ANTH 235, EXPLANATION IN ARCHAEOLOGY
The most fundamental question guiding archaeology today
is: “Why did things change?”
IMPORTANT: There is no single agreed upon and
universally accepted perspective from which to
understand or explain the human past.
Today, there is a superabundance of approaches to
explaining “why?” The archaeological literature is
awash with polemical discussions among logical
positivists, Marxists, structuralists, postprocessualists, eco-feminists, Queer Theorists, etc., all
claiming special insight into understanding the past.
WHAT ARE ARCHAEOLOGISTS TRYING TO
EXPLAIN? A HIERARCHY OF QUESTIONS…
 Explaining specific conditions of burial and
preservation (“How did these animal bones come to be
buried with those tools?” “Why are these textiles so
well preserved?”)
 Explaining a specific event (“What caused the Classic
Maya collapse?” “Why was the Second City at Troy
destroyed when it was?”)
 Explaining a specific pattern of events (Elm tree
decline in Neolithic Europe. “Is the explanation climatic
change?” “Did some pest attack the trees?” “Was there
a change in the pattern of exploitation by humans?”)
 Explaining a class of events (Origins of agriculture.
Occurred apparently independently at about the same
time in many areas – China, SE Asia, Mesoamerica, the
Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa – why was this?
This is a class of events that demands an explanation)
 Explaining a process (Development of a ranked society.
Processes which are common to large segments of
humankind, at least under certain circumstances)
TRADITIONAL EXPLANATIONS (NOTE: the word
“traditional” is used here deliberately in a somewhat
pejorative or at least negatively critical sense)
1. define an archaeological culture (“a constantly
recurring assemblage of artifacts” – V. Gordon Childe).
2. associate that culture with a specific people (a welldefined ethnic group), such as Mimbres people of New
Mexico or the Windmill Hill people in Neolithic Britain.
3. next, think in terms of migration to explain the changes
observed.
4. propose cultural diffusion (maybe even hyperdiffusion)
as the mechanism for exchange.
THE PROCESSUAL ALTERNATIVE: The processual
approach attempts to isolate and study the different
processes at work within a society and between societies,
placing emphasis on relations with the environment,
subsistence, and economy, and on the impact that ideology
and belief systems have on these things.
EXAMPLE: The origins of farming; a processual
explanation, following Lewis Binford’s seminal 1968
paper, “Post-Pleistocene Adaptations” [in Sally Binford
and Lewis R. Binford, editors. New Perspectives in
Archaeology, pages 313-341. Chicago: Aldine].
ATTEMPTS AT EXPLANATION:
Monocausal (“prime mover”) versus multivariate
explanations
“Post-processual” Explanations: a broad class of
interpretive paradigms, including, but not limited to:
 neo-Marxism (Althusser, Balibar, Lukacs)
 the “post-positivist” (anarchic) view of scientific
method advocated by Feyerabend
 structuralism (Lévi-Strauss, Chomsky)
 the hermeneutic (interpretational) approach
(Dilthey, Croce, Collingwood, Ricoer)
 Critical Theory as developed by philosophers of the
Frankfurt School (Marcuse, Adorno) and later by
Habermas, Hodder, Shanks, and Tilley
 the post-structuralism (or deconstructionism) of
Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida
 structuration theory (Giddens, Bourdieu)
 various feminist approaches to archaeology
(Gimbutas, Conkey, Spector)
STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES: Structuralist
archaeologists stress that human actions are guided by
beliefs and symbolic concepts and that the proper object of
study is the structures of thought – the ideas – in the minds
of human actors who made the artifacts and created the
archaeological record.
Criticisms of structuralist approaches:
 most such inquiries are synchronic and do not address
issues of change
 are proposed connections (e.g., “boundedness” in social
relations and pottery decoration) just superficial and
coincidental? How do we prove that they’re not?
 can any of these structuralist propositions be expressed
as testable hypotheses?
CRITICAL THEORY: Stresses that all knowledge is
historical, distorted communication and that any claims to
seek “objective” knowledge are illusory.
Criticisms of Critical Theory:
 seems to imply that one person’s view of the past is as
good as any other’s without any hope of choosing
systematically between them…
 opens the door to “fringe archaeologies” where
explanations can be based on flying saucers and extraterrestrials – why not?
NEO-MARXIST THOUGHT: Great emphasis is placed
on the significance of ideology in shaping change in early
societies – Neo-Marxists see direct links between the
ideological superstructure of societies and their economic
base or foundation.
Criticisms of Neo-Marxist Thought:
 Is there really such a strong connection between
ideology and economics?
 The inevitability implied by some neo-Marxist
approaches seems suspect…
 Most (though admittedly not all) Marxist approaches are
limited to explanations of change in terms of the struggle
between social classes – is this oversimplification?
CONCLUSIONS:
 In any explanation, it is important to be clear about what
one is trying to explain – whether a specific event, a
class of events, or a more general process.
 Perhaps the future of archaeological explanation lies in a
synthesis of many of the ideas presented above; maybe a
cognitive-processual synthesis that draws on the
strengths of many of these intellectual paradigms...
MIDTERM II RESULTS (n=13)
110
109
99
98
97
95
94
90
89
88 88
79
57
Of course, some behaviors defy all rational explanation!