Introduction
Archaeology as a professionalized practice – with accredited specialists, institutional support, defined methodologies, and a coherent knowledge base – has a convoluted history. By some accounts, that history extends back no more than a half century, to the post-World War II era and, in particular, to the 1960s and 1970s. By other accounts, it stretches across multiple centuries (if not millennia), with a range of interested individuals and materials converging at various times and places in the making of archaeological expertise. Typical reviews of such disciplinary development tend to emphasize intellectual progression or the role of a select number of notable people in creating a professional archaeological environment. Iconic publications such as Trigger’s (2006) A History of Archaeological Thought and Daniel’s (1981) A Short History of Archaeologybear witness to these tendencies, compiling the rise of different modes of thinking at the hands of a series of...
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Perry, S. (2014). Professionalization: Archaeology as an “Expert” Knowledge. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1002
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