Post-processual archaeology

Processual archaeology made contributions to archaeological

theory by encouraging the notion of culture as adaptive,
and by applying systems theory, information exchange theory
and a host of other general theories. Many of these ideas
had existed in some form in earlier approaches in archaeology,
and the extent of this continuity will be further examined
below. Yet perhaps the major contribution made by the
NewArchaeology was methodological (Meltzer 1979; Moore
and Keene 1983, p. 4). Archaeologists became more concerned
about problems of inference, sampling and research
design. Quantitative and statistical techniques were used more
frequently; procedures were questioned and made more explicit.
Contextual archaeology is an attempt to develop archaeological
methodology further.
In the realm of theory, there have been a number of developments
since the early 1960s which, it can be argued, indicate
movement from the initial stance of processual archaeology
as represented by the early papers of Binford (1962; 1965)
and Flannery (1967). In the 1980s, what we now call postprocessual
archaeology encouraged an engagement with the
theoretical turns taken in other fields, particularly anthropology,
which had explored many new directions not foreseen
by the first wave of anthropological archaeology in the 1960s.
In the newmillennium, as the debate between processualism
and post-processualism gives way to a thousand archaeologies
(Preucel 1995; Schiffer 2000), the usefulness of this debate is as
questionable as the demand for a resolution (Hutson 2001; cf.
VanPool and VanPool 1999). In this chapter we summarise
the ways in which archaeology benefits from the dismissal of
this and other dichotomies and suggest areas in which archaeology
can export theory to fields from which it once only
imported.
Beyond engaging with new theories, post-processual archaeology
also valued engagements with society. The centrepiece
of the positivist methods introduced into archaeology
in the 1960s and 1970s was a strict separation between the
object of research and the social context of the subjects conducting
the research. Theory could come from anywhere but
if it contaminated the data, any chance of clean hypothesis
testing would be ruined. As mentioned in chapter 1, most
archaeologists have since backed away from this stance. In
the previous chapter, we stressed how understanding comes
from the mesh between present political contexts and past
‘data’. The politics of the present are therefore part of archaeological
inquiry. We must therefore dissolve one final
dichotomy: that between subject and object. To show how
archaeology is a contemporary social process, we conclude the
chapter by illustrating a series of recent engagements between
archaeologists and other communities who have a stake in the
archaeological record.
Variability and materiality
Throughout this volume it has been noted that most current
archaeological theory, of whatever hue, retains a normative
component, in that explanation assumes ideas held in common
and rules of behaviour. Adequate accounts of individual
variation and perception were encountered most frequently
in those studies based on modern theories of social action
and practice (chapter 5), embodiment (chapter 6) and history
(chapter 7).
This finding is in direct opposition to the commonly stated
aim of the NewArchaeology to be concernedwith variability.
Certainly in some of Binford’s later work (cf. 1984) the notion
of expedient, situational behaviour comes to the fore. As was
noted in chapter 2, such interests have not made their way
into archaeological consideration of ideology and symbolic
meanings. Even in Binford’s studies, individuals appear bound by universal rules
concerned with what individuals will do ‘if
other things are equal’. Because Binford does not recount
a meaning-laden process, the ability of individuals to create
change and to create their culture as an active social process
is minimized.
Norms and rules do exist. The argument here is rather that,
in order to allowfor change, innovation and agency, the relationships
between norms, rules and individuals need to be
examined more fully. In the practice of daily life, ‘other
things’ never are ‘equal’. It is always necessary to improvise
expediently, yet through the framework of the norms and
rules, changing them in the process (see p. 91). In this volume
such questions have been discussed in the context of the relationships
between the individual and society, and between
practice and structure.
The first development that is found, then, in the postprocessual
phase, is the inclusion, under the heading ‘process’,
of an adequate consideration of agency. For example,
it is necessary to develop approaches to typology which are
concerned less with defining ‘types’ and more with describing
multi-dimensional surfaces of variability on which the
‘type’ can be seen to vary with context. More generally, archaeologists
tend to force their material into styles, cultures,
systems, structures, preferring to ignore the ‘random’ noise
of individual variability. Leach’s (1954) insight that various
stages of development may be expressions of a common underlying
structure is an important one for archaeologists who
have tended to disregard variability: for example, there has
been little account of howindividual sites in a region may
go through similar trajectories but at different, overlapping
times (but see Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978).
