Tilley obtained his PhD in Anthropology and Archaeology at the
University of Cambridge, where he was a student of
Ian Hodder. In the early 1980s, Hodder and his students at Cambridge first developed postprocessualism, an approach to archaeology stressing the importance of
interpretation and
subjectivity, strongly influenced by the
Neo-MarxistFrankfurt School. Tilley and his early collaborator
Daniel Miller were amongst the most strongly
relativist of first wave postprocessualist archaeologists, and was particularly critical of what he saw as the negative political implications of
positivistprocessual archaeology.[2] In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tilley moved away from the
structuralist approach pursued by Hodder and, along with
Michael Shanks and
Peter Ucko, advocated a position of strong relativism. For Shanks and Tilley,
academic interpretations of the archaeological record have no more legitimacy than any other, and they view claims to the contrary as
elitist attempts to control the past,[3] asserting that "there is no way of choosing between alternative pasts except on essentially political grounds."[4]
In a 1989 paper of his published in the academic journal Antiquity, Tilley openly criticised the aims of
rescue excavation, arguing that it was simply designed to collect "more and more information about the past", most of which would remain unpublished and of no use to either archaeologists or the public. As he related, "The number of pieces of information we collect about the past may increase incrementally – our understanding does not."[5] Instead he argued that the archaeological community in the western nations should cease their constant accumulation of new data from rescue digs and instead focus on producing interpretive frameworks with which to interpret it, and also on publishing the backlog of data produced from decades of excavation.[6]
Tilley is credited with introducing
phenomenology into archaeology with his 1994 work A Phenomenology of Landscape.
Phenomenology in archaeology entails the 'intuitive' study of material things, especially
landscapes, in terms of their meanings to people in the past, and has been influential in both Britain and the United States.[7] In the late 1990s, Tilley worked with
Barbara Bender and
Sue Hamilton to investigate the
Bronze Age landscapes of
Leskernick on
Bodmin Moor, with a number of UCL students.[8][9]
Selected publications
Tilley, Christopher (1990). Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
ISBN978-0-631-17285-7
Tilley, Christopher (1991). Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity. London: Routledge.
Tilley, Christopher (1997). A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford: Berg.
ISBN978-1-85973-076-8.
Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher. (1997). Leskernick: Stone worlds, alternative narratives, nested landscapes. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63: 147-178.
Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher. (1999). Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. Archaeology International 3: 13–17.
Buchli (Ed.), Victor; Tilley, Christopher (2002). The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.
ISBN1-85973-559-2.
Tilley, Christopher (2004). The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg.
ISBN978-1-85973-892-4.
Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue; Tilley, Christopher (2007). Stone Worlds: Narrative and Reflexivity in Landscape Archaeology. Walnut Creek CA: Left Coast Press.
ISBN978-1-59874-218-3.
Tilley, Christopher; Keane, Webb;
Küchler, Susanne; Rowlands, Mike; Spyer, Patricia (2013). Handbook of material culture. London: SAGE.
ISBN978-1446270561.
Tilley, Christopher; Cameron-Daum, Kate (2017). [An Anthropology of Landscape]. London]: UCL Press.
ISBN978-1-911307-43-3. Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
Tilley, Christopher (2019). [London's Urban Landscape: Another Way of Telling]. London]: UCL Press.
ISBN978-1787355590. Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
^Bender, B, Hamilton, S., and Tilley, C. (1997). Leskernick: Stone worlds, alternative narratives, nested landscapes. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63: 147-178.
^Hamilton, S., Tilley, C. and Bender, B. (1999). Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. Archaeology International 3: 13–17.