Abstract
This article uses archeology as a metaphor in order to conceptualize anthropological practices of significance within the anthropology of law, employed mostly after personal fieldwork. Taking the gradual clarification of the meaning of the Western legal concept of vis major as an example, the article traces its various permutations at different times and places, from 18th and 19th century Europe to the contemporary Peruvian Andes, where mountain and glacier deities are seen as analogies to vis major, and to China during the Ming dynasty, where the Mandate of Heaven was identified as a true alternative to the Western concept of supreme or natural force.
In conclusion, the archeological imagination is seen as a more appropriate process than conventional anthropological comparison, juxtaposition and generalization.