Professional Documents
Culture Documents
T R I G G E R
A history
archaeological
thought
PORT CHESTER
MELBOURNE
SYDNEY
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CONTENTS
LIST O F ILLUSTRATIONS
...
PREFACE
I
Xlll
Page x
4
12
19
25
vii
5 Culture-historical archacology
Iliffiisio~ristrr
TIYEMo~ztelinnqvrtljesis of Eziropeatl prchistoy
Tlje cotzccpt oj'cztltzlre
IZossi~lnanizd the crllttlrc-l~istoricalnppronch
Cl?ildc ma' Thc Da\v11of Europcan Ci\lilizntion
Nntiorral nrcl~ncologp
C~i/tzirc-/~i.~to~.icnl
nrz/~acol~qj~
ivr Noi*tllA~lzcricn
Tcc.111ricnl I ~ L - I ~ C / O / I I I I L . I ~ ~ S
(~o~rcllrsiorrs
6
Sovjct archaeology
A i*cl~ncol(~qy
z 71 tsrrrzst Rzi~szn
Al-c/~n~-o~o~qjf
d1ir11gthe N C I IEJC O ~ I Ul'olzcy
MZC
T l ~ bzrtll
e
~ ' J o t v rnrc/';laeol~qy
t
Cousolzdntzolr
I < C C E I Zdc~lclo~t~fictlt~
~
C:ollcll~szol~s
7
r-
I?rtcrsocietal car1tact
Nco-historicism
Idealism atzd taco-Marxism
Contextual archacolo~y
Archaeol~qyas itself
Conclusions
10
B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L ESSAY
REFERENCES
INDEX
Illustrations
+
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
I;
IJ
15
10
Pa%!"
Important movcn-rcnts in archaeology and some major figures associ10
ated with them
2
0
Relationships b c t w c c ~Ic\-cls
~
of gcncrtllizatio~ls
Merlin erecting Stonchcngc, from a fourteenth-ccntt~ry British manu32
script (British Library MS Egertoll 3028, f.3or.)
lligging at tlcrculancum, 1782 ( S a i ~ ~ t - N OJ:C.
I I , Voyngcpittovesyrrc et
3:
description du voyarrmc de Naplcs ct dc Sicile, l'aris 1781-6
Layard's reconstruction of an Assyrian palace, from iMonurnents of
41
Nincoeh, 1853
Shang cast bronze ritual vessel, illustrated with rubbing of illscriptio~ls
and their transcl-iption into con\rentional characters, from twelfthcentury A.D. catalogue Boyutu (Pcrcival Davici Foi~ndationof Chinese
Art, London)
+3
Aubrey's plan of Avcbury, from his Mu;r~imentaBvitarririca, c. 1675
48
(Rodlcian MS Top. Gcn. C. 24, f.39~-40)
Engraving of t u n ~ u l i and rune stones at Jelling, Denmark, 1591
50
(Drawing cxccutcd for Henrik Ratzau and published in 1591)
62
Stukclcy's view of Avcbury, published in Abuvy, 1743
Succcssi\~cstyles of ornamentation, from Thornsen's Guidebook (older
forms at top) (C. J . Thornscn Lcdetvaad ti1 Nordisk Oldky?rdighcd,
Copenhagen 1836)
77
Thornsen s I i o \ v i ~ ~visitors
g
around thc Museuln of Northern Antiquities
79
Worsaac boring into one of the large tumuli at Jelling; he explains the
procedure t o King Frcdcrik VII of Denmark ( D r a w i l ~ gby J. Korn81
crup, 1861)
Achculcan handasc found by Frcrc at Hoanc, publ~shcdin Archa~olu88
qra, 1800
Profile s l l o w i n"~locanon of Palacol~thic~n'~rcrlal,
frocn Bouchcr dc
91
Perthes' A ~ z t i q u i t sccltiljucs ct nirtcdtlu~~icn~~es,
1847
hlortillet's epochs of prehistory, from Fov~rratio;~
dc la ~rationfian~aisc,
-Y7
1897
Plan of prehistoric carth~'orksat Portsmouth, Ohio, from Atwater's
'Ilcscription o f the anticluitics disco\rcrcd in the St.~tcof Ohio' (Trails100
I T ~ - ~ ~ I o/.~/Jc.
I I I ~ A I I I C I ~ I L ~ I I I, I~ I I ~ I ~ I I , ~ I ' I I, ISI OI L . I ~ . ~ISZCI)
,
17 Grave Creek Mound, West Virginia, from Squicr and Davis Aircieirt
rl/loirrrnzclrtsc f t / ~Mississip/~i
r
Vallry, 1848
107
13 John 1,ubbock (Lord Avcbury) (1834-1913) (Radio Times Hultoll
I'icturc Library)
114
19 'Cultural characterization areas' o f North America, based o n archacologic'1l criteria, by Holmcs (Anaei-icarrA;ithropul(~~ist,
1914)
123
2 0 l)r.~\villgo f the C;rc.~tScl-pent Mound o f Ohio, from a popul.lr article
I)!. I'utl~.lln ( ( , ' L V I ~ I I ? Y I ~ i ~ ~ t ~ - n t ~ ~ i i l . l18yo)
npci~rc,
128
21 'Approach to the acropolis', from J. T. Bent's The Ruined Cities of
il?nsrsl,oimln~rd,1892
132
22 'Native police dispersing the blacks', Westcrl-r Quccnsland, c . 1882
(C. L ~ ~ n i h o lAnzong
tz
Cairlribals, 1890)
142
23 Oscar Montclius (1843-1921)
156
2 4 I ~ ~ O I I Z C -.~rtifilcts
age
arranged according t o Montclius' system, 1881
159
25 Childc with a party ofworkme11at Sk;m Brae, Orkney, 1928-30 (Royal
Commission on Ancient Monuments, Scotland)
169
26 Childc's first chart correlating the archaeological cultures o f Central
Europe, fro111TIJCDanube in Pvcbistoiy, 1929
171
27 Kidder's profile of refuse stratigraphy and construction levels at Pecos
Ruin, New Mexico, from A n I;ztvoductiovz to the Study of Soutl~western
A ~~chacolu~y,
1924
189
18 Cl~ronologicalchart from Ford dncl Willey's synthesis of castern North
American prehistory (AmcvicanAnthropologist, 1941)
193
29 l'ctric's profile of Tell el-Hesy, 1890 (Tell cl Hcsy, 1901)
198
3 0 Grave from Hallstatt ce~neter!., Austria, recorded by the painter Isidor
Engcl in the mid-nineteenth century
199
31 Pottery of successive periods in I'ctrie's predvnastic sequence, from
Diospolis Pnrvn, 1901
201
32 \'. I. lid\8do~~ik.ib
(189.~-1976)(Institute of Archaeology, Leningrad)
217
33 Plan o f Palaeolithic hut found at Buryet, reproduced in Antiquity by
Childe, 1950
224
34 Plan from cxca\rations dt Novgorod, 1977-83 (Institute ofArchaeology,
Leningrad)
231
35 Exca\rations at No\rgorod, 1977-82 (Institute o f Archaeology,
Leningrad)
232
36 Escavations at Novgorod (Institute of Archaeology, Leningrad)
233
37 1'1.1n .lnd section of Cutting 11, S t ~ Carr
r
(E.~cavntioizsat Star C a w ,
19i-c)
268
38 Structures o n mound platform, fro111Hi~vasseeIsland, by T. Lewis and
M. Kneherg, 1946
273
39 M'~cNcish's interpretation of suhsistencc-setclement pattern o f Ajucrcado PII~ISC(11,000-7,000 B . c . ) in Tchudcan Valley ( T l ~ eScience of
Archncology ? 1978)
28 1
40 Willcy's interpretation of community patterns in thc Viru Valley,
Pel-u, in the EIu.1nc.ico I'criod ( A . n. 8oo-1000) (I'vcl~istovicScttlciirc~rt
l'tzrtr7.11.r211 t l ~ rVil-~iVtrllcy, I'CYU, 195;)
283
Illustrations
3
4
5
7
8
y
lo
11
12
13
page
Important ~novcmcntsin archaeology and some major figures associI0
ated with them
Relationships bctwccn lcvcls of gcncmlizations
20
Merlin erecting Stonchcngc, from a fourteenth-ccntury British manu32
script (British Library MS Egerton 3028, f.3or.)
Digging at Hcrculancum, 1782 (Saint-Nan, J.-C. Voyngepittovesque ct
37
descviptiort du voyaunze de Napla et de Sicilc, Paris 1781-6
Layard's reconstruction of an Assyrian palace, from Monuments of
41
Nincveh, 1853
Shang cast bro~lzeritual vessel, illustratrd with rubbing of inscriptions
and their transcription into conventional charactcrs. from twelfthcentury A.D. cataloguc Bagutu (Pcrcival David Foundation of Chinese
Art, London)
43
Aubrey's plan of Avebury, from his Monzrmenta Britannica, c. 1675
48
(Rodleian MS Top. Gcn. C. 24, f.39~-40)
Engravillg of tuniuli and rune stones at Jelling, Denmark, 1591
50
(Drawing executed for Henrik Raczau and published in 1591)
Stukclcy's view of Avcbury, published in Abury, 1743
62
Successive styles of ornamentation, from Tho~ilsen'sGuidebook (older
forms at top) (C. J. Thomscn Lcdetvaad ti1 Novdisk Oldkyndigged,
Copenhagen 1836)
77
Thomsen showing visitors around the Museum of Northern Antiquities
79
Worsaac boring into one of the large tumuli at Jelling; he explains the
procedure t o King Frederik VII o f Denmark (Drawing by J. Koi-1181
crup, 1861)
Achculcan liandasc found by Frcre at Hoxnc, published in Avchaeolo88
@a, 1800
17 Grave Creek Mound, West Virginia, from Squier and Davis Aacieiit
rMo)rrrt?rcntsr f t / ~Mississippi
c
Vallcy, 1848
107
18 John Lubbock (Lord Avcbury) (1834-1913) (Radio Tinics Hulton
I'icture Library)
114
19 'Cultural characterization areas' o f North America, bascd o n archacological criteria, by Holmcs (Antcrica~i
Aizth~opol(~qist,
1914)
I23
2 0 I)~-,iwi~
ol'thc
~ g C;rc.it Scrpcnt Mound o f Ohio, from a pop~il.lrarticle
by 1'11t n i m (<,'cnt~ty
I I l ~ ~ t ~ Mqqaziirc,
flt~d
18yo)
128
21 'Approach to the acropolis', from J. T. Bent's The Ruined Cities of
M a s / ~ u n a ~ n t1892
~d,
132
22 ' N ~ t i v cpolice dispersing the blacks', Western Quccnsland, c. 1882
(C. Lumholtz Among Canizibals, 1890)
142
23 Oscar Montcli~ls(1843-1921)
156
2 4 Bronze-age artifacts arranged according t o Montclius' system, 18x1
139
z.5 Childc with a party ofworkmen at Skara Brae, Orkney, 1928-30 (Roy;~l
Commission on Ancient Monunicnts, Scotland)
169
26 Childc's first chart correlating the archaeological cultures o f Central
Europe, from The Daizube in Prcbistoiy, 1929
171
27 Kidder's profile of refuse stratigraphy and construction levels at Pecos
to the Study of Soutr'~~veste~n
Ruin, New Mexico, from A n Zi~t?*oduction
Archaeolo~y,1924
189
28 Chronological chart from Ford and Willey's synthesis of eastern North
American prehistory (American Anthropologist, 1941)
193
29 l'etric's profile of Tell el-Hcsy, 1890 (Tell el Hesy, 1901)
198
30 Grave from Hallstatt cemetery, Austria, recorded by the painter Isidor
Engel in the mid-nineteenth century
199
31 Pottery of successive periods in Petrie's predynastic sequence, from
Diospolis Parva, 1901
201
32 V. I. lia\ldonikas (1894-1976) (Institute of Archaeology, Leningrad)
217
33 Plan o f Palaeolithic hut found at Buryet, reproduced in Antiquity by
Childc, 1950
224
34 Plan from exca\lations at Novgorod, 1977-83 (Institute ofArchaeology,
Leningrad)
231
35 Excavations at Novgorod, 1977-82 (Institute o f Archaeology,
Leningrad)
232
36 Excavations at Novgorod (Institute o f Archaeology, Leningrad)
233
37 Plan and section of Cutting 11, Star Carr (Excavatioizs a t Star C a w ,
1954)
268
38 Structures o n mound platform, from Hiwassee Islaizd, by T . Lewis and
M. K~leberg,1946
273
39 MacNcish's interpretation o f subsistence-settlenient pattern of Ajuercado Phase (11,ooo-7,000 B . c . ) in Tchuacan Valley (TIJEScience of.
A r c h n e o l g ~ ?1978)
28 1
40 Willcy's interpretation o f community patterns in the Viru Vallcp,
Pcru, in thc Mu.inc.ico I'criod ( A . I I . 800-1000) (I'rchistovic Scttlcnrcnt
1'nftcr~r.rit^ t l ~ cVini Valley, I ' c r ~ ,1 ~ 5 3 )
283
Illustrations
The settlement pattern o f the Basin o f Mexico for the Late Horizon
(Sanders et al., T h e Basin ofMexico, 1979)
42 Binford's plan o f a modern Nunarniut butchery .ma at Anavik Springs,
Alaska, showing where caribou wcrc dismembcrcd dncl waste prociucts
were disposcci (In Purstrit $the Past, 1983)
4 3 System flow chart for Shoshonean Indian subsistence cycle, by D. H.
Thomas (13. H. Thomas in 1). I*. Clarkc, cd., Modcls iu A r r t ~ n c o l q v ,
1972)
44 Flow diagram of prcsumed f o o d / m o n ~ ~ m c allocation
nt
in the Classic
Maya civilization (J. A. Hoslcr, J . A. Sabloff .~nciD. liungc in N.
Hammond, ed., Social Process il.1 M a y a Prehistory, 1977)
45 Sampling at Broken K Pueblo, J. N. Hill, 1968 (J. N. Hill in S. R. and
L. R. Binford, New Perspectives i n Archeolofiy, 1968)
46 Modul'~r housing unit .lt Gl.istonbury Iron-agc site, as idcntificci by
I). I,. Clarkc (Modcls in Alz/~aeof!qy,1972)
47 and 48 Hodder's recording of ethnographic distribution o f shield types
and calabash motifs alllong different ethnic groups it1 the Baringo area
of Kenya (Sy~rzbolsi;z Action, 1982)
49 Eighteenth-centur~rWilliarn Paca Garden, Annapolis, Maryland; the
outlilies of the garden are archaeologically cietcrmincd (M.Leone in
D. Miller and C. T i l l e ~ cds.,
,
Ideol~qy,I'ul~~crand l'rcl~istoly, 1984)
50 Model of drop and toss zones, as de\,elopcd by Rinford from his
ethnoarchaeologic31 study of the Nunamiut of Alaska (ITZPursuit of the
Past, 1983)
41
xii
Preface
uniquc characteristics of thc human mind, whilc it facilitates the
inscrtion of social science thcory into a broader biological undcrstanding o f human origins and bchaviour. Yet I havc ncvcr found
that ecological determinism, nco-evolutionary theory, or cultural
ll
of
materialism provide satisfactory explanations of the f ~ ~range
variation found in human bchaviour or of the various complcxitics
of concrctc scqucnccs of cultural changc. T l ~ r o ~ l g l ~my
o u tcarccr I
Iiavc soi~glitto reconcile a materialist approach with efforts to
account for the historical diversity that cl~aractcrizcsthe archacological record. This has fostcrcd my growing appreciation of.historical materialism, to which I was initially attracted by my efforts to
understand thc past rathcr than as a result of dogmatic political
convictions. In particular, I havc found Gordon Childc's historically
and co~ltcxtuallyoricntcd Marxism to bc infinitely prcfcrable to the
more dctcrministic forms of evolutionary Marxism or the flirting
with idealism that characterizes much so-called 1x0-Marxism.
Whilc this book has bccn writtcn as a unit, I havc drawn to varying dcgrccs upon my previous writings. Thc outlinc of thc study of
the history of archaeology in tlic bibliographical essay for chaptcr
one is bascd heavily 011 Triggcr (1985a). Many of the ideas uscd to
structure chapters four and fivc wcrc dcvclopcd in Triggcr (1978a)
and (1984a), while the sections dealing with Childc in chaptcrs fivc
and scvcn arc bascd on Triggcr (198oa) and morc particularly Trigger
(1984b) and (1986~).
Chaptcr six is bascd in part on Triggcr (1984c),
although thc views that I havc cxprcsscd about Sovict archaeology in
that papcr havc bccn consicierably modificd. Chapter nine makes use
1988). Some
of idcas devclopcd in Triggcr (1982a, 1984c, 198sb, 198~d,
of the rcfcrcnccs citcd in chaptcr six wcrc located by Rosemarie
Bcrnard in thc course of writing hcr McGill undcrgraduatc honours
thesis 'Marxist Archacologics: A History of thcir Development in
the U.S.S.R., Europe, and the Americas' (1985). I am also gratcful t o
Peter Timmins for his advice in drafting the section of chaptcr ninc
dealing with site-formation pi-occsscs. For factual infor~liationand
bibliographical assistance I thank Chcn Chun, Margaret Dcith,
Brian Fagan, Norman Hammond, Fumiko Ikawa-Smith, Junc
Kcllcy, Philip ICohl, Isabcl McBrydc, Mary Mason, Valcrie Pinsky,
Ncil Silbcrman, Robcrt Vogcl, Alexander Iron Gcrnct, Michael
Woloch, and Alison Wylic, as well as many other collcagucs around
the world who have sent me reprints of thcir papers.
xiv
CHAPTER I
IZO
and hcncc may morc closely approximate reality ovcr long periods of
time. This, howcvcr, is a tenuous basis on which to base our hopes
for thc objcctivity of historical intcrprctations.
I do not claim that thc historical study prcscntcd hcrc is any morc
objcctivc than arc thc intcrprctations of archacological or cthnological data that it cxanlincs. I bclicvc, howcvcr, as do many others who
study thc history of archacology, that J historical approach offcrs a
spccial vantagc point fro111 which thc changing relations bctwccn
arch~cologicalintcrprctatio~~
&~ncl
its soci.11 snd cultur.11111ilic~1
can be
cxamincd. The timc pcrspcctivc providcs a diffcrcnt basis for studying the ties betwccn archaeology and socicty than d o philosophical
or sociological approachcs. In particular it pcrmits the researcher to
idcntify subjcctivc factors by obscrving how and undcr what circumstances intcrprctations of thc archacological rccord havc changcd.
Although this docs not climinate the bias of the observer, or the
possibility that thcse biases will influcncc the intcrprctation of
archacological data, it almost certainly incrcascs thc chanccs of
gaining morc rounded insights into what has happcncd in thc past.
1982: 42). In the past most of thcse frameworks were not formulated
explicitly or even consciously by archaeologists. Today, especially in
thc contcxt of Amcrican archacology, many thcorctical propositions
are systematically elaborated. Yet it is surely misleading to restrict
the status of thcory to the self-conscious formulations of rccent
dccadcs. Morcovcr, a closc examination of thc history of archacological intcrprctation suggcsts that carlicr thcorics wcrc not always
as implicit or disjointed as thcy arc oftcn bclicvcd to have bccn.
Others acccpt that arch;lcologists cmploycd thcorics in thc past
but maintain that until recently there was not ,enough consistency in
this process for thcse thcorics to havc constituted what Thomas
Kuhn has called a research paradigm. Kuhn (1970: 10)has defincd a
paradigm as an accepted canon of scientific practice, including laws,
thcory, applications, and instrumentation, that providcs a modcl for
a 'particular coherent tradition of scientific research'. Such a tradition is sustained by a 'scientific community' and is propagated in
journals and textbooks that arc controlled by that community. D. L.
Clarke (1968: xiii) dcscribcd archacology as an 'undisciplined cmpirical disciplinc' and suggcstcd that its thcorctical dcvclopmcnt, at
least until very rccent times, must be rcgarded as being in a preparadigmatic state. Until the 196os, archacological theory remained
a 'disconncctcd bundlc of inadcquatc subtheories' that had not bccn
structurcd within a con~prchcnsivcsystem. H c also implied that only
approaches that arc recognized internationally can qualifjr as paradigms (ibid. 153-5). Yet detailed studies of earlier phases in the
devclopment of archaeology are revealing much more comprehensive and internally consistent formulations than were hitherto
believed to have cxisted. This is especially true of studies that respect
the integrity of the past and judgc the work donc in terms of the
idcas of the pcriod rather than modern standards (Meltzer 1983;
Grayson 1983, 1986).
Some archaeologists combine Kuhn?sidca of scientific revolutions
with an evolutionary view of thc development of their disciplinc.
They maintain that successive phases in the devclopment of archaeological thcory display enough intcrnal consistency to qualify as
paradigms and that thc rcplaccmcnt of onc paradigm by anothcr
constitutes a scicntific revolution (Sterud 1973). According to this
view, successive innovators, such as Christian Thomsen, Oscar
Montelius, Gordon Childc, and Lcwis Binford, rccognizcd major
A history of arcl~acologicalthought
A history of arcl~acologicalthought
lation dcnsitics forcc pcoplc to work hard (Slotkin 1965: IIG-11). 111
1843 the Swedish archacologist Svcn Nilsson (1868: Ixvii) argued that
increasing population had brought about a shift from pastoralism to
agriculture in prehistoric Scandinavia. This concept was also implicit in the 'oasis' thcory of the origin of food production, as cxpoundcd b!. Raphael Pumpclly (1908: 65-6) and adopted by Harold Pcakc
and H. J. Flcurc (1927)and by Gordon Childc (1928).They proposed
that postgl.~cialdesiccation in the Near East Il.ld compcllcd pcoplc
to cluster around surviving- sources of water, whcrc they had to
innovate in order to fccd higher population dcnsitics. Yet, while
idcas persist and recur in the history of archacology, this docs not
mean t11;it there is nothing new in the intcrprctation of archacological data. Such idcas must be examined in relation to the diffcrcnt
conceptual frameworks of which they wcrc a part at each period. It is
from these framcworks that tl~cscconcepts derive thcir significance
to the discipline and, as the frameworks change, thcir significancc
docs also. According unduc importru~ccto particular idcas and not
x t lead archacpaying enough attcntion to their changing c o ~ ~ t cwill
ologists to undcrcstimatc the amount of significant changc that has
characterized the clcvclopnlcnt of arcl~acologicalintcrprctatio~l.
Many archaeologists note that one of the principal characteristics
of archacological intcrprctation has bccn its rcgio~lal diversity.
David Clarkc (1979: 28, 84) nnil Leo Klcjn (1977)llavc both trc;ltccl
the I~istoryof archacology as one of rcgional scl~ools.Clarkc maintained that archacology had only recently begun to ccasc being a
series of divergent traditions, each with its own locally cstccnlcd
body of thcory and prcfcrrcd form of description, intcrprctation,
and explanation. It is clear that there have bccn, and still arc,
rcgional traditions in archacological intcrprctation (Daniel 1981b;
Evans ctnl. 1981:11-70; Trigger and Glover 1981-2). What has not yet
been studicd adequately is the nature of thcir divergences. T o what
dcgrcc do they rcprcscnt irrcconcilablc differences in the understanding of human bchavioi~r,differences in the questions being
asked, o r the same basic idcas bcing studicd undcr thc guise of
different tcrminologics? Cultural diffcrc~lccsarc important. Yet, on
closer inspection, most interpretations bv archacologists working 1
within different national traditions can bc assigned to a limited
nu111bcr of gcncral
orientations. Elscwhcrc I havc identified thrcc
types: colonialist, nationalist, and imperialist or world-oriented
(Triggcr 1984a). Tl~cschave rcplicatcd thcmsclvcs in thc archacology of countries that arc gcographically rcmotc from onc anothcr
and the archacology of a particular nation may switch from onc type
to another as its political circumstanccs change. Such approachcs to
archacological intcrprctation will bc cxamincd in dctail in later
chapters.
Yet studics of rcgional traditions, with a few notable exceptions
(12crn;il 1980; Chakrabarti 1982), havc failed to take account of the
vast intcllcctual exchange that has charactcrizcd thc dcvclopmcnt of
arc11acology in all parts of thc world during thc ninctccntl~and
twentictl~ccnturics. This is dramatically illustrated by the carly
s t ~ ~ of
d ys11cll mounds. Reports of the pioneering studies by Danish
scholars, who bcgan thcir work in thc 184os, stimulated a large
number of investigations of shcll hcaps along the Atlantic and latcr
the Pacific coasts of North America in thc latter half of the nineteenth century (Triggcr 1986a). When the Amcrican zoologist
Edward Morse went to tcach in Japan, aftcr analysing matcrial from
shcll 111ounds along
- thc coast of Maine for thc Harvard University
archaeologist Jcffrics Wyman, 11c discovcrcd and cxcavatcd in 1877 a
large Mesolithic shcll deposit at Omori, near Tokyo. Some of his
zoology students dug another sl~cllmound by thcmsclvcs and it was
not long bcforc Japancsc archacologists who had studicd in Europc
cstablishcd the s t ~ ~ dofp the Mcsolitl~icJomon culture on a professional basis (Ikawa-Smith 1982). The Scandinavian studics also
stimulated the carly invcstigation of shcll mounds in Brazil (Ihcring
1895) and Southcast Asia (Earl 1863). Even thc ideologically opposed
archacological traditions of Wcstcrn Europe and the Soviet Union
have significantly influc~lccdcach other, dcspitc dccadcs whcn
scientific contact of any sort was very difficult and cven dangerous.
For all these reasons it s c e r ~ ~
unwise
s
to over-estimate thc indcpcndcncc or thcorctical distinctivcncss of thcsc rcgional archaeologics.
Less attention has bccn paid t o thc cffccts of disciplinary specialization within archacology on the ways in which archacological data
arc intcrprctcd (Rousc 1972: 1-25)> Yet diffcring oricntations along
these lines may account for as many diffcrenccs as d o regional
traditions. Classical archacology, Egyptology, and Assyriology have
been strongly committcd to studying epigraphy and art history
within a historical framework (Bietak 1979). Medicval archaeology
has dcvclopcd as an invcstigation of matcrial rcmains that corn-
story of a
;ical thou;
relevance of archac
A:""
if the miduLLL l a a a u d l l u L" LIY.. *LU U
L ~ C O to
V ~WML
~
cxtcat change,- --rchaeological interpretatio n reflect the altcring fort1ines of that
roup.
This is not to cla~mthat the middlc classes are a unitary p11t-11~
lm-..
non. The bourgeoisie of the Ancicn Regime, composcd largely, of
Ierics, professionals, and royal administrators, has to be dist.inuishcd from the cntrcprcncurial bourgcoisic of thc Indust]rial
1 (Darnton 1984: 113). Thc intcrcsts and dcgrcc of dcc,elf the middle classcs also have varicd grcatly from c)nc
3unri-y ro another and within cach country they havc been divialed
ito various strata, while individuals who prefer eithcr more radi cal
r morc conservative options arc found in cach stratum. It is aIs0
~idcntthat archaeology has not been associated with the whc3lc
liddlc class but only with that part of it, 1argcly cc)mposcd
rofessionals, which is inclined to bc interested in schola rship (Kr
ansen 1981; Lcvine 1986).
Relations bctween intcrcsts and idcas arc contextually mediat
a largc number offactors. Archaeologists therefore cannot expc
1 establish a onc-to-one c o r r c s p o ~ ~ d c bctwccn
~ ~ c c spccific archac
gical intcrprctations and particular class intcrcsts. Instead th
ust analysc the ideas influencing archacological intcrpretations
01s with which social groups seck to achicvc thcir goals in p;
ticular situations. Among thcsc goals arc to cnhancc the groul
sclf-confidcncc by making its success appcar natural, prcdcstinc
and inevitable, to inspire and just@ collective action, and to d
guise collective interests as altruism (Barncs 1974: 16); in short,
provide groups and whole societies with mythical charters (McNe
1986). Without denying the significance of individual psychologic
tr;kits and cultural traditions, the relations betwc:en archa eology ar
thle middle classes provide an important focus; for exatnining tl
re1ationship between archacology and society.
Most professional archaeologists also bclicve their discipline to t
,ignificantly influcnccd by a largc numbcr of otllcr intcrnal ar
bxternal factors. All but the most radical relativists agree that one (
thc:sc is the archaeological data base. Archaeological data have bec
acc:umuIating continuously for several centuries and ncw data ai
tra ditionally held to constitute a test of earlier interpretations. Y
c
. wnlat data are collected and by what me1thods are influence
:d by eve1
arc
of what i
int, whiclh in turn reflects h
'
.e of archaeological history
-~
-ic
forn~ulatedin accordance vvith a ger
- .
v ~ c wtnat bas bccn rcjcctcd. For cxamplc, whcn K. S.
