__NOTOC__ Chris Tilley is a British archaeologist known for his contributions to postprocessualist archaeological theory. He is currently a Professor of

Anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

and

Archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. Tilley obtained his PhD in Anthropology and Archaeology at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

, where he was a student of Ian Hodder. In the early 1980s, Hodder and his students at Cambridge first developed postprocessualism, an approach to archaeology stressing the importance of interpretation and subjectivity, strongly influenced by the

Neo-Marxist Neo-Marxism is a Marxist school of thought encompassing 20th-century approaches that amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or exi ...

Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...

. Tilley and his early collaborator Daniel Miller were amongst the most strongly

relativist Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...

of first wave postprocessualist archaeologists, and was particularly critical of what he saw as the negative political implications of positivist

processual archaeology Processual archaeology (formerly, the New Archaeology) is a form of archaeological theory that had its beginnings in 1958 with the work of Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips, ''Method and Theory in American Archaeology,'' in which the pair state ...

. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tilley moved away from the structuralist approach pursued by Hodder and, along with

Michael Shanks Michael Garrett Shanks (born December 15, 1970) is a Canadian actor, writer and director. He is best known for his role as Daniel Jackson in the long-running military science fiction television series '' Stargate SG-1'' and as Charles Harris ...

and

Peter Ucko Peter John Ucko FRAI FSA (27 July 1938 – 14 June 2007) was an influential English archaeologist. He served as Director of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL), and was a Fellow of both the Royal Anthropological ...

, advocated a position of strong relativism. For Shanks and Tilley,

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, ...

interpretations of the archaeological record have no more legitimacy than any other, and they view claims to the contrary as

elitist Elitism is the belief or notion that individuals who form an elite—a select group of people perceived as having an intrinsic quality, high intellect, wealth, power, notability, special skills, or experience—are more likely to be construc ...

attempts to control the past,. asserting that "there is no way of choosing between alternative pasts except on essentially political grounds." In a 1989 paper of his published in the academic journal '' Antiquity'', Tilley openly criticised the aims of

rescue excavation Rescue archaeology, sometimes called commercial archaeology, preventive archaeology, salvage archaeology, contract archaeology, developer-funded archaeology or compliance archaeology, is state-sanctioned, archaeological survey and excavation car ...

, arguing that it was simply designed to collect "more and more information about the past", most of which would remain unpublished and of no use to either archaeologists or the public. As he related, "''The number of pieces of information we collect about the past may increase incrementally – our understanding does not.''" Instead he argued that the archaeological community in the western nations should cease their constant accumulation of new data from rescue digs and instead focusing on producing interpretive frameworks with which to interpret it, and also on publishing the backlog of data produced from decades of excavation. Tilley is credited with introducing

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

into archaeology with his 1994 work ''A Phenomenology of Landscape''. Phenomenology in archaeology entails the 'intuitive' study of material things, especially

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...

, in terms of their meanings to people in the past, and has been influential in both Britain and the United States.. In the late 1990s, Tilley worked with

Barbara Bender Barbara Bender is an anthropologist and archaeologist. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Heritage Anthropology at University College London. Career Bender studied for a PhD on the Neolithic of Northern France at the Institute of Archaeolo ...

and Sue Hamilton to investigate the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

landscapes of Leskernick on Bodmin Moor, with a number of UCL students.Hamilton, S., Tilley, C. and Bender, B. (1999). Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. ''Archaeology International'' 3: 13–17.

Selected publications

* Tilley, Christopher (1990). Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. * Tilley, Christopher (1991). Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity. London: Routledge. * *Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher. (1997). Leskernick: Stone worlds, alternative narratives, nested landscapes. ''Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society'' 63: 147-178. *Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher. (1999). Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. ''Archaeology International'' 3: 13–17. * *Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher (2003). Art and re-presentation of the past. ''

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute The ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'' (JRAI) is the principal journal of the oldest anthropological organization in the world, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Articles, at the forefront of the di ...

'' 6(1): 35-62. * * * * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.

References

Bibliography

External links

*
The Leskernick Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tilley, Christopher Alumni of the University of Cambridge British archaeologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people)

Selected publications

See also

References

Bibliography

External links