Six years ago we took over the editorship of Ethnoarchaeology from the founders, Kathryn Arthur and Liam Frink. The success of the journal in gaining both authors and readers demonstrates their wisdom in perceiving the need for a journal focusing on ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology. We have enjoyed being editors, have learned a great deal, worked with wonderful authors, reviewers, and other colleagues, and, we hope, helped publish some excellent papers. We wish to thank the previous editors who bequeathed us a thriving journal, a diverse and expert editorial board, all of the scholars who invested their time providing reviews of articles, and both the past Book Review Editor, Jerimy Cunningham, and the current, Rachel Horowitz.
We are delighted now to be passing the journal to the competent hands of Brenda Bowser. Brenda is a well-known ethnoarchaeologist who specializes in both ceramics and space use and has headed the Ecuadorian Amazon Conambo Ethnoarchaeological Project since 1992, She is a prolific scholar with considerable previous editing expertise, including three edited book volumes and five guest-edited journal issues. She will undoubtedly use her talents to continue the best traditions of Ethnoarchaeology, while further developing it in new and exciting directions.
In the past Ethnoarchaeology has published a number of defenses of the theoretical bases and usefulness of experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology. As a parting editorial comment, we feel it is time to be even more assertive about the value of our endeavor and of its relationship to the general enterprise of anthropology. At our institution and others, anthropology as a field is losing students to supposedly more “useful” and “relevant” departments like economics, computer science, the so-called STEM fields, and even sociology. Some of our difficulty has always come from the relative obscurity of a study that is not taught in most high schools, and that in some minds deals with “foreign,” or “exotic” cultures “not relevant” to most people’s lives. It is clear that anthropologists, in general, but especially archaeologists need to demonstrate that our field is central to an understanding of the world, not peripheral to it. Anthropology’s problems are deeper, however, and connected to theoretical divides in the field, our sensitivity to the power of voice and representation, and compounded by increasing sensitivity to issues of identity.
We are being told, and sometimes taught, that every human experience is unique, so to attempt to understand another’s experience is ultimately impossible. This is a self-defeating premise that challenges the goals anthropology as a field. In fact, in informal ways what all humans do, every day of their lives, is attempt to understand themselves and their relations with other humans. Thus, anthropology is a basic human activity for everyone everywhere. Our individual uniqueness is canalized by cultural rules. We think and behave in predictable and understandable patterns, and we can communicate and live successfully with each other. Understanding the “Other” in a broad sense, and specific cultures that are not our own, is a path toward understanding ourselves, and getting along with others – perhaps the most valuable skill in today’s globalizing world.
Anthropology, (and all the related humanities and social sciences), provide a toolbox of theories and points of view, and a library of examples for understanding our human experiences. Like all toolboxes, some of the equipment therein does not work for some jobs, or was flawed from the beginning; as in all libraries, some of the books are worthless. But Anthropology has always had a central message evident in the best work: we can understand and respect and learn from each other. The very existence of scholarly fields like Anthropology is a reflection of our desire to do so; the practice of anthropology is merely a formalization of what we all do all the time. Ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology are part of this enterprise. We examine closely the relations between humans and the technology that has shaped our lives in every culture since the days of our earliest hominin ancestors. Not only does this provide a unique window on vanished lives, but the tools of ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology are useful for examining how the material world shapes our lives today. We need not be apologetic about being anthropologists, ethnoarchaeologists, or experimental archaeologists. We should be proud. As the editors of this journal, we feel its work represents the power of anthropology to understand and unite.