HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which
archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes ...
interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of
philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
to archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways. Throughout the history of the discipline, various trends of support for certain archaeological theories have emerged, peaked, and in some cases died out. Different archaeological theories differ on what the goals of the discipline are and how they can be achieved. Some archaeological theories, such as processual archaeology, holds that archaeologists are able to develop accurate,
objective Objective may refer to: * Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope * ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film * Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object * Objective Productions, a Brit ...
information about past societies by applying the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
to their investigations, whilst others, such as
post-processual archaeology Post-processual archaeology, which is sometimes alternately referred to as the interpretative archaeologies by its adherents, is a movement in archaeological theory that emphasizes the subjectivity of archaeological interpretations. Despite having ...
, dispute this, and claim all archaeological data is tainted by human interpretation and social factors, and any interpretation they make about past societies is therefore subjective. Other archaeological theories, such as
Marxist archaeology Marxist archaeology is an archaeological theory that interprets archaeological information within the framework of Marxism. Although neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels described how archaeology could be understood in a Marxist conception ...
, instead interpret archaeological evidence within a framework for how its proponents believe society operates. Marxist archaeologists in general believe that the bipolarism that exists between the processual and post-processual debates is an opposition inherent within knowledge production and is in accord with a dialectical understanding of the world. Many Marxist archaeologists believe that it is this polarism within the anthropological discipline (and all academic disciplines) that fuels the questions that spur progress in archaeological theory and knowledge. This constant interfacing and conflict between the extremes of the two heuristic playing grounds (subjective vs. objective) is believed to result in a continuous reconstruction of the past by scholars.


Background

Since the early 20th century, most accounts of archaeological methodology have accepted the data that is uncovered by the archaeologist is subsequently interpreted through a theoretical viewpoint. Nevertheless, the archaeological community is divided over the extent to which theory pervades the discipline. On one side, there are those who believe that certain archaeological techniques – such as excavation or recording – are neutral and outside of the bounds of theory, while on the other are those who believe that these too are also influenced by theoretical considerations. Archaeologist
Ian Hodder Ian Richard Hodder (born 23 November 1948, in Bristol) is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980–1990. At this time he had suc ...
, a prominent advocate of the latter view, criticised the alternate approach by highlighting that methodological decisions, such as where to open a trench, how diligently to excavate a stratigraphic layer and whether to keep every artefact discovered, are all based on prior theoretical interpretations of the site, and that even excavatory techniques could not therefore escape the realm of theory. Those who take the former approach have sometimes tried to separate the raw data from the theoretical interpretations in their publications, but have come under criticism from those, such as Hodder, who argue that theoretical interpretation pervades the entire archaeological methodology, and therefore cannot be separated from the raw data. In his overview of archaeological theory, the archaeologist Matthew Johnson of the
University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...
put forward four arguments for why theory was so important to the archaeological discipline, and therefore why all archaeologists should learn about the subject. First, he noted that all of the arguments for why archaeology benefited society were based in theory, and that archaeologists wanting to defend their discipline from its critics would therefore require a grounding in theory. Second, he highlighted that theory was required to compare two different interpretations of the past and decide which one was the more likely. Third, he asserted that theory was needed for the archaeologist to accept and admit to their own personal biases and agendas in interpreting the material evidence. Finally, Johnson put forward what he considered to be the most important reason for the necessity of understanding theory; that all archaeologists, as human beings, are innately theoretical, in that they naturally make use of "theories, concepts, ideas, assumptions" in their work. As such, he asserts that any archaeologist claiming to be "atheoretical" is mistaken, and that in actuality they cloud their own theoretical position under such jargon as "common sense". He proceeded to suggest that most of those western archaeologists who claim to eschew theory in favour of a "common sense" approach were actually exhibiting cultural ''machismo'' by playing on the stereotype that intelligent discussions and debates were
effeminate Effeminacy is the embodiment of traits and/or expressions in those who are not of the female sex (e.g. boys and men) that are often associated with what is generally perceived to be feminine behaviours, mannerisms, styles, or gender roles, rath ...
and therefore of lesser value.