The concern with variability is of particular importance in
relation to social and cultural change. For example, it may
prove to be the case in a particular area that most individual
variability is allowed in areas outside the direct control of
dominant groups.
The recognition of variability in individual perception
leads to a curious twist in the tale of the reconstruction of the content of historical
meanings. In chapter 8 we discussed
meaning content and howit can be attained in contextual archaeology,
but we also showed that there is not one meaning
in the past. The same object can have different or conflicting
meanings along different dimensions of variation and from
different perspectives. Ethnographers too often assume that
there is some authoritative account of meaning that can be
achieved. Certainly one has to allowfor different perspectives
from different interest groups in society (chapter 4), yet the
problem goes far deeper than this. If material culture is a ‘text’,
then a multiplicity of readings could have existed in the past.
An example is the varied meanings given in British society to
the use of safety pins by punks. It seemed to Hodder (1982d)
that individuals would create verbal reasons for such items but
that these verbal reasons were not ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ –
they were all interpretations of a text in different verbal contexts,
and in different social contexts. Individuals seemed to
be making up the verbal meanings of things as Hodder talked
to them, contradicting and varying their responses as a social
ploy.
The fragmentation of holistic notions such as culture, society
and origin, and the dispersal of meaning along chains
of signifiers (p. 67) provide the main thrust of much poststructuralist
archaeology (e.g. Tilley 1990a; Bapty and Yates
1990). Much of the post-structuralist critique emphasizes the
different pasts we produce in the present and the plurality of
views that should be opened to debate. We will return to this
point below, but for the moment we can focus on the plurality
of meanings within past societies. At first sight this notion of
cultures as heterogeneous assemblages of overlapping, conflicting
interpretations and representations of those interpretations,
in an endless spiral of movement and variation, is
disturbing to the archaeologist. Given the difficulty of interpreting
any meaning in the past, howcan the archaeologist
ever approach this complexity of meaning? In fact, however,
the potentials introduced by this insight are considerable.
Archaeologists no longer need to force their data into wellbounded
categories, and overlapping multiple dimensions of meaning can be sought using a
contextual methodology. The
real complexity of the archaeological data can be faced. An
example of the way in which material culture can be interpreted
as having different meanings to different groups, at
different times in the past, is provided by Greene (1987).
Perhaps more important is the link between variability of
text interpretations and the discussion of power in chapter 4.
The potential of individuals to ‘see’ things from different and
contradictory perspectives may, in theory, be almost limitless.
How, then, is meaning controlled by interest groups
within society? Strategies might include placing events and
their meanings in nature, making them ‘natural’, or placing
them in the past, making them appear inevitable. More generally,
material culture has a number of distinctive aspects
which suggest that it may play a major role in the control of
meaning variation. In particular, it is durable and it is concrete.
All the dimensions of material culture elaboration discussed
under the heading of ‘contextual archaeology’ – all
the associations, contrasts, spatial and temporal rhythms and
so on – can be used in attempts to ‘fix’ meanings. Much,
if not all, material culture production can be described as a
process in which different interest groups and individuals try
to set up authoritative or established meanings in relation to
conflicting interests and in the face of the inherent ability of
individuals to create their own, shifting, foot-loose schemes.
The ‘fixing’ of meanings may be most apparent at centres
of control, and in public rituals. The various domains of culture,
the opposing strands, may here be brought together, and
the dominant structures re-established.Asmall contemporary
example of the relationship between perspective and control
may help to clarify the point. Walking in large, formal gardens
one is often aware of some larger pattern. Glimpses are
obtained of long lines of trees, shrubs, statues, lawn, ponds.