MacNcish
(1952) uscd pottery striations to demonstrate that local dcvclopme~~t
explained the origin of thc Northern Iroquoian culturcs of eastern
North A111crica bcttcr than did migration, hc continucd to acccpt
small-scale migrations as accounting for the origins of a few specific
groups. H e and other archaeologists forgot that these mi cromigrations wcrc not bascd on sound arcl~acologicalevidcncc
had bccn part of the largcr-scale migrationary theorizing that A
Neish himsclf had disproved. In this fashion specific vicws about
past can persist and influcncc arcl~acologicalintcrprctation 1ong
~ f t cthe
r reasoning that led 1-o tllcir for~i~ul.~tion
llas bcc11discrcd i tcd
~ n dahnndoncd (Trigger 19,78b).
LLIbOL.0
19
or)?of arc
L ~ V G I ~
Theory
High
Low
Archaea
."=.--.
1 coherence I correspondence
. -~
ships betwm
- .
low categoric
c--:1
...-,.,."- -.
,-
.-
been established at the low and middle Ie\~cls(M. Salmon 1982: 33-4;
Gibbon 1984: 35-70; Gallay 1986: 117-21). Yet, because numerous
i~nplicitassumptions about the naturc of human bchaviour colour
what is believed to be a sound expla~latio~l
of archacological data,
high-level concepts can be ignored only at tlie risk that implicit ones
unwittingly will distort archacological interpretations. Most succcssf~~l
scie~itificthcory-building in\rolvcs a combination of both
call be for~iiulatcd
approaches. 111 the first instance, expl;~natio~is
citlicr inductively or deductively. Yet, howcvcr they arc formulated,
their status as scientific theories depends both on their logical cohcrcncc, intcmally and with other acccptccl explanations of human
bchaviour, and o n establishing a sutisf.~ctory correspondcncc between t11cm and any logically rclatcd empirical gcncralizatio~ls,and
finally with an adcquatc corpus of factual evidence (Lowthcr 1962).
Archaeologists also disagree about the formal naturc of the gcncralizations tliat they seek to elaborate. In modern American archacology, as within the positivist trnclition gcncrally, it is assumed that
311 luws must be ~~ni\,crsul
in nnt~lrc.'l'liis mcuns thnt thc)~provide
st.ltcmcnts about relations bctwccn i~a~-i;~blcs
that arc assumed to
hold true rcgardlcss of the tc~iiporalperiod, region of the world, or
specific cultures that are being studiecl. These ge~lcralizationsvary in
scale from ni;ljor ass~~iiptions
about historical processes t o regularitics dealing wit11 relatively tl-i\,inl aspects of h ~ ~ m ahclin\liour
n
(M.
Suln~on 1982: 8-30), Illis ;I~F)SO;ICII
is cxc~ii~liticdb y fi)snl;~list
economics, ~ ~ h i c rnLlint.lins
li
that the rules used to csplnin the
ceononlic bcha\,iour of Western societies explain the bcliaviour of a11
human beings. Such an approach accounts for significant variations
in human beliaviour in diffcrcnt societies by viewi~lgthem as the
rcsults of novcl co~iibi~iations
and permutations of a fixed set of
cting variables (Burling 1962; Cancia111966; Cool< 1966). Uni111tet-a
vcrsul generalizations arc frequently interpreted as reflecting an
invari ant human nature.
Otl1cr arcliacologists ~%aintaintliat general laws of this sort con~g Iiu~iiannature arc rc1ativeIy f e r ~in numbcr. A much largcr
ccrni~
numb,cr of gcncralizatio~isapplies only to societies that share the
SaIlle Ior closcly rclatcd modes of production. This position is si~nilar
in its general orientation to that of the cconomic substantivists. In
r n st
lltr.
to the positio~ladopted by the for~nalists,substantivists
ain that the rules, as well as tlic forms, of economic bchaviour
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
social influenccs that have shapcd a scicntific tradition in the past are
rcvcalcd morc easily aftcr social conditions have changed, while
current influenccs arc much hardcr to recognize. This malccs prcscnt
interpretations of archaeological data gc~lerallyappcar to bc morc
objcctivc than those of the past. Hcncc, by tliemsclvcs liistorical
observations do not necessarily distinguish objcctivc progress from
changing culturally shared fantasies. T o do that, historical invcstigators must scck to cliscovcr to what extent this irrc~crsibilityhas
bccn assurcd not o n l ~by thc logical appeal of archacological interprctations but also by their continuing factual corrcspo~ldcncewith
a growing data base. If this can be done, wc may hope to lcarn
something about the objectivity or subjectivity of arcl~aeological
interpretations; to what extent archaeology can be morc than tlie
past relived in the prcscnt, in the scnsc Collingwood defined that
process; the degree to which any sort of understanding is communicable from onc age or culture to anothcr; and tlic cxtcnt to which an
understanding of thc history of archaeology can influcncc archacological intcrprctation.
T o d o justicc to thcsc topics, I will scclc to avoid writing a history
of archacological interprctation that is unduly prcsentistic and strivc
to understand thc intellectual history of each major trend in its social
contcxt. In order to keep this boolc within reasonable limits,
however, I rcfcr more to works that have contributed to the longterm dcvclopmcnt of archacological interpretation than to unsuccessful and repctitious studies or to the many publicatio~lsthat
havc mainly addcd to our factual k~~owlcdgc
of tlic remains of the
past. In his survey of the history of the interpretation of Stonclicngc,
Chippindalc (1983)has shown that works of thcsc lattcr sorts constitute the bulk of archacological literature.
of T C M
(IY~z),
~
P.
19
for present-day social and political relations, as is thc case with the
Australian Aborigine co~lccptof dream-time (Isaacs 1980). In other
cascs oral traditions claim t o prcscrvc accurate accounts of human
activities ovcr many gcncrations (Vansina 1985).
A diffcrcnt approach developed in those early civilizations whcrc
Ivritten records provided a chronologicul fi-31ucworicand inforrnation ; I ~ O L I\\{hat
~
had happened in the past that wns independent of
human memory. Even so, the compiling of annals did not givc rise t o
the writing of clct,lilcd histories of the past o r narratives of current
c\~entseither in the Mediterranean region or in China until after 500
B.C. (Van Sctcrs 1983; Kcdford 1986).Moreover, thc dcvclopnnc~ltof
history as 3 literary gcnrc did not ensure the concurrent growth of a
disciplinccl intcrcst in the material remains of carlicr timcs.
Artifacts from an unlcnown past havc bein collcctcd by at least
some tribal societies. Projectile points, stonc pipes, and native
copper tools madc thousands of years carlicr arc found in Iroquoian
sites of thc fifteenth and sixtecntln ccnturics A . D . in eastern North
America. Thcsc objccts must havc been discovered in thc course of
c\~erpdayactivities and ltcpt by the Iroquoians (Tuck 1971:I;+), just
as 'thundcrstoncs' (stonc cclts) and 'elf-bolts' (stonc projcctilc
points) wcrc collcctcd by European peasants in the mcdicval period
(European stonc cclts wcrc also sold t o goldsmiths who used them
for burnishing [Hcizer 1962a: 631). While \ve lna\lc no direct record
of how the Iroquoians regarded thcsc finds, they map have treated
then1 as charms, as they arc said to havc done various types of
pcculiarlp shaped stoncs, which they belicvcd bclo~lgcdt o spirits
who lnad lost thcm in the woods (Thwaitcs 1896-1901, 33: 211). I11
many culturcs such artifacts wcrc bclicvcd to havc a supcrnatural
rathcr tlnan a human origin and were credited with magical powers,
which may havc bccn the main rcason thcy wcrc collcctcd.
The rc~nainsof the past wcrc also used in the religious obscrvanccs
of thc carly civilizations. In the sixteenth century thc Aztecs pcrformed rituals at regular intervals in tlnc ruins of Tcotihuacan, a city
that lnad bccn inhabited in t11c first millcnniunn A . D . and which was
bclicvcd to be whcrc the gods had rc-cstablishcd the cosillic order at
the beginning of thc nnost recent cycle of cxistcncc (Heyden 1981).
They also included much older Olrncc figurines, as wcll as valuable
goods from many parts of thcir cnnpire in the ritual deposits that
\verc periodically buried in the walls of thcir Great Tcmplc in
rian
I
i thc physical rcn
thc past. T11c Grcck histo~
l'hucydldcs noted that sonic of t ~ l cgravcs dug up on Delos, w hen
that island was purificd in thc fifth ccntury B . c . , belonged to
Carians, sincc tlicy contailled armour and wcapons rcscniblilig th10SC
of the Carians of his day. In his opinion this confirmed a tradit ion
that Carians had oncc lived on thc island (Casson 1939: 71). In his
Description of Greece, written in thc scco~ldcc~lturyA.D., thc ph ysician Pausanins s!~stcmatically dcscribcd thc public buildings, art
\vorks, rites, and customs of diffcrcnt regions of that c o ~ l n
togcthcr with tlic historical traditions associatcd with thcm. 1
\vhile he bricfly described the cclcbratcd Brol~zcAge ruins at Tir
and Mpccnac, for him and othcr classical \vritcrs of guide boc>ks,
ruined buildings were 'hardly worth mentioning' (Lcvi 1979, I: 3).
Thc Greeks and Romans prcscrvcd valucd rclics'of the past as voltivc
offerings in tlicir temples and gravcs were somctimcs opcncd1 to
recover the relics of 'hcrocs'. In support of literary cvidence that thc
warriors of thc Honicric agc had all uscd bro~izcwcapons, Pausaxlias
~lotcdthat the blade of the alleged spear of Achillcs in tlic temple of
Athcna at Pliasclis was made of bronzc (Lcvi 1979, 2: 17). Yct such
historical infcrcnccs arc notable for their rarity. Ancient bronzes and
pottcry vcsscls that were accidc~itally~ilic:~rtllcdor plii~~dcrcd
dcalcrs sold for high prices to cvcalthy art collectors (Wacc 194
Nc\~crtl~clcss,
sc1iol;lrs maclc n o effort to recover such artifacts i
svstcmatic fashion, nor, cicspitc sonic classicists' claims to the cl
trary (Wciss 1969: z), did these artifacts bccomc a special focu:
study. Thcrc was absolutely no awarcncss that thc,matcrial rcmz
of the past could be uscd to test thc IIUIIICSOUS co~lflicti~lg
ph110sophical speculations about human origins and thc gcncral outlincs
of hun~anhistory that charactcrizcd classical civilizatio~ij
Si-ma Qicn, the first great Chincsc historian, who wrote in tllC
'
sccotld ccntury B . c . , visited ancient ruins and csamincd rclics of the
past as well as tests wlicn compili~lgmaterial for thc Shi Ji, his
influential account of ancicnrChincsc history. Thc systcrnatic st1
of the past was valued by Confuciall scholars as a guide to mc
bchaviour and, by stressing a common hcritagc going back at lcas~
thc Xia D y n a s t ~(2205-1766
~
B.c.), it pla)lcd a powcrful role
unifying Chinese cultural and political life (Wang 1985). Yet
almost a millcnlii~i~n
Chilicsc historians co~ltinucdto base tlbooks on written records, \vhilc bronzc vessels, jadc carvings, :
olther anc
tcd as curiositics
3"
Clas:xca,
alLllaL"l"sy
arid antiq~atbattta11t
,-.
11
:rccting Stc
from n fou
A history of ~ r c l i a e o l o ~ ~L cI IaO~L I E ~ ~ ~
I C could
~
thc gloric us acliic
)f antiqui
.
first tlicrc was ~ ~ t t belief
lc
that ill tilclr present acgclicratc st,
uman bcings could cvcr hope to cxccl those acliicvcnic~its.Only i~
.s possession o f a religion based o n divinc revelation could th
lodern age be vicn~cd;is ~ ~ t ~ ; i n ~ b i g u osi~~~s Jpyc r i to
o r n~icic~lt
tinics
Tlic appreciation of classicnl anticluity was not restricted t o lite 1-.Ire.
. ~ r cbut rapicily cstcndcd into the fields of 31-t 2nd architcct~~
'licsc \\,ere of pal-ticular concern to the Italian nobility 2nd \vcalt l!'
~c~.cliants,
\vho \ircl.c ri\~,llli~ig
c,l~-Iiothcr .is patrons of the a1
;otliic styles wcrc rejected ,ind an effort \V;IS 1ii;1c1cto c111~1;ltcthe
11' arcliitccturc o f ancient Rome. This dcvclopn~cntsrndually nia
3rd but also ~natcrialobjcl
clear that not only the \v
ort;l~itsources of inforniati~
~r\,i\.ingfrom the past caul'
lout c1;issical ci\~ilizatiori.
Both currclits of intcrcst arc csprcsscd in the \vorIc o f Cyriacus
ncona (Ciriaco dc' l'izzicolli, A . D . 1391-1+52), I V ~ O S C ~ e s e a r
ltitlcs him t o be considered the first archaeologist. H c nl;is
alian rncrch;uit \\rho travcllcd cstcnsivcly in Gscccc and thc caste
Icditcrrancan over ;i period of 25 \~c;I~s,
o f t c ~spccific;i11y
i
in order
)Ilcct ciat;~; ~ b o.11icicnt
~ ~ t monuments. In t l ~ c~ O L I I - S Cof his travels
)pied hundrcds of iiiscriptions, mitdc dru\vings of m o ~ i ~ r m c ~ nl
its,
)Ilcctcd books, coins, ancl w o r b ofart. tlis chief intcrcst, howc\,c
as public inscriptions. While his six volumes of commcntnrics c
lcsc inscriptions \\7crcdestroyed in a fire in irl+, some of his oth
orks survi\~c(Casson 1939: 93-9; Wciss 1969: 137-42).
By the late fifteenth century, popes, such as Paul I1 anc
I, cardinals, and other mc~iibcrsof the Italian nobility \yere co~lcc
g; and displaying ancicnt worlts of art. They also began to spolis
c systematic search for and rccovc~-yo f such objects (Taylor 194
-10). As early as 14-62Pope Pius 11 passed a law t o preserve alicie
lildings in the papal states and in 14-71Sistus IV forbade the cspc
'stone blocks o r statues from his domains (Wciss 1969: 99-IOC
par a long time thcrc \\{as lio excavation in the niodcr~isense b
mcrcly digging in seurcli o f objects that had acstlictic and conimc
cia1 value. The cscat.ations that bcgan at the \ilcll-prcscrvcd ROIII;
sites o f Hcrcula~ieurnand Pompcii in the first half of the ciglitccn
century were treasure hunts of this sort, although a desire to rccov
statucs and othcr \vorlts of art gradually came t o bc accornpa~iicdI
I ilitcrcst in Koniii~idonicstic 21-cliitcct~~rc.
Tlicrc was. howcvc
3 c~nulatc
~t
'u
Shang cast bronze ritual vessel, illustrated with rubbing of inscriptions and
t h c ~ tr~~iscrlptlon
r
into convent~onalcharacters, from twelfth-century A.D.
catalogue Bogutu
legends and traditions relating t o these sites. In addition, some antiquarians made collections of local (as well as exotic) curiosities. John
Twy~ie,who died in 1581, collcctcd Romano-British coins, pottcry,
and glass, as wcll as studying carthworks and megaliths (Kendrick
1950: 105). A more varied and cxtcnsivc, but less archaeological,
collection of curiosities by the royal gardener John Tradcscant was
to become the nucleus of thc Asl~molcanMuseum, cstablishcd at
Oxford in 1675 Hitherto collections containing antiquities had
consisted either of church relics o r the family heirlooms of the
nobilitv.
At first no clear distinction was drawn bctwcc~lcuriosities that
were of natural and those that werc of llunlan origin. Scholars, as
well as uneducated people, believed stone celts to be thundcrstones
(a view endorsed by the Roman naturalist Pliny [Slotkin 1965: x])
and stone projcctilc points t o be clf-bolts, while in Poland and
Central Europe it was thought that pottcry vcsscls grew spontaneously in the earth (Abramowicz 1981; SklcnPi- 1983: 16). In a
world unaware of biological
evolution, it was not self-evident that
a prehistoric cclt was man-made while a fossil ammonoid was a
natural fornlation. Most of these curios were found accidentally by
farmers and manual labourers and therc was as yet n o tradition of
excavating for prehistoric rcmains.
John Lcla~ld(1503-52) was appointed Icing's Antiquary in 1533. H c
played an important role in rescuing books following the dispersal
of monastic libraries. H e also toured England and Wales recording
place-nanics and genealogies as wcll as objects of a~~tiquarian
intcrest, including the visible remains of prchistoric sitcs. Although hc
was only vaguely aware cvcn of major changes in architectural styles
in nicdicval times, his great innovation was his desire t o travel t o see
things rathcr than simply to rcad about them (Kendrick 1950:
45-64). William Camden, the author of the first comprehensivc
topographical survey of England, concentrated mainly o n Roman
and early medieval remains. His Britannia, first publishcd in 1586,
was to g o through many posthumous editions. Camden was also a
founding member, in 1572, of the Society of Antiquaries, a Londonbased association for the preservation and study of national antiquities. This society was supprcsscd by James I in 1604, presumably
because the Scottish-born monarch feared that it was encouraging
English nat~onalismand Ilcncc opposition t o his rulc (Taylor 1948:
r-.
10-5
A his
-11..
cal thoug
....,-,
-...
"
LLL'U
"rn*l,.TJ
.
"
I
",
"I
A history of archaeological t
t
XX.-.-*
1'
L A
Lb1.1
nctallurgy must have bccn lost by nations th;at migrat cd into a ceas
where iron ore was not found ([17r7] Hcizer 1962a: 66). Similar
lcgcncrationist vicws wcrc widcly hcld. Othcr antiquariaris mainaincd that stonc tools wcrc used at thc samc timc as mctal ones by
:ommunities or nations that wcrc too poor to own mctal. As late as
857 it was argued in opposition to thc tlicory that stonc t<,ols
ntcdatcd mctal oncs that stonc tools must bc iniitatio~isof m ctal
)riginnis (O'Lavcrty 1857; 'Trcvclyan' 1857). Without a d c qlatc
~
I~ronologicalcontrols and any archaeological data from many p;arts
~fthc world, it remained possiblc that iron working and lack of SI~ c h
nowledge had cxistcd sidc bv sidc tliroughout most of hunlati
iistory. Prior to thc ninctc cnth cen~
tury thcrc was n o factual (:viencc to make an evolutiona~
ry vicw ol'human history more plausi blc
han a degenerationist one. '1rkIIL ~ L I U I religious
I ~
sanctioiis cnjoinrn
y tlic dcgcnerationist posit)ioii also rnade many antiqu,arians rcl
Int to challenge it.
108-10). The reasons for this growing optimism included the scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and sevcntce~~th
ccnturics, as
ma~lifcstcdabove all in the work of Galilco and Newton, the application of scientific discovcrics to the ad\~ancemcntof technology, and a
widespread appreciation of the literary creations of English writers
in the reign of Elizabeth I and of French ones under Louis XIV.
Especially among the nliddlc classes, thcsc dcvclopmcnts cncouraged a growing faith in progrcss and a belicf that to a large degree
human bcings wcre masters of their own destiny. They also inclined
Western Europeans t o regard the ways of life of the technologically
less advanced peoples that they wcrc encountering in various parts
of the world as survivals of a primordial human condition rathcr
than as products of dcgcneratiorl.
Neither the Renaissance discovery that the past hacl been diffcrcnt
from thc prcscnt nor thc realization that technological dc\lclopmcnt
was occurring in Western Europe led directly to the co~lclusionthat
progrcss was a general theme of human history. In the scvcntcc~lth
ccntury succcssivc historical periods were viewed as a series of
kaleidoscope variatio~lson themes that wcrc grounded in a fixed
human nature, rather than as constituting a dcvclopmcntal sequence
worthy of study in its own right (Toulmin and Coodficld 1966:
11;-14). The Italian philosopher Giamh;lttist;l Vico (1668-1774)
viewed history as having cyclical characteristics and argued that 311
human societies evolvc through similar stages of d c \ ~ c l o p i ~ ~and
cnt
dccay that reflect the uniform actions of providence. H e p r ~ d c n t l y
stressed, ho\ve\lcr, that this view of human history as govcrncd by
strict laws did not apply to the Hebrews, whose progrcss was
divinely guided. Although he was not an evolutionist, his views
helped t o encourage a bclicf that history could be understood in
terms of regularities analogous to those being proposed for the
natural scicnccs (ibid. 125-9).
An cvolutio~laryview of human history that was sufficie~ltlycornprehcnsivc to challcngc the medieval formulation not only on specific points but also in its entirety was formulated by the Enlightenment philosophy ofthc eighteenth century. This movement began
in France, whcrc it is associated with Icading philosophers, such as
Montcsquic~i, Turgot, Voltairc, and Condorcct, but it also
flourislicd in Scotland in the school of so-called 'primitivist' thinlccrs,
which included John I,oclcc, William Robertson, John Mill;~r,Aciam
'l'i tus
Carus (98-55 B . C .) in his poem DE
** ..,.,4 ti...
( 0 1 1 tllc L ~ , ~ L of
L ~ Things).
~ ~ '
H c aisuccl
L L I , L ~ tlic c;lrlicst i
~ n p
\\,cl.c linnds, nails, and teeth, as well as stones vicl pieces of \\rood.
OI~I!,I.1tc.r \\.crc tools made of bronze nnci then of iron. While liis
\ < IIC.IIIL.
\\!.IS s~ll>lxwtc~l
h\' \,.~riol~s
cl,~ssii.~l
\\,ritings th.lt I-cfcrrcd t o .I
\\.llc.11I > I - O I I Z ~tools .lnd \\,c,lpons 11.1~1n o t yet bccn rcpl.~e~cl
I!,
1 1 ~ 5i,t \\*.IS h.1sc.d 1.1rgc.lv o n c\.ol~ltioll.lryspccirlatio~ls,\\,hiell
.~tctl1l1.1t thc \\,orld .~nci1111 li\fing species had d c \ ~ l o p c dns .I
. ) I i~-l.~.~luiihlc
.und ctcrn,ll p.1rticlcs of m,lttcr, \vhich hc c,\llcd
combining in cvcl- morc complex ivays. Neither Lucrctius
1101
. i l l \ , otllcr Romnn schol,lr sought to pro\.c his theory ;lnd it
~ c donl!, one of many spcci~lnti\.cschcmcs kno~1.n to the
1s. A polx1l.11-nltcrnnti\lc postulatcci the moral dcgencrution of
lit!, t l ~ r o ~ ~succcssi\~c
gli
ages of gold, sil\.cr, bronzc, and iron.
y i l l thc cightccnth ccntury E'rcncl~scholars wcrc familiar both
lc. iclc.ls of1 .ucrctiils and \\,it11 the growing c\,idcncc that stonc
irrc,lh 11.d once hccn used tlirougliout Europe. They were also
I;lmili.ll. \\.it11classical nnci bi!>lical tests \\.liich silggcstcd that bronzc
r o o l 5 11.1~1hccn used prior to iron ones. In 17;+ Nicolas Maliudcl rend
.I I ' . I ~ ~ I .l o (Ilc Ac.~dcmicdcs Inscriptions in Paris, in \\,hich lie cited
i . ~ n dset O L I ~the idea of three S L I C C C S S ~ \ ~ages
Cofstonc, bronzc,
) I I .IS .I pl.~l~siblc
account o f humun dc\~clop~ncnt.
Rcrnard dc
111co1i;111ci1ii.1ny other scholars I-cpcntcd this idea throughout
~ l l cciglltc.cnth century. In 173s Antoinc-Y\.cs Goguct (1716-j8) sup~ ~ ) r t c tlic
c l 'Ilircc-Age theory in a book that was translated into
Ill~glishthrcc vcars later \\fit11the title 7.116 O~.i_lJi~z
qflntm, Arts, and
,SI.;I.IICIT, nud t / ~ c 1-'1~$qrcss
i~
~ I Y L O Pthc
~ Most A V I L Z E
Nations.
IZ~
Hc
I>clic\,cdtli.lt modern 'savages set bcforc us a striking picture o f the
ig11or.lnccoftlic ancient tvorld, and the practices of primitive times'
( 1 17011 Ilcizcr 1962;1: 14). Yet t o S ~ L I ; ~ I -this
C
cvolutionar~\.ic\\r \\,it11
I hc biblical assertion that iron \\,orking 1i;ld beeti il1\rcntcd before the
flood, he cl,~imcd,like Mcrcati and some other contcrnporary c\.olut ionists, that this process had t o be rcinventecl after 'that d r
cal.lmity dcprit'cd the greatest part of mankind of this, as we1
ot1ic1-;1rts1. GI!JII D1111icl (1976: 40) correctly \varncd against csi
,lting the influence t h ~the
t Thrcc-Age theor!. cscrtcd o n antiquarian
tlio~rglitcluring the cightecntli century. Yet, as a n interest in cultural
1~.ogrcssgrc\v morc pcr\..~si\rc, the Tlircc-Age theory gaincci in
r cstccm.
b
A history of ~ r c h ~ c o l o g ltch~o~~l ~ g h t
fl-0111nrch~cologicalsites and sought
to dctcl-mine ho\v tools had bee11
m.ldc and ~ l s c d .They also tried t o
\\,ark o u t lie\\, 1.1rgc stones might
h.~\.chccn lno\,cd .111d monltmcnts
L~ollsrl~11'~lcc~
i l l \ l l l L ~ l c ~ l l 1i111cs.
l
'lllc~
liillcis of' ~-csc~.~rili
tl1.1t [ h e I<o!.al
Socicrj. cnco~~r.lgccl
Llrcc\-cmplificci
h!. the c,irl! \\.orI\ ot' \l'illi,~rn
S~LII~CIC!.
(iOS--i-Oc). I,ilic (-;,urncicn
llciill-c Ililll ( I ~ J l l i ~ loo-:
l
<7),I1c
I-c.~li/.cdtli.lt rhc gcomctric.ll (1-01,
m.~rlis th,lt iirnicrs had notcci in
\ . , ~ r i o ~p.11-t
~ s of' l-;ngl%~~ncl
since the
mcciic\z.~l pcrioci ( m d \ v h i i l ~ they
h,ld interpreted ;IS supcrn,lt~~rul
p11cnomcn.l) outlincci the buricci
fi)lind,ltions ot' \..lnishcd s t r ~ ~ c t i ~ ~ ~ e s
(l'iggott tc)Sj: .;.).
t Ic g ~ - o ~ ~ p c c i
together as tlPpcs monuments 01'
simil,ll- form, sc~clias linc,~rc,l~-th\\,o~-lis01-ciiffci-c~ltIiinds of huri.11
~ l i o ~ ~ i i c111
i s , l ~ o l > ~01.. s i i i t c . ~ - p ~ ~ c ~ i ~ i g
them in the light of the mc.igrc historii.ll c\.idcncc t h ~ \\,.IS
t
,l\,,~il,~blc.
Stl1.11-tl'iggott j IC)S<:
0-1 h,is noted
th.1t Stt~liclc!. \\,.IS one of the til-st
liritish ,~~iticl~~~ll-i,lils
t o r c c o g n i ~ cthe
possil>ilit\,o f .I length!. prc-1<ornc~~n
o c ~ u p ~ ~ t i during
on,
\\.liich clibtincti\.c t\,pcs of ~,rcliistoricmonuments
h,ld bee11 cc~nstt.l~ctcd
. ~ tdiffci-cnt
times ,lnd diffci-cnt pcoplcs might
Ii,~\.cs~~cccssi\.cl!,
occupied s o i ~ t h c r n
Engl.ind. E\.cn this, lio\\.c\.c~-,\\.CIS
sug,qcstcd
b\. J11lill.c Cncs.lrls ~ O C L I -mcnt,ltion of ,I Rclgic inixsion of
so~lthcastcl-nEngland shortly befi)rc the Rom.ln conquest. At the
same timc, Stukelcy and other antiquarians took the first steps
towards trying to ascertain relative dates for archaeological finds for
which there were no historical records. H e observed construction
layers in barrows and argued that Silbury Hill, the largest artificial
~ n o u n din Europc, had been built prior to the constructio~lof a
Roman road, which c~lrvcdabruptly to avoid it (l>nnicl 1967: 122-3).
H e also noted that R o ~ n a ~roads
l
C L I ~through Bronze Age disc
('Druid') barrows in several places (l'iggott 1985: 67) and used the
prcscncc of blucstonc chips in some burial mounds ncar Stonchcnge
to infer that these burials were contemporary with the building of
the temple (Marsdcn 1974: 5). In 1758 his daughter Anna dated the
White Horse cut in the chalk at Uffington, and which had been
thought to be a Saxon memorial, to the pre-Roman period on the
basis of its stylistic similarity to horscs portrayed 011 pre-Roman
British coins (Piggott 1985: 142). In 1720 the astronomer Edmund
Hallcp cstinlatcd that Stonchcngc might be 2,000 or 3,000 years old,
following an examination of the depth of wcnthcring of its stones;
while a later comparison of rclativc wcathcring convinced Stultclcp
that Avebury was much older than Stonchcnge (Lynch and Lynch
1968: 52). In Dcnmarlc Erik Pontoppidan carefully excavated a megalithic tomb on the grou~ldsof a royal palace in northwest Sjaelland,
the main Danish island, in 1744. H e reported on the structure and
the finds it contained in the first volume of the Proceedivjgs of thc
Danish Royal Society, concluding that cremation burials found ncar
the top of the mound dated from a more recent era than the stone
chamber below them and the mound itself (I<lindt-Jcnsen 1975:
35-6). When three megalithic tombs opened in 1776 wcre found to
contain stone and bronze artifacts but not iron ones, 0. HocghGuldbcrg, the excavator, assumed that they wcre very ancient (ibid.