Archaeological theories


Antiquarianism (antiquities collection) and Imperial synthesis (ancient times through c1880)

People's interest of the past has existed since antiquity. During the Western world's Medieval period six main concepts were formed that would come to influence archaeological theory to some degree 1) The world is of recent, supernatural origin at best no more than a few thousand years old 2) The physical world has degraded since God's original creation 3) Humanity was created in the Garden of Eden 4) Standards of human conduct naturally degrade 5) History of the world is a sequence of unique events 6) Culturally, socially, and intellectually the people of the past were identical to the present The coming of the Renaissance stimulated an interest in the past but it was more on the level of collecting artifacts and romanticized theories of their origin. It was not until the 19th century the first elements of actual systematic study of older civilizations began but they tended to be designed to support imperial nationalism.


Cultural-historical (historical particularism, national archaeology) archaeology (c1860-present)

Developments in the 19th century with Hutton and Lyell's theory of
uniformitarianism Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in ...
and Darwin's theory of
natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
set the stage for the modern scientific investigation into the origin of humanity. After Darwin came a mode of archaeology known as cultural, or culture history, according to which sites are grouped into distinct "cultures" to determine the geographic spread and time span of these cultures and to reconstruct the interactions and flow of ideas between them. Cultural history, as the name suggests, was closely allied with the science of
history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
. Cultural historians employed the '' normative model of culture'', the principle that each culture is a set of norms governing human behaviour. Thus, cultures can be distinguished by patterns of craftsmanship; for instance, if one excavated
sherd In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are ...
of pottery is decorated with a triangular pattern, and another sherd with a chequered pattern, they likely belong to different cultures. Such an approach naturally leads to a view of the past as a collection of different populations, classified by their differences and by their influences on each other. Changes in behaviour could be explained by
diffusion Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical ...
whereby new ideas moved, through social and economic ties, from one culture to another. The Australian archaeologist
Vere Gordon Childe Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 189219 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and ...
was one of the first to explore and expand this concept of the relationships between cultures especially in the context of prehistoric Europe. By the 1920s sufficient archaeological material had been excavated and studied to suggest that diffusionism was not the only mechanism through which change occurred. Influenced by the political upheaval of the inter-war period Childe then argued that
revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
s had wrought major changes in past societies. He conjectured a
Neolithic Revolution The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an inc ...
, which inspired people to settle and farm rather than hunt nomadically. This would have led to considerable changes in social organisation, which Childe argued led to a second Urban Revolution that created the first
cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
. Such macro-scale thinking was in itself revolutionary and Childe's ideas are still widely admired and respected.


Historical particularism (c1880-c1940)

Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
argued that cultures were unique entities shaped by a unique sequence of events. As a result, there was no universal standard by which one culture could be compared with another. This line of thought combined with John Lubbock's concept that Western civilization would overwhelm and eventually destroy primitive cultures resulted in anthropologists recording mountains of information on primitive peoples before they vanished.


National archaeology (c1916-present)

National archaeology used cultural-historical concepts to instill pride and raise the morale of certain nationalities or racial groups and in many countries it remains the dominate method of archaeology.


Soviet archaeology (1917-present)

Adapting some of the concepts of Darwinian
natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
for use outside of the discipline of evolutionary biology while employing the Marxist historical-economic theory of
dialectical materialism Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world co ...
, Soviet archaeologists resumed the method of use-wear analysis and, beginning in the 1930s, tried to explain observed changes in the archaeological record in terms of internal social dynamics.


Social archaeology (UK) (c1922-present)


Processual archaeology (New Archaeology)

In the 1960s, a number of young, primarily American archaeologists, such as Lewis Binford, rebelled against the paradigms of cultural history. They proposed a "New Archaeology", which would be more "scientific" and "anthropological". They came to see culture as a set of behavioural processes and traditions. (In time, this view gave rise to the term processual archaeology). Processualists borrowed from the
exact sciences The exact sciences, sometimes called the exact mathematical sciences, are those sciences "which admit of absolute precision in their results"; especially the mathematical sciences. Examples of the exact sciences are mathematics, optics, astron ...
the idea of
hypothesis A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
testing and the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
. They believed that an archaeologist should develop one or more hypotheses about a culture under study, and conduct excavations with the intention of testing these hypotheses against fresh evidence. They had also become frustrated with the older generation's teachings through which
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
s had taken precedence over the people being studied themselves. It was becoming clear, largely through the evidence of anthropology, that
ethnic group An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
s and their development were not always entirely congruent with the cultures in the
archaeological record The archaeological record is the body of physical (not written) evidence about the past. It is one of the core concepts in archaeology, the academic discipline concerned with documenting and interpreting the archaeological record. Archaeological t ...
.


