Practice Indiscipline: Exploring a Common Ground between Archaeology and Ethnography

Abstract

Archaeology and ethnography have been seen as closely related disciplines for a long time. One reason for this is that both fields introduced the concept of practice early in their theoretical development. Recently, theoretical debates on practices have undergone several conceptual shifts, enabling new interdisciplinary interactions and transdisciplinary hybridizations. We argue that contemporary theories of social practices are ideally suited to establish a common methodological ground for these fields in three main areas: the field site, materiality and temporality. We suggest using a common conceptual language for these disciplines, incorporating the notions of situatedness, participation and the simultaneous ‘archaeologization of the contemporary’ and ‘contemporization of the archaeological.’ Such a framework can enable (contemporary) archaeologists and (sociological) ethnographers to communicate their research more effectively and potentially foster closer collaborations in the future.