42-3).
Studies of these sorts helped to advance the investigation of
prehistoric times by encouraging more accurate observations and
descriptio~lsof ancient artifacts and monuments, more disciplined
thought about them, and efforts t o date a few of them in either
relative or cale~ldricalterms. Altl~oughthis research was too fragmentary and the results too discon~lcctcdto co~lstitutea discipline of
prchistoric archaeology, it helped to lay the groundwork for the
cventual dcveloprne~ltof such a discipline. Noting similar trends in
the antiquarian rescarchcs of the eighteenth century in conti~lc~ltal
Europe, Karcl Sklenii- (1983: 59) observed that 'the vcry fact that
arcl~acologistsin Central Europc prcfcrred analytical description of
the facts t o the formation of a synthetic picture of the past' shows
how small was the contribution that the new scientific approach
made to the dcvelopme~ltof a better knowlcdgc of prehistory. This
statcmcnt cannot be nppl~cdto England and Scandi~iavia,whcrc
a n t i q u x ~ a ~were
s making substantial progress in conceptualizing
the problems confronting the study of prchistoric times and tcntativc steps werc being taken to resolvc these problems.
ological tliought
A history
;.,
L,n
06
Ithat gray
ining only stonc ar
:re earlier
those that also contalncd metal oncs (Lyncl, ,,,, bYIILII..,-i. I- -YLUO D . 40).
Some of thc bcst work donc during this pcriod was by William
Cunnington (1754-1810) and his wealthy patron Sir Richard Colt
Hoarc. They silrvcycd a large arca in Wiltshirc, locating ancient
vill,zgc sites ~ n dearthworks and excavating 379 barrows. Thcy
1-ccordcd their observations carcfillly, dividcd barrows intc five
types, and cnlploycd stratigraphy to distinguish bctwccn pri
'ind sccondClr)ri~ltcrrnc~lts.
Thcy used coins to date sornc bar rows
fro111the historical pcriod and, like Douglas, thought it possiblc:that
-..gravcs containing only stone artifacts might be earlier than r.urc-historic burials accompanied by ~nctaloncs. Yet, dcspitc thcsc t~Cllt'ltivc advanccs, they wcrc unablc to dcmonstratc to 'which o f thc
successive inhabitants' of Britain various classcs of monurncnts wcrc
.. - - to be ascribed o r cvcn whcthcr thcy wcrc the work o f morc tliarI one
peoplc. Morcovcr, Cunnington could not discover enough rcgularity in typcs of grave goods associated with particular b arrow
~_
styles to iniplc~iicntthc antiquary Thomas Lcman's suggestion that
stonc, bronzc, and iron wcapons could bc used t o distinguish t.hrce
successive ages (Chippindale 1983:123). Thus, in Glyn Danicl's ( I ~* w .
31) words, they 'failed to find any way of brcaking down the appacent
contc~iiporancityof prc-Roman remains'. Evcn at thc most clcrncntary Icvcl, thcrc were always antiquarians prcparcd to arguc +I.L ,*L l d L
gravcs contaiiiing only stone tools wcrc not necessarily older than
the rest but mcrcly belongcd to rudcr tribcs or poorer social groups.
As yct thcrc was n o satisfactory rcbuttal for this claim.
<
7e New
The first historical questions that Europeans askcd about the naltive
inhabitants of North and South America wcrc who they were and
from where they had conic. Betwccn the sixteenth and eightcc:nth
:cnturics scholars speculated that tlic Indians might be descenldcd
%om Iberians, Cartliaginians, Israelites, Canaanites, and Tart:as.
Still more imaginative writers claimed that they came from the
~anishcdcontine~itof Atlantis. Most of thcsc speculations rcflecxed
-lie prctcnsions or biases of particular groups of scttlcrs. Some c arly
Spanish colonists denied that thc Indians had souls, which mc:ant
not h ~ l m
an being:
exploit tt
71
prcl~istorictimes and hcnce to acquiring a more systematic knowwas tl>$ assumption that artiE~cts
lcdgc of early human dcvclopmc~~t
and monuments merely illustrated thc Iris~oricallyrecorded accomplis11111ents of the past. This was bascd on the bclicf shared with
can be acquired
classical archaeologists that historical lt~~owlcdgc
only from written documents or reliable oral traditions 2nd that
understanding of carlicr
without thcsc there can be no con~~cctcd
times. The creation of prehistoric archacology required that antiquarians find the means to libcratc thcmsclvcs from this restricting
assumption.
O L D i- I E L D,
Ititrodt~ctoryAddress, Arc/~aeo~ogrcai/ozrrnal
(181z), y.
The dcvclopment of a self-containcd and systcmatic study of prchistory, as distinguished from thc antiquarianism of carlicr times,
i~ivolvcdtwo distinct movcnlcnts that began in the early and middle
parts of thc ninetecnth century rcspcctively. The first originated in
Scandinavia and was bascd 011thc invention of new techniques for
dating archacological finds that made possible thc comprehensive
markcd
study of the latcr pcriods of prehistory. This dcvcloptnc~~t
the beginning of prehistoric archacology, which was soon able to
take its placc alongside classical archaeology as a significant component in the study of human development. The second wave,
which began in Francc and England, pionccrcd the study ok tllc
Palacolitl~icpcriod and added a vast, hitherto unimagincd timc
depth to 11uma11 history. Palacolitl~icarchacology was conccrncd
with questions of human origins that had bccome of major conccrn
to the cntirc scientific community and to the gcncral public as a
result of the debates bctween evolutionists and creationists that
followed the publication of O n the Origin of Species in 1859.
Relative dating.
The creation of a controlled chronology that did not rely on written
records was the work of the Danish scholar Christian Jiirgcnsen
Thomscn (1788-1865). The principal motivation for Thomscn's
work, liltc that of many carlicr ailtiquarics, was patriotism. The
antiquarian rcscarch of thc eighteenth century and the evolutionary
conccpts of the Enlighte~lmentwere indispensable preconditions for
c ~ ~ t s havc been of littlc
his succcss. Yct thcsc a c c o ~ ~ ~ p l i s h mwould
accomplished.
Thonlscn was born in Copenhagen in 1788, the son of a wealthy
mcrcliant. As a young man he studied in Paris and, after he rctur~led
home, he undertook to arrange a local collection of Roman and
Scandinavian coins. Collecting coins had become a popular
gentleman's hobby during the eightcent11 century (McICay 1976).
From the inscriptions and datcs thcy bore it was possible to arrange
thcm in series according to the country and reign in which thcy had
beer1 minted. It was also often possible to assign coins on which
dates and inscriptions wcrc illegible to such series using stylistic
criteria alone. Working with this coin collectio~lmay have made
Thomscn aware of stylistic changes and their value for the relative
dating of artifacts.
Thc beginning of the nineteenth century was a period of growing
nationalism in Denmark, which was greatly strengthened when the
British, who were fighting Napoleo~land his reluctant continental
allies, clcstroycd 11iostof the l>anish navy in Copenhagen harbour in
1801 and bombarded Copenhagen again in 1807. Worsaac latcr
argucci that these cal:umitics encouraged l),incs to s t ~ ~ dtheir
y past
glories as a source of consolation and encouragement to facc the
future. Yet he also noted that the French Rcvolution, by encouraging greater respect for the political rights of a broader spectrum of
the population everywhere, awakened in Denmark a new popular, as
opposed to dynastic, interest in the past (Daniel 1950: 52). Many
middle-class Western Europeans who laclzed political rights saw in
the Rcvolution, and latcr in Napoleon, hope for their own political
and economic improvement; while those who enjoyed a mcnsurc of
political power viewed them as a threat to their interests.
Denmark was at that time politically and economically less
cvolvcd than Wcstcrn Europe. Hence the ideals of thc French
Revolution appealed to many middlc-class Danes. These same
Danes were also receptive to the teachings of the Enlighte~~ment,
which in popular thinking were closely associated with the Revolution (Hampson 1982: 251-83) Denmark had a strong antiquarian
The bcgin~li~igs
of scientific archaeology
Botge~irater:
ging8irater:
1A*L1AAAll*ll*ll~ll111111111111A&1~I1A1
F=rrrrrrvvyYrvYKh
10
"
11
that lt~iowlcdgeof bronze and iron working was brought into thc
region either by successive waves of immigrants from the south o r as
a result of 'intercourse with other nations' (Daniel 1967: 103). They
did, however, assume that somewhcrc in Europe o r the Near East all
cvolutio~lary dcvclopmcnt had taken placc. Ninetccnth-ccntury
archaeology did not view diffusion and migration as concepts that
were antithetical to evolution but as factors that hclpcd to promotc
cvo~utionarychange (Harris 1968: 1 7 4 ) .
L.,,
7-n
v.7
12
Worsaae also played an important role in developing interdisciplinary research related to archaeology. As early as 1837 o n Sjaelland,
moiulids of oyster and cockle shells containing numcrous prehistoric
artifacts had bcen observed a short distance inland from the present
coastline. As the rcsult of a desire to lcarn morc about geological
changes, in 1848 the Royal Ilanish Academy of Sciences establishcd a
commission to stncly these shell middcns. Thc commission was
lic;iJcd by Wors;lnc, the biologist Stccnstt-up and J . S. Forchhamlncr, the Siithcr of l3anish geology. In the carly 1850s thcse scholars
published six volunles of reports on their studies of these 'kitchen
middens'. Their interdisciplinary rescarch dcmo~lstratcdthat thc
middens werc of human origin and traced the patterns of their
nccumulation. They also detcrmined that, when the middens had
lijrmcd, the palaco-ct~vironmcntdsetting had consisted of fir and
pine forests and some oak, that the only animals likely to have bcen
dolncsticatcd wcrc dogs, and that the middens had been occupied
during the autumn, winter, and spring but not during the summer.
'I'hc distributions of hearths and artifacts \vithin the middens wcrc
;iIso studied to learn more about IILIIII~II activities at these sitcs.
I'spcrimcnts, which involved feeding animal bones to dogs, were
carried out in order to explain the numerical preponderance of the
middle part of the long bones of birds over other parts of their
skclctol~(Morlot 1861: 300-1). Thc one issue Worsaae and Steenstrup did not agree about was the dating of the middens. Steenstrup
maintained that they were Neolithic, and hence contemporary with
the megalithic tombs, but, because they containcd no ground or
polishcd stone impleme~lts,Worsaac correctly believed them to be
earlier (Klindt-Jctlscn 1975: 71-3).
The archacology that was developing in Scandinavia provided a
n~odclfor work clscwl~cre.Contacts with Worsaae inspired the
Scottish antiquarian Daniel Wilso~l(1816-92) to use the Three-Age
system to rcorganizc the large collection of artifacts belonging t o the
Society of Alltiquarics of Scotland in Edinburgh. This work providcd the basis for his book TheA~ehaeologyand Prehisto~icAnnalsof
Scotland published it1 1851. In this first scientific synthesis of prchistoric times in thc English languagc, Wilso11 assigned archaeological data to the Stone (Primeval), Bronze (Archaic), Iron, and
Christian eras. Yet his study was not merely a slavish imitation of
Scandinavian work. H e demonstrated that, while Scotland and
I~ana~es,
111a~c
ctry, and a vast ar.ray of foodstuffs. Villages
dating from both the Neolithic and Bronzc Agcs provided Swiss
archaeologists with the opportunity to study changcs in the natural
cnvironmc~lt,economics, and ways of life of thcsc people. The Swiss
finds not only revealed many sorts of pcrishabic artiFacts not usually
found in Scaiidiriavia and Scotland but also verified the rcc 011strLlcwas
tio~isof stonc and bone tools by Nilsson and others. Switzcrland
,- .
already a major centre of tourisni and the continuing study o t thcsc
prcliistoric remains attracted wide intcrcst. It played a major rolc in
convincing Western Europeans of the reality of cultural evolution
and that ancient times could bc studied using archacological cvidcncc alone (Morlot 1861: 321-36).
l'rchistoric archacology had thus dcvclopcd as a well-defined
discipline in Scandinavia, Scotland, and Switzerland prior to 1859.
The basis for this ncw discipli~lcwas the ability to construct rclativc
chronologies from archacological data alone using seriatiot~and
stratigraphy. Thomscn had pionccred scriation using a large and
rcprcscntative museum collection, whilc Worsaae had employed
stratigraphy to confirm his findings. For the first timc rclativc
chronologics wcrc offered into which all known prchistoric data
could bc fitted. This demo~lstratcdthat artifacts from reaso~lably
wcll-documented archacological contexts could be uscd as a basis for
understanding human history.
The dcvclopmcnt of prehistoric archaeology has lo1~g been
ascribcd to the influcncc of geological and biolog;ical evol ution. It
has bccn assumed that thc stratigraphically derived chronologies of
gcological timc constructcd by geologists and palaeontologists provided a model for the devclopme~ltof archaeological chronologics of
prehistory. Yet in Tl~on~sen's
pioi~ceri~lg
work we scc a seriational
chronology of l ~ u n ~ aprchistory
n
inspircd by social-evolutionary
tlicorics of the Enlightenment combining with the data collected by
of stylistic
carlicr antiquaria~lsand with an implicit k~~owlcdgc
change probably derived from the study of numismatics. Prehistoric
archacology did not begin as thc result of borrowing a dating device
from other disciplines. Instead it started with thc d c v c l o p n ~ e of
~ ~at
ncw tcclinique for rclativc dating that w
logical material.
"' c kind of llistorv p ~ ~ by~Scand~nav~a~l
~ ~ c archaeology
d
-. also
cctivc of
in tern;is of the cultural-c
: sense o r~ l p
the E
ILCLUUI
U
U
k
:
,
.
8$
A history of archaeological t l ~ o u g l ~ t
13 A c h c ~ ~ l c ahnnclosc
n
found by Frcrc at H o s n e ,
cussion. While the i~ltellectualclimate was clearly opposed t o assigning a grcat antiquity to humanity, Donald Grayson (1983: 58) has
pointed out that Frcrc's failure t o idc~ltifycithcr the animal bones o r
thc shells in his stratigraphy did not demand agreement with his
c11'
< l1llS.
In the course of tlic cightccntli ccntusy scic~~tists
such ,IS Gcorgcs
Buffon began to propose natural~sticorig~nsfor thc world and t o
speculate that it might be tens of thousands or even millions of years
old. This in turn suggcstcd the nccd for a symbolic rather than a
htcr,~llntcrprctatlon of the biblic~laccount of the scvc~ldays of
creation. The Frcnch zoologist Gcorgcs Cuvicr (1769-1832)' who
cstabltshcd p~laeontologyas a scientific discipline, uscd his knowledge of comparative anatomy to reco~istructcomplete slccleto~lsof
hitherto unknown fossil quadrupeds. In this fashion hc was able t o
assernble cvide~lcethat numerous species of ani~nalshad become
extinct H e also obscrved that older geological strata co~ltai~ied
an~l-n~ll
scmallls that were increasingly dissimilar to thosc of modern
tlmcs. S ~ n c chc assumed 1' relatively short span since the crcatio~iof
the world, he concluded that a scrics of natural catastrophcs had
destroyed cntlrc bpcc~csof an~malsand shaped the niodcrn gcological configuration of the planet. W h ~ l clie believed that devastated
arcas wcrc repopulated by mlgratlons of anlmals from areas that had
hccn \p.l~cd, other gcolog~\t\,\i~zIi,IS W~lli.lm 1Suclil.lnd (178+18~6),~111A11glic.1n prrcst and Professor of Mineralogy at Oxford
UIIIVCI-s~ty,
viewed many catastrophcs as u~iivcrsaloncs that had
w ~ p c dout most speclcs. T h ~ srcqu~rcdGod to CI-catcnew oncs to
replacc them. The increasing co~iiplcxityof plant and animal life
obscrvcd 111 succcssi\~egeological strata was thcscforc not vicwcd as
a dcvclopmcntal scquc~icebut rather as a scrics of ever lnorc coniplcx
creations. H e co~iceivcdof evolution as having occurrcd in God's
mind rather than in thc natural world.
In the first half of the ninctccnth cclltury ~laturalistsand antiquarians ci~coullteredhuman physical remains and stone tools associated with the bones of extinct animals in stratified deposits in cave
sites in niatiy parts of Wcstcr~iEurope. The most inlportant work
was that of Paul Tournal (1805-72) near Narbonnc and Jules de
Christ01 (1802-61) northeast of Montpellier, both in France,
Philippc-Charles Sch~ncrling(1791-1836) near LiPgc in Belgium, and
the Rcvcrcnd John MacEncry (1796-1841) at Kent's Cavern in
'
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
I:,ngland. Each of these men bclicvcd that his finds might constitute
cvidcncc of tlic co~ltcrnporancity of human beings and cxtinct
r~nimalspccics. Yct thcir tcchniqucs of excavation were not sufficic~itlydcvclopcd to rule out thc possibility that thc human material
was intrusive intb older dcposits. MacEncry's finds wcrc scaled
beneath a layer of hard travcrtinc that nlust havc take11a long timc to
form. Buckland maintained that ancient Britons had dug earth ovens
tlirougli the travcrti~lcand that thcir stone tools had found rl~cirway
through thcsc pits into much older dcposits containing the bones of
t;)ssil animals. While MacEncry denied this claim, hc accepted that
tlic human boncs, while old, need not bc contemporaneous with the
cxtinct animals. It was argued that dcposits clsewhcrc contained
mixturcs of animal boncs and artifacts from divcrsc pcriods that had
bccn waslicd into caves and mixed together in fairly recent times
(Grayson 1983: 107). It becamc obvious that caves were not going to
bc conclusive. Their deposits were notoriously difficult to date and it
was hard t o rule out the possibility that human rcmains had become
niixcd with tlic bones of extinct animals as a result of human or
geological activity in recent timcs.
A much-dcbatcd question was whethcr traces of human beings
and thcir works should be found associatcd with cxtinct manlmals.
Tlic boncs of mammotli and woolly rhinoccros wcrc cncountcrcd
frcqucntly in the glacial deposits that covcl-ed Fra~iceand southcrn
England. At the beginning of thc linet tee nth century thesc wcsc
gcrtcrally bclicvcd to have rcsultcd from Noah's flood, the last great
catastrophe to convulsc the earth's surface. Since thc Bible rccordcd
the existence of human beings prior to that timc, it seemed possible
that human rcmains might be fou~ldin thcsc diluvial deposits. Yet
fundamentalist Christians believed that the Biblc implied that as a
rcsult of divine intcrvcntion all animal spccics had survived the
flood; hence the prescncc of cxtinct spccics in thcsc levels indicatcd
that they dated beforc the creation of humanity rathcr than simply
beforc the last flood. Evcn~hosepalacontologists who wcre inclined
to interpret the Biblc less literally bclicvcd that a beneficent God
would havc brought thc earth to its modern statc prior to creating
thc human spccics. By thc 1830s it was gcncrally acccpted that all thc
diluvium had not bee11 deposited at thc same timc. It was also
believed to be oldcr than the flood and therefore should not contain
human rcmains (Grayson 1983: 69).
14
A history of archaeological
..,
dc Pcrthcs and Rigollot had madc thcrc and the geologists also
rccogllizcd that the strata in which these finds occurred must havc
hccn deposited long bcforc 4000 B . C . In their reports to leading
I<ritisli scic~itificassociations, includillg thc British Association for
the Ad\~;1ncctne11t
of Science, thc Royal Society of London, and the
C;cologicnl Society of London, they agreed thnt thcrc was now solid
cvidcncc that human beings had coexisted with extinct lllarnrnals at
somc time that was fat- removed from the present in terms of
calcndnr ycars (Chorlcp c t al. 1964: 447-9; Grayson 1983: 179-90).
'This new vicw of the antiquity of human beings won what
; ~ ~ n o u n tto
c dofficial approval in Lpcll's The Geolojical Evidences of the
Alrtiq14ityofMan (1863).
(;hnrlcs Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in
No\~cmbcr1859. This book, which summarized the results of almost
to ycars of rcscarch that had been inspired by uniformitarian
ga)logy, accornplishcd for cvolutio~larybiology what Lyell's Prinrilrlcs had donc for geology. Darwin's concept of natural selection
wns ncccptcd by Inany scientists and members of the general public
;is providing a mechanism that madc it possible to believe that a
lwowss of biological cvolutio~laccounted for modern species and
c.spl;~incdthe c h a ~ ~ g observed
es
in the palaeontological record. The
ohvio~lsi~nplicationthat humanity had evolved from somc ape-like
~>ri~ii;ltc
not otily madc the anticluity of the Iluman species a burning
isst~cthat had to be empirically studicd but also madc this invcstigarion ;I vital part of the broader colltrovcrsy that was raging
concerning Darwin's theory of biological evolution. Palaeolithic
;ircllacology thcrcforc quiclily acquired a high-profile role alongside
gcolog)l arid palaeontology in the debates concerning a question of
csc;ilating public interest.
some stone tools, such as axes and gouges, had been ground and
polished (Danicl 1950: 85). Aftcr 1860 thc main advances in Palacolithic archaeology took placc in France, where thc river terraces of
the north and the rock shelters of the south providcd bcttcr evidence
than was available in England. Thc principal goals of these studics
were to determine how long human bcings had bee11 in the area and
whether evolutionary trends could bc dctcctcd within the Palacolitllic period. Evolutionary theory predicted that ovcr time human
beings would havc bccornc both morphologically atid culturally
more complex. The first goal of Palaeolithic arcl~acologistswas
thercforc to arrange their sites in chronological order.
The leading figure in early Palaeolithic rcsearch was Edouard
Lartet (1801-71), a magistrate who had turned to the study of
palacontology and had publicly aclcnowlcdgcd the importance of
Bouchcr de Perthes' discoveries in 1860. Supported by the English
banker Henry Christy, he began to explore cave sites in the Dordogne in 1863. H e quickly realized that the Palaeolithic was not a
single phase of human development but a series of phases that could
be distinguished according to artifacts and associated prehistoric
animals. H e preferred a classification based on palaeontological
criteria and distinguished four ages o r periods, which from most
recent to oldest were: (I) Aurochs o r Bison, (2) Reindeer, of which
the cavc sites at Laugcric Bassc and La Madclcinc wcrc typical, (3)
Mamn~othand Woolly Rhinoceros, and (4) Cave Bear, although hc
gradually recognized that the last two periods could not be temporally separated. The Le Moustier site was designated as typical of a
new Cave Bear and Mammoth period. T o Lartet's three periods
Fklix Garrigou added a still earlier Hippopotamus one when human
beings had inhabitcd mainly open sitcs and which was not rcprcsented in the caves of southern France (Danicl 1950: 99-103).
Lartct's work was continued by Gabricl dc Mortillct (1821-98), a
geologist and palacontologist who turncd to the study of archacology. H e was assistant curator at thc Museum of National Antiquities at Saint-Germain-en-Layc for seventeen years bcforc becoming
Professor of Prehistoric Anthropology at the School of Anthropology in Paris in 1876.Although he admircd Lartct's work, he bclicvcd
that an archaeological subdivisioll of thc Palaeolithic had to be based
on cultural rather than palacontological criteria. In this respect he
chose to follow the example of Lubbock and Worsaac.
A history of arcl~aeologicaltliouglit
In spite of this, liis approach tp archaeology was greatly influc~iccdby liis knowledge of geology and palacontology. H c sought to
distinguish each pcriod by spccif~ringa limited number of artifact
typestthat were cliaractcristic of that pcriod alone. These diagilostic
nrtif;icts were the archaeological equivalent of the index fossils that
geologists and palaeo~itologistsused to identify tlic strata belonging
to ;I el articular gcological epoch. Mortillct also followcd gcological
practice in naming cach of his subdivisions of the Palaeolithic aftcr
rhc t)lpc sitc that had been used t o define it. Liltc palacontologists he
rclicd on stratigraphy t o cstablisl~a chronological sequence. I11 the
l';~l;~colithic
rcscarcli of the ninctccnth century, striation played only
;I minor role as a nlcans of cstablishing chronology. This was n o
tlot~htpastly because technological and stylistic sequences were
I~;irdcrto rccogni~cin Palacolithic ston; tools than in latcr artifacts
illid also because the issues being discussed were so controversial
tl~:itonly the clcarcst stratigraphic evidence was u~iivcrsallyagrccd
t o hc ;iblc to provide coiiclusivc tenlporal scclucnccs. The rcliancc on
stratigraplly also reflected Lartct's and Mortillct's training as natural
scientists.
1,artct's N ~ P P O ~ ~ O ~ Age
; I I ~bccanic
I L ~ S the Chcllcan Epoch, namccl
.ili.cr .I sitc 1ic3r l';iris, ;111dmost o f La-tct's C;I\JC1<c;1rvncl Mammoth
Age bcc;imc the Moustcri;ui, a l t h o ~ ~ gMortillct
h
assigned finds from
A u l - i g ~ itli;it
; ~ 1,urtct 1i;id placccl late in liis Cave 1Scar and Mviimotli
Age to 3 separate A~~rignacian
Epocli. Lartct's Rci~idccrAge was
di\lidcd into an earlier Solutrean Epoch and a latcr Magdalenian
one. Mot-tillct was uncertain about the date of the Aurignacian. H e
latcr placcd it aftcr the Solutrcan and finally dropped it from his
c1;issification of 1872. H e also added a R o b c ~ ~ l ~ a u s iEpoch
an
to
rcpcscnt the Neolithic pcriod and in latcr studies, such as Fovmation
dc la nationfiangalse (Dcvelopmciit of the Frcncli Nation) (1897),he
added still more cpoclis to incorporate the Bronze and Iron Ages
into his system. It is doubtful, however, that he was cvcr serious
about tlic univcrsalitp of these highly distinctive Wcstcrn European
periods (Cliilde 1956a: 27).
Mortillct also invcnted a Thenaisiaii Epoch and latcr a Puycour~iiaiione to cover prc-Chcllcan finds. Bctwccn 186; and 1940 ai-chacologists discovcrcd eoliths, or prcsumcd artifacts of exceptionally
crude nianufacturc, in early Pleistocclic as well as still earlier
Pliocene and Miocene deposits in France, England, Portugal, and
~~311)s
I\C;I.:S
1 ;2
.----
I-I
2
1111
.--
L
i
--I
--
--
--4
\Vi~l)cnien~~e.
(1Vr~/>ot,
1'ci.v-r/c-(;ri/ciis.)
C:l~i~n~~xlolic~~~~c.
(Chnr~ij)tlolc*r~t,
Seirte-et-Oiac.)
-- . --- .
L~~g~l~rnient~c.
( L!/Oll , 1~11o11e )
Bct~\-r;~y~icn~~c.
(.lIol1l-Bc~lli~l~/l~,
.\ l>[ll*e,)
.----
.\16ro\.ingic1111c.
Fcr.
I::I>O~UES
Iiomn~nr.
~'~::RIODES
Rlnr~~ic~~nc.
(I)crl~~rlrrr~ertI
tic Irr .Il(ir.rle.)
Golnliennc.
II~~ll~l;~llic~~~~c.
(IIi~llslcill,11ci11te~Iiilr~i~~Itt~,)
--
dl1 B Y O ~ L C'r~lz,tl~icnllp.
.
I.nr~~a~~tlic~inc.
(Lctr.r~cii~rl,
Jurci.)
.\1orgie1111c.
(.llor.yc~s,
ccrnior~cle I'ciarl, Suibae.,
Iiohe~~ll;~uz~c~~~~e.
(IloDr~~l~tru.~o~,
%itrVic.h.)
Tartic~~oisic~~nc.
(Iq'?~.e-e~iS'rir.cler~r~is,
Atis~~e.)
Tu~~rns~io~~nc.
(L(c 'l'~,~i~.rih\c',
Ilr~i~le-G(~~~o~irte.,
, \ I I C ~ ~ I IIIi;tLt~s.
.r
.-2
--
1 :-
I\logl;~ldnier~nc.
(Lu .Mutleleirze, Dor5tloyrte.)
.--
.--
._i
r.
L
2
---
cle In
1'1crrc.
I,nl~olillliquc.
Solulri:cr~~ie.
(Soliilr~;,S(ior~e-el-Loire.)
hloosl6ric1111c.
Acl~cl~lBcn~~e.
(Snirtl-Arheul, Sornn~e.)
5,
CII~II~CIIII~.
(Chelles, Srinc-ct-,ll~irrie.)
I~~iycour~ric~~nc.
( P ~ I I J - C V ~ ~C(i111cil.j
I~II!~,
.i.
15 Mort~llct'sepochs
l<oIilhiq~~c.
The~~irysie~~nc.
(?%ellcl~~,
Loif.-el-Cher.)
series of voyages around the world in order to build up the collcctions of the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. Impressed by the
cultural similarities that he e~lcountcrcdin widcly separated regions,
he emphasized the Enlightcnmcnt doctrine of pspchic unity by
arg~iillgthat as a resitlt of uni\~crsallyshared 'clcmcntary ideas'
(Ele~~ze~~tayqedarzkc)
peoples at the salnc Ic\~elof dc\lelopmcnt \vho
arc facing similar problems will, within the constraints imposed by
thcir cnviro~~mcnts,
tend to develop similar solutio~lsto them.