Behavioural archaeology

An approach to the study of archaeological materials formulated by Michael B. Schiffer in the mid-1970s that privileged the analysis of
human behaviour Human behavior is the potential and expressed capacity ( mentally, physically, and socially) of human individuals or groups to respond to internal and external stimuli throughout their life. Kagan, Jerome, Marc H. Bornstein, and Richard M. ...
and individual actions, especially in terms of the making, using, and disposal of
material culture Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects crea ...
. In particular this focused on observing and understanding what people actually did, while refraining from considering people's thoughts and intentions in explaining that behaviour. A related area is
Human behavioral ecology Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity. HBE examines the adaptive design of traits, behaviors, and ...
, which models material traces of human behaviour in terms of adaptations and optimisations.


Post-processual archaeology

In the 1980s, a new movement arose led by the British archaeologists
Michael Shanks Michael Garrett Shanks (born December 15, 1970) is a Canadian actor, writer and director. He is best known for his role as Daniel Jackson in the long-running military science fiction television series '' Stargate SG-1'' and as Charles Harris ...
,
Christopher Tilley __NOTOC__ Chris Tilley is a British archaeologist known for his contributions to postprocessualist archaeological theory. He is currently a Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at University College London. Tilley obtained his PhD in Anth ...
, Daniel Miller and
Ian Hodder Ian Richard Hodder (born 23 November 1948, in Bristol) is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980–1990. At this time he had suc ...
. It questioned processualism's appeals to science and impartiality by claiming that every archaeologist is in fact biased by their personal experience and background, and thus truly scientific archaeological work is difficult or impossible. This is especially true in archaeology where experiments (excavations) cannot possibly be repeatable by others as the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
dictates. Exponents of this relativistic method, called
post-processual archaeology Post-processual archaeology, which is sometimes alternately referred to as the interpretative archaeologies by its adherents, is a movement in archaeological theory that emphasizes the subjectivity of archaeological interpretations. Despite having ...
, analysed not only the material remains they excavated, but also themselves, their attitudes and opinions. The different approaches to archaeological evidence which every person brings to his or her interpretation result in different constructs of the past for each individual. The benefit of this approach has been recognised in such fields as visitor interpretation, cultural resource management and ethics in archaeology as well as fieldwork. It has also been seen to have parallels with culture history. Processualists critique it, however, as without scientific merit. They point out that analysing yourself doesn't make a hypothesis any more valid, since a scientist will likely be more biased about himself than about artifacts. And even if you can't perfectly replicate digs, one should try to follow science as rigorously as possible. After all, perfectly scientific experiments can be performed on artifacts recovered or system theories constructed from dig information. Post-processualism provided an umbrella for all those who decried the processual model of culture, which many feminist and neo-Marxist archaeologists for example believed treated people as mindless automatons and ignored their individuality.


Current theories

After the turn of the millennium archaeological theory began to take on new directions by returning to the objects of archaeological study. Archaeologists, led by Laurent Olivier, Bjørnar Olsen,
Michael Shanks Michael Garrett Shanks (born December 15, 1970) is a Canadian actor, writer and director. He is best known for his role as Daniel Jackson in the long-running military science fiction television series '' Stargate SG-1'' and as Charles Harris ...
, and Christopher Witmore, argued for taking things seriously not only as mediators in what can be said about the past, but also in terms of the unique ways they hold on to actions, events, or changes. For them, archaeology is less the study of the past through its material remains, than the study of things themselves with an aim to generate diverse pasts in the present. (Many archaeologists refer to this movement as symmetrical archaeology, asserting an intellectual kinship with the work of
Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
and others).


