This book is about neither a goddess nor a bull, unless Michael Baiter is using a metaphor too subtle for me to appreciate. Indeed, The Goddess and the Bull is not really about the archaeological site of Catalhoeyuek either. After much thought, I believe this is actually a post-processual book about archaeology. Post-processualism is a concept developed by Ian Hodder, a Cambridge-trained archaeologist who now works at Catalhoeyuek in Turkey. In its early formulation, Hodder suggested that the best way to approach archaeology is "characterized by debate and uncertainty about fundamental issues that may have been rarely questioned before". He added that archaeologists "move backwards and forwards between theory and data, trying to fit or accommodate one to the other in a clear and rigorous fashion, on the one hand being sensitive to the particularity of the data and on the other hand being critical about assumptions and theories." Post-processual archaeology is a dialogue, not a diatribe.
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