After 1860 thcrc was a grcat revival of thcorctic history, as cthnologists sought, by comparing modern socictics assu~ncdt o be at
differc~ltlevels of dcvclopmc~~t,
to work out the stagcs through
which European societies had cvolvcd in prehistoric times. These
rescarchcs rangcd from studies of specific .issues, such as Johann
Bachofcn's (1861) theory that all socictics had evolved from matrili~lcalbcgin~li~lgs
2nd John McLenna11's (1865) arguments that the
oldest human socictics had been polyandrous, to gc~lcraldelincations of dcvclopmc~~t
from savagery to civilizatio~lby E. B. Tylor
(1865) and Lewis H . Morgan (1877). Unlil<c the 'thcorctic' histories
thcsc ethnological formulatio~lswcrc
of the cightcenth cc~ltur)~,
prcscntcd as scientific thcorics rather thail as philosophical spcculations. While reflecting the gc~lcralvogue for cvolutio~larystudies
in the mid-nineteenth century and usunllp addressing questions that
cs
archaeological data wcrc ill ccluippcd to hnndlc, thcsc ~ ~ o r lderived
ruuch of thcir self-confidcncc from growing .~rchaeologicalcvidcncc
that tech~lologicaladvances had bee11an important feature of human
history. Reciprocally thcsc c t l ~ ~ ~ o g r a pformulations
l~ic
c11couragcd
archacologists to i ~ ~ t e r p rthcir
c t data in a unili~lcarpcrspcctivc.
In his guide to the archaeological displays at the Paris Expositio~l
of 1867 Mortillct declarcd that prchistoric studics rcvealed human
progress to bc a law of nature, that all human groups passed through
similar stages of dcvclopmcnt, and the grcat antiquity of hurnanit~~
(Daniel 1967: 144). The first two co~lccptshad thcir roots in the
philosophy of the E n i i g h t c ~ ~ m cand
~ l t the third had been recognized
as a result of research carried out prior to the publicatio~lof On the
O~iginof Species. Yet, while Palacolithic archacolog~~
had vindicated
an evolutionary origin for hurnanit~r,Mortillct's first two laws wcrc
far from validated. Not enough work had been done outside of
Wester11 Europe to dctcrminc whether or not human groups cvcry\vhcrc hacl developed - i11sofi.11-us thcy had dc\,clopcci at 311 -through
A history ofarciiacolog~calthought
Avchaeolo~yin N O YA
&me
~vi
Ica
ory ot archaeolog~calthougll t
distingulshcd bctwecr1 burial and tcmplc mourids and corrcctly
-.--..-: ones wcrc carlicr (Willcy and S a b,.fL--,.o-.
suggested
t h a-.l~.ulr LUUllal
l u ~, y~o u .
23). Research and thc publication of rcscarch gradually bccamc morc
systematic. The Amcrican Philosophical Society took an active interest in the Moundbuildcr debate. In 1799, as one of its numerous
scicntific projects, its President, Thomas Jcffcrson, distributed a
circular soliciting information about prchistoric fortifications,
+lltnuli, and Indian artifacts. In 1812 the p~iblishcrIsaiah Thomas
~ndcdthe Anicric,~nAntiquarian Soc~cty,which provided a focal
po:int for thc diffuse but growing interest in archaeological qucstin ns. The first volume of the society's Transactions, which appeared
in 1820, contained Calcb Atwater's 'Description of the antiquities
disccwered in the Statc of Ohio and othcr western states'. This study
preserved valuable plans and descriptions of carthworks, many of
which were latcr destroyed. He divided the remains into three
classes: modcrn European, modcrn Indian, and Moundbuildcr. H e
speculated, on thc most meagre cvidcncc, that thc latter had been
built by Hindus, who had com~
:h Amcricca from tlsia and
latcr moved south into Mexico.
TIic
-. ncxt major contribution to nmcr~can archacology was
A ncir:nt Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848) by Ephraim G.
Squic:r (1821-88) 3nd Edwin H. 13avis (1811-88). Squier, a ncwspapcr
---..u
UWIJl,,
Rapaarwr.rr
!
:
,,l
, I?,". ,,-d.o.,;**<:/.
",",.;,A
....A,,,
;,*,
,,?,
,,~.,",,,.,-".,,/;,.
.;II"rd,;,.,#.'...f-..
.,.#+" d , ~ & , , ~ .
o f thc ant
scovercd
il-I
I
f
I
E A K L 0 F 1) E V O N,
The in~pcrialsynthesis
Lubbock's sy~zthesis
A Darwinian view of human nature was incorporated into prchistoric archacology by thc versatile John Lubbock (1834-1913), who
latcr became Lord Avcbury, with his book Pre-historzc Times, as
Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of
Modern Sava~es.Betwee111865 and 1913 this book went through scvc~l
editions both 111 England and the United States and it long served as
a textbook of archacology. It was almost certainly the most influential work dealing with arch~cologypublished during the nineteenth
century. A second book The Origin of Czvzlisation and the Przmitive
(lXj+-ly
I;)
I
I
I
!
I
3
son, that the climate of North Amcrica was conducive t o thc dcgcncration of a~linlaland human lifc (Haven 1856: 94). William H .
Prcscott's celebrated Histo7.y of the Conquest ofA4exico (1843) and his
of Peru (1847) portrayed the Aztccs and
later Histoql of tJge &~z~uest
Incas as civilized pcoplcs, although 11c ~ilaintaincdthat, as a result of
their superstitions 2nd aggrcssivencss, the Aztecs were destroying
the ~ccomplishmcntsof their morc civilized PI-cc1ccesso1-s.The
ethnologist Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) defended Enlightenment
vicws of c u l t ~ ~ r evolutionism
ul
and strongl!~opposed polygcncsis,
but by the 1840s his argurnellts appeared old-fashioned and unconvi~lcing(Bicdcr 1975). Ncvcrthclcss E. G. Squicr continued to
defend both u~lilincarc v o l ~ ~ t i o ~ i and
i s m psychic unity (Bicdcr 1986:
104-45) Finally in 1862 Daniel Wilson, who was now teaching at
University College in Toronto, published the first edition of Prehistovic Man: Researches iwto the Or$in of Civilization in the Old and
the New Wovld. This book was a rcniarlcablc synthesis of all that was
hiown about the a~lthropologyof thc Nc& World. Wilson, as a
continued, lilcc Gallatin,
product of the Edinburgh E~ilightct~nicnt,
to resist ~-aci;lli~ltcrp~-ctations
of human bchnviour. A significant
portion of his book was co~lccrncdwith thc impact that Europea~i
colonists and African slaves wcrc having upon the native pcoplcs of
the wcstcrn hemisphere and the eftkcts thar a new e ~ l v i r o ~ ~ r nwas
cnt
having on them. 111the section of his book dealing with prehistory,
Wilso11, while ncccpti~lgthe M O L I I I ~ ~ Lmyth,
I ~ ~ ~skctcliccl
CIan
evolutionary sequence which, indcpclldcntly of outside i~lflucncc,
had produced in Mcxico and Peru civilizations that were comparablc
to tliosc of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
These vicws cncountcrcd great opposition. Tlic war between the
United Statcs and Mcxico that cndcd in 1848 unleashed a flood of
anti-Mexican feeling in tlic United Statcs. The Mexicalls wcrc
widely ugrccd to be racially inferior to Euroa~~~cricans
because
Spanish settlers had intcrbrcd with the nativc population (Horsman
1975). Thc ctl~~iologist
Ecwis Henry Morgan, doggedly ignoring
archaeological cvidcncc, maintained that the sixteenth-century
Spanish had cxaggcrated the sopl~isticationof the Aztccs and Incas
in ordcr t o glorify tlleir own achievements in conquering them. H e
argued that the traditional ways of lifc of thesc peoples had differed
littlc from that of the Iroquois of Ncw Yorlc State and that 110native
g r o ~ in
~ pthe New World hacl ever c\~olvcdbeyond the level of a tribal
society (Morgan 1876).H c did not rule out thc possibility that nativc
Americans on their own might have cvolvcd morc complcx ways o f
lifc, but he bclicvcd that any cultural adva~lccmcntdcpcndcd o n an
increase in brain size which could occur only vcry slowly (Bicdcr
1986: 194-246). This position was long maintai~lcdby many Euroamericans who saw littlc t o adnlirc in the nativc pcoplcs of thc
U111tcdStates. Thcrc w'ls strong support by the 1860s for thc vicw
that thc native cultures not only of North Amcrica but of the entire
New World were ~~lhcrcntlp
prinlitivc and had bccn static tllro~1g11out prchistoric timcs.
It has bccn suggcstcd that thc lack of conccrn with chronology in
North Amcrican archaeology prior to thc twcnticth century r c s ~ ~ l t c d
fro111 the failurc of any native group t o advance bcyo~ldthc Stolic
Age, a dcarth of stratified sitcs, and lack of familiarity with tcchniqucs for dcriving chronology in thc abscllcc of major tcchnological cliangcs (Willcy and Sabloff 1980: 80-1). Thcsc factors d o not
explain, howcver, what happcncd. A low frcqucncy of stratified
post-Palacolithic sitcs among thosc that wcrc known in northcrn
and wcstcrn Europc in the ninctccnth cc~lturpdid not inhibit the
constructioll of dctailcd chronologies in those rcgions, mainly by
employing Thomscn's principles of striation (Childc 1932: 207).
Morcovcr, all of thc cl~ronologicalmcthods uscd in Europc wcrc
applied by archacknown in America and had bccn succcssf~~lly
olog~sts In sltu,ltlons where thcy sought t o c m ~ ~ l a tEuropcnn
c
research. After 1860 shcll mounds were studied both scriatiollally
and stratigraphically and on the basis of such cvidc~lcclocal cultural
chronologies werc constructed that wcrc cllaracterizcd by changing
pottery styles o r adaptivc patterns. Such observations wcrc made by
Jcffrics Wyman (1875), S. T. Walkcr (1883), and Clarcncc B. Moorc
(1892) 111 the soutl~castcrnUnitcd Statcs; Willia~llDall (1877) in
Al,~slca;,ind the visiting Gcrm'ln archaeologist Max Uhlc (1907) in
Calitorn~a.Stratigraphic methods were also c~llploycdin ~lioutld
studies by Squicr and Davis in thc 1840s and by Cyrus Thomas in the
1880s, as well as by W. H . Holmcs and F. W. Putnam in their
'Palacolithic' research in thc 1880s (Mc~tzcr1983: 39). The cvidcncc
of local cultural change that tl~escarcl~acologistsadduccd was
rejccted o r dismissed as being of trivial significance by most contemporary arcl~acologists, including so111eti1~1cs those who
c~l~ploycd
these ~ncthods(Thom,ls 1898: 29-34) 1)iscussing Uhlc's
19
1 4
A history of'arcl~aeologicalthought
20
Racist 'a~cbueolo~y
in Apica
These developments in American archaeology foreshadowed ones
that were to occur later in other colonial settings. Archaeological
research was carried out sporadically in sub-Saharan Africa by
European visitors beginning in, the eighteenth ccntury. According
to Brian Fagan the earliest recorded excavation was by the Swedish
naturalist Andrew Sparrman in 1776. H e dug into one of a number of
stone mounds near the Great Fish River in southern Africa.
that thcsc mounds
Although he discovcrcd nothin$, hc concl~~dcd
offcrcd irrefutable proof that a morc powerful and numerous population had lived in the area bcfore being 'dcgradcd to the prescnt race
of Cafres, Hottentots, Boshiesmen, and savages' (Fagan 1981: 42).
Systematic archaeological research did not begin in Africa before
the 189os, by whicl~time the continent had been divided among the
various European colonial powers. Archacologists and colonizers
both regardcd the indigenous cultures of sub-Saharan Africa as a
living museum of the human past. There was much more diversity
among thcse cultures than among those of North America, which
could all be formally assigned to t l ~ cStone Age. In Africa technologies werc based on iron as well as stonc tools, whilc socictics rangcd
in co~nplexityfrom tiny hunting bands ro largc kingdoms. Yet most
Europeans agreed that the technological, cultural, and political
achieve~nentsof African people werc less significant than they
appeared to be. This position was sustained by attributing such
2.1
s A p ~ , ~ - o . ~toc Ithc
~ acropolis', from Rclir's
TIICKzliucd Citics oJ'Mnsl~o~mln~~d,
I Xgz
The i~l~perial
synthesis
138
1
i
1
I
~ u s t r a ~ i prehisto~
nn
In Australia studics of Aboriginal custon~sbegan with thc first
European cxplorcrs and scttlcrs. 13)~1850
most of sourhcrn Australia
was occupied by Europeans and the Aborigines had bccn drivcn
from their lands or were dead as a result of discasc, ncglcct, and
outright murder. As in North! America racial prejudice helped t o
reduce any feelings of guilt that European scttlers may have had
about the way they were treating native people.
Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, etbnologists it1 Europe and America ckouragcd thc study of Aborigincs as
examples of the 'most primitive tribes' known to anthropological
science. By 1900 major studies, such as Baldwin Spcncer and F. J.
Gillc11's The Native Tribes of Central A w t a l i a (1899), had placed
Aboriginal ethnography on an internationally rcspccted basis.
Spcnccr, likc his English mentors? was to dcscribc the Aborigincs as
'a relic of the early childhood o f mankind left stranded . . . in a low
condition of savagery' (Spencer 1901: 12).
Early investigations of Aboriginal prehistory failed to uncover
any clear evidence of the association betwecn human beings and
prehistoric animals, such as had been found in Europe. Nor did the
artifacts discovered in archaeological sites appear to differ significantly from those in recent use. By 1910 naturalists abandoned the
search for early cvidcncc of native people in Australia./The assumptions that they had arrived recently and that their cultures had not
changed significantly accordod with the ethnologists' belief that
these cultures were primitive and essentially static. From 1910 until
the 1950s amateur arcl~aeologistscollected artifacts 'secure in the
knowledge that Aborigines were an unchanging people, with an
unchanging technology' (Murray and White 1981: 256). Spencer,
'lllcging tcclinologic~lopportunism and lack of conccrn with formal
22
The in~pcrialsynthesis
tool types in Aboriginal culture, attributed variations in thc form
and function of artifacts t o diffcrcnccs in raw material, thus ignoring
the alternative possibilities of change over timc, idiosyncratic cultural prcfcrcnccs, and functional adaptation (Mulvanc)l 1981: 63).
John Mulvanc)r (1981:63-4) lias argued that this concept of tlic
'unclinnging savage', which \vas in accorci with the popular cicnigration of Aboriginal culture, inhibited the dcvclopmcnt of prchistoric nrcliacology in Australia throughout this period. It is also
notc\r~orthythat the first nrclincologp dcpurtmcnt that was cstahlislicd in Australia, at the University o f Sydney in 1948, initially
studicd only the archaeology of Europc and the Near East.
The cscavation ill southern Australia, beginning in 1929, of a
stratified scrics of different tool types suggested 3 longer hunlan
occupation and callcd into question the image of a static prehistory.
Cultural change was attributed initially, howcvcr, to various groups
rcplucing o n c another, some of them recent invaders. In 1938
Norman Tindalc linked his scqucncc to the An~crican physical
anthropologist, J. B. Birdscll's, tri-racial hybrid theory ofAustralian
racial origins. Tindalc also suggcstcd that cnvironmental changcs
might have occurred during tile pcriod of Aboriginal occupation.
Concern with cultural cli;lngc and regional variation did not charactel-izc Australian arcliucology until a nl~mbcrof young professional arcliacologists began t o study Australian prehistory following John~Miil\~ancy's
apptziiltn~entat the University ofMi-lbournc in
195;. Most of these archucologists had been trained at Cambridge
Uni\.crsity, \\~licrcGrahamc Clark had cncourugcd them to work in
Australia. As 3 result of their rcscarch, it 112s become clcur rhat
lit11ii31ihcings have l i \ d in Australin for at least -1-0,000 years.
Archaeologists ha\.c documcntcd numerous changes in technology,
c~i\~ironmcnt,
udapt.~tion,and no11-tccllnologic;~I;~spcctso f nntivc
cultu~.~*.
.l'hc.ir i t ~ l t ~ ~ . i. ll il ~ . o ~ i o l o ~h,1\,c
i c s .dso di.\\~cllcclrhc bclicl'
that nll cultural cliangcs in prehistoric times came about as a result of
cstcrnal stimuli.
Sincc the 1970s the interpretation of archaeological data lias also
rcflcctcd a gro\ving concern for a distinctive national identity among
whitc Australians. White artists draw i~ispirationfrom native art
forllls and Aboriginal art is viewcd as part o f Australia's national
hcritagc t o a far grcatcr dcgrcc than is thc case with nativc arts in
North America. Within the :context of this, growing nationalism,
Lubbock's lgacy
In tlic 1860s and 1870s archaeologists continucd to bclicvc in tlic
cvolutio~iaryorigins of Europcan socicty. Yct by that pcriod thcy
wcrc inclined to o f i r racial cxpla~iationsfor tlic failurc of other
socictics to cvolvc to tlic same cxtcnt as thcp had done. Thc Darwinian cxplanatiori of thcsc racial diffcrc~icesthat was popularized by
Lubbock reinforced thc racist views inhcrcnt in colollial situatio~is
and which had already i~lfluc~iccd
tlic intcrprctations of arcliacological cvidcncc in thc United Statcs. Tlic arcliacology that dcvcloped wherever Europcan colonists were seclcing to establish themsclvcs jn the rliidst of native populations had much ill common.
Native socictics werc assumed to be static and cvidcncc of changc in
the archacological record, when noted, was attributed to migratio~ls
rather than to irltcrnal dynamism. The racist vicws undcrlyi~~g
specific intcrprctations wcrc morc oftcn implicit than explicit.
Either way, colo~lialistarchacology served to dctiigratc thc native
socictics that Europcan colonists wcrc scclcing to dominate o r
replace by offering evidence that in prehistoric times thcy had lacked
tlic initiative to develop on thcir own. Such arcliacology was closely
aligned with cthnology, which docu~nentcdthe primitive condition
of traditional native cultures and their gcncral inability t o changc.
This priniitivcrlcss was widely bclicvcd to justify Europeans seizing
co~itrolof thc territories of such peoples. While tlicse archacological
vicws did not survive thc collcctio~io f archacological cvidcncc
which indicatcd that internal' changes had takcn place in nativc
cultures, they impeded the search for such evidence and significantly
delayed the development of prehistoric archaeology in countries
such as Australia, whcrc it was assumcd that archacology had little to
reveal about thc past. Morcovcr, this dcvclopment did not occur
until evolutionary archaeology had been replaced in Europe by a
historical view of prehistory.
This was because unilinear evolutionism, whether of Lubbock's
racist variety or the oldcr, ulliversalistic sort championed by Mortillet, shared ccrtain major wcaknesscs as a model for collecting and.
interpreting archacological data. Thcsc wcakncsscs wcre cspccially
evident in the cvolutio~laryarchacology that had evolved in England
and France around the study of the Palaeolithic period. By arguing
that modcrn culturcs arranged from simplcst to most complex
recapitulated the sequence through which European societies had
evolved, unilinear evolution denicd that there was anything novel to
be learned from the archaeological record. The main value of archaeology was its proof that evolution had in fact occurred, to varying
degrees and hence at varying rates in different parts of the world.
Lubbock and othcr archaeologists argucd that ethnographic evidence provided an easy way to achieve a rounded understanding of
how people had lived in prehistoric times. As long as archaeological
data, in the form of diagnostic artifacts, could rcvcal thc level of
dcvclopment that a particular culture had reached, ethnographic
data concerning ~nodcrnsocictics at thc same stage werc capable of
supplyi~lgall that needcd to be known about the nature of life
associated with that culture. Only the earliest archaeological finds
were believed to lack corresponding ethnographic evidence. As late
as 1911 Lower and Middlc Palaeolithic cultures wcre being equated
with the Tasmanians and Australian Aborigines (Sollas 1911).These
holistic analogies invited a revival of antiquarianism, to the extent
that they returned archaeology to a situation where artifacts once
again merely illustrated the past, rathcr than constitutcd a basis for
studying prehistoric human behaviour. Within the context of unilinear evolutio~~ism
the matrix for undcrstanding archaeological
data was no longer historical documentation, as it had been prior to
Thomsen's work or remained in classical studies, but rathcr had
become ethnography.
Another major problem was that none of the unilinear evolutionary archaeologists succeeded in devisi~lga niethodology for
Culture-historical archaeolc
a1 archaeolog
\,..,.-.
( - ~ - ~ ~ J..
- T - ~ IJI ~
I YC L Z / C Inntio7rnlirt
~~,
idcol(!lr7~
.I,t/j
.,
SS n ~ y t 1
in11cl't
~ ~ ~~c~zlzt~l:
tCTl'aSZ 1 1 ~ f ; l lC~O cI ~ J C ~ ~ Z L S I L CIt>
zt . . . c laims topyotect an oldfolk soczety while infact
help,in4
- to build up an anonymous mass society.
Lt
G t. 1. L N B I<,
Nntionnlisnt I
!epatriot 1
necessity 2
t
icnl C;ullccrion
llrll
2-3
~ a t ~c i i n c t ~ ~
,,..tury,
, , ~ , cultural cvo~utiotlislnwas si~ilu
ously challcngcd across E~tropcby growing natiollalism and c
ing faith in thc benefits of tcchnological progrcss. Thesc two
oplncnts wcrc closcly linlicd, sincc a rcduccd commitmc
evoluti onis~ilmade cthnicity appear to bc the most importa~ltfactor
in liunIan history. I11 Western Europc ~iationalisniincreased as
o.-..,.-,4;
iodustri~lizatiohcightcncd competition for markcts and
resources. Towards tlic cnd of tlic century it was cncourag
intcllcctuals who sought to pro~iiotcsolidarity within thci
countries in the facc of growing social unrest by blatni~igcco
and social problems on neighbouring states.
In England and France nationalism cxprcsscd it:self stroll gly in
historical writing, which cmphasizcd the solidarity o f thesc na~tional
111 IIIC
groups. Yct its impact on arcliacology was quitc muted, 111 part as a
rcsult of thc continuing influc~iccof Lubbock and Mortillct. The
French Enipcror Napolcon I11 ordcrcd large-scale excavations to bc
carricd out bctwccn 1881and 1865 at tIic Ccltic oypida, o r fortified
towns, at Mont Auxois and Mont R i a in Burgundy. These sitcs,
which had bccn bcsiegcd by Julius Caesar when lic invaded Gaul,
rcvcalc d the material culturc of thc Ccltic inhabitants of France in
thc fir:st ccntury B.C. Napolcotl sought, by encouraging nationausm, to cnhancc the powcr of his regime (Danicl 1950: 110-11). By
tasking about p c ~ ~ i h l ~
dent Bri
contra:
r4
Culture-historical archaeology
human behaviour was biologically determined, promoted growing
scepticism about humah creativity. Writers and social analysts maintained that pcople were not inhercntly inventive andthat change was
contrary to human naturc and potcntially harmful to pcoplc. It was
argucd that a static condition was most congenial to human bcings,
who werc naturally prcdisposed to rcsist altcrations in thcir styles of
life. This led to dccliniog credcncc in indepcndent development, a
belief that particular inventions wcrc unlikcly to bc madc morc than
once in human history, and hence a growing rcliancc on diffusion
and migration to cxplain cultural change. I t also encouraged an
increasing intercst in the idiosyncratic fcaturcs associatcd with particular ethnic groups rathcr than with thc gcncral characteristics of
succcssivc stages of cultural devclopmcnt. If thc insccurity of thc
middle classes of Western Europe in the 1860s had Icd Lubbock and
othcr Darwinians to abandon th; doctrine of psychic unity and view
native peoples as biologically inferior to Europeans, the still greater
insecurity of the 1880s led intellectuals to jettison the doctrine of
progress and regard human beings as far more resistant to change
than they had been viewed since before the Enlightenment.
Increasing reliance on diffusion and migration, as well as the
concept of cultures as ways of life relatcd to specific cthnic groups,
wcrc soon cvidcnt in thc work of Gcrman ethnologists such as
Fricdrich Ratzcl (1844-1901) and Franz Boas (1858-1942). Ratzcl, a
geographcr and ethnologist, rejected Bastian's conccpt of psychic
unity. In works such as Anth~opogeog~aphie
(1882-91) and The Histoly
ofMankind ([1885-81 1896-8) he argued that, because the world was
small, ethnologists must bcware o f thinking that even thc simplest
inventions were likely to havc bccn made morc than once, Ict alone
repeatedly. Both invention and diffusion were dcscribcd as capricious processes; hence it became impossible to prcdict whcthcr a
particular group will borrow cvcn a uscful invention from its ncighbours. Ratzel argued that because of this it was necessary to rulc out
the possibility of diffusion in order to provc that the same type of
artifact had been invented more'than oncc. H c tried to demonstrate
that items such as thc blowpipe and the bow and arrow, whcrcvcr
they occurred in the world, could be traccd back to a common
source. H e also sought to show that, dcspitc its capriciousness,
diffusion created culture areas, or,blocks of similar cultures adjacent
to each othcr.
Culture-historical archaeology
the development of agriculture, which was followed by the invcntion of pottery, clothing, konumental architecture, and divine
kingship. Smith believed that these events had occurred in a unique
cnviro~lmcntand wcre ynlikely ever to have happened elsewhere.
Egyptian innovations had been carried to all parts of the world by
Egyptian mcrcl~antswho wcre searching for raw matcrials that had
thc power to proloilg huma~ilife.While these influences acted as an
'exotic leaven' encouraging the development of agriculture and
civilization in other parts of the world, civilizations such as that of
the Maya declined when cut off from direct contact with Egypr
(Smith 1923, 1933).
Smith's hyper-diffusionist ideas were elaborated using ethnographic data by W. J. Perry, who taught cultural anthropology at
the University of London. His two major works, The Children of the
Sun (1923) and The Growth of Civilization (1924) still makc fascinating
reading, although the explanation of his world-wide parallels in
political organization and religious beliefs rcmains illusive. Lord
Raglan (1939) also advocated hyper-diffusionism but believed Mesopotamia rather than Egypt to have been its source. The ideas o n
wl~ichthese three men agreed were that most human beings are
tlaturally primitive and will always revcrt to a stagc of savagcry if not
stoppcd from doing so by, the ruling classcs; that savagcs ncvcr
invcnt anything; that thc dcveiop~llciltof civilization, and by extrapolatio~lthe Industrial Revolution, were accidents that produced
results contrary to human nature; and that religion was a prime
factor promoting the development and spread ofcivilization. Yet, in
denying that progress was natural or that therc was any plan t o
human history, the hyper-diffusionists were only carrying to an
extreme ideas that had been shared by a growing number of anthropologists sincc the 1880s. Marvin Harris (1968: 174) has observed
that diffusionists generally were far more dogmatic in dismissing the
possibility that thc samc invention had bccn madc twicc than cvolutionists ever had been in denying the importance of diffusion.
Some European archaeologists were influenced by Elliot Smith to
the extent that they argucd, that megalithic tombs might be a
degenerate form of pyramid, the, idea of which had been carried to
Western Europe by Egyptians seeking for life-giving natural substances (Childe 1939: ~ o I - ~ , I ~ s69).
+ ' : Yet, by the 1920s the archaeological rccord was sufficicntly well known that hyper-diffusionism
had little appeal to archaeologists as an explanation of world prehistory. Insofar as archaeologists thought about the problem, culturcs in thc Old and New Worlds wcrc rccog~~izcd
to be stylistically
distinct and wcrc bclicvcd to havc dcvclopcd indcpcndcntly from
hunting and gathering to civilization. Yct, within the diffusionist
milicu that had bcgun to cvolvc in thc 188os, thc human capacity for
innovatioll was considcrcd to bc sufficiently lin~itcdand quixotic
that basic discovcrics, such as pottery and bronze working, sccmcd
unlikcly to have bccn invented twice and hcncc wcrc bclicvcd to
havc spread fro111one part of the world to another. Thc cl~ronologics~
that had been elaborated prior to radiocarbon dating, especially on
an intercontinental scale, were not sufficiently calibrated to rule out
such interpretations. Almost all cultural change in the archaeological record was attributed to the diffusion of ideas from one
group to another or to migrations that had led to the replacement of
one people and their culture by another. Because they accepted the
capacity of one group to learn from another, archaeologists who
stresscd diffusion werc generally morc optimistic about the capacity
of human societies to changc than wcrc thosc who attributed almost
all change to migration. Thc latter fashion is exemplified in the work
of W. M. F. Petric (1939)~who, in discussillg the prehistoric dcvelopmcnt of Egypt, explained all cultural changes in tcrrns of mass
migrations or the arrival of smallcr groups who brought about
cultural change by mingling culturally and biologically with thc
existing population. Petrie saw-no possibility of significant cultural
change without accompanying biological change.
