The question of ethnicity is highly controversial in contemporary archaeology. Indigenous and nationalist claims to territory, often rely on reconstructions of the past based on the traditional identification of 'cultures' from archaeological remains. Sian Jones responds to the need for a reassessment of the ways in which social groups are identified in the archaeological record, with a comprehensive and critical synthesis of recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences. In doing so, she argues for a fundamentally different view of ethnicity, as a complex dynamic form of identification, requiring radical changes in archaeological analysis and interpretation.

List of figures, Preface, Definitions, 1 Introduction, 2 The archaeological identification of peoples and cultures, 3 Taxonomies of difference: the classification of peoples in the human sciences, 4 Ethnicity: the conceptual and theoretical terrain, 5 Multidimensional ethnicity: towards a contextual analytical framework, 6 Ethnicity and material culture: towards a theoretical basis for the interpretation of ethnicity in archaeology, 7 Conclusions: constructing identities in the past and the present, Notes, References, Index