Coming to terms with local approaches to sardinia’s nuraghi

Contemporary local discourses concerning sites put archaeologists in an uncomfortable position. Tutored in the notion of cultural diversity for some time now, they are used to insisting on the notions of multiculturalism and inclusion. However the local life of monuments would seem to have no place in the modern archaeological project. The result has been for archaeologists to acknowledge the abstract ‘validity’ of these perspectives but to ignore them entirely in practice. This is unfortunate, as how people of the present live through these monuments informs the structures’ meaningful constitution in the past. Pragmatism is a strain of philosophical thought that supervenes the problem of cultural relativism without sacrificing open-mindedness and tolerance, thus permitting an incorporation of these non-archaeological approaches.