The transition between evolutionary and diffusionist modes of
thought was gradual and diffusionist explanations often shared
many of the features of evolutionary ones. W. J. Sollas, in his
Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives ( I ~ I I )based
,
or, a
scrics of lccturcs dclivercd in 1906, appears to bc following an
evolutiollary modcl whcn hc compares succcssivc agcs of Palaeolithic development with "dfferent modern hunter-gatherer groups.
Thus the Mousterians are 'represented' by the Tasmanians, the
Aurignacians in part by the Bushmen, and the Magdalenians by the
Inuit and the American Indians. Yet he maintains that most of these
modern countcrparts are appropriate analogues because they are the
literai descendants of thesc Palaeolithic groups, who, as more
'intclligcnt' raccs cmcrgcd, wcrc 'cxpcllcd and drivcn to thc uttcr-
Culture-historical archaeology
most parts of the earth' where, they remained in an arrested state of
development (1924: 599). Under the impact of diffksionism, holistic
analogics bascd on thc assumption that historically unrclatcd groups
at thc same levcl of dcvclopmcnt arc culturally similar gradually werc
replaced by the assumption that because cultures are inherently
staticonly the comparison of hisforically rclatcd ones could facilitatc
thc intcrprctation of ar~hacolo~ical
data (Wylic 198sa: 66-7).
Culture-historical archaeology
travelling throughout Europe in ordcr to study collections and thus
bccamc tllc first arcl~acologist,to invcstigatc prchistory on a continental scalc. Thc cnlargcd scopc of his rcscarch was madc possiblc
by the increasing tempo of arcl~acologicalactivity throughout
Europc and by thc dc\rclopmcnt of a nctworlc of railways, which
m ~ d travel
c
casicr.
The typoIog~c.~l
method, 1' s Montcllus dcvclopcd it, was a rcfincmcnt of Thomscn's scriation.il .ipproach. Hc rioted v,lrintions In
l o 1 1 1 1 .11111 d c c o ~ . l t ~ o101.
~ i \ * . I ~ I O L I \cl,~ssesof' .lrt~f.lct\ t l i r o ~ ~ g l i o ~ t
I - ; u ~ o.11id
l ~ o n tli~sh.l\~\~ o i ~ g ltoi t\\,ark o ~, ~~n dcorrcl,ltc
t
.I series o f
I-cg1on.11cl~ronologics. H c did this by examining material from
closcd finds, such .I\ gr.~\~cs,
ho.lrds, .lnd 111~ii\'idt1.11
rooms, to dctcrrl111lc. \ \ Il.lt rypc\ ol'.~r.c~l;lc.is
o z c ~ ~ r r c.111d
d 11c\,croccurrcd together.
Espcricncc t , l ~ ~ ghl~~nt that,
i
,lfter comparing zoo to 300 finds of this
sort, clustcrs of association \vould form that rcprcscntcd, not largc
units of timc such as the Bronzc Agc, but subdivisions of thcsc ages
that he bclic\rcd could cach ha\;e 1,zsted only a few hundred !cars. B\.
' ~ r r ~ ~ n g thcsc
i n g clusters so that clcmcnts that were most ,dike wcrc
pl,lcccl ,~clj,~ccnt
to cach other, hc created a chror~ologicalscqucncc.
Fol s ~ ~ c.Il iscqucncc to be co~i\~incing,
ho\vc\~cr,ni.~tcrials, tccliniclucs of rn.lnl~f.~ct~~rc,
sh.~pc,.lnd dccor.itton had to form an intcrn,llly coherent series, just .IS they h,ld donc with Tt~omscn'sc r ~ ~ d c r
scriation (Bibby 1956: 176-81; Klindt-Jcnscn 197s: 87-96).
Montclius notcd evolutionary trends ovcr the course of his
periods. Bronzc cclts, for cxamplc, began as flat axes that wcre latcr
flanged to strcngthcn them. Ncxt thcy wcre providcd with a crossbar
and cylindrical shaft and finally with a hcavy cast socltct to facilitatc
mounting. H e vicwcd,such a sequcncc as a natural and logical one
and drcw parallels bctwccl~thc cvolution of matcrial culturc and of
biological organisms. Yct, as Graslund (1974)has shown, dcspitc his
training in thc natural scicnccs, Montclius' thinking about human
bchaviour owcd littlc to Darwinism. 011 the contrary it continued
thc traditions of Scandinavian archacology. Montclius believed, as
had thc philosophers of the Enligl~tcnmcnt,that technology dcvclopcd because Iiumai beings used thcir powers of rcason to dcvisc
morc cffcctivc ways of coping with naturc and thcrcby makc thcir
livcs casicr and more sccure. His rcfcrcnccs to biological evolution
sccm to havc bccn intcndcd mainly as analogics that would enhance
the status of archacology in an cra dominated by Darwinian cvolu-
icological thought
L I V I I . ~t 1s s~gnlhcant
that not all of Montclius' evolutioilary
wcrc unilincar. H c dcmonstratcd, for cxan~ple,that during the
Bronze Agc fibulac (safety pins), which were uscd t o fasten clorhing,
had bccn manufactured in Italy as onc piecc with a coilcd spring and
in Scar~dinaviaas two picccs with a hinge (Bibby 1956: 180-1). I n due
course thc best fcaturcs of both types wcrc merged to form a new
pan-European variety. Hence hc took account of how historical
factors
as logical ones influcnccd the cvolutio~lof material
culture
.
-1:.
developed his typological method and
In t nc Iaaos Lvlonrcuils
dividcd thc Europcan Bronze Agc into six pcriods. In the following
dccadc he divided thc Neolithic into four pcriods and thc Iron Agc
into ten. While he regarded thcsc periods as applicablc t o the whole
of Europc, he noted considerable rcgional variation within each one
and rcjcctcd thc idea that all parts of Europc had reached the same
stage of devclopment at thc same time. Instead he sought to use
artifac.ts which hc assun~cdhad bee11cschangcd from one region to
anothc:r, or copied from more advanced areas, to correlate various
period s in rliffcrclit parts of Europc. As a rcsult of the discovcr!r of
Mjlccnacn11 GI-cck pottc~-yin historically dated Egyptian sitcs and
Egyptian goods in Greece, it was possible for nrcl1:icologists to date
the Mpccnacan period in C;rcccc to the fifteenth century B.(:.
Faicnc c bends found across E ~ ~ r o ptliat
c \vcrc prcsitmcd t o hnvc
come iFro111 Egypt through the Mycenaean civilization provided a
bench-mark calcndrical dating for Bronze Agc cultures. This corrc. .
l a t ~ o nalso gavc rise to what was later called the 'short chronolnr+v'of
European prehistory (Bibby 1956: 181-2).
Moiltclius bclicvcd that his cultural c'hronolog
I..
. - I
prchistory was dcrivcd objcctivcly ft-0111 t11c arcllacologlcal
cvluc~~cc.
Today ~ v carc not so ccrtain that prcsuppositions did not plly a
significant rolc in dctcrlnillillg his selection of thc cross-tics that he
l x c t3
~
correlate the chronologies of diffcrcnr parts of Europc.
Hc
I
~t that his c h r o ~ ~ o l o gindicated
y
that in prchistoric times
11 devclopment had occurred in the Ncar East and that
...-- UL-laclllcvcmcnts had bee11 carried from there t o Europc by wavcs
diffusion and migration malting their way through thc Ballza~lsand
Italjl. Because of that the lcvel of cultural dcvclopment in southcastI U l LII
ern Europe in pi-chistoric times was always ahead ofthat to thc;I---+II whole 'was for long but the pale rcflIcction
and west and El
ulturc-historical arc
1
Belt b m ~ ,
Bro
S "
\J
I-'
Culture-historical archaeology
East also appealed to many Christians as a reaffirmation of the
biblical vicw of world history. It furthcr accordcd with a biblically
based intcrprctation of history dating from thc mcdieval period that
saw successive empires - Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic Greek,
and Roman - transferring the centre of powcr and crcativity westward from the Ncar East to Europc. Finally, throughout thc nineteenth ccntilry Europea~lpowers, cspccially England and France,
had bccn intervening to an ever greater dcgrcc it1 thc political and
cconomic .~ff.~irsof thc Ncar East (Silbcrn~an1982). A vicw of
prehistory which saw the Western Europcan nations rather than the
Arab peoples as thc true hcirs of thc ancicnt civilizations of the Ncar
East helped to justify Europc's colonial intcrvcntions in that region,
just as such folk lore justified the European colonization of Africa.
This interpretation of early cultural development in the Ncar East as
constituting thc origins of Epropean civilization may help to explain
why Montclius' arguments wcrc morc popular in France and
England than in Germany, where intcrventio~lsin the Ncar East
began only towards thc end of the ninetcentl~ccntury.
Montclius did not subscribe ,to racial intcrprctations of human
history. Moreover, while he belicvcd that diffusionary proccsses
accounted for the sprcad of civilization to Europc in prehistoric
times, he saw evolutionary oncs explaining its origins in thc Ncar
East. As the citizcn of a geographically pcriphcral nation whose
cultural and academic lifc 'was bcing transformcd in thc nineteenth
century by influences coming principally from Germany, hc must
have regarded diffusion as a powcrful stimulus for changc. Whilc he
was the first great archaeological innovator to bc strongly influcnced
by a specifically diffusionist view of culturc, his position in the
debate about human inventiveness was a modcratc one and much of
his thinlcing continued in an evolutionist mode.
T h e co&ept ofcuZtwe
In the late nineteenth century a growing preoccupation with cthnicity encouraged the development of the concept of thc archaeological culture and of the culture-Historical approach to the study of
prehistory. Archaeologists in Scandinavia and Central Europe
began to draw an explicit analogy bctwccn thc numcrous gcographically restricted remains of n distinctivc chnractcr that thcy
Culture-historical archaeology
aidentities in the archaeological record. As early as 1866 the Norwegian archaeologist Olof Rygh interpreted distinctive spear points
and arrowheads found in his country as thc products of a particular
Stone Age 'culture and people' and by 1871 he had noted the
existence of 'two Stonc Age cultures and two Stone Age peoples' in
Norway (Mcinandcr 1981: 106). A. Gotzc was referring to thc
Bandkcramik and othcr Neolithic cultures in 1891; V. V. Hvojko to
the Tripolye culture in 1901; and A. A. Spitsyn to thc Fatyanovo
culturc in 1905 (ibid. 103, 107). In 1908 Raphacl Pumpclly, an
American geologist turncd archaeologist, who was excavating at the
stratificd sitc of Anau in Ccntral Asia, used the term culturc to
distinguish successive level; of occupation at that sitc, explaining
that 'culturc' was employed as a synonym for civilization (p. xxxv).
In some cases it is possible to trace the process by which specific
cultures were recognized. Following the cxcavations at a Bronze
Agc cemetery at ~ n f t i c in
e Czechoslovakia, archaeologists began to
identify ~nineticc-likefinds in nearby regions and finally organized
culture. In a similar manner thc protothese to establish a ~116tice
Slavic Burgwall-type pottcry that thc German prehistorian Rudolf
Virchow (1821-1902) had dcfincd in Ccntral Europe in 1870 was
broadened into the conccpt'of a Burgwall culture (Sklenil1983: 110).
Culture-historical archaeology
the archacological record of Central Europe could be organized as a
mosaic of cultures (IGltttren o r Kultur-Gwppe), the location and
contents of which altcrcd ovcr timc. O n thc basis of his belief that
cultures arc incv~tablya reflection of ethnicity, he argued that
similarities and diffcrcllccs in material culturc corrclatc with similar~tics. ~ n ddiffcrcticcs in ethnicity. Hcncc clearly defined cultural
provinces always con-clatc w ~ t hmajor ethnic groups o r pcoplcs,
,
such as the Germans, Celts, and Slavs, while individual cultures
correspond with tribes, such as thc Germanic-speaking Saxons,
Vandals, Lombarcls, and Burgund~ans. Like many othcr archacologists, including Montclius, Kossinna bclicvcd that culturr~lcontinuity indicated cthnic continuity. HCIICChc argued that, by inapping the distributions of types of artifacts that wcrc characteristic of
specific trlbal groups, it would bc possible to dctcrminc whcrc thcsc
groups had livcd at diffcrcnt pcriods in prchistory, a procedure that
hc called scttlcmcnt archacology (Szedlungsarchiiolugie).By this he
did not mean the study of habitation sites but rather the dclincatioll
of whcrc particular cthnic groups had livccl. H c bclicvcd that by
known t r i b ~groups
l
with particular archacoidentifying h~~torically
logical culturcs for thc early historical period, it would become
possible to trace them backwards in timc archacologically. At some
point it would no longer bc possible to dist~nguishindividual
Gcrm.ln tribe.\, alncc they would not yet have diffcre~tiatcdfrom
c ~ c hother, but arch.lcologists could still distinguish bctwccn
Gcrmans, Slavs, Celts, and other major groups of Indo-Europeans.
For still inorc rcnlotc pcriods it might only be possible to diffcrcntiate Indo-Europeans fro111 11011-Indo-Europeans. Kossinna was not
only the first arcl~acologistto usc the concept of thc archacological
culture systematically but also the first t o apply thc direct historical
approach to thc study of a large region.
In a11 of his latcr writings Kossinna specifically idcntificd cult~iral
and ethnic variations wit11 racial diffcrc~~ccs.
In particular hc
acccptcd the com~nonlyheld bclicf that thc original Indo-Europeanspcalcing pcoplcs and hence the direct ancestors of thc Germans werc
nlcmbcrs of the blond, longhcadcd Nordic (or Aryan) racial group
and that racial characteristics wcrc the fundamc!ltal dcterrninants of
11uma11 bcl~aviour.1.ossinna- also acccptcd Klcmm's distinction
between I<ulturvulker, or culturally creative peoples, and Naturvuler, or c u l t ~ ~ r ~passive
lly
pcoplcs. For him this was a distinction
Culture-historical archaeology
1101\7
Culture-historical archaeology
25
book, w h ~ c hGlyn Daniel (1950: 247) has called 'a new starting-point
for prehistoric arcl~acology',the archacological culturc bccamc the
worliing tool of all Europcan archaeologists.
Childc was born in Sydncy, Australia in 1893, the sot1 of a conscrv:~tivc Ch~irchof England minister. H c studied Classics at tllc
University of Sydney, whcrc hc bccamc comrnittcd to socialist
politics. At ah early stage he also grcw intcrestcd, likc Icossinna, in
locating the homcland of the Indo-European-spc~ki~lg pcoplcs. H c
wcnt 011 t o Oxford Univcrsity where hc studicd with Myrcs and
Evans. In 1916 he returned to Australia. There he engaged in various
left-wing political activitics until 1921. Then, disillusioned with
politics, hc returned to the study o f archaeology. His already extensive command of European languages and an acute visual memory
enablcd him t o visit and asscmblc data from muscums and cxcavations across thc wholc of Europc. H c presc~ltedthe results of this
research in two boolis: The Dawn ofEuvopean Civilization, which was
26
Culture-historical archaeology
ology and a new culture-historical approach. H c also observed, with
rcfcrcncc to the British and French rathcr than the Scalidinavian
school, that in the ninctcc~itlicentury cvol~~ti~~iar~\~arcl~acolo~ists
had bccomc more interested in artifacts than in thcir makcrs. H c
claimed that in constructing evolutio~laryscquc~~ccs
they had
trcatcd artifacts as dcad fossils rathcr than as cxprcssions of living
socictics (194oa: 3). I11 his opinion scientific progrcss had lcft archacologists with no altcrnativc but t o adopt thc concrctc mcthods of
history. H c was correct in portraying thc development of a historical
approdch to archaeology as a natural and logical progrcssion, to the
extent that culturc-historical archaeology was cquippcd, as cvolutionary archaeology had not becn, to study and try to cxplain
geographical as well as tcmporal variation in thc archacological
rccord. H e was wrong, howcvcr, in implying that his mcthod for
interpreti~lgthe archacological record was necessarily morc objective than evolutionary archaeology. The conccpt of the archacological culturc, which he had borrowcd from Kossinna, and thc
diffusionist vicws of Montclius wcrc both closcly rclatcd to thc
tvidcly hcld intcrprctations of human bchaviour that had dcvcloped
as a rcaction against cultural evolutionism in Wcstcrn Europe bcginning in thc latc ninctccnth century. Thc new culture-historical view
of prehistory was as dccply rootcd in a pcssiliiistic asscssmcnt of
cultural change and human creativity as thc prcvious evolutionary
vicw had bccn rooted in an optimistic onc.
Childc, dcspite his left-wing political radicalism, did not wholly
escape thc racism that was part of this ncw outlook. In The Aryans
(1926) hc argucd that thc Indo-Europeans did not succeed bccausc
thcy posscsscd a matcrial culture or natural intclligcllce that was
supcrior to those of othcr people. Instead thcy wcre successful
bccausc they spoke a superior languagc and bcncfitted from the
more competent mentality it made possible. H e pointed out that thc
Greeks and Romans had only a dilutcd Nordic physical type but that
cach had realized the high cultural potential that was inhcrcnt in
thcir language. This intcrprctation contrasted with Kossinna's belief
that ethnic and racial mixture in thcse countries had resultcd in
cultural decline. Yct at the cnd of The Aryans Childc bowcd to
prcvailing racist scntimcnts by suggesting that thc 'superiority in
physique' of the Nordic pcoplcs niadc thcm thc appropriate initial
bearers of a superior language (Childc 1926: 211). In latcr ycars, as hc
Culture-h,istqricalarchaeology
'
National a~chaeology
The culture-historical approach, with its emphasis on the prehistory
of specific peoples, provided a model for national archaeologies not
only in Europe but around the world. It remains the dominant
approach to archaeology in many countrlcs. Like nationalist history,
to which it is usually closely linkcd, thc culture-historical approach
can bc used to bolster thc pride and moralc of nations or ethnic
groups. It is most often used for this purpose among peoples who
fccl thwarted, thrcatcncd, or dcprivcd of thcir collcctivc rights by
more powerful nations or in countries where appeals for national
unity are being made to counteract serious internal divisions.
Nationalist archaeology tends to emphasize the more recent past
rather than the Palaeolithic period and draws attention to the
political and cultural acliievcmcnts of indigenous ancient civilizations. There is also, as Danicl Wilson (1876,I : 247) noted long ago,
a tendency to glorify the 'primitive vigour' and creativity of people
assumed to be national ancestors rather than to draw attention to
thcir low cultural status.
Thc political problcnls and revolutionary cl~angesthat overtook
China beginning in the ninctccntli century produced a rcncwed
i~itcrcstin historiography. In particular it Icd to thc dcvelopn~c~lt
of
a more critical attitude towards ancicnt tcxts (Wang 1985: 184-8).
The study of art objects and calligraphy was a long-established part
of the Chinese tradition of historiography. Field archaeology developed, however, within the context of the reformist May 4th Movement, which, beginning in 1919, sought to replace traditional literaiy
scl~olarshipwith scientific knowledge from the West. There was a
receptive audience for geology, palaeontology, and other sciences
capable of collecting empirical data from the earth.
Thc first major archaeological fieldwork was carried out by
Western scientists attached to the Geological Survey of China,
which had been established in Peking in 1916.The Swedish geologist
J. G. Andersson (1934: 163-87) identified the Neolithic Yangshao
culture in 1921,whilc major work at the Palaeolithic site of Zhoukoudian began under thc direction of the Canadian anatomist Davidson
'#
Black in 1926 (Hood 1964). The first native Chinese scholar to direct
the excavation of an archaeological site was Li Ji (Li Chi) (18961979), who had earned a doctorate at Harvard University in 1923.
From 1928 to 1937, as first head of the Department ofArchaeology in
the National Research Institute of History and Philology of
Academia Sinica, he dug at the important late Shang site of Yinxu,
near Anyang. These excavations, carried out at an early historical site
that yielded many inscriptions and works of art, played a major role
in training a gcncration of Chincsc archaeologists and also in
turning the new sciencc of,archaeology into an instrument for
studying Chinese history. They also fuclled a resurgence of pride in
China's ancicnt past. This turning towards history is all thc morc
significant in view of Li's training as an anthropologist.
Foreign scholars, such as Andersson, sought to trace the origins of
Chinese culture, or at leaqt of major aspects of it, such as the
Neolithic painted pottery, back to the Near East, thereby implying
that Chinese civilization was derivative from the West. Chinese
archaeologists sought the origin of Chinesc civilization in the Neolithic Longshan culture, where Wcstern influence seemed lcss
evident. Later they argued that Yangshao and Longshan represented
a continuum of development that culminated in Shang civilization
(W. Watson 1981: 65-6). Archaeological research was curtailed by
thc Japancsc invasion in 1937and, following thc Communist victory
in 1949, many archaeologists, including Li, rctrcated to Taiwan
taking valuable collections with; them.
Marxism had begun to influence the study of ancient China as
early as 1930 in the writings of Guo Moruo (1892-1978). A writer and
revolutionary, Guo was forced to flee to a still relatively liberal Japan
in 1927 to escape Chiang Kai-Shek's death squads. During the ten
years he lived there he produced a series of studies on ancient
inscriptions and the stylistic evolution of bronze artifacts. Unlike Li
and his associates, who were primarily interested in art, religion, and
ideology, Guo stressed production as the basis of society and interpreted the Shang and Zhou Dynasties as examples of a slave society.
More than any other Chinese'scholar, Guo sought to place his
country in a comparative framework of world history (Wang 1985:
188). After the Communist revd~utionhe became a major figure in
Chinese intellectual life. From 1950 until his dcath in 1978 he was
President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A history of arcl~aeologicalthougl~t
After 1949 archaeology became a statc-dircctcd activity. Except
whcn thc valuc of any study of the past was challcngcd by cxtrcmists
during the Cultural Revolution, archaeology has been supported, 11s
it always has been in the Soviet Union, as an important instrumc~lt
of political education. This is done in accordance with Mao
Zedong's dictunl that 'the past should scrve the present'. A National
B ~ ~ r e aofu Cultural Relics ad~llinistcrsthousands of provincial and
local muscu~nseither directly or through provincial and district
Bureaus of Culture. Vast amounts of archaeological data havc been
unearthed througl~outChina in the course of unpreccdc~ltcdindustrial and agricultural dcvclopmcnt and, because accidental finds now
quickly come to the attention of professional archacologists, information about the past has incrcascd vcry rapidly (Chang 1981:168).
Within the research divisions of Academia Sinica, Palaeolithic
archaeology is separated from thc study of the Ncolithic and historical periods and attached to the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropolog~~.
This arrallgcnlcllt may reflect a lack
of close ide~ltificatio~l
of the earliest periods of hutnan dcvelopnlcnt
with a specifically national history, although there is much pride in
thc antiquity of China's Palacolithic record. 0 1 1 a practical lcvcl this
division reflects the close working relationship among Palacolithic
archacologists, geologists, and palacontologists.
In kcepi~lgwith nationally accepted Marxist tenets, thc Chincsc
past is conccptualizcd in terms of a unilincar sequence of stages:
primitive society, slavc socicty, and feudal socicty. There is no
qucstio~lingof this model. So far vcry little arcl~aeologicalrcscarch
has been directed towards examining Marxist thcorics of social
evolution, which would involve thc investigation of subsistence
systcms, scttlcmcnt patterns, trade, and social and political organization. This may partly reflect the scarcity of wcll-trained personnel,
but it has also been attributcd to unpredictable shifts in Chinese
govcrnmcnt policy, which have discouragcd thc cxprcssion of opinions on topics that arc ~potcntially politically scnsitivc. Instead,
archaeological finds arc interpreted pragmatically to promote a
variety of political goals. Thcy dramatize the cruelty and oppressio~l
that characterized life for the Chinese masscs under successive royal
dynasties, and which contrast with the beneficial social and
cconomic changes that havc been the goal of go\~crnmcntpolicy in
China since 1949.The great tombs, temples, and other nlonulllcnts
Culture-l~istoricalarchacology
of the past arc also interpreted as testimonials t o the skill and energy
of the worlccrs and artisans who crcatcd thcm. Last, but not Icast,
.~rch,~cological
finds arc used to cultivate national dignity and pridc
by documenting China's accomplish~nentsover the ages.
Dcspitc a Marxist vcnccr, Chincsc archacology has conti~lucdto
displ.1~strongly traditional features. It plays a significant rolc in
promoting national unity, as historiography in gcncral did prior t o
1949.Until recently the intcrprctation of thc archaeological rccord
'~ccordedwith longst~ndingnortl~crn-centredChincsc traditions.
Chinese matcrial culture and i~lstitutionshave bccn interprctcd as
first evolving in the Huang-he Valley and gradually spreading from
there southward to producc the yan-Chincsc culturc of thc Iron
Agc. Thc cultural creativity of othcr parts of China was thcrcby
minimized. In the past at lcast onc Westcrn archacologist has been
attackcd for drawing attention to the sophisticatio~land independent character of the 'provincial' Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures
of southcrn China (W. Watson 1981:68-9). This Chinese view has
been vigorously rejected by Vietnamese archacologists who see in
the Bronze Agc Dong-s'on culture of Southeast Asia evidence of a
'decp 2nd solid basis' for a distinctivc cultural tradition, which in
their own country 'absolutcly rcfuscd to bc submcrgcd by Chincsc
culture while many othcr culturcs at that timc wcrc subjugatcd and
~nnihila~cd'
(Van Trong 1979: 6). It has rcmaincd for scholars
working outside China t o identify the distinctivc cultural characteristics and early dcvclopment of central and southcrn China
(Meacham 1977).
Western-stylc field archaeology was introduced into Japan cven
earlier than into China by American and European natural scientists
and physicians who were hired to tcach there, especially after the
Mc~jirevolution of 1868,whcn the ncw government dctcrmincd to
catch up with advances in Wcstcrn scicncc, technology, and mcdicinc. Thc most important of thcse visitors was thc American zoolowho had participated in shcllgist Edward Morsc (1838-I~ZS),
mound research in the eastern United States. H c identified and
excavated the shcll mound at Omori in 1877.Whilc none of his
students bccanle profcssional archaeologists, he interested some of
thcm in doing archaeological rescarch. Ikawa-Smith (1982:299)
points out that the leading Japanese archaeologists of thc late
ninetccntl~and early twcnticth ccnturics wcrc traincd in geology,
Culture-historical archaeology
At t h ~ tlmc
s
some historians also publisl~cdMarxist intcrprctations
of' J,11.>.11icscli~stoi-yin wli~charchacological data wcrc used. Fro111
tlic ninctccntl~century onwards, howcvcr, most archacologists were
careful not t o contradict officially sponsored accounts of ancicnt
Japanese history based o n the Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, and other chronlclcs recorded in the eighth century A . D . The prinl~tivcJ o l ~ ~ o ~ i
culturc, w h ~ c hwas dated prior to 1500 B . C . and thercforc antedated
thc events dcscribccl in thcsc accounts, was ascr~bcdto the Ainu by
thc ~ n ~ i t o m i sIcogcnei
t
Yoshik~yoand to a pre-Ainu pcoplc by
Morsc and Tsuboi, but was not considcrcd to be ancestral t o the
modcnl Japancsc. Either i~ltcrprctationjustificd the latc-ninctccnthcentury colon~zatio~l
of the island of Holikaido, wherc thc Ainu
I~vcd,by reprcsc~iti~lg
~tas the conti~luationof a historical c x p a n s i o ~ ~
of the Japanese people northward through the Japancsc archipclago
(Fawcett 1986). In the ultra-nationalist atmosphcrc of the 1930s it
bccanlc extrc~l~clp
dangerous t o engage in any rcsearch that even
inadvertently might cast doubt on Shinto myths concerning the
d ~ v i n corigin of the royal family. Thosc i~lvolvcdin such act~vitics
risked renloval from then posts and cvc~limprisonment. As a result
and linguists avoided
of thcsc pressures phys~calantl~ropolog~sts
discussions of etl~nicity,while arcl~acologistsco~lcentratcdon elabor a t ~ n gartifact typologics and did not cngagc in discussio~lso f
cultural change that could havc any bearing on the official version of
history.
Since World War I1 archaeological activities havc increased enormously III Japan. Japanese archacologists arc proud of the technical
excellence of t h c ~ work
r
and strlvc to advance their undcrstandi~lgof
culture-historj~and chronology. The vast majority of them arc
i~ltcrestcdin studying material rcmains within Japan from the perspect~vcof ilatio~lalhistory. Public interest in archaeology is high,
survcys and rcscue work mandatory, and archacological finds are
widely exhibited to the public (Tanaka 1984). Archaeology has
prov~dcda view of the dcvclopmellt of the Japanese nation, people,
and culturc that has helped to fill the ideological vacuum left after
the m ~ l ~ t a r idefeat
st
in World War 11. For many Japancsc, archacol o g ~ c ~finds
~ l provide tang~blccontact with thc past and hclp t o
reinforce a sense of stability in a period of great social and cultural
changc and unccrta~nty.111particular, arcl~acologicalresearch and
popular accounts of archaeology arc cliclractcrizcd by a fascination
Culture-historical archaeology
Culture-historical archaeology
dc facto, if not official, colonial regimes. In particular, Western
scholars werc attracted to Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine by thc remains
of ancient civilizations that were of special intcrest to Europeans
because they were mentioned in the Bible. O n the other hand, local
attitudes toward archaeology have been colourcd by a traditionally
negative view of prc-Islamic tinlcs as an agc of religious ignorance.