In many parts of the garden one is not allowed to walk, and
the individual understanding of the overall pattern remains
partial and personal, dependent on the particular trajectory
taken in the garden. Many of the formal gardens of which we are thinking are
arranged around a large house, itself raised upor at the centre of radiating
alignments. It is only from here,
the centre of control, that the overall organization becomes
apparent. Suddenly, from the centre, the scheme makes sense
and the individual understandings can be placed within their
context – a context constructed by the centre.
All aspects of cultural production, from the use of space, as
in the above example, to the styles of pots and metal items, can
be seen to play a part in the negotiation and ‘fixing’ of meaning
by individuals and interest groups within society, whether
child, mother, father, chief or commoner. Rather than assuming
norms and systems, in the attempt to produce bounded
entities, archaeologists can use their material to examine the
continual process of interpretation and reinterpretation in
relation to interest, itself an interpretation of events.
Many great continental thinkers of the 20th century –
Freud, Benjamin, Lacan, Foucault – have appropriated archaeology
in some form. However, the ‘archaeology’ referred
to by these writers consists of little more than shallow
metaphors – the idea that archaeologists work with silent
traces and fragments or the idea that the past is concealed and
that we have to dig deep down, one layer at a time, to get to
it – for which no archaeologists would take credit. We cannot
claim that the actual work of archaeology has made an
impact on the conceptual repertoire of any of the theorists
listed above. Nevertheless, archaeology’s focus on material
culture positions it as a potential contributor to any field –
anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history of science
and technology – that takes seriously the interaction between
people and things.
Early work by Rathje (1979), Miller (1984) and Shanks and
Tilley (1987a) showed that archaeology could contribute to
an understanding and critique of the present by paying attention
to objects that are usually taken for granted. The success
of the cross-disciplinary Journal of Material Culture, founded
in 1996, demonstrates that many fields besides archaeology
recognise the importance of objects (Shanks 2001) and underscores
the perceived need for a forum on the topic. Archaeology,
a field which concerns itself with the production, consumption, discard, style,
context and historicity of
objects, has much to contribute to the dialogue on material
culture, and it is perhaps no surprise that some of the pathbreaking
works on the subject have come from writers trained
in archaeology (Miller 1987; 1995; 1998; Schiffer 1991; 1995).
There are many reasons to be interested in the material
world. As we noted in the previous chapter, the material
world is the substance out of which people create their own
meaningful, biographical texts. In chapter 6 we stressed that
one’s memories and sense of self are closely tied to the people,
landscapes and things that fill a life. And in chapter 5 we
presented the possibility that things are more than just props
in the creation of meaningful lives: they acquire lives of their
own. Bruno Latour has discussed this point in a number of
contexts. In his ethnographic and historical studies of science
(1999), he argues that when scientists isolate new substances
in labs, such as the fermenting microorganisms studied by
Pasteur, they do not simply reveal things that were always
there, but give those substances the conditions in which they
can act and prove their mettle. Thus, rather than seeing matter
as a passive substance waiting to create a fuss, matter is active
and can help scientists gain medals.
Even though things have lives, it is not quite correct to say
they have lives ‘of their own’. Matter is not a sort of bedrock
unaffected by the transient biographies of the people that skitter
across its surface. Rather, the reality of a thing depends in
part on the actions of people. Latour refers to this mutually
constitutive interrelationship as circulating reference: a network
of associations and collaborations between people and
things. In his analysis of a failed attempt to create a Personal
Rapid Transit system in Paris, Latour shows that one ‘cannot
conceive of a technological object without taking into
account the mass of human beings with all their passions and
politics and pitiful calculations’ (1996, p. xiii). Latour’s point,
then, is that the lives of people are so thoroughly interwoven
with the lives of objects that a human science can no longer be
the science of humans alone. Machines, like texts and human
actions, must also be interpreted.
