Much has been made in the last 25-30 years of critical archaeological scholarship of the power of the meta-narrative as a device that makes implicit use of or subverts archaeological material in order to legitimate and perpetuate socio-cultural, and political ideas. One salient modern example is the archaeology of Saudi Arabia, which bears witness to the struggles between archaeologists and higher authorities with regards to dealing with the past.
Saudi Arabia faces the issue of confronting its seemingly rich pre-Islamic past in the face of pre-eminence of Islamic culture and a disregard for that which preceded it. The example illustrates well the power of archaeology breaking down conceptions of cultural homogeneity The past was clearly different – cultures rose and fell into obscurity; people’s daily lived lives cannot be accorded with modernity; society operated upon different precepts. As I have outlined before in this blog, archaeology has the ability to break down preconceptions and stereotypes through investigating difference.
Thus, archaeology merely shows how entrenched particular cultural precepts are in Saudi Arabia in the maintenance of certain cultural ideals, which themselves are arguably invested in upholding of structures relating to power and hierarchy aligned with ideology.
