Abstract

If there is a common theme to the history of archaeology across Canada it has been the struggle to develop and define cultural historical sequences in each part of this vast country. And this has led to archaeologists developing very specialized expertise for particular geographic areas, and so resulting archaeological sequences tend to reflect this specialization, entrenching an insular regionalism in Canadian archaeology that can often seem to make archaeological efforts of little consequence beyond a telling of local history. And this is only further exacerbated by the tendency to draw links between these archaeological sequences and historically specific Native cultural groups. Moreover, it has been suggested that Canada's geography and diverse archaeological record has kept Canadian archaeologists too busy to worry about the theoretical ism debates that have come and gone elsewhere in the discipline. In a sense, this is implying that theoretical issues are something someone else can specialize in - we've got our hands full working to uncover the past. But if this is the case for Canada, such an a-theoretical or unreflective archaeology has left many critical concepts such as culture and ethnicity, as well as their archaeological manifestations, unexplored and simply assumed within constructed regional culture histories. The implications and limitations of archaeology as local history and under-theorised in Canada will be explored, and strategies for moving on offered.