Negotiating scientific knowledge and heritage values with the history of archaeology

When histories of the history of archaeology begin to generate attention, should we take this as a welcome sign of disciplinary success or as a wake-up call for renewed relevance?Most probably both: much like archaeology itself, also its historiography proves useful for legitimising and rationalising the field for its audiences, and also for enhancing its claims to wider scientific and social pertinence.All this finds ample confirmation in the recently published Oxford handbook of the history of archaeology (OH-HA).Taken as a whole or through a selection of its chapters, this landmark volume promises to become an indispensable teaching aid for advanced students, and also a fertile source of information and inspiration for addressing knowledgeably the historical-and thence the scientific, cultural, economic and ideological-dimensions of archaeology.No longer dismissible as the recollected anecdotes of retiring professors, the history of archaeology has proven time and again its capacity to initiate and to sustain broader reflections on contemporary theoretical, practical and societal challenges.The pages of Antiquity provide numerous examples, such as the debate by Chris Evans on 'Celebrating the annus mirabilis' (2009), and the special sections on 'The uttermost end of the earth' by Clive Gamble (1992) and on 'Ancestral archives: explorations in the history of archaeology' produced in association with the AREA project-Archives of European Archaeology (Schlanger 2002).This critical perspective underlies my review of this volume.I begin by reconsidering the well-established distinction between 'internalist' and 'externalist' approaches in archaeological historiography.This revision is an encouragement to reach beyond the 'prime movers' trio of colonialism, imperialism and nationalism to prise out other generic topics worth pursuing, such as religious agendas, legal frameworks and economic regimes.This in turn makes it possible to point at a potentially problematic conflation between 'archaeology' and 'heritage', which critical historiography could help us untangle. CosmopolitanismThe manifest cosmopolitanism of this book is one of its most compelling features.Starting with the editors themselves, its 35 contributors hail from a wide range of scholarly and linguistic traditions, including Spanish, Italian, German, Francophone,