Processual and Postprocessual Archaeology or How to do archaeology: 19602005

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Processual and Post-processual
ArchaeologyorHow to do archaeology 1960-2005

• 161221
• ?????????????????
• Department of Sociology and Anthropology
• Faculty of Social Sciences
• Chiang Mai University
• benjamin.marwick_at_anu.edu.au

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Outline

• What is processual archaeology?

• What is post-processual archaeology?

Where did it come from? How is it done? Who is
doing it? Where did it go? Why is it important?
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What is Processual Archaeology?

• Popular way of doing archaeology in America and
  England in 1960s and 1970s
• A scientific way of doing archaeology
• Aimed to find general laws to explain cultural
  systems and change

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How to do scientific archaeology

• Use methods that other archaeologists can use
  (anthropology, maths, biology, ecology)
• Have a theory (a coherent set of propositions
  that explain a class of phenomena, that are
  supported by extensive factual evidence, and that
  may be used for prediction of future
  observations)
• Test hypotheses (a proposition explaining the
  occurrence of a phenomenon or phenomena)

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Where did it come from?

• Before processual archaeology was cultural
  historical archaeology
• They wrote narrative history from artefacts(Used
  historical explanatory principles to examine
  changes in the archaeological record, such as
  trade, invention, diffusion, migration, invasion)
• They assumed that 1 assemblage 1
  culture(Nationalistic, normative and
  historically specific bias)
• Their main work description, classification and
  chronology(inductive method)

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How was it done?

• Processual archaeologists interpret artefacts
• as means of adaptation to the environment within
  a cultural system rather than historical marker
  (How is the artefact useful to the people? What
  is the function of the artefact? How was it
  made?)
• As affected by anthropological factors in
  addition to historical factors (How is the
  artefact useful to the people? What is the
  function of the artefact? How was it made?)
• They used scientific methods to analyze artefacts
  and the environment(Logical empiricism and
  hypothetico-deductivism of Hempel)
• They wanted to make theories to explain the
  behaviors behind variation in artefacts, rather
  than only describe it(The Indian behind the
  artefact)

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Who was doing it?

• Lewis Binford

• Kent Flannery

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Lewis Binford

• Binford, L.R. 1962. Archaeology as Anthropology.
  American Antiquity 28(2)217-225
• Argues that archaeological record must used as a
  database for a reconstructing human behaviour,
  not just a record of changing material culture.
• Argues that artefacts give information about
  different cultural systems (environment,
  society, supernatural)
• Argues that archaeology should be a science and
  have methods and theories(Middle Range Theory
  uniformitarianism assumptions linking the
  archaeological record to natural and cultural
  processes)

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Lewis Binford The Old Copper complex

• Northern Great Lakes region of the USA,
  3000-1000 B.C.
• the "Old Copper Problem
• Archaic Period copper tools were used, but not
  reworked, and then buried with grave goods, later
  in the
• Early Woodland Period burial assemblages these
  copper tools disappeared
• Culture-historians puzzled by devolution(Copper
  tools better than stone and bone tools, so why
  stop using them?)

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Lewis Binford The Old Copper complex

• Binford says copper artefacts not better than
  stone or bone (sources of copper distant and
  sparse, metalworking is very labour and time
  intensive)
• So, copper artefacts had symbolic function as
  social status indicators, not tools(they werent
  reused only found in graves with burial goods,
  not reused )
• Copper artefacts disappear because population
  increase ? change in social organisation ? new
  indicators of status(thinking of culture as a
  system)
• Good example of anthropological and scientific
  archaeology, but hard to read!(with theories and
  hypotheses, not technological methods)

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Lewis Binford The Mousterian Debate

• Period of the European Middle Palaeolithic (After
  Acheulean Homo erectus and before Aurignacian
  Homo sapiens)
• 200,000 40,000 BP, Neanderthals, Levallois
  technique
• Four different Mousterian assemblages(Denticulate
  , Typical, Mousterian of the Acheulean Tradition
  and Charentian with the Quina and Ferrassie
  subgroupings)
• Binford v. Bordes

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Lewis Binford The Mousterian Debate

• François Bordes says that the different
  Mousterian assemblages are different cultural
  groups

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Lewis Binford The Mousterian Debate

• Binford does some statistics and says different
  Mousterian assemblages represent different
  functions

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Lewis Binford The Mousterian Debate

• Binford processual archaeologist interested in
  cultural systems and adaptation
• Bordes culture-historical archaeologist
  interested in describing the chronology of
  cultural groups

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Lewis BinfordAncient Men and Modern Myths

• The Olduwan Period 2 1 million years ago in
  equatorial Africa (Earliest Lower Palaeolithic)
• Louis and Mary Leakey excavate at Olduvai Gorge

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Lewis BinfordAncient Men and Modern Myths

• Leakeys argue for home bases and hunting
• Campsites where hominids take their tools and
  food
• Some areas at Koobi Fora and Olduvai have a lot
  of stone artefacts and animal bone
• Leakeys make analogy to modern hunter-gatherers

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Lewis BinfordAncient Men and Modern Myths

• Binford says not home bases
• Statistical analysis of artefacts
• Studies site formation processes
• Finds that sites are like carnivore dens
• Says hominids were only scavengers at carnivore
  kill sites

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Kent Flannery

• Flannery, K.V. (ed.) 1982 The Early Mesoamerican
  Village. Academic Press, 1982
• Flannery, K.V. 1973 The origins of agriculture.
  Annual Review of Anthropology 2 271-310
• Flannery, K.V. 1972 The Cultural Evolution of
  Civilizations. Annual Review of Ecology and
  Semantics 3399-426.
• Uses scientific methods sampling and statistics,
  geography, ecology, zoology, botany
• Uses systems theory to combine different
  methods(Systems theory looks at interacting
  phenomena as interrelated to a degree that a
  change in one variable will result in a change in
  at least one other, ie technology, social
  organization, and ideology)

