Back to top: III. Hermeneutics
Grammar and beyond
There is an immediate relationship to the data in what we may call their raw state. But there must also be a mediated relatioship, mediated, that is, through an appropriation process which must depend on the competence of the archaeologist. This is not as such part of the grammar, but it depends wholly on it.
There are two levels where this happens.
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Native inheritors. – Archaeological data present a unique claim vis-à-vis the awareness of the people in whose territory the data are located. They are part of the cultural landscape which nourishes them since their birth: just as they are “native” speakers of a given languages, so they are “natively” linked to the past history of their territory.
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Adopted inheritors. – But the notion of “heritage” extends beyond the territory: it has a wider human resonance which must be made explicit.
Back to top: III. Hermeneutics