Recasting Anthropology: Praxis, People, and Possibilities

Abstract

Well into its second century, Anthropology continues to search for its place in the world. Its founders were looking to create a new way of studying humans throughout time and space as a means of better understanding who we are, who we have been, and who we can be. Over the course of the past 50 years, I have participated in government-based archaeology, academic archaeology, and contract archaeology at the state, federal, and private levels as an anthropological archaeologist. Today's anthropologists often find themselves in a variety of situations where they must find ways of making the discipline relevant in the eyes of community members, the academic world, and even government entities. In this paper I will offer a glimpse of the ways that I believe anthropology has changed over the fifty years I have been in the discipline, the way it hasn't, and the way it should.