Toward an Archaeology of the Future

Archaeologists have largely embraced the idea that our discipline is political; that from its inception it has been intimately linked to capitalism and implicated with nationalist, colonialist, imperialist, sexist and racist agendas. Archaeologists have always validated our existence by the social relevance of our work, often with varying success. We believe that the best method may be to study history backward: to begin with the present result and look to the past to consider its preconditions. Bringing these understandings forward again allows us to project this potential into the future and examine the present complete with its ties to the past. This dialectical connection of past, present and future provides an important perspective on the long-term historical study of the social relations of capitalism. In this paper, we provide the larger theoretical context to elucidate these issues that form the foundation for this issue.