72 Johannes Siapkas
in material culture merely reflect identities, or if it was used to actively construct and
express identities, contributed to the development of the post-processual perspective
(see Sackett 1991). Another important contribution was made by Ian Hodder. He
confirmed several features of the instrumentalist perspective. One of these features
was that ethnic identities are expressed more acutely around the symbolic boundaries
(Hodder 1977, 1979). In the post-processual perspective, archaeologists began to pay
attention to how material culture was used to articulate identities, and also how the
experiences of material culture contributes to shape identities (see Shennan 1989; Olsen
and Kobylinski 1991; Jones 1997: 112–27).
Another area that received much attention was the contribution of archaeological dis-
courses to the construction of modern identities. Archaeology is embedded in the mod-
ern nation-states, and has contributed to construct and sustain modern identities not least
by providing tangible evidence for the existence of a people in the past (e.g., Diaz-Andreu
and Champion 1995; Graves-Brown, Jones, and Gamble 1996; Meskell 1998; Galaty
and Watkinson 2004; Hamilakis 2007). In many cases, these two fields of interest were
combined. In several of the previously mentioned publications, there is an emphasis
on both the historiographical aspects of identities and the development of ethnicity
in the past.
Embodied Ethnicities
The discursive relationship between ethnicity and culture is a fundamental issue in eth-
nicity studies. The dynamic perspective questioned the straight one-to-one correlation
between cultural manifestations and ethnic identities. However, the instrumentalists
failed to produce viable alternative models for this complex issue. Anthropologists
turned, therefore, to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice (Bourdieu 1977), and
particularly to the concept ofhabitus, in order to comprehend the relationship between
ethnicity and culture, and also to bridge the polarization between primordialism and
instrumentalism. In essence, theories of practice emphasize that we are shaped by our
experiences, which in turn are influenced by the social and cultural context that we
live in. Mundane everyday practices, in particular, are viewed as the most natural, or
even authentic, articulation of ourselves. Thus, ourselves and our identities are never
fixed but are instead in a perpetual state of development. Material culture and other
structures, ideologies, and discourses in our social and cultural milieu become embodied
experiences that constitute an integrated part of our identity. However, here lies the
novelty of the theories of practice in relation to earlier theories: through our actions
we influence the experiences and practices of other agents. There is a constant dialectic
exchange of practices between us and our surroundings. We identify, ethnically, with
other persons with similar practices, and make a conceptual distinction between “Us”
and “Others” with different practices (Bentley 1987, 1991; Yelvington 1991; Eriksen
1993). Accordingly, archaeological cultures are conceptualized as manifestations of
identities. Material culture is used by agents, more of less consciously, to articulate
identities, and is also a constituent element of the social context that structures our
experiences and identities. In such an approach to interpreting culture, it is not the
distribution of archaeological artifacts that is considered, but the multiple symbolic
meanings of material culture (Jones 1997: 116–44).