Archaeological Semiotics [Paperback]

This interdisciplinary book examines archaeology’s engagement with semiotics, from its early structuralist beginnings to its more recent Peircian encounters. It represents the first sustained engagement with Peircian semiotics in archaeology, as well as the first discussion of how pragmatic anthropology articulates with anthropological archaeology. Its central thesis is that archaeology is a distinctive kind of semiotic enterprise; one devoted to giving meaning to the past in the present through the study of materiality. It compliments standard studies of linguistics and reformulates contemporary theories of material culture.List of Figures.

List of Tables.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

1. Introduction.

What is Semiotics?.

Archaeology and Semiotics.

Theorizing Material Culture.

Organization of Book.

Part I. Signs of Meaning.

2. Saussure and his Legacy.

Ferdinand de Saussure.

Semiology and Structural Lingustics.

Saussure and Modern Linguistics.

Structural Anthropology.

Symbolic and Cognitive Anthropology.

Summary.

3. The Peircian Alternative.

Charles Sanders Peirce.

Semeiotics.

Peirce and Modern Philosophy.

Peirce and Modern Linguistics.

The Life of the Sign.

Summary.

4. Pragmatic Anthropology.

Peircian Encounters.

Indexicality.

Self and Social Identity.

Material Culture Meanings.

Summary.

Part II: Aspects ofl“