In Egypt the indigenous middle class displayed considerable interest
in Pharaonic civilization within thc context of scc~llarnationalism
t l ~prevailed
~t
in the c.lrlp p u t of the twentieth century. This intcrcst
expressed itself in strenuous efforts to ensure that Egyptians controlled the archaeological work being done in their country and that
Egyptian scholars were involved in it (J. Wilson 1964: 159-77). Thc
late Shah of Iran sought to emphasize the pre-Islamic glorics of his
country and in particular to identify his regime with thc ancient
Persian monarchy. This included a magnificent celebration of the
supposed z,sooth anniversary of thc ancient Persian kings at the
ruins of their palace in Persepolis in 1971. In the face of growing
difficulties with neighbouring Islamic, and in some cases also Arab,
states the Iraqi government has likewise paid increasing attention to
thcir country's distinctive Babylonian hcritage. O n thc other hand,
interest in prc-Islamic times dcclincd rapidly in Egypt following thc
overthrow of the monarchy and the coming t o power of the Gamal
Abdul Nasscr regime, which promoted a pan-Arab rather than a
specifically Egyptian scnsc of identity. Likewise in Iran the overthrow of the Shah brought to power a strongly Islamic government
that discouraged identification with pre-Islamic times both on rcligious grounds and because of the symbolic associations between
ancient Persia and the recent monarchy. Throughout the Near East
there is increasing emphasis on Islamic arcliacology as research
comes to be controlled by and carried out by local scholars (Masry
1981).
I11 modern Israel archaeology plays the very different role of
affirming the links between a recently arrived population and its own
ancient past. By providing a sense of concrete reality to biblical
traditions, it heightens national consciousncss and strengthens the
claims of Israeli settlers to thc land they are occupying. I n particular,
Masada, the site of the last Zealot resistance to the Romans in
A.D. 73, has become a monument possessing great emotional and
ceremonial value as a symbol of the will to survivc of thc new Isracli
Culture-historical archaeology
rcalignmcnt, as wcll as a growing involvemcnt with the study of oral
traditions and historical li'nguistics, history is now cquippcd to
investigate periods for which few o r n o written records are available.
I t t h ~ i s~CCOIIICS African rather than colonial in its orientation (D.
McCall1964; Ehrct and Posnallsky 1982). By actively participating in
this process, African arc11acolog)l is transformed fro111being colo~lial
to national in character.
In Europc the crudcl- and morc obvious I-clationships bctwccn
archacological intcrprctntio~land nationalism tcndcd t o disappear
aftcr World War 11, us growing political and cconomic coopcratioll
and a gcncrallp in~provi~lg
standard of living Icd to n dcclinc in
nationalism. In rcccnt pears this has promoted a growing nwarcncss
of how f~~ndamcntally
diffcrcnt prchistoric E u r o p c a ~culturcs
~
wcrc
from modern ones and has encouraged archacologists o11cc again to
rely 01-1 cthnograpliic studies of non-Europcan culturcs to interpret
thcir data. The rcsult has been a growing ~approchementbctwccn
Wcstcrn Europcan (cspccially British) and A~ncrica~l
archacology.
Yct archacological interpretation co~lti~lucs
to be influcnccd in
various ways by political issucs (Gjcssing 1968). In cou~itricssuch as
Greece, Poland, and to a lesser degrec Italy, whcrc various gricvances still nurture nationalism, archaeology continues t o be valued
as a chronicIc of past glories and a sourcc of hope for the futurc. I n
Scandinavia 11dcdicntion to pcacc and soci;ll wc1E11.cis accompnrlicd
by a whimsical fascination with thc Viking period, which is conccptualizcd as violent, wanton, and romantic in contrast to thc present.
In thc 1970s, 20 to 25 per cent of all archaeological publicatio~lswcrc
devoted t o thcsc 300 years (Moberg 1981: 215). 111Englalld, howcvcr,
the discovcry that during thc Darlc Agcs the Viking scttlcn~cntat
York was a centre of manufacturing and tradc has confirmcd to
~lorthcrncrsthat thcir region was culturally as advanccd as southcr~l
England, contrary to cstablishnlc~ithistory which portrays Saxon
Wcsscx as an outpost of civilizatio~lvaliantly resisting the incursio~ls
of barbarous Scandinavians who eventually settled i11 the north
(Graharn-Campbcll and ICidd 1980). Thc rcvclation, as a result of thc
excavations at Wood Quay, that in thc Dark Agcs Dublin was a
nlajor Viking centre, while exciting great public interest, accords
less well with a Ccltoccntric nationalist vicw of Irish history (Shcchy
1980).
As the rolc of Europc, and in particular that of Britain, as a ccntre
Culture-historical archaeology
people had lived in North America far longer than most archaeologists had hitherto believed (Willey and Sabloff 1980: 121-3).
These observations were interpreted in the context of general developments in American anthropology. Boasian anthropology had
popularized the concept of the, ethnographic culture as a basic unit
of study and of diffusion as a major cause of cultural change. In
addition Boas' persuasive advoc~cyof cultural relativism and his
strong opposition to racism encouraged the view that Indians were
c,lpablc of change. Yct, while hc had some interest in archaeology,
which he actively promoted in Mexico (ibid. 84-j), thcrc is no
evidcncc that he introduced the ~ u r o ~ e concept
an
of the archaeological culture to the United Statcs. On thc contrary, thc way in
which this concept developed in North America and the fact that it
was used prior to any formal, definition in Europc suggest an
indcycndent origin. Both the ~ u i o ~ e and
a n the American version
had their roots in the ethnology of Friedrich Ratzel.
We have already noted that during the nineteenth century
American archaeologists became , increasingly aware of geographically circumscribed cultural manifestations in the archaeological record, especially in the central United States, where a
concern with the Moundbpilders (had led to much archaeological
activity. In 1890 G . P. Thruston dkfined a prehistoric Stone Gravc
'r.~cc' in Tcnncsscc, which he bclicvcd was the r c n ~ ~ ~of
i nas singlc
tribe or a group of rclatcd tribes (pp. s, is). The tcrm culture was
first applied to groups of sitcs containing distinctive artifact asscmblagcs in the Ohio Valley. By '1902 William C. Mills had distinguished the Fort Ancient and Hopewell cultures. In 1909 W. K.
Moorehead identified the Glacial Kame culture and soon after H. C.
Shetrone (1920) was noting more such units in that area. These
archaeological culturcs diffcrcd from Europcan or later Amcrican
oncs inasmuch as they remained primarily geographical entities. It
was, for cxamplc, not until 1936 that the Hopewell culture was
'
one.
securely dated earlier than the ~ o r tAncient
In 1913 the American ethnologist Berthold Laufer (1913: 577)
correctly diagnosed the most serious shortcoming of American
archaeology as being its lack of chronological control. This was a
problem that American archaeologists had already recognized and
begun to remedy. Stratigraphic excavations had been undertaken
with increasing frequency since the 1860s but for a long time this
187
I
Cuiture;historical archaeology
-bb
Modern F l o o r
27
189
Culture-historical archaeology
1
stems and stems beforc branchcs. Willey and Sabloff (1980: 10s)
observc that the system implies that the prehistoric cultures of the
southwestern Unitcd Statcs had become increasingly diffcrentiated
through tinic, which 'yhilc a possibility, was by no means dcmonstratcd'.
A similar but even liiorc influential schcn~cwas proposcd in 1932,
under the leadership of W. C. McI<ern (1939), by a group of archaeologists working in the midwcster~lUnited States. Thc Midwcstcr~i
*.
I ,ixonomlc Mcthoci w.15 s o o n clpplicd t h r o ~ i g l l o ~tlic
~ t ccntr.~ld n ~ i
c.istct-n Unitcd St.itcs. It w.is ~ ~ s ctod cl,issify largc clmoLlnts o f
matcrial that had bccn collcctcd by amatcur archacologists in a
region whcrc fcw stratified sitcs reprcscnting occupations over long
periods of time were known. The Midwcstcrli Taxonomic Mcthod
proposcd to classify these finds or1 the basis of formal critcria alonc.
Yet, whilc its authors denied that the system had historical implictions (Rouse 1953: 64), they generally acted on the assumption that
cultural diffcrcnccs in a singlc locality indicated tcmporal diffcrences, while similar culturcs distributed over largc areas dated from
thc same period (Snow 1980: 11). Artifact asscmblagcs represelltilig
a single period of occupatioll at a site wcrc called a component;
components sharing an almost identical set of artifact typcs were
assig~lcdto the samc focus; foci with 'a prcpo~lderati~ig
n~ajorityof
traits' to the samc aspect; aspects shar~ngonly more general charactcristics t o the samc phnsc; and phascs sharing a fcw broad traits to
the samc pattern. The traits uscd to define a pattern wcrc said to bc 'a
cultural reflection of thc primary adjustmc~ltsof peoples to environment, as defined by tradition'. The patterns that wcre identified were
Woodland, characterized by semi-scdcntary sitcs, cordmarkcd pottery, and stemmed or side~lotchedprojectile points; Mississippian,
with sedentary sites, incised pottery, and small triangular points; and
Archaic, which lacked pottery but contained ground slate artifacts.
Foci and aspects wcre defined by drawing up lists of artifact types
for each component and seeing how many types different componcnts had in common. This approach corresponded with the
historical particularist conception, champiol~edby Boas, which
vicwcd culturcs not as integrated systems but as collections of
individual traits that had comc together as the result of historical
accidents. No inferences about human bchaviour were included in
tlicse dcfinitiolis nor was any attention paid, as Childc had done, to
Culture-historical archaeology
ment had been a local and almost wholly independent one that was
cut short by the 'devastating blight of the white man's arrival' (1962:
344). I n this, as in much clsc, Kiddcr was an innovator.
American archaeology did not rcmain a passivc victim of the
stcrcotypcs of Indians as bcing incapable of changc that had dominated it throughout thc ninctccnth ccntury. Yct, while eultural
change and devclopmcnt wcrc pcrccivcd for thc first time as bcing a
conspicuous fc.lture of thc aschaeological record for North Amcrica
in the dec'ldcs after 1914,thc main,product ofthis period was a scrics
of regional clironologics. While overtly racist vicws about nativc
people werc abandoncd, the stereotypes of the Amcrican Indiail th;
had becn formulatcd bcforc 1914 rcmaincd largcly uncl~allci~gct
Major changes documented in the archaeological record continuc
to be attributed to migration and diffusion was only grudgingly
admitted to indicate creativity on the part of North American
Indians. Because there was less concern than previously with rcconstrutting prehistoric patterns of life, the links between archaeology
and ethnology, as well as betwcen arcl~aeologistsand native people,
were weakened. No alternative links were formed and to a large
dcgrce American archaeology came to be preoccupied with typologies of artifacts and cultures andtworkingout cultural chronologies.
American archacologisrs did not simply adopt a culture-hiskorical
approach from European ones but rcinvcnted much of it, as incrcasing knowledge of chranological variations in the archaeological
record supplemented an older awareness of geographical variations.
The culture-chronological approach developed differently i~
Europe, where a growing sense of geographical variation in th
archaeological record complemented a longstanding evolutionar
preoccupation with chronological variation (Trigger 1978a: 75-95).
Yet Amcrican archaeology did not, as a result of this cnhanced
perception of change in prehistory, overcome the views about native
people that had characterized the 'colo~lial'phase of its development. The minimal acceptance of change in prehistoric times was
primarily an adjustment of cherished beliefs to fit new archaeological
facts. American archaeology rcmaincd colonial in spirit at the same
time that it adopted a culture-historical methodology. The price that
American arcl~aeologistspaid for their conservatism was a growing
disillusionment with thcir discipline, which was perceived to be
without theorctical or historical intcrcst.
Technical developments
The dcvelopmcnt of the culture-historical approach resulted in a
significant claboratio~iof archaeological mcthods. This is especially
cvidcnt in tcrlns of stratigraphy, scriatio~l,classification, and Icarning niorc about liow pcoplc had lived in the past. As arcliacologists
bccanic incrcasi~iglyi~ltcrcstcdin historical rarhcr than evolutionary
problems, they perceived tlic need for increasingly tight controls
over chrono1ogic;ll .~swell .IS ci11ti1r;llv:tri,ttio~i. TCIIIPOI-JI
cIi,~~~gcs
within sitcs over relatively short pcriods of time became crucial for
answering questions of a historical rather than an cvolutionary
nature. This nccd was first pcrccivcd in cl,~ssicalnrchucology, which
always had a historical orientation. In the latc ninctccnth century
classical archacologists bcgan to search for ways to rccovcr information from historical sitcs that would corroborate and expand
what was known about tlicir history from written records. O ~ i cof
tlic pionccrs of this sort of stratigraphic analysis was Giuscppc
Fiorclli (1823-96), who took charge ofthc excavations at Pompcii in
1860. H c proclainicd the recovery of worlcs of art, whicll liithcrto
had doniinatcd work at thc sitc, to be scco~idaryto the detailed
excavation of all kinds of buildi~lgsand learning liow they had been
constructccl and for what F)III-poses
c,1c11 pal-t o f them hsd been used.
This involvcd careti11 stratigraphic cscavntions so t h ~ the
t ruined
upper storeys of houses could bc reconstructed. H c also recovered
the outlines of dccapcd organic rcmains, includi~lgliuman bodies,
by filling thc holes tlicy left in the ,is11 with liquid plaster of Paris.
Fiorclli cstablislicd an archacological school at Pompeii whcrc
students could learn his tcchniqucs (Daniel 1950: 165).
His work was carried forward by the Austrian archacologist
Alexander Conze (1831-1914),who bcgan to excavate on the isla~ldof
Samotliracc in 1873, and the German archaeologist Ernst Curtius
(1814-96), who started to dig at Olympia two ycars later. These
excavatio~isinitiated 3 0 years of major cxcavations at classical sitcs in
the eastern Mcditcrrancan. Both archacoiogists aimed t o record the
plans and stratigraphy of thcir cxcavatio~lsof major a~icientbuildings in sufficient dctail that thcir reports would be a substitutc for
what thcir digging liad dcstroycd. The report on Samotlirace was
the first to contain plans rccordcd by professional architects, as wcll
as photographic docurncntatio~lof the work. Williclm Dorpfcld
Culture-historical archacology
(18j3-1940), who had cxcavatcd at Olympia, workcd for Hcinrich
Schliemann (1822-90) at Hisarlik, in Turkcy, from 1882 t o 1890.
Sclilicmann, who liad begun there in 1871, had pionecrcd the stratigraphic cxcavation of multi-layered 'tell' sites in an cffort to discover
tlic rcmains of Homcr's Troy. H c liad idcntificd scvcn supcrimposcd
scttlcmcnts at the sitc. Using morc rcfincd cxcavation mcthods,
Dorpfcld idcntlficd ninc lcvcls and rcviscd Schlicmann's chronology
(Daniel 1950: 166-9).
Thcsc new tcchn~clucsof cxcavating and recording data gradu,llly
sprcad tlirougliout thc Ncar East. W. M. F. Pctric (1853-1942), who
bcgan to work in Egypt in 1880, rccordcd the plans of his cxcavations
.~ndnoted cv11c1-cm,~jorf nds wcrc m,dc but gcncr,\ily did not rccorct
stratigraphic sections. EIc rcgardcd thc lattcr as bcing of rclativcly
minor importance, since most of thc sitcs hc dug had been occupicd
for rclativciy short pcriods. H c did rccord stratigraphic profiles at
Tell cl-Hesy, a stratified site in southern Palcstilic where he bcgan
cxcavating in 1890 (Drower 1985). George Rcisncr, who cxcavatcd in
Egypt and tlic S u d m beginning in 1899, introduced the rccordi~lgof
scctlons as wcll CIS plans and brought Egyptian archacology t o its
modern standard (J. Wilson 1964: 145-9).
Altlio~igliprehistoric monuments occasionally were cxcavatcd
w ~ t hcon\~dc~-.lblc
.Ittcntlon to dct.111 bcginn~ngIn the scvcntccnth
century (I<l~~idt-Jcnxn
1975: 3 0 ) , cictailcd rccord~ngtcchniqucs
dcvclopcd morc slowly 111 this field than in classical archacology.
Until the I ~ ~ OasSa, result of evolutionary preoccupations, i~ltcrest
was focused on the rccording, frcqucntly in an idcalizcd fashion, of
cross-sections of cxcavations, the main exception bcing richly furnished graves, such as those found in the early Iron Age ccmctery at
Hallstatt in Austria in the 18jos (Sklcnii- 1983: 71-2, 77). General
Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (1827-1900) altcrcd this situation
with liis slow and detailed excavations of sitcs on liis cxtcnsivc estate
in soutl~ernEngland beginning in thc 1870s. In the 1850s he had
become intcrcstcd in cintliropology as thc rcsult of a detailed study
lie made of the history of firearms in order t o improve thc riflcs uscd
by the British Arniy. Throughout the 1860s hc built up a large
ethnographic collection and wrote o n primitivc warfare, navigation,
and the pr~nclplesof classification (Pitt-Rivers 1906). His daughter
was nl'~rricd to John Lubbock. Although an cvolutionist (PittRivers 1906), Pitt-Rivers' principal aim as an arcl~acologistwas t o
30
~~ndcrstand
the history of particular sitcs. H e did this by trenching
ditches at right angles, leaving baulks to rccord stratigraphy, and
carefully rclating finds to their stratigraphic contexts. In his lavish
excavation rcports hc strcsscd the need for arcl~acologiststo publish
a complctc rccord of their works, rathcr than only what was of
interest to thcm (M. Thonlpson 1977). While Pitt-Rivcrs is oftcn
treated as an isolatcd figurc, his work signalled a gcneral improvement in thc standard of recording prehistoric sitcs. A. H. Bullcid
and H. S. Gray (1911, 1917) rccordcd their work at thc late Iron Age
scttlemcnt at Glastonbury bctwccn 1892 and 1911in sufficient detail
that thcir data concerning houscs and building lcvcls could bc
re-analyscd in thc 1970s (Clarkc 1972b). Through the advocacy of
Mortimer Wheclcr (1890-1976), onc of thc few young archacologists
to survivc World War I, modern forms of three-dimensional cxcavation and recording became standard throughout Europc and
much of the Old World beginning in the 1930s (1954). Whceler
cstablishcd the primacy of archaeological evidcnce and its reliability
and availability forcmost in thc minds of British and Indian archac-
(==y$-oo(Je
ovc
11L7
A history of archacolog~calthought
Culture-historical archacology
Conclusions
An approach cclitred upon defining archacological culturcs a
trying to account for their origins in tcrms of diffusion and m
ration developed as Western Europeans ceased t o vicw cultu
evolution as a natural o r necessarily desirable process. Europd
archaeology bccan~ecloscly aligned with history and was seen
offcrilig ~nsiglitsinto thc dcvclopmcnt of particular pcoplcs --_
prcli~storictimes. Its findi~igsthus bccamc a part of struggles for
national sclf-dctcrmination, thc assertion and dcfcllcc of national
identity, and promoting national unity in oppositioli t o class conflict. Archaeology of this sort obviously had a widcsprcad appeal in
other parts of tlic world. Ethnic and llatio~lalgroups co~ltinucto
dcs~ret o learn more about their prehistory and such knowledge can
play a significant role ill the devclopmcnt of group pride and
solidarity and hclp to promote economic and social development.
This is particularly important for peoples whosc past has been
neglected or denigrated by a colol~ialapproach t o archaeology and
history. While the findings of culture-historical archacology can be
cnriclicd by tcchniqucs for recollstructing prchistoric cultures and
cxplain~ngcultural changc that havc bccn dcvclopcd outsidc the
fi-amcwork of this kind of archacology, only an approach that is
focused on understanding thc prchistory of specific peoples can fulfil
the ~iccdsof natio~isin a post-colonial phase. For this reason
culture-historical archaeology rcmains socially attractive in many
parts of the world.
I11 the Unitcd States a culturc-historical approach cvolvcd as a
rcsponsc to a growing awarcncss of complcxity in the archacological
Sovict archacology
It t.c not only a nett, econonzic system ~vhtchhas been Lorn. A new
culture . . . a netv science . . . a new style oflife bas been born.
N
I . 1)
A I-listol-y of
'g)'
~istRussia
Archacolog
lrcacly a
~blishcddisciplint: in tsar 1st
.-..,.I.:,.*-.
I<LISS~:I.T l l ~l i ~ b ib~ibst;~ntial
I L I L L I C I ) ~i l l the rc~inaillsof ~ I C I L I I ) L U ~ ~ C
times \vas ciircctcd t o the Icurguns, o r t ~ ~ m u lmany
i,
t h o ~ ~ s n ~oi df s
\vI~iclnhad been constructed over 3 period of 5,000 ycars in the
steppe lands that stretch from the Ukraine eastward into Sibcria. For
centuries, if not millennia, these tombs had been p l u ~ ~ d c r cfor
d
treasure. As Russian colonization spread eastward into Siberia in the
sc\~cnteenthcentury, the plundering of Iiurgans in 'that region was
carried out 011a massive scale, somcti~ilcsunder go\~cr~lmcnt
licence.
By the 1760s not cnough Siberian tu~nuliremained u~lplu~ldcrcd
for
*l-csc large-scale opcratioils to rcmain profitable (Millcr 1956: 15).
As early as the 1680s Tsar Fyodor Alcksc~~cvitch
ordered that the
~ilcsof a 'giant' (probably a mammoth) fou~ldin the I<hatkov
gion should be excavated, measured, and dcscribcd (Miller 1956:
). In 1718 Peter the Great issued a more gcncral order that district
wcrnors and com~nandcrsof cities should collect and forward to
Petcrsburg (now Leningrad) old and rare objects as these were
.a1
scovcrcd. His intc rests cmk)raced geological a
Soviet archaeology
the late nineteenth ccntul-y 'and wllich supported the government's
. n
cfforts to cxtcnd Russian lnnucncc
throughout Eastern Europc. By
this time archaeology was being taught at thc universities in St
Pctcrsburg and Moscow.
This samc period witnessed a considcrablc, if uneven, improveillent in ~rchacological~ ~ ~ c t l ~ o d o and
l o g yintcrprctation. Treasure
hunting continued and was popular among landowners, who legally
owncd all the wcaltll on thcir estates, including archacological finds.
This ,~pproachwas provided with somc dcgrcc of scientific rcsycctability by old-fashioned archacologists and art historians who
believed that kurgans and classical sitcs were the only archaeological
rcillains worth studying and by an aesthcticizing trend that viewed
only works of art as deserving of attention. The latter approach was
cultivated particularly at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg
where a remarltable collection of prehistoric and medieval art had
been assernbled (Miller 1956: 53).
Other archacologists working in Moscow and St Pctcrsburg wcrc
influcnccd by rcccnt dcvclopn~cntsin prehistoric archaeology in thc
rcst of Europc. Thc most prominent of these wasVasily Gorodtsov
(1860-rgqs), a rctircd infantry officcr who bcgan to cxcavatc in the
1890s with financial support from the Countess Uvarova. In the early
1900s he became d~rcctorof the MOSCOW Historical Muscum and
one of the founders of thc Moscow Archaeological Institute. H e also
trained a largc number of professional archaeologists. Gorodtsov
was the outstanding exponent of what later was called the formalist
school of Russian archaeology, which was inspired by the work of
Oscar Montelius, Joseph Dtchelettc, and other typologists. Formalists studied the morphology of artifacts and sought to arrange them
in chronological sequenced. As a result of his excavations along the
Don River, Gorodtsov was ablc to demonstratc thc existence of a
Bronzc Age in Russia and to dividc it into succcssivc pcriods. H c
systcmatically pcriodizcd Russian antiquities and proposcd his own
terminology, although it was not widely accepted. H e also stressed
the importance of studying scttlcments and ordinary cemeteies as
well as kurgans (Millcr 1956: 37).
Alcksandr Spitsyn (1858-1931), who was a member ofthe Imperial
Archaeological Commission, was a founder of the empirical school.
The school maintained that the basic task of archaeologists was to
provide the most detailcd and' accurate descriptions of artifacts,
A history of arcIiaeologic,~lthought
while cschcwing prclliaturc conclusions of a historical o r sociological nature (Millcr 1956: 32-3). Such a n npproach had much in
comlnon with that of Joscph Henry in the United States. The
eventual leader of the c~lipiricalschool was hleksandr Millcr (187519;5), a student of Mortillct ~vliobegan to excavate in Russia in 1902.
H e greatly improved the st,indards oi'cxc,~\~ation
tccliniclucs, as well
as of the study and conscr\.ation of al-tifacts. As l'rofcssor of Archacology at the Univcl-sity of St P c t c ~ - s h ~ ~hc
r gtl-nincd
,
man)? Russian
archacologists. Yet, despite the good tvorli that was being done, no
Russia11arch,lcologist establishccl an international reputation ccl~~ivalcnt to that of Lobaclicvsky in mathematics, Mcndclcjrcv in the
physical sciences, 01-l'avlov in biology.
Sovict archaeology
Following thc creation of the Sovict Union the RAIMIC became
thc State Acadcmy for the History of Matcrial Culture (GAIMK)
and was give11 ultimate jurisdictioli over archacological activities
and institutions not only in the Russian Republic but throughout
the U n ~ o n(Miller 19S6: 47). From the start this was a larger and
niorc powerful lnstitutc than thc Inlpcrial Archacolog~calCommission had bccn (Bulkin et al. 1982: 274). In 1922 the chairs of archacology . ~ tthe uni\rcrsitles of Lcn~ngradand Moscow were transfomicd into archacology departments. Talcntcd students who
complctcd t h c ~ rundcrgraduatc studies in these and other departmcnts were adm~ttcdto thc Institute of Postgraduate Studies of thc
GAIMIC The best of thcsc studcnts could hope to remain in tlic
GAIMK as junior and then senior research associatcs. Thus a pattern
of largcly scparatlng rcscarcli and undergraduate teaching was estabhshcd that has pcrsistcd to thc present in the Sovict Union (Davis
1983: 409). In additloll to allowing a large number of archaeologists
to cngagc 111 full-timc rcscarcli, the institute structure gave these
archaeologuts access to technical cxpcrts who could scientifically
analysc art~facts,floral and faunal rcmains, and geological and climatolog~caldata relating to archaeological problems.
In Moscow in the mid-1920s a rival arcliacological centre was
cstabl~slicdin tlic form of an Archaeological Section of the Russian
Assoc~ation of Scicnt~fic Institutes of the Social Sc~cnccs
(RANION). The latter ~ 1 . 1~111
~ amnlgamation of 15 scparatc institutes
in MOFCOW
and Len~ngradthat sought to produce good rescarclicrs
and tcachcrs by employing Colilmunist Party and sclcctcd non-party
pcrsonncl worlcing under close communist supervision (Shapiro
1982: 89). Thc encouragcmc~itby the Communist Party of thc
popularizat~onand dcmocratlzation of scicntific knowledge and
rescarch also Icd to thc formation of many regional studies organizations in thc early 1920s. Arcl~acologywas a popular subject in these
socictics, 111 whicli professional archacologists, studcnts, and intercsted amateurs united to carry out and publish rcsearch (Miller 1956:
44-5).
Allnost no archacological fieldwork was donc during World War I
or thc civ~lwar that followcd it. In 1921, in an cfibrt to promote
econornlc rccovcry and broaden thc basis of support for thc rcvolution, cspccially among the peasantry, Leni~iinaugurated the New
Economic Pol~cy,which rcstored a limited market economy in tlic
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
Soviet archaeology
rccords (Miller 1956: 55). The New Economic Policy has been
described as a 'golden c ~ of
a Marxist thought 11; the USSR' (S.
Cohcn 1973: 272). Thcrc is no evidence that any archacologists
participated in this ~ntcllcctualferment. Even within the framework
of traditional intcrpretations, Russian archaeologists appear to have
been cautious .ind rc,lctionary rather than innovati\.c.
Soviet archaeology
mative years was Ravdonikas, whom even his enemies credited with
cxccptional ability. Thc Communist Party, whilc supporting thc
crcation of a Marxist approach to~archacologyand rcserving the right
to pass judgement on its theory and practice, does not appear to have
provided archaeologists with e'xplicit guidelines. Nor could these
guidclincs be found in the writings of Marx and Engcls. Thc most
relevant statement that Marx had made about archacology was that
I
('
Moreovcr, Marx had devoted most of his career to studying capitalist societies and how they had developed from feudal ones. H e had
bcgun to investigate pre-class and early class societies late in life and
had to dcpcnd on thc highly dcfcctivc and polemical anthropologis
in thc late ninctccnth century (Bloch
cal literature that w ~ av,~ilablc
1985: 21-94). Thus hc ,uld Engclslcft nlany qucstiolls about thc sorts
including how
of societies that archacologists study una~~swcrcd,
these societics had cvolved. This meant that archaeologists had to
rely, not on the well-developed concepts that werc available to most
other social scientists, but on the basic principles of Marxism, as
these werc formulated in Marx's and Engels' own writings and in
later exegeses.
