The Archaeology of the Event - The Annales School and Maritime Archaeology

"One fundamental change in social and cultural theory in recent decades has been the number and variety of theoretical perspectives that have come to the fore. In archaeology since the 1960s, theoretical approaches have taken the form of everything from the "New" archaeology to post-processual archaeology as well as been informed by perspectives such as Marxism, feminism, and structuralism among many others. Nevertheless, among some archaeologists, there is a strong and persistent atheoretical strain which supports and promotes the idea that archaeology simply collects scientific facts. This paradigm ignores those approaches that suggest that all data are theory laden or that data are affected by the paradigmatic and theoretical framework used to approach it. Recently some archaeologists, even some maritime archaeologists, have begun a search for a more holistic to archaeology informed by the social and cultural theory of the past thirty years."