Global scope

This divergence of archaeological theory has not progressed identically in all parts of the world where archaeology is conducted or in the many sub-fields of the discipline. Traditional heritage attractions often retain an ostensibly straightforward Culture History element in their interpretation material whilst university archaeology departments provide an environment to explore more abstruse methods of understanding and explaining the past. Australian archaeologists, and many others who work with indigenous peoples whose ideas of heritage differ from western concepts, have embraced post-processualism. Professional archaeologists in the United States however are predominantly processualis

and this last approach is common in other countries where commercial
Cultural Resources Management In the broadest sense, cultural resource management (CRM) is the vocation and practice of managing heritage assets, and other cultural resources such as contemporary art. It incorporates Cultural Heritage Management which is concerned with traditio ...
is practised.


Development

In 1973, David Clarke of
Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
published an
academic paper Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pub ...
in ''
Antiquity Antiquity or Antiquities may refer to: Historical objects or periods Artifacts *Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures Eras Any period before the European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) but still within the histo ...
'' claiming that as a discipline, archaeology had moved from its original "noble innocence" through to "self-consciousness" and then onto "critical self-consciousness", a symptom of which was the increasing recognition and emphasis on archaeological theory. As a result, he argued, archaeology had suffered a "loss of innocence" as archaeologists became sceptical of the work of their forebears.


The impact of ideology

Archaeology has been and remains a cultural, gender and political battlefield. Many groups have tried to use archaeology to prove some current cultural or political point.
Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...
or Marxist-influenced archaeologists in the
USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...
and the UK (among others) often try to prove the truth of
dialectical materialism Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world co ...
or to highlight the past (and present) role of conflict between interest groups (e.g. male vs. female, elders vs. juniors, workers vs. owners) in generating social change. Some contemporary cultural groups have tried, with varying degrees of success, to use archaeology to prove their historic right to ownership of an area of land. Many schools of archaeology have been patriarchal, assuming that in prehistory men produced most of the food by hunting, and women produced little nutrition by gathering; more recent studies have exposed the inadequacy of many of these theories. Non-white cultural groups and experiences of racism in the past are under-represented in the archaeological literature. Some used the "Great Ages" theory implicit in the
three-age system The three-age system is the periodization of human pre-history (with some overlap into the historical periods in a few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; although the concept may also refer to ...
to argue continuous upward progress by Western civilisation. Much contemporary archaeology is influenced by neo-Darwinian evolutionary thought,
phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
,
postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...
, agency theory, cognitive science, functionalism, gender-based and
Feminist archaeology Feminist archaeology employs a feminist perspective in interpreting past societies. It often focuses on gender, but also considers gender in tandem with other factors, such as sexuality, race, or class. Feminist archaeology has critiqued the ...
and
Systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...
.


References


Footnotes


Bibliography

;Academic books *Harris, O.J.T. and C.N. Cipolla. (2017). ''Archaeological Theory at the Millennium: Introducing Current Perspectives''. Routledge, London. *Hodder, Ian. (1991). Postprocessual Archaeology and the Current Debate. In ''Processual and Post-Processual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past'', Edited by R. Preucel, pp. 30–41. CAI Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Occasional Paper No. 10. * * * Izquierdo-Egea, Pascual (2012).
Economic Archaeology of Grave Goods
'. ''Advances in Archaeology'' 1, . Graus. . * *McGuire, Randall H. (1992). ''A Marxist Archaeology.'' Academic Press, Inc, New York. *McGuire, Randal H. (2008). ''Archaeology as Political Action''. University of California Press, Berkeley. *Olsen, B., M. Shanks, T. Webmoor, and C. Witmore. (2012) ''Archaeology. The Discipline of Things''. University of California Press, Berkeley. *Praetzellis, A. (2000). ''Death by Theory: A Tale of Mystery and Archaeological Theory.'' AltaMira Press

*Trigger, Bruce G. (2007). ''A History of Archaeological Thought'' (Second Edition). New York: Cambridge University Press. ;Academic papers * {{DEFAULTSORT:Archaeological Theory Archaeological theory, Philosophy of archaeology