Marx summarized the basic principles on which he based his
analyses of socicty in thc preface to his Contribution t o the Critique of
Political Economy (1859):
In thc social production that human beings carry on, they
enter into definite relations that are indispensable and
independent of their will, relations of production which
correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production . . . The mode of production in
material life determines 'the general character of the social,
political, and intellect~ialprocesses of life. It is not the
consciousness of humans that determines their existence; it is
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
Soviet archaeology
Soviet archaeology
set themselves was to explain in Marxist terms the changes that had
occurred in prehistoric times. The primary context in which such
changes were held to be comprehensible was n o longer technology
but social organization. The concept of succcssive ages of stone,
bronze, and iron was abandoned on the ground that it had its source
in .in undcrst.inding not of society but too narrowly of the raw
matcri,ils prevailing in thc dcvelopmcnt of technology. Archacologists wcrc c~llcdupon not only to dcscribc thcir finds but also to
reconstruct the socictics that had produccd them. This involved
as much as
defining thcir ~liodcsof production and dctcrn~ini~lg
poss~bleabout their technology, social organization, and ideological
concepts (Miller 1956: 79).
This approach had many valuable conscqucnccs. By dirccting the
attention of archaeologists to bow ordinary people had lived, it
encouraged thcm to undertake large-scale horizontal excavations of
settlements, camp sites and workshops (Davis 1983: 410). Greater
attention also was paid to the evidence of dwellings and the relationship of different types of artifacts to thcsc structures. This rcsultcd in
the first identification of Palaeolithic dwellings anywhere in the
world (Childe 1950) and some of the first total excavations of
Neolithic villages. When ccmctcries were cxcavatcd it was mainly to
investigate religious beliefs and to ascertain the social structures of
the socicties that had produccd thcm.
Some of tlie interpretations of this period were unsound, such as
P. I. Boriskovsky's suggcstion that female statuettes were evidence
of matriarchal clan societies in Upper Palaeoiithic times (Davis 1983:
413-4). O n the other hand, in 1934 P. N. Tret'yakov determined
from fingerprints on the interiors of vessels that the pottery associated with prehistoric hunter-fisher cultures of northern and central
Russia was manufactured by women. H e went on to argue that the
unifor~nityof pottery styles within individual sites and the considcrable variation between sites indicated a matrilocal marriage pattern,
which resulted in the potters of each small community handing on
their traditions from onc generation to the next undisturbed by
external influences (Childe 1943: 6). Similar interpretations were not
attempted by American archaeologists prior to the 1960s and these
studies were less archaeological in that the identification of the sex
of the potters depended entirely on the direct historical approach
(Binford 1972: 61).
<
Soviet al-chacology
important in evolving societies, the greed of heirs gradually curtailed thc burial of large amounts of valuablc possessions with thc
dead (Childe 1942d: 133).Thc latter argument was to inspire Childc's
(194~a)cross-cultural gcncralizations about thc development of
funcrary,custol~~s,
which aftcr dccadcs of ncglcct have oncc again
bccomc of intcrcst to arcl~acologists(M. Pcarson 1982). 13ccausc of
their concern with social change Sovict archaeologists also rcvivcd
an intcrcst in cultural evolution as wcll as in associated concepts of
dcvclopmcnt and progress, at a tinic whcn diffusionism was still in
the ascendant in North Amcrica altd thc rcst of Europc.
Yct Marxist studies of archacological data laboured under scvcrc
conceptual restrictions at this time. Social cvolution was conccytualizcd in terms of a unilincar schcmc of sociocco~~omic
formations
looscly dcrivcd fro111Engcls' The orbin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which in turn had bcen bascd largely on Marx's
study of Morgan's Ancient Society. Pre-class socictics wcrc dividcd
into succcssivc prc-clan, matriarchal clan, patriarchal clan, and tcrminal clan stagcs followcd by thrcc forms of class society: slavc,
fcudal, and capitalist; and two ,more forms of classless socicty:
socialist and communist. Thc latter was rcgardcd as thc final stagc of
human dcvclopmcnt and not subjcct to further changc (Millcr 1956:
78-9; Yu. Semcnov 1980). This formulation was accordcd ca~lonical
status dul-ing the Stalin pcriod and scientific criticism of it was 11ot
.~Ilo\vc~i.
Arcl~~cologist~
I I ~ I L to
~ inrcrprct thcir fi ndings in accordance
with this scheme and also in agrccmcnt with thc classics of
Marxism-Leninisn~. The only lccway allowcd rcflcctcd thc recognition that many culturcs wcre in a transitional rathcr than a purc state
with respect to thcir stagc of dcvclopmcnt. Therc was also debatc
concerning tllc archacological critcria that might rcvcal to which
stagc of dcvclopn~entan archacological culturc bclongcd. The dogmatism with which socia!scientists adhered to this scheme contrasts
sllarply with the views cxprcsscd by Marx and Engels, who wcrc
preparcd to consider ~llultilincar modcls of social evolution,
cspccially with regard to earlier and less wcll understood periods of
human development.
Still worse, within the GAIMK, Sovict archacological rescarch
was now subjected to the intcllcctuil influence as wcll as the administrative dircction of Marr. By denying commonly acccptcd evidence
of linguistic continuity, his thcory of linguistic change encouraged
Soviet 'ar~haeology
ology). The attention paid to'classification in the past was condemned as part of a bourgeois tendency to ignorc thc social and
political significance of archaeological data. Hence it, like diffusion
and migration, acquired negative political connotations. The
neglect of classification has had long-term adverse cffects on Soviet
arcl~~lcology,
which to the present day has continucd, in tcrlns of
typology, cultural chr01101ogy, *andthc defining of cultural units t o
lag behind research bcing do& in Central and Wcstcrn Europc
(Bulkin e t al. 1982: 288-90).
Although the Sovict cultural revolution is gcncrally dcscribcd as a
period when creativity was swamped by aggressive and intolerant
scctarianis~n(Fitzpatrick 1974: 52), thc approach to archacological
interprctation that was pionccrcd at that tirnc was onc of grcat
origihality and importance.' The conceptualizations of this initial
phase in the development of Soviet archaeology were not without
flaws and excesses. chief,among these was a superficial and politically constrained understanding of Marxism, which was accompanied by an ovcrcnthusiasm for intcrprcting archacological data in
terms of human bchavio~~r,
oftc1.l' without ncccssary formal studics.
Such shortcomings wcrc to bc cxpcctcd in the early stagcs of a ncw
approach to archaeological interpretation. These flaws were identified and havc bcen increasingly ovcrcomc as Sovict archaeology has
matured.
Sovict archaeologists shared an intcrcst in cultural evolution and
learning how people had lived in prehistoric times with the Scandinavian archaeologists of the early nineteenth century. What was
co~nplctclyncw was their determination to understand how social
and cultural systems changed in terms of their own internal
dynamics. This niarkcd a sharp brcak with carlicr cfforts by archacologists to explain cultural change in terms of external influences or
human inventiveness considered without rcfercnce to social and
cconomic conditions. Thc new approach was also charactcrizcd by
an explicit rcjcction of the racism and pessimism about human
creativity that characterized archaeology in Central and Western
Europe in the 1920s. Instead it adopted a dynamic view of society
that accorded with the new social outlook within the Soviet Union.
In particular, it reflected the belicks of a new generation of archaeologists, trained since the revolution, that society could be altered
and irnprovcd through collcctivc social efforts.
' 227
Consolidation
The cultural revolutio~lwas followcd by a period of consolidation.
Beginning in 1934there was a call, i n all branchcs of Sovict historical
scholarship, for grcatcr profcssiol~alization,better techniques, and
higher-cl~~alit)~
work. The polemical and progr,ummatlc litcrat~irc
that had dom~natedthc previous pcr~odwas abandoned in favour of
more conventional empirical st~ldics.The latter became morc
popular as growing Inslstcncc on politic,~l orthodoxy nladc any
innovation wit11111 the Marxist tradition, or cvcn thc serious
academic discussio~lof theoretical problems, increasingly dangerous. Postgraduate degrces and thc dcfcncc of dissertations, which
,
had been abolished after the revolution (Graham 1967: I ~ I )were
rcintroduccd. As part of this consolidation the term archaeology was
revivcd, early in 1931, as the name of a discipline, although to
distinguish it from 'bourgeois archacology' the form practised in thc
Sovict U11io1lwas henceforth to be called Soviet arcliacology (Miller
1956: 108-9). Archaeology continued to be regarded as a branch of
history, but was sccii as embracing a set of problc~nsthat were
studied by means of material culture. It was also possible once again
to refer to the traditional technological stages of development,
although tecl~~iolog)~
alone was no longer accorded cxplanator)~
significance.
Whilc Sovict archaeology was clcccptcd as being adequately dcvcloped in a polit~calsense, grcatcr tcch~~ical
expertise was now said to
be required to improve the general standard of the discipline. Thc
GAIMIC was expanded and given the right to award postgradqtc
degrees. In 1934 it was divided into four branches, one each to study
the history of pre-class, slavc-holding, and feudal societies and a
fourth to deal with technical aspects of research common to archacolog)~.A separate chair (professorship) was established for each
socioeco~~omic
period. In 1937 the GAIMIC was rcnamcd the Institute for the History of Material Culturc and attachcd to the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences, which by the 1930s had regained
the role that the Imperial Russian Academy had playcd under the
tsars as the 'dircctoratc of the cultural and scientific life of the nation'
(Graham 1967: 23). The main ccntre of the Institute for the History
of Material Culture was now located in Moscow, although a branch
remained in Lcn~ngrad.In the mid-1950s the Institute was renamed
Soviet archaeology
thc Institute of Archaeology. It has continued to exert a controlling
influence on setting the obj&tives of archacological research for
five-year plans, organizing.major conferences, allocating space for
publications in major journals and monograph series, and regulating
foreign contacts. It also continues t o grant a largc numbcr of the
111ghc1-dcgrccs in archacolo~y((Davis 1983: 408).
During the 1930s chairs and dcpart~ncntsof archacology wcrc
cstablishcd in a largc number of univcrsitics, new monographs and
monograph series were published, and Sovetskaya Arkheolog.iya,
which was to bccorne thc leading Sovict archacological journal, was
begun. Archaeological salvage work expanded rapidly in coiljunction with the massivc industrial projccts that startcd in 1928. Spccial
archacological cxpcditiolls wcrc attached to each nlajor construction
project. These investigated the affected terrain bcfore and during
construction, carried out excavations, and studied thc findings. In
the 1930s nearly 300 expeditions were at work annually (Bulkin et al.
1982: 276). Tours of excavation8; exhibitions, and popular publications scrvcd as Illcans of public instruction. Archacologists also
appl~cdthcmsclves to practical work, such as studying ancient irrigation systems as guides to modesn development and locating ancient
mining sites which might still be of commercial value. This practice
was cspeciallp common bctwccn 1935 and 1941 (Miller 1956: 112).
During the 19los there was n dramatic incrcasc in ki~owledgcof
the prehistoric 'irchacology of the Caucasus, Ccntral Asia, and
Sibcria. These regions wcre studied in order to enhance the cultures
of national groups that had been exploited and kept underdeveloped
in tsarist Russia (Frumkin 1962). Various rich finds werc made in
these areas, such as remains of the ancient states of Urartu and
Parthia and the tumuli at Trialcti and Pazyryk. Thc cultural diversity
of thc archaeological record became increasingly evident and this in
turn raised questions about how such data were t o be analyscd and
rclatcd to the prevailing unilinear evolutionary scheme. These questions acquired greater urgency in the late 1930s a n d during World
War 11, when thc sovereignty and v q y survival of the peoples of the
Sovict Union wcrc threatcncd by Gcrman military cxpansion. Soviet
scholars responded with an asscrtion of patriotism and by fostering
national self-consciousness, which continhed during the period of
the Cold War.
In archaeology this new interest cxprcsscd itself in a growing
Soviet archAeology
A history of archaeologic~lthought
Sovict arc~laeolbg~
xcavations
bone tc
ltally identifying
esscs tha.t had
W a r r L l l l a "l ~ > ~ - w c
f ao ru ~ on
~ dthelll. r v 11uithis ~ ~ ~h,- I W U L I I ,
caused
which i:s closely a
a Marxis t interest in producxion, hacI been
pioneer ed by Ni
the first 1lalf of th e ninetee nth cent1Iry, it
was i ~ l l ~ l \ , a L<.?L,. \ , l l l t ,lLLcry rg110r~db y, ur,.,.+,..-,
v v c ; r L L t ,l, l .,,-,I.,.,,
ILell,lL
~ l oU~,..+:I
~ iI ~
L ~t ,
CL
~
I
u
translat ion of Semenov's Preh
kchnology (1964) was
publish1ed. Thus, without in any wa
ning the Marxist g;oalof
explainill5 LulLural tran~forrnatioi~~ lLLationship Lw cllallf;lly,
modes of production, archaeologists becarrle aware that ther e was
more evidence that required explaination. V dhile stay ing with in the
. . n'-;,-,1
a o opposed Lw all
Marxist tradition,. they, adopted a more hlstb,,,at,
evolutic)nary, view of the past.
~ L L L
In',*
0 0
+nn n
~o$ietarchaeology
Recent developments
The post-Stalin era saw significa~ltliber~lizationof So\iiet scholarship and in Soviet Life generally. While this period has been
described as one of problems (Gcning 1982) or even crisis (Soffer.
1985: 8-15) in Sovict nrch,icologp, it 11.1s ,ilso been .i time of growing
complexity and diversity in the intcrprct~t~on
of .irchacological d<ita.
The centralized control of archacology lessened somewhat as new
dcgrcc-granting centres of the Inst~tutcof Archaeology wcrc establishcd in No\~osibirsk, Irk~~tslc,Chita, KCIIICI-OVO,
MLigGidC~n,
Dushanbe, and Samarkand and the amount of research originating
in Moscow and Leningrad dropped to 2s percent by 1970 (Davis
T
*.:U 3 409). Wcstcrn books became morc widely available and morc
'OY
COllltacts were established with Wcstcrn archaedlogists. These contact:s have been justified on the basis of Lenin's observation that
c=xrPr
.," .y important trend in bourgeois science reflects as well as distorts
real,ity and that by applying a dialectical materialist critique to such
wor k it is possible for Marxists to discover what is of value in these
a n n roaches (Bulkin e t a/. 1982: 278). Soviet archaeologists now
-rr
recc,gnize that valuable insights can be derived from Western archae;y, whereas in the past such behaviour would have been den--.xed as a 'manifestation of fawning and subservience to the Wcst
and its capitalist cu.lturc' (Miller 1956: 146). According to Sovict
archaeologists this new collfide~lccdocs not mean 'the end of ideological struggle' but signifies that it has become 'less sharp in form
but more ~ r o f o u n din substance' (Bulkin et al. 1982: 278).
Greater self-consciousness and creativity are also manifested in
tl~eoreticaldiscussio~lsof Marxism, which is no longer obligatorily
identified with the traditional Soviet scheme of unilinear evolution.
In recent years the status of the Asiatic mode of production has been
hotly debated (Dunn 1982), as have the relationship between socioeconomic formations and specific cultures, the impact that interacting societies at* different levels of' development have on one
another, and the nature, of sociocultural change in precapitalist
societies (Danilova 1971). Wcstern observers have noted a rejection
of dogmatism and a trend towards theoretical diversification,
although always within the framework of Marxist philosophy
(Fortes 1980: xix). What is happening is perhaps more accurately
described as a contillui~lgshift from the evolutionary to the his.,L
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
Sovict archaeology
logical concepts that would distinguisl~arcl~aeologicalintefpretation from the general stream of historical analysis.
This approach characterizes thc work of arcliactllogists who arc
intcrestcci in studying not only $pccific culturcs but also the evolution of society. The cvolutionarp approach, which V. M. Masson
calls 'sociological archacologp', cspcci,llly embraces rescarcli being
dolie in the Caucasus and Central Asia, where the earliest agric~~ltural
economics and the first urban civilizations cvolvcd within
the territory of the Soviet Union. Sociological archaeology seclcs to
reconstruct the economic, social, and ideological structures of
ancient socictics in order to establish the laws as wcll as tlic particular pl~cnoiiicn~l
and processes that bring bout change (Bulkin et
al. 1982: 281). Systcniatic studies bcgun i1-r 1937 by S. P. Tolstoy in
Turklilcnia documented the dcvclop~i~cnt
of ancient irrigation
systcms. Sincc then research in southern Turlunenia has demonstrated the devclopn~eiitof a food-producing cconon~yand later of
Bronze-Age class societies in that region (Kohl 1981a).
Although major cfforts havc bccn made to reconstruct tool use,
tlic operatioii of irrigation spsterns, and the economy and social
composition of urban centres, at lcast one American comllientator
has noted the absence of detailed discussions of the relative import,uncc of population prcssurc, irrigation agriculture, scttlcmcnt patas
terns, warfare, economic cxcIi,ungcs, and religious ~ntcgr~ltion
factors bringing about change (Lambcrg-ICarlovsky 1981: 388). H e
attributes this to the 'historical-descriptlvc' rather than 'analyticalexplanatory' iliodcls that charactcrizc Soviet archaeological research.
On tlie other hand, some Sovict arcliaeologists have suggested that
the chief shortcoming of their evol~~tionary
interpretations is that
evolutionary patterns, often derived in part from the writings of
Wcstern arcliaeologists such as V. G. Childe, R. J. Braidwood, and
R. McC. Adams, are imposed on the data, rather than derived from a
detailed study of the objective characteristics of the archaeological
record (Bulltin et al. 1982:*281).TOat least some degree this approach
reflects a continuing belief that Marxist stadial theory already provides a detailed explanation of cultural change rather than a desire to
use archaeological data to refine and elaborate an understanding that
would take a c c o ~ nof
t the distinctive features of the archaeological
record, such as the wcalc dichotomy bctwccn urban and rural society
found in Ccntral Asia during tlie Bronze Age (IColil 1984: 131-2).
A h~storyof arch,~cologicalthought
Sovlietarchaeology
Sovict archacology
Conclusions
Sovict and Wcstcrn archacology havc devclopcd in ways that contrast'with cach othcr. Yet over time both appear to have come to
address the same range of problems. In the 1930s Soviet archaeologists pionecrcd thc dcvclopmcnt of settlement archaeology and
the societal cxplanation of archacological data. Later they spcarheaded thc modern rcvival of usc-wear analysis. A Marxist oricntation led them to bccomc the first archacologists to attcmpt to explain
changes in the archaeological rccord in tcrms of internal social
factors. Only in the 1950s did thcsc start to become frontier areas of
rcscarch in Wcstcrn archacology. Convcrscly, an increasing number
of Sovict archacologists arc currently advocating that more systcmatic attention should be paid to the construction of cultural chronologics and the study of diffusion and migration at a time whcn thcsc
topics have comc to seem routine, and eve11old-fashioned, to many
Western archacologists. At thc samc time both Sovict and Wcstcrn
arcliacologists share a growing interest in studying thcir data from
an ecological viewpoint.
Sovict archacologists began to take account of cxtcrnal factors
bringing about changc in social systems at thc samc time that
Western ones were becoming more interested in internal factors.
TIic political and economic influences that adjaccnt societies exert
up011 onc another can be analyscd easily in terms of a traditional
Marxist framework by enlarging the scale of thc unit bcing studicd
and thereby treating a nunibcr of interacting cult~~scs
as pasts of a
world systcm. Yet ecological analyses and thc study of cultural
diffusion rcquirc the consideration of external factors that Marxist
archacologists havc hitherto avoided. This docs not constitutc,
howcvcr, a break with Marxist theory but rather an attcmpt to
claboratc it to take account of the complexity of the archaeological
rccord. By avoiding cxtcrnal dctcrminism and stressing thc socially
conditioned evolution ofthc relations of production as the principal
factor bringing about cultural evolution, Soviet archaeology
remains unique in tcrms of thc primary role that it assigns to human
action in csplaining history.
F~~nction~llism
in Western archaeology
CHAPTER 7
TA L L G K L N , ' l h c
factors that promoted social stability. His interprctations were elaborated in a series of major publications: De la division du travail social
(1893),Les Ri~Lesde la mbthode sokzologague (1895),Le Suicide (1897),
and Les Fovnzes blbmentaires de la vie religieuse (1912).
Durkhcirn argucd that thc~objcctivcof social science studies was
to understand soci'll rcl,ltions and that the origin of all social
prdccsscs should be sought in the internal constitut~onof human
groups. Individual aspects of culture, whcthcr they wcrc invcntcd
intern.lll!~ or catcrnally, \\ crc s.~icito ,~ccluirct h c ~ rsignlfic.lncc 111
terms of their functio~lalrelationship to specific social systems. He
rejected the culture-historical view that social systems and the cultural norms that wcrc associatcd with them could bc understood as a
mechanical collectio~lof traits that diffusion had brought together
largely as a result of the operation of chance. Instead he argucd that
societies constituted integrated systems, whose institutions were
interrelated like the parts of a 1iving.organism.Thc science of society
was thus conceptualized as a comparative study of social morphologics, similar in its objectives to comparative anatomy.
Durkhcim also maintained that 110changc could occur in one part
of a social system without bringing about varying degrees of change
in other parts. Yet he believed that the normal state of society was
one of social solidarity and that rapid changes led to a feeling of
anomic or alienation. Thus he agrccd with the diffusionists that
change was contrary to human nature. This suggcsts that in his
interprctations of change he aligned himself w i ~ h the anticvolutionists of the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless he was
interested to some degree in problems of social evolution, which he
studied using ethnographic data. H e argued that as societies became
more complex they ccased to be held together by mechanical solidarity, or shared beliefs, and were increasingly united by organic
solidarity, resulting from economic interdcpcndcncc. This new form
of cohesioll freed individuals from the tyranny of custom and
tradition. Ma1inowski"and to a still greater cxtcnt Radcliffe-Brown
rejected all evolutionary and historical interpretations of ethnographic data as speculative and argued that the comparative study
of societies currently available
of the structure and functio~li~lg
cxaminatio~l
was
sufficient
to produce generalizations
for dctailcd
that would explain the morphological variation among all societies.
For Radcliffe-Brown in particular, thc study of changc had no
Environmentalfinctwnalism
As early as the 1840s Worsaae had argued that archaeological finds
had to be studied in relationship to their palaeoenvironmental
settings and had cooperated with biologists and geologists to d o
this. Thus began a tradition that has continued to the present in
Scandinavian archaeology. Archaeologists studied the retreat of
glaciers and the combined results,of changing sea levels and isostatic
rebound in altering the distributioils of land surfaces, lakes, and
oceans as a background for determining the impact that these
changes had on the prehistoric,populations of Scandinavia. They
also investigated changes in climate and in the reciprocal relations
between flora, fauna, and human land use. Beginning in 190s the
geologist Gerard de Geer (1858-1943) used successions of overlapping annually deposited varves to date the retreating ice front in
Sweden beginning 12,000 years dgo. This varve sequence was tied in
with 3 0 metres of annual silt deposits on the bed of former Lake
Raganda, which had been drained in 1796. Another Swede, E.J.
Lennart von Post (1884-I~S?),utilized Gustav Lagerheim's observation that pollen grains could be preserved for thousands of years to
elaborate Steenstrup's pioneering studies of post-glacial floral
~unction~lism
in Western archaeology
adopting 11cw items of culturc. This approach has sincc been applied
to othcr arcas (Daniel r963b; Trigger 1969).
As carly as 191s Elliot Smith had championed the idca that the
invention of agriculturc, which he bclicvcd had occurrcd as a rcsult
of' fortt~itouscirct~nistanccsin Egypt, was thc primary criterion of
rlic Ncolithic and marked onc of the crucial turning-points in human
history. 130th this idca and Pumpclly's oasis hypothesis wcrc popularized by Harold Pcakc (1867-19+6) and H. J. Flcurc (1877-1969) in
tlic third volume of thcir T / JCorridors
~
r#?'imc (r927), a widely rcad
multi-volun-rc series dealing with prehistory. About the same tinlc
W. J. Pcrry (1924: 29-32) popularized the claim of the agronomist
T. Chcrry that agriculture had bccn invcntcd in Egypt whcn pcoplc
bcgan to incrcasc the amount of nlillct and barlcy that grcw spontaneously on thc flood plain by irrigating dry land adjacent to wild
stands and scattering barley secds in the wct mud lcft behind at thc
end of the annual flood. Thcsc contributions raised thc discussion of
the origins of agriculturc to a new lcvcl of thcorctical importancc.
Whilc not constituting analyses of whole cultures, growing intcrcst in the relatioriship bctwccn human societies and thcir cnvironmental settings c~icouragcda fu~lctionalvicw of one major aspect of
human bchaviour. This stimulated thc analysis of palacocnvironnlcnts and of thc ecological adaptation of cultures to thcsc cnvironmcnts. It was generally assumcd that the natural environment set
limits to the sorts of adaptations that wcrc possible ratl~crthan
dctcrmincd thc spccific naturc of the rcsponsc, which was also
i~lfluenccdby historical traditions and u~~prcdictablc
human choiccs.
This vicw accordcd with thc human geography of thc period which
was dominated by thc cnvironmcntal possibilist approach of the
Frcnch gcographcr Paul Vidal dc La Blachc (1845-1918). Possibilism
and diffusionism both stressed indeterminacy as the dominant
fcaturc of cultural changc.
Economic approaches
As Childc turncd away from thc culture-historical approach, which
he came to rcgard as an intellectual dead cnd, hc did not deny the
importance of diffusion as a forcc bringing about cultural change.
H e did, howcvcr, rcalizc that diffusion was of no morc valuc for
explaining such changes thn~iunilinc:~r cvolutionar)~conccpts had
Functionalism in Wester11arcl~aeology
to ensure the regular dclivcry of supplies of copper and tin. While he
viewed bronze working as an important prerequisite for the development of civilization in thc Ncar East, 11e argucd that in Europe it
was mainly used to supply wcapons to tribal societies, as an increasing population and spreading forests (rcsulting from climatic
c11,lngcs) led to greater cornpetition for agricultural land.
In New Lhht o n the Most Ancient East, whic11 was written after a
visit to major archacological excavations in Iraq and the Indus
Valley, Childe synthcsizcd and claboratcd the arguments advanced
in his two previous books. Hc,maintained that two revolutions had
occurred in prehistoric times in the Near East that were equivalent
in their inlportancc to the Industrial Kcvolution. These were the
transition from food-collecting to food-producing and from selfsufficient food-producing villages to urban societies. H e believed
that each of these revolutions had resulted in a more productive
technology and a massive increasc in population. The population
increase was, however, assumed rather than demonstrated. H e also
overestimated the extent to which the inhabitants of ancient Near
Eastern cities engaged in industry, trade, and commerce rather than
agricultural activities. Migrations of surplus population, the
exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials, and surplus
craftsmen seeking employment spread the tcchnologics produced by
these rcvolutio~~s
to Europc. The result was the dcvclopmcnt in
Europe of Neolithic and Bronze Age socictics that wcrc structurally
different from those that had evolved in the Ncar East. I11 duc coursc
conspicuous consun~ptionby the upper classes and the military
conflicts of the Near Eastern civilizations began to waste more
goods than they produced, while the growth of secondary civilizations reduced the amount of raw materials that was reaching thcm.
As a result of both processes, economic progress eventually ground
to a halt in the Near East. At the same time European societies
continued to progress until they wcre able to outstrip and dominate
those of the Ncar East. With this economic explanation Childc was
able to cxorcizc the ethnic stereotypes and semi-racist theorics that
he had invoked to explain the ulti~natcdominance of European
cultures in The Arynrzs.
Childe's interest in economic, development in prehistoric times
drew its inspiration from trends that were active in the European,
and more specifically the British, archaeology of that period. Yet he
modern hunter-gatherer socicties were probably unlike the Palaeolithic oncs from which morc complcx societies had cvolvcd. Thc
same dichotomy held at thc lcvcl of tribal cultivators. Childc thus
proposcd two gcneral iineq of cultural evolution: a progrcssivc one,
charactcrizcd by continuous tcchnological dcvelopment combined
with a flexible social organization and ideology, and a conservative
one, characterized by static technology and the elaboration of convoluted social structures and ideologies (1936: 46). While based on
Marxist idcas, this model borc little relationship to gcncrally held
Marxist evolutionary concepts. His interpretation of cultural dcvcloprncnt, like his changing efforts to explain the eventual superiority
of Europcan culture, looks curiously like an attcmpt to reformulate
Lubbock's vicw of human evolution in non-racist terms.
In Scotland Before the ScotslChildcattcmptcd to apply a Sovict-stylc
approach to the interpretatioq of a specific corpus of Western
archaeological data. H e sought to usel information concerning subsistence patterns, houses, handicrafts, trade, and burial customs to
infc? changing modes of production and the accompanying development of larger and more unequal groups and new ideologies.
Inspired by Kruglov and Psdgayetsky's explanation of the evolution
of Bronze Age society in southern Russia, he saw Scotland dcveloping from .I nctwork ofcga1it.u-i.ln tribal socictics bascd o n communal
property into a hierarchical statc socicty. Thc kcy factor bringing
about change was the emergence of private property, which he
believed was mirrored in the replacement of communal tombs by
individual ones expressing status 'differences. Childe concluded that
this approach produced 'a picture of Scotland's dcvclopment which
was far more realistic and far mQre historical' than he had achieved
by means of migrationist hyporheses in his early studies of Scottish
prehistory (1958b: 73). Yet he refused categorically to subscribe to
the dogmatic scheme of social evolution used by Soviet archaeologists or to rule out diffusion and migration as significant factors
bringing about social and cultural change.
