "Illyrian argument". Anthropologie (Brno) 51, 2: 249-259'. |
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| Abstract | | The purpose of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to reveal and present some interpretative issues in different Balkan Iron Age archaeologies that result from long-lasting use of culture-historical approach, and on the other to suggest that future interpretations of the past need to be more reflexive. Culture-historical archaeology is based upon a premise that individuals who are linked by production and consumption of stylistically homogeneous material culture form a group with a feeling of collective identity, whereas recent identity studies vigorously question this approach. Today, the idea about archaeological cultures as relatively stable and homogeneous systems of values characterizing certain group of people is recognized as ethnocentric projections that reflect modern national/ethnic identities and social concepts into the constructed image of the past. A following case study of the "Illyrian argument" - a well known dispute between Yugoslav and Albanian archaeologists and historians on "ethnogenesis" of the ancient Illyrians - shows how culture-historical archaeologies in different sociopolitical contexts, sometimes, beside the same methodology, reach very different conclusions. As a way forward, we suggest a reflexive approach that will be well aware of constitutive interrelations between the past as an object of the study and the present as a context of the research. | | | | Keywords | | Iron Age - The Western Balkans - Culture-historical archaeology - Reflexivity theory - "Illyrian argument" | | |
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