Can archaeology stand alone?

Of course archaeology can stand apart from anthropology. I'm an archaeologist based in the UK, where the two disciplines have never been linked and yet archaeology flourishes.

To my mind, relatively little of use has been added to archaeology by anthropological theorising. Much more valuable information has come from the co-operation of archaeologists with scientists in fields such as botany, zoology, sedimentology and materials science. By working with disciplines such as these we can address answerable questions (what was the environment like?; did increased cultivation cause excessive soil erosion?; what metalworking technologies were used? etc). Anthropolgy, on the other hand, seems to deal with inherently unanswerable questions (what people thought, why they did things, etc). As a result there is a risk that it leads to endless and ultimately fruitless academic speculation on unresolvable issues..

Really? Sometimes I'm glad I'm not in academia. I don't see how divorcing ourselves from anthropology would do much good. What's the point of digging up stuff if it's not to better understand human culture, or history, as they do it in England? I can also say, as a CRM archaeologist, that it seems to be easier to do our job if we understand the findings within a culture. In CRM, we almost never get any kind of overview of the cultures we're studying. We're just there to dig. Last summer, I worked for the Forest Service, and we were able to learn more about those cultures than I ever did about anywhere else. I know more about the culture in that region after six months than I do about midwestern ones after three years. It put the finds in context, and helped me to look for sites beyond the basics of "near water, on a hill".

I'm really curious how we're supposed to go about doing this, but I do consider myself an anthropologist first and foremost. What are these people proposing? It seems to me that so much good work has been done in areas where anthropology and archaeology are even more closely knit, like, for instance, gender studies and archaeology, that I don't know why we'd want to separate them.

Although Archaeology is an auxiliary branch of History and it has its own characteristics and finds itself as a distinct discipline,it cannot survive alone.In order to conduct an efficient research on something,other disciplins need to be involved to be able to add as much information and as comprehensive as possible.You'll find yourself anthropologists and archaeologists working together hand in hand a lot.So no,in order to bring effective answers to light,Archaeology needs to work hand in hand with other Disciplines to complete the puzzles.

'username' is perfect correct. We don't see archaeology as subordinate to anthropology in the UK - and btw that's why we train the worlds best archaeologists.