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Evolutionary Archaeology

• In the late 1970s Dunnell, Rhindos and other
  archaeologists become interested in Darwins
  theory of evolution
• Evolution is scientific and good for biology and
  palaeontology
• Makes archaeology more scientific

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Evolutionary Archaeology

• Dual inheritanceGenes and culture are two
  distinct, but interacting, systems of information
  inheritance within human populations. Culture
  cannot be fully subsumed by natural selection,
  because it has its own mechanisms and properties
  and, in this sense, can be said to have a "life
  of its own."
• Evolutionary ecologyCulture change is the output
  of individual organisms seeking to maximize the
  net rate of energy capture so as to enhance their
  reproductive fitness.
• Selectionist archaeologyUse natural selection to
  explain change in the archaeological record.

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Processual archaeologyKey Concepts

• 1. ExplanationOriginally, the goal of
  archaeology had been to reconstruct the past. New
  Archaeologists were not satisfied with this
  approach. They said archaeology must work to
  actually explain the changes that occurred in the
  past. This involved the use of explicit theory.  
  
• 2. GeneralizationBefore the 1960's, archaeology
  used historical explanations. New Archaeologists
  relied on science and culture process to explain
  changes. This meant the use of generalizations.  
  
• 3. Deductive ReasoningThe approach of the New
  Archaeologists involved the use of deductive
  reasoning rather than inductive. The deductive
  process involved forming hypotheses and
  constructing plausible models to explain changes.
   
• 4. Testing of HypothesesNo longer would
  hypotheses and conclusions be accepted because of
  the standing of the researcher offering them.
  Instead, all hypotheses would be subjected to
  rigorous testing before gaining acceptance.
• 5. Project DesignTraditional archaeology had
  focused on data accumulation. The projects of the
  New Archaeology should be designed to answer
  specific questions, not to generate more data
  that might not be relevant.  
• 6. Quantitative MethodsThe traditional verbal
  approach to analysis was abandoned by the New
  Archaeologists in favor of sampling, significance
  testing, and other methods of computer
  statistical analysis.  
• 7. OptimismTraditional archaeologists believed
  that archaeological techniques were not fit to
  study social organizations and cognitive
  processes. The New Archaeologists were optimistic
  and believed the current techniques could be used
  to elucidate these issues nicely.
• 8. Cultural materialism,The social science
  framework that explains culture in terms of the
  constraints imposed by available technologies and
  natural resources

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Where did it go?

• Processual archaeology said it could study all
  cultural systems, but actually studied only
  technology, subsistence, economics and social
  organisation (Thought they couldnt research
  gender, ideology, religion, symbols, internal
  social dynamics)
• In the 1980s archaeologists reject scientific
  archaeology looked for new approaches
  (deterministic and functionalist views, not an
  objective experimental discipline)
• They were influenced by developments in
  neo-Marxian anthropology, structuralism, literary
  and cultural theory, feminism, post-positivist
  social science, hermeneutics, phenomenology and
  many others

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and so
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What is Post-processual Archaeology?

• Critique of processual archaeology
• Includes many different approaches
• Archaeology of gender
• Archaeology of social practice and agency
• Archaeology of symbols and meaning
• Critical analysis of doing archaeology

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How is it done?

• Archaeology of gender
• Gender as a socially created and historically
  specific force
• Investigates male and female roles in society
  through ethnographic analogy
• Generally interprets the past to reclaim the role
  of women as subjects

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How is it done?

• Archaeology of social practice and agency
• Influenced by Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu and
  Anthony Giddens
• Study individual motivation, intentions and goals
  "putting people back into the past the
  relationship between the constitution of the
  actor, in terms of cultural and psychological
  structures, and behavior.
• and the dialectic of structure and
  agencyconstraining/enabling influences of
  social, symbolic and material structures,
  institutions, habituations and beliefs

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How is it done?

• Archaeology of symbols and meaning
• Examining meaning in social and economic
  processesas part of ritual behavior or religious
  processes. Most apparent in varied approaches to
  leadership and the rise of political systems.
• all kinds and scales of archaeological
  evidence,ranging from portable material culture
  to architecture and landscapes (cosmos
  recreation)
• understanding prehistoric ideas and cosmologies
  not just as part of social processes but also for
  their own sake, archaeoastronomy

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How is it done?

• Critical analysis of doing archaeology
• Influenced by Marx, Horkheimer and the Frankfurt
  Schoolwho reacted to the pervasive and dominant
  nature of capitalism by stressing that empirial,
  logical positivist analysis is heavily biased and
  value-laden by the ideologies of scientists all
  knowledge is class-based and histories are
  composed from class puposes
• Interested in biases in how the past is
  reconstructedhow archaeologists construct the
  past by writing/museum displays/television and
  exhibit systemic biases of gender, race, power,
  colonialism
• Advocate multi-vocality and hermeneuticsgiving
  different groups their own past, concentrating on
  the process of interpretation itself

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1909
Bias in the depiction ofNeanderthals
1953
1990s
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Who is doing it?

• Critique Ian Hodder, Michael Shanks, Christopher
  Tilley
• Gender Margaret Conkey, Alison Wylie, Joan Gero
• Agency John Robb, Marcia Dobres, Bill Sillar
• Critical theory Mark Leone, Valerie Pinsky

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Where did it go?

• Hegmon, M. 2003. Setting theoretical egos aside
  Issues and theory in north American archaeology.
  American Antiquity 68(2) 213-243.
• Post-processual archaeology has no new method,
  only theory, so
• What are archaeologists doing now?
• Processual-plus combination of generally
  processual archaeology with concepts from
  post-processual approaches.