Creolised Swedish Archaeology

Abstract

This is on one level a story of a meeting between Swedish archaeologists, Laotian archaeologists and villagers in the Ban Nabong village in central Laos. It is also about the structurcs of Swedish archaeology, as revealed in this meeting with alternative views of the past and its material remains. Two central concepts: eaolisatinn and crenlisnrion, are derived from the so-called post-colonial theory to serve as models for describing different attitudes to 'the other' that we meet in any archaeological research. It is argued that a creolised archaeology is worth striving for, becausc it has the active meeting as a central principle. It produces a multitude ol' localised knowledges that enrich cach other, and is built upon a constant open-ended discussion which prevents us from coming to solutions with the problems of the archaeological praxis.