A case of intertwining of people and things to which archaeology
has recently contributed is the house society approach
to social organisation. L´evi-Strauss (1987) conceived
of the house society to help characterise social structures that
elude explanations based on kinship alone. At the core of such
ambiguous social groups, ranging from the noble houses of
medieval Europe to the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest,
he and other ethnographers (see papers in Carsten and Hugh-
Jones 1995) found ‘a spiritual and material heritage, comprising
dignity, origins, kinship, names and symbols, wealth and
power’ (L´evi-Strauss 1987, p. 174). Since material heritage
such as heirlooms and landed estates have deep histories and
play an active role in constituting these social groups, the
archaeological approach has made substantial contributions
to the understanding of ancient, historic and contemporary
societies (Joyce and Gillespie 2000).
Historians and anthropologists have come to recognise in
particular that monuments and material heritage play an active
role in society, and that archaeologists can contribute to
wider debates from the perspective of their theoretical understanding
of material monuments (e.g. Bradley 1993). For
example, Rowlands (1993) has discussed different ways in
which societies develop relationships with monuments and
memory. In a highly politicised context, Jerusalem, Nadia
Abu El-Haj focuses on the materiality of archaeology as being
constitutive of a newreality. She argues that ‘in the case
of archaeology, it is not only historiographies or narratives of
and for past and present that are made. Rather, in excavating
the land archaeologists produce material culture – a newmaterial
culture that inscribes the landscape with the concrete
signs of particular histories and historicities. It is through the
making of those objects that archaeology most powerfully
“translates” past and present, that it is able not simply to
legitimize existing cultural and political worlds, but also to
reinvent them’ (1998, p. 168). Archaeology not only can contribute
to the study of the relationships between materiality
and memory, but also plays an active part in forming those
memories.
As we have noted throughout the book (see chapters 3
and 9), material culture is often not the focus of conscious
reflection or conversation. Our feel for our landscape and
our bodily adjustments or reactions to things are not constituted
in discourse. This condition creates what Buchli and
Lucas (2001) refer to as an absent present. The unconstituted
or nondiscursive nature of material culture makes it an especially
attractive site for attempts by special-interest groups to
control meaning in society.

Process and structure

Archaeologists have in the past been concerned with two

main types of process, historical processes (such as diffusion,
migration, convergence, divergence) and adaptive processes
(population increase, resource utilization, social complexity,
trade and so on). Although the work of Grahame Clark and
Gordon Childe, for example, shows that both types of process
have been studied for a long time in archaeology, it was the
processual archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s that introduced
a special emphasis on the latter form.
In essence, the two types of process are very similar. If
a culture changes, we might say that this is because of the
process of diffusion or because of the processes of population
increase and environmental deterioration. Of course, as was
discussed in the first part of this chapter, we can argue about
whether diffusion is an adequate explanation, in the same way
that we can argue about whether any processual account is
adequate. Yet the manner of argument is always the same –
visible event is related causally to visible event. It was on
the inter-relationships, correlations and covariations between
such events that a positivist NewArchaeology was able to
build.
The notion that there might be structures, codes of presences
and absences, that lie behind historical and adaptive
processes, cannot exist comfortably with the empiricism
and positivism that have dominated archaeology since itsinception.
In this sense, post-processual archaeology, in so
far as it incorporates structuralism and Marxism, is a far more
radical break than that which has occurred before.
There are dangers in talking of ‘structure’ as if a unified
concept is widely accepted for this term. There are major
differences between the types of social structure studied in
Marxist archaeology, and the formal and meaning structures
studied in structuralist archaeology. Yet despite these fundamental
differences, all such uses of the term imply something
not visible at the surface – some organizational scheme or
principle, not necessarily rigid or determining, that is immanent,
visible only in its effects. Thus a newlevel of reality
is proposed in archaeology, often described as ‘deeper’ than,
‘behind’ or ‘beneath’ the measurable evidence.
Yet rather than talking about these deeper structures as
underlying the historical and adaptive processes, it is more
appropriate to talk of howeach of these elements contributes
to an integrated viewof society that is always in the process
of becoming. From the practice theories and dialectics of
domination and resistance discussed in chapter 5, from the intersections
of historical events and structures in chapter 7, and
from the operational meanings in chapter 8, there emerges the
familiar idea that society is never a given: its reproduction or
transformation is contingent on historical actions that draw
upon various unpredictable combinations of structures. The
structures and processes mentioned are fluid and constituted
in their performance. Because of the passage of time, which
allows for the reformulation of context, these structures can
be differently reproduced even if the performance is a reiteration
of the previous performance.
Historical meaning content: the ideal and the material
The third aspect of post-processual archaeology that can be
identified is an increasing acceptance within archaeology of
the need for, and possibility of, the rigorous reconstruction
of contextual meanings. Within traditional archaeology the ‘ladder of inference’ (see
p. 43) leading to the ideational realm
could scarcely be scaled, and the NewArchaeology often operated
with the same attitude. For example, Binford (1965;
1982, p. 162) has claimed that archaeology is essentially materialist
and poorly equipped to carry out ‘palaeopsychology’.
We have seen throughout this book, however, an increasing
readiness on the part of archaeologists to deal with the
ideational sub-system, meaning and operational intentions.
All such developments have played an important part in suggesting
to archaeologists that systematic links can be identified
between the material and the ideal.
We have also seen, in all realms of archaeology, an increasing
awareness that the particular historical context needs to
be taken into account in applying general theories. The older
law-and-order attitude has been faced with its own inability
to deliver valid and interesting general laws.
Yet the ideational realm is, in most of archaeology, still
studied largely in terms of the functions of symbols and rituals.
And the historical context is no more, usually, than the
specific conditions in phase A that affect phase B. In traditional
archaeology too, meaning content was rarely examined;
material symbols were seen as indicators of contact,
cultural affiliation and diffusion. Only in chapter 7 were a
fewstudies noted of an emerging explicit interest in meaning
content as the ‘cog-wheel’ for the inter-relationships between
structure and process.
Insofar as post-processual archaeologists recognize that all
archaeologists necessarily impose meaning content, and that
such meanings form the core of archaeological analyses which
must be made explicit and rigorous, the concern with meaning
content is a third marked break with most recent and
traditional archaeology.
Initially, the linking of meaning contents with historical
particularism appears to have pernicious results for archaeology.
A dangerous and negative pessimism lurks. Howcan
archaeologists understand these particular other worlds, coherent
only to themselves? In the discussion of contextual
archaeology in chapter 8 we have attempted to demonstrate that increasingly
plausible approximations to this ‘otherness’,
in all its particularity, can be achieved. This is ultimately because
historical meanings, however ‘other’ and coherent to
themselves, are nevertheless real, producing real effects in the
material world, and they are coherent, and thereby structured
and systematic. In relation to the real, structured system of
data, archaeologists critically evaluate their theories. The data
are real but are both objective and subjective; and the theories
are always open to further questions and new perspectives.
Better and better accommodations and newinsights can be
achieved in a continuing process of interpretation.
Such discussions open up a debate about the relationship
between subject and object. And if every society and time
can be expected to produce their own prehistory, what are
the responsibilities of archaeologists to the worlds in which
they live?
Archaeology and society
Object and subject
Processual archaeology was not characterized by a detailed
examination of the social contexts of archaeologists, since
the main emphasis was to be placed on independent testing
of theories against ethnographic and archaeological data. In
the 1980s, however, archaeologists began to show a greater
interest in the subjectivity of the pasts we reconstruct in
relation to contemporary power strategies (Patterson 1986;
Gibbon 1989; Meltzer 1983; Kristiansen 1981; Rowlands
1984; Wilk 1985; Leone et al. 1987; Trigger 1980). Archaeologists
engaging in critical theory have been the most vocal in
exploring this issue.
Although the archaeologist can be rigorous and scientific
in the accommodation of theory and data, much of our definition
of those data depends on ourselves. It is writers such
as Childe and Collingwood who, from their Marxist and historical
idealist positions respectively, discussed most fully the
contemporary social basis of archaeological knowledge. The discussion of power
and ideology in chapter 4 raises the issue
of whether archaeological interpretations are ideological in
relation to sectional interests.
Critical Theory
‘Critical Theory’ is the umbrella term given to a diversity
of European authors, particularly those of the ‘Frankfurt
school’, centred around the Institute of Social Research established
in Frankfurt in 1923 (Held 1980). The main figures
are Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse. More recently Habermas
and his associates have reformulated the notion of Critical
Theory. The approaches followed in Critical Theory derive
from the tradition of German idealist thought, and incorporate
a Marxist perspective. Critical Theorists claim on the one
hand that all knowledge is historically conditioned, but at the
same time suggest that truth can be evaluated and criticism
can be conducted independently of social interests – in short,
that Critical Theory has a privileged position in relation to
theory.
Among the various aspects of the work of Critical Theory
that might be of most interest to archaeology, the analysis of
aesthetics and contemporary culture is immediately relevant
to the presentation of the archaeological past in museums, on
television and so on. In their Dialectic of the Englightenment
Horkheimer and Adorno (1973) use the term ‘culture industry’.
Contrasting, for example, ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music,
they showthat modern culture is standardized according to
the rationalization of production and distribution techniques.
Individuals do not ‘live’ art and culture any more – they consume
its performance. The culture industry impedes the development
of thinking, independent individuals; it conveys
a message of adjustment, obedience. People are diverted, distracted
and made passive. While there are many exceptions,
archaeology in television documentaries and in museum displays
is often presented as ordered, to be passively viewed. It is
consumed as the cultural component of the leisure industry,
rarely challenging and participatory. Archaeological scientists
can place this sense of order and control and the supremacy of science (their own
science and that of all dominant social
groups) in a long-term historical perspective involving escape
from the disordered primeval past through technological innovation.
The result is a powerful ideological message.
Another relevant aspect of the work of Critical Theorists
is their discussion of the philosophy of history. Habermas
argues that it is inadequate to rest with the idealist interpretative
understanding of contextual meanings, and the analyst
must move towards the explanation of systematically distorted
communication. In other words, one must see how
the ideas of an age relate to domination and power. Similar
points are made by Marcuse, Horkheimer and Adorno. In the
Dialectic of the Enlightenment, the aim is to ‘break the grip of
all closed systems of thought; it is conceived as a contribution
to the undermining of all beliefs that claim completeness and
encourage an unreflected affirmation of society’ (Held 1980,
p. 150).
Following Hegel, the Enlightenment is seen as the rise of
universal science in which the control of nature and human
beings is the main aim. Within positivism, the world was seen
as made up of material things which could be commanded
and ordered according to universal laws, and the laws of history
were equated with the laws of nature. It can certainly
be argued (Hodder 1984b) that archaeological use of the natural
science model, positivism and systems theory supports
an ‘ideology of control’ whereby the ‘apolitical’ scientist is
presented as essential for the control of society in past and
future time and space.
In contrast, Critical Theory seeks a newenlightenment,
an emancipation in which critical reason leads to liberation
from all forces of domination and destruction. With writers
such as Lukacs, the insight which leads to this liberation is
that the structure of the social process constrains, dominates
and determines the social totality, including thought and consciousness.
The ideals of objectivity and value-freedom are described
by critical theorists as being themselves value-laden. Critical
Theory seeks to judge between competing accounts of reality and to expose realms
of ideology, and thus to emancipate
people from class domination. By emphasizing the material
and social conditions, ideological distortions can be revealed,
leading to self-awareness and emancipation.
A materialist approach to history as ideology has been
taken most clearly in archaeology by Leone (1982; Leone
et al. 1987; see also Handsman 1980 and 1981). Leone notes
that when the past is interpreted and made history it tends to
become ideology, and he suggests that the consciousness or
revelation of that process may help those who write or are
told about the past to become aware of the ideological notions
that generate modern everyday life. Through, for example, locating
the origins of individualism or modern notions of time
in the growth of capitalism in eighteenth-century America,
visitors to museums could be made aware of their own ideology
as historically-based, and their taken-for-granteds could
be revealed as sources of domination.