A history of arcl~acologicalthought
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
North
'
South
Modern surhcc
37
determine what sort of social group had used the sitc. With the help
of palacobotanists and zoologists hc was able to conclude that a
small group of hunters had visited it ovcr a number of winters in
ordcr to hunt dccr. This study sct a nc\v standard for the archacological invcstigatio~lof huntcr-gatherer sitcs and callcd into qucstion the value of all previously cxcavatcd sites for cconomic studics
of prehistor~i(Clark 1954, 1972; cf. Andrescn et al. 1981).
At the same timc Clark was cxcavating at Star Carr, he was writing
Prebistovic Euvope: The Economic Basis (1952).111 this book hc sought
to 'mine and quarry' existing archacological literature and muscum
collections to see what could be learned from thcm about the
econonlic dc\lclopmcnt of Europe from late glacial times to the
historical period. Thc maill topics that hc addressed wcrc subsistencc pattcrns, shcltcr, technology, trade, travel, and transportation.
H c did not examine data m relation to specific societies or archacological culturcs but sought to trace economic changes as they related
to thrcc major climatic and vcgctation zones: Circumpolar, Tcmpcrate, and Mediterranean. The relationship bctwccn culturc and
environment was vicwcd as reciprocal and thc ccononly defined as
'an adjustment to specific physical and biological conditions of
certain needs, capacities, aspirations and valucs' (p. 7). Pvehzstovic
'
tools, U~CIISIIS,
WCJ~OIIS,
~I~C
costumes,
S,
ornan~cnts,and burials. In
each of these cases, despite a growing variety of data, thc cmphasis
was largely 011 listing traits in an ethnographic o r pscudocthnographic format rather than on trying to interpret material
culturc as cvidence of human behaviour. Although interpretations
prior to the 1930s havc been castigated for remaining 'on a rclativcly
supcrficial level' consisting 'mainly of thc obvious inferences t o be
drawn from artifacts . . . by visualizing how thcy might havc been
L I S C ~ ' (Rouse 1972: 147), they constituted a more serious cffort to
infer human behaviour from archacological remains than did thc
ethnographic trait lists of the 1930s and 1940s. This indicates that the
classificatory orientation of thc Midwcstcrn Taxo~lomicMethod,
and of chronological studies gcnerallp, suppressed a professional
intercst in the behavioural interpretation o f archaeological data in
North America for a longer period than Taylor (1948: 91) o r Willey
and Sabloff (1980: 134) havc belicvcd.
A history of ,~rchacologicalthought
'mcrc chronicle', working out thc geographical and temporal distributions of archacological matcrial and explaining changes by attributing them to cxtcrnal factors groupcd under the headings of
diffusion and migration.
Taylor proccedcd to dcmonstratc that the limitcd goals of archaeologists encouraged slackness in a~hacologicalfieldwork and analysis. Many classcs of artifacts, cspccially those that wcrc not regarded
as important for defining cultures, wcrc not examined and dcscribcd
in detail. Pottery and iithic rnatcrial wcrc studicd much more carefully than was surviving evidence of baskctry. Floral and faunal
remains often were inadcquatcly rccovcred and identified; hcnce
archaeologists did not know what foods were eaten and why particular sitcs wcrc used or at what season. Archaeologists also failcd
to rccord, and morc often to rcport, the intrasitc provenience of
artifacts in sufficicnt dctail. Bccausc of this it was difficult for them
to dcfinc activity arcas within sitcs and to dctcrminc how artifacts
might vary from one part of a sitc to another. Finally, although
archacologists sought to claborate lists of all the types of artifacts
associatcd with particular sitcs and made statistical comparisons of
thcsc lists in an cfOrt to dctcrrninc thcir dcgrccs of cultural affinity,
they wcrc normally content to compare merely the presence or
absence of types. As a result, quantified data, that might be vcry
important for understanding thc role played by particular hnds of
artifacts, wcrc lacking. Taylor dcvoted much of his study to providing a detailed critique of the shortcomings of the work of leading
American archacologists in order to dcmonstratc how thcir
cultural-chronological objectives had limited thcir investigations of
thc archaeological rccord.
T o remedy thesc defects Taylor offered the conjunctive approach.
T o the traditional investigation of chronological problems and
intcrsite relations hc proposed to add dctailed intrasite studies in
which careful attention would .be paid to all artifacts and features
and how they wcrc interrelated. Special note would be taken of
thc quantitative aspccts and spatial distributions of archacological
finds, as wcll as of their formal properties and evidcnce of how they
wcrc made and used. In this way arcl~acologistsmight hope to learn
as much as possiblc about the nature of life in prehistoric times
and about thc functional relations within a prchistoric culture. A
distinctivc aspcct of the co~~jut~ctivc
approach was thc importance
Functionalism in
stern archaeology
Functionalisn~in Wester11archaeology
39
A history of arcl~acologicaltliouglit
promoted s c d c ~ l t a r ~ z a t ~and
o n denser p o p u l a t ~ o ~ throughout
ls
the
reglon. These developn-ie~ltsc~icouragcdthe acqulsltlon o f h e a v ~ e r
and Inore v a r ~ c dtypes of cqulpnicnt than had bccn useful prcv~ously,~ ~ l c l u soapstone,
d ~ ~ ~ g and later ccramlc, c o o k ~ n gvessels. H c
stressed not only the capaclty for lnter~lallyi ~ l ~ t i a t cchange
d
among
the natlve culturcs o f the Eastern Woodlands but also the need for
archaeolog~stst o u n d c ~ s t a n dart~factssuch JS pottcrv vessels wltll
rcfcrcilcc t o the roles they had playcd w1th111 a d a p t ~ v csystems Such
Interpretations had bccn f-orcshc~do\vcdIn Ralph L~nton's (1944)
study o f dcvclopmcntal trends in the sliapc o f castci-11 North
American ceramic vcsscls.
Steward also inspired the dc\~clopmcntofsettlcmcnt archaeology,
which was initiated by (;ordon Willcy's 1'~ehistovicSettlement l'atterns in the Virzi Valley, Peru (1953), a study that was carried o u t in
connection with a combined archacological and a~lthropological
i~lvestigationo f a small coastal valley in Peru by Amcrica~land
Peruvian a~lthropologistsin 1946. I t was Steward w h o persuaded
Willep t o conduct 3 scttlcmcnt-pattern survey as part o f the project
(Willey 1974b: 153). Yet Willcy's interpretation o f the data collccted
by this survey marked a significa~ltdeparture froin Ste\vard's ccological approach. 111previous studies archacological scttlcmcnt patterns had bccn viewed as cvidcncc o f relations bctwccu human
groups and tllc natural c~i\lironment.Willcy chosc illstcad to vicw
scttlcmcnt patterns as 3 'strategic starting point for the f ~ l ~ i c t i o ~ l a l
interpretation o f arcl-~acologicalculturcs'. H e went o n t o assert that
scttlcmcnt patterns 'reflect the natural cnvironmcnt, the lcvcl o f
technology o n which the builders operated, and various i~lstitutio~ls
of social interaction and control ~ v h i c hthe culture maintained'
(p. I ) . H c did n o t deny that ecological factors playcd a significant
role in shaping settlement patterns but observed that many other
factors of a social o r cultural nature were also rcflcctcd in the
archacological record and was unprepared t o vicw thcsc factors as
mcrcly a rcflectio~lo f the general patterns o f ecological adaptation.
Instead he treated scttlemc~ltpatterns as a source o f illfor~nation
about many aspects o f human bchaviour. T h e great advantage o f
scttlcmcnt patterns over artifacts nras that, while artifacts ficquently
urcre found in co~itcxtswhere they had been disposed, scttlcmcnt
patterns provided direct cvidellce about the settings in which h u ~ n a n
activities wcrc carried out. Willcy recognized the pote~ltial o f
Fu~~ctionalist
intcrprctations of archaeological data had long been
inhcrcnt in studics of the relations bctwccn cultures and their
environments and of how artifacts were made and used. Yet thc
proliferatio11 and increasing sophistication of such views that rcprcscntcd a significant trcnd in British and American anthropology,
beginning in the 193os, cncouraged archacologists to view prchistoric cultures as internally differentiated and to some dcgrce
intcgratcd ways of lifc. This in turn promoted a consideration of thc
internal as wcll as the cxtornal causcs of change. At first the examination of intcrnal causcs was mainly directed towards ecological
factors. Yct, whilc Taylor and in an cvcn morc explicit fashion Clark
did much to dcvclop the usc of archaeological data for reconstructing prehistoric patterns of life, they made few contributions
to\v.lrds cxp1,lining changcs in the arcli,icological record. In contrast, Childc, while developing some very interesting models of
---,-.-...
.""".G
-.-..
41 Sanders e t al. settlement pattern of the Basin of Mexico for the Late Horizon
A history of at~cliacologicnItliought
social changc, failcd to addrcss how tllcsc 111odclscould be applicd in
any dctail to thc study of thc archacological rccord. Scttlcment
archacology, by contrast, e~lcouragedthe relatively holistic study
both of prchistoric culturcs at specific points in time and of how
thcsc cultures changcd. This dcvelopmcnt of a concern with changes
in structural and functional relations over time marlicd the beginning of a proccss~ial, as opposed to a synchronically functional,
study of prehistoric cultures.
Tllc dcvclopmcnt of functional and then proccssual approachcs to
nrcl~acologicaldata rcprcsc~ltcda replaccmcnt of the increasingly
sterile preoccupation of culture-historical archaeology with ethnicity by a vital new interest in how prchistoric culturcs operated
and changed. A functio~lalistoricntation was cncouraged by the
development of social anthropology, which initially was no more
concerned with problems of internal social change than earlier
diffusionist explanations had been. Growing interest in change was
rclated to social developments after World War I1 that will be
cxa~nincdin the ncxt chaptcr.
From an internal point of view culturc-historical archaeology was
a logical preludc to thc systematic study of prchistoric cultures from
functional and proccssual perspcctivcs. The culture-historical
approach had revealed the basic fi-amcworli of cultural distributions
relations that W L ~ complemcnS
in time and space and of intcrcult~~rul
tcd by a functionalist cmphasis on the systcnlatic study of thc
internal configurations of c~~lturcs.
Yet, while initially building on
traditional culture-historical chronologics, functional and processual approachcs soon raised archacological questions that required
refinements in chronology and the understanding of spatial variation (especially intra-site variation) in the archaeological record.
American archaeologists strcngtl~encd and renewcd their longestablished tics with anthropology in a search for ethnographic
parallels and theoretical concepts that would assist them to interpret
thcir data from a functional or proccssual point of view. I11 doing so
they reaffirrncd a relationship first established in the nineteenth
century. European archaeologists tended to remain sceptical of
analogics in the abscncc of somc sort of direct historical connection
between the cultures bcing compared and vicwcd thcir worlc as an
enrichment of thcir continuing analysis of archacological data.
CHAPTER 8
C L A R K E , Ana[Yt~calArchaeolo~~t
(1979), p. 101
Despite the sweeping claims that White sometimes made for his
theories, he strcsscd that, while thcy account for thc general outlincs
of cultural dcvclopmcnt, thcy cannot be uscd t o infer the specific
fcaturcs of individual cultures (Whitc 194s: 346).
Altl~ough White's technological dctcrminism has often been
statcd to be of Marxist origin, conceptuall~it has nothing in
common with Marxism except a general materialist orientation.
Instead, it reflects onc of thc principal thcmes of American socialscicncc scholarship, which has been described as privileging the
relationship bctwecn technology and society at thc expense of other
kinds of relations, such as thosc bctwccn self and society (Krokcr
1984: 12).
Stcw.lrd championed .In altcrnativc multilinear, ecological, and
more empirical approach to thc study of cultural cvolution. H e
assumed that thcrc were significant rcgularitics in cultural development and that ecological adaptatio~lwas crucial for detcrmi~lingthe
limits of variation in cultural systcms. H c sought by means of comparative studies to determine the diffcrcnt ways in which culturcs
had developed in diffcrcnt typcs of natural cnvironments, bclicving
that they would tend to assume the same forms and ollow similar
dcvclopmcntal trajcctorics in similar natural scttings hcsc similaritics constituted the 'cultural corc', which consisted f thosc fcaturcs
of a culture that wcrc most closcly relatcd to subsistence activities.
The corc embraced economic, political, and religious patterns that
could be empirically determined to have major adaptive significance.
Stcward argued that thc aim of cvolutionary anthropology should be
to explain the common fcaturcs bfcu~turesat similar levels of devcloplncnt rather than '~uniquc,exotic, and non-recurrent particulars'
which can be attributed to historical accidents (Stcward 195s: 209).
TheNew AYzhaeology
In 1959 Joseph Caldwell published an articlc in Science titled 'The
ncw American archeology'. 111 it he surveyed major trends that he
saw transforming archaeology. H e cited growing interest in ecology
and settlement patterns as cvidence of a new concern with cultural
process. Archaeological cultures were no longer regarded merely as
thc sum total of their preserved artifact types, each of which can be
treated in a stylistic fashion as indcpe~idcntand equally significant.
Instcad they have to be analyscd, as Taylor had proposed, as configurations or even as functionally integrated systems. H e also
supported the neo-evolutionary belief that behind the infinite
variety of cultural facts and specific historical situations is a finite
A history of arcl~acologicalthought
evolving social systems. Steward (1955: 182) had argued that every
cultural borrowing might be construed as an 'independent recurrence of cause and cffcct' and Harris (1968: 377-8) had dismisscd
diffusion as a 'nonprinciplc'. Chang (1962: 190-1) maintaincd that, if
in the coursc of its developmellt Chinese civilization had been
unable to borrow new tcchnologiral proccsscs from thc outside, the
Chincsc would have invented thc same processes o r oncs of similar
econornic and social significance. Thus Binford differed from tradi~l
by emphasizing humanity's capacity
tional A m c r ~ c , ~archaeologists
for innovation at the sanlc tinlc that he agrccd with them in vicwing
undisturbed cultures as normally static.
Like Caldwell, Binford stressed the internal differentiation and
systcmic integration of culturcs. H e objcctcd to the cstablishcd
normative view, which regarded cultures as collections of ideas held
in common and transmitted over generations by members of particular social groups. In somc of his writings his objections to views
of culture as a mental phenomenon appear to rule out White's
concept of culture as being symbolic in nature, although hc otherwise praises White's views (Binford 1972: 105-13). Like Caldwell, he
also objected to each item of culture being regarded as equal in
significance to all others and thc pcrccntagc of similarities and
diffcrcnccs In artifact types being trcatcd as a mcasurcmcnt of the
ainount of cffcctivc conlrnunication bctwccn groups. H e maintained that traditional arcl~aeologyattributed diffcrcnces between
cultures t o geographical barriers or resistant value systems, while it
viewed ideas as being spread from one culture to another by diffusion and migration. Although this description may have represented
accurately the views about cultures held by traditional culturehistorical archaeologists working in the midwestern United States
or even those of Walter Taylor, it did not take account of the views
of a growing nurnbcr of functionalist archacologists in thc Unitcd
States or of Clark and Childe in Britain. As early as 1925 Childe had
cmployed a functio~lalistview of culture to facilitate his culturehistorical analyses when he distinguished between ethnic traits,
which did not diffuse readily, and tecllnological ones, which did.
Binford argued that cultures were not interllally homogeneous.
All of them wcre differentiated at least according t o age and sex roles
and the degree to which they were internally shared by individuals
varied inversely with their complcxity. Individuals always partici-
42
acquired a holistic knowledge of the structural and functional cliaractcristics of cultural systems could they begin to investigate problems of evolutionary changes in social systems and ideology. Binford
argued tliat in order to cstablish sucli corrclatio~isarchacologists
~ . by studying living sitnations
must bc trained as e t l i n o l o g i ~ tOnly
in which bcll.i\~io~~r
2nd iclcas ca11 bc obscl-vcd in conjunction \vitIi
material culture W ~ itS possible to cst:lblis11 co~-~-eIatio~is
tllat co~tld
be uscd to infcr social bcliaviour and idcology reliably from the
.~rcl~acologic~~l
i-c.corci. l{i~~li)~-ci
s.liv tIii> AS .I p r o ~ n i s i111
~
3 >~-o.lch
~ ~ to
understancling the past bccausc, as 3 nco-evolutionist, hc bclicvcd
that there was a high dcgrcc of regularity in human bchaviour which
comparative cthnograpliic studies could rcvcal. These rcgularitics
could then be used to infcr many aspects of prehistoric culturcs that
were not directly obscrvablc in the archacological rccord. If 11~1n1an
bcha\~iourwere lcss regular than lie assumed, sucli corrclatiorls
\vould bc fewer in number and lcss ~ ~ s c f for
u l reconstructing prehistoric culturcs and understanding changc.
Some of tlic principal carly applicatio~isof tlic New Archaeology
were attempts to use ceramics to infcr the residence patterns of
prchistoric communities. It 1vas 3ss~11iied
tliat, if \voniell ~iiadcthe
pottcry uscd by their families, design clcnlcnts would tend to cluster
wlicrc knowlcdgc of pottcry maliing was transmitted from motlicrs
to clauglitcrs in nic~trilocalsocieties but would bccomc randomized
in patrilocal oncs wlicrc fc~iialcpottcrs from diffcrc~ltlincagcs Ii\icd
adjacent to one anothcr (Dcctz 1965; Whallon 1968; Hill 1970;
Longacrc 1970). The sex of pottcrs was detcrmincd by applying thc
direct historical mctliod rathcr than by nicans of forensic cvidcncc as
Trct'yakov had done in the 1930s. In thcsc carly studics the altcrnative possibility that some pottcry was professionally made and
cxcliangcd ovcr long distances was not cxamincd, nor wcrc tlic
conditions under which brokcn pottcry was discarded (S. Plog
1980). Thcsc pioneering efforts by American archacologists to infcr
social organization from archacological cvidcncc tlicrcforc did not
reach the high standards Binford had set for sucli worli. They also
map have provided a misleading impression of the Itind of
opcrations that were required bp tlic dcductivc approach.
Among Binford's principal original contributions at tliis time was
his insistc~iccthat the correlations used to infer human beha\~1our
from archacological data had to be based on the dcmonstration of
'
(Binford 1967b: 235; 1968b). This line of reasoning had been introduced to American archaeologists by the ethnologist Clyde ICluckhohn (1940) when 11e wrote that Mesoamerican archaeologists had
to cl~oosebetween historical studies that sought to recrcatc unique
cvcnts in all of their idiosyncratic detail and scicntific research that
addrcsscd significant trends and uniforniitics in cultural changc.
This invidious dichotomy bctwccn history and scicncc, which paralleled the distinction that American anthropologists drew bctwcen
his tor)^ and evolution, was rcinforcccl by Taylor (1948: 156-7) and
Willep and Phillips (1958: 5-6), who regarded culture-historical
integration as an objcctivc that was inferior to formulating general
rulcs of cultural bchaviour. Binford vicwcd archaeologists' cfforts to
explain particular historical cvcnts as inductive bchaviour that
would doom archaeology to remain a particularistic, nongeneralizing ficld. H e argued that archaeologists instead must seek
to for~nulatelaws of cultural dynamics. While in historical retrospect
this position can bc sccn as rcflccting the belief that human history is
govcrncd by strong regularities, it deflected archacological interest
from significant aspects of cultural changc that d o not display such
regularities.
Binford also denied the relevance of psychological factors for
undcrstanding prehistory. Hc identified the use of such concepts
wit11 Boasian idealism and the culture-historical approach and
argucd that thcp had no cxplanatory value for an ecological interpretation of culturc and cultural changc. O n thc contrary, within an
ecological framework spccific psychological factors could be vicwcd
as an epiphenomena1 aspect of human behaviour that arose as a
consequence of ecological adaptation. H e also argucd that archaeologists arc poorly trained to function as palaeopsychologists
(Binford 1972: 198).
New Archacologists have continucd to condemn explanations of
change that invokc cithcr conscious or unconscious psychological
factors. Instcad they have identified relations bctwcen technology
and the environment as the key factors determining cultural systems
and, through them, human bchaviour. In this respect they clearly
differ from Marxists who see individual and collective perceptions of
self-interest as a major cause of changc. On. the other hand this
rejection of perceptions is shared by many other Western social
scientists. It seems to rcflcct a tendency that has its roots in Christian
Systems theov
Binford's ideas quickly attractcd a large following among American
arcl~acologists,cspccially younger oncs. At lcast one scnior scholar,
Paul Martin (IWI), rallied publicly to his support. Binford's work
also influenced Colin Renfrcw (1979,1984), an English archacologist
who taught for a time in thc United Statcs, and had much in
common with thc formulations of David Clarke (1968)~another
Englishman who was, however, independently influenced by the
locational analysis and general systems approaches of the New
Geography that had developed at Cambridge University (Chorley
and Haggett 1967). In America also attempts wcrc soon made to
account for cultural changc in terms of General Systems Theory.
This was a body of concepts that the biologist Ludwig von Bkrtalanffy began to develop in thc 194os, which sought to dclineatc thc
underlying rules that govern thc behaviour of cntitics as divcrsc as
tl~ermostats, digital computers, glaciers, living organisms, and
sociocultural systems. It was assumed that all of thcsc could be
conceptualized as systems madc ub of interacting parts and that rules
could be formulated that described how significant aspects of any
system functioned, regardless of its specific nature (~ertalanfG1969;
Laszlo 1972a, b, c). Systems theory allowcd archaeologists to transcend the limitations of traditional social anthropological analyses of
static structures by studying not only structure-maintaining but also
structure-elaborating (or morphogenctic) processes. Many of the
most important of thcsc studies wcrc bascd on cybernetics, which
sought to account for how systems functioned by mapping feedback
between their various parts. Negative feedback maintains a system in
an essentially steady state in the face of fluctuating external inputs,
while positive feedback brings about irreversible changes in the
structure of thc system. The concept of feedback offered archaeologists a more precise, and potentially quantifiable, mechanism for
interrelating thc various components of a changing cultural system
303
A h~storyof arcli,~cologicalthought
'
43
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
.T
13gr
a
-.
."
\I
-p\\\
N
..A
7ibg
'
\\
\
\
/
/
Critics have argued that the New Archaeology represented a revolution in the technical and methodological spheres rather than in
archaeological theory (Meltzer 1979). Yet the stand that Binford
took against the still influential culture-historical approach in the
United States was no less a break with that past in terms of high-level
theory than it was mctl~odologically.The questions that must bc
answered are why did his approach appeal so powerfully to a rising
generation of American archaeologists and why, apart from Binford's undeniable charismatic qualities, was he able so quickly to
popularize views that until then had only slowly been spreading
through American archaeology?
Thomas Patterson (1986a) has argued that the majority of New
Archaeologists were recruited from the increasingly powerful and
'
A history of arch~cologicalthought
Neo-cvol~~tionism
and tlic New Archaeology
A 111atorpof archaeolog~calthought
FIG.2 1 . 1 . T h c modular unit - the social and architectural building block of which the
scttlcmcnt is a niultiplc. T h e analyscs of vcrtical and horizontal spatial relationships,
structural attributes and artcfact distributions convergently define a distinct range of
structures (I-VII) repeatedly reproduced on the site. Each replication of the unit
appears to be a particular transformation of an otherwise standardized set cf relationships between each structural category and every other calegory. T h e basic division
bcrween the pair of major houses (Ia) and their satellites, and thc minor house (Ib) and
its ancillaries may be tentatively idcntificd with a division between a major familial,
multi-role and activity area on one hand and a minor, largely female and domestic area
(see Fig. 21.6).
Below: the iconic symbols uscd to identify the structures in the schematic site
models, Figs. 21.2-21.5.
IZ~]
I
I
I a Major house
Ib M ~ n o rhouse
I l a Anc~llaryhut
- I I Workshop
~
hut
- IIc Courtyard
IId Bak~nghut
Iie Guard h u t
. ........
)r)
111 Workfloor
IV Clay patch
P
0
- V1
-
Granaries or
Storehouses
Stables
VII S t ~ e or
s
Kennels
Waggon stance
P a l ~ s a d eor fence
D. L. Clarke
by
B c g ~ n n ~ nin
g the 1970s the cultural-evolutionary paradigm that
guided thc high-level intcrprctations of thc New Archacology
underwent a major changc. Since the late 1950s the optimism and
security of the middle classcs in the United States had bccn scriously
eroded by a succession of chronic and deepening cconomic crises
that were cxaccrbatcd by repeated failures of foreign policy,
especially in Vietnam. Tlicsc cvcnts produced a marltcd decline of
faith in the bcncfits t o bc derived from technological dcvclopment.
This In turn spawned n prolifcration of middle-class protcst mo\rcmcnts. While these movements consistently h ~ v cavoided addrcssing the crucial economic and political proble~nsof American society,
they havc profoundly altered social values and influcnccd the social
sciences.
The oldest of thcsc is the ecology movcmcnt, which views unrcstraincd technological dcvclop~ncntas poisoning and gradually dcstroying the world ccosystcm. Its beginnings were signalled by the
publication of Rachel Carson's Silent S p ~ i q(1962). I t has sincc
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
humanity's ability to solve prbblems and make life easier and more
fulfilling wcre in fact responses t o forccs bcyond human control.
pcoplc to work
Throughout history thcsc forccs had co~l~pcllcd
hardcr, suffcr increasi~lgexploitation, and dcgradc thcir environ,
ments.
The dcrnonstration by Richard L ~ Cand Irvcn DcVorc (1968) that
hunter-gatherer economics cduld support a low populatio~ldcnsity
with less effort than was rcquirkd by cven the least dcmanding forms
of food production not o111y was intcrprctcd as support for Boscrup's position but also 1cd arclfa~oldgiststo adopt ncw intcrprctations of prchistoric hunter-gatherers. Instead of being viewed as
living 011 the brink of starvation, thcy wcrc portraycd as lcisurcd
groups with plcnty of spare timc to dcvotc to religious o r ii~tellcctual
pursuits. Even relatively conservative arcl~aeologistsbegan to idealize the more egalitarian prehistoric cultures as examples of 'conserving societies' that provided models of how we ourselvcs should
behave in relation to the envkonment (Cunliffc 1974: 27). Some
archaeologists questioned the evidence o n which these formulations
were based and their gcncral ,applicability (Bronson 1972; Cowgill
1975; Harris 1979: 87-8). Yet the'rapid and relatively unchallenged
way in which these studies came t o influence the interpretation of
archaeological data, oftcn in 'thc abscncc of adequatc mcasurcs of
prehistoric populatio~lsize or even of relative population change,
suggests the degree to which they accorded with the spirit of the
time.
Archaeologists also began 't? 'express reservations about conventional neo-evolutionary theories that analysed change as if it occurred in slow, gradual trajcctories of the sort that Braidwood and
MacNeish had documented in their studies of the origins of agriculture in the Ncar East and ,Mesoamerica. Robert Adams (1974:
248-9) pointcd out that thcre were abrupt shifts in the development
of early civilizations, sometimcs separa'tcd by long periods when
rclativcly few changes occu~red. Soon after Renfrew (1978)
attemptcd to use catastrophe theory, which had been invented by
the French mathematician ~ k h t ' T h o m to
, cxplain changes in the
arcliaeological record. Catastrophe thcory treats the question of
how, as the rcsult of particular conjunctions of internal states, a set
of fluctuating variables can producc discontinuous cffccts (Saunders
1980). Whilc it rcrnains to bc dcmonstratcd how rigorously Thom's
mathematics, which can treat only four variables at once, can be used
to explain social bchaviour, the col~ccptattracted considerable attention among archaeologists in Britain and America (Rcnfrcw and
Cookc 1979). Although Thom and Renfrcw were both interested in
'catastrophes' that produced more complex as well as simpler states,
the ready acceptance of catastrophe theory as an analogue of social
process reflected widespread fears that Western societies might be
sliding towards a catastrophc in the conventional as well as the
mathematical sense. Finally archacologists havc sought to imbue the
concept of disconti~luouscultural change with additional sciclltific
prestige by drawing parallels between it and that of punctuated
equilibrium being promoted by some evolutionary biologists (S.
Gould 1980; Eldrcdgc 1982). Thcsc vicws of cultural change havc
made arcl~aeologistsmorc aware of the need to distinguish varying
rates of change in the archaeological record, sometimes over relatively short periods of time. Gaps arc also being recognized in the
archacological record that in the past would havc been filled by
unwarrantcdly projecting k~lowncultures backwards and forwards
in time or hypothesizing undiscovered intermediary forms. This has
challenged archaeologists to acquire ever greater control over culIt has also rei~iforcedthe belief that cultures are
tural chro~~ologies.
more fragile and cultural changc morc fraught with dangers than
arcl~acologistshad bclicved Ilithcrto.
These ncw idcas about thc nature of cult~iralchangc havc promoted a pessimistic and cvcll tragic vcrsion of cultural evolution that
interprets demographic, ecological, and cconomic factors as constraining change to occur along lines that most human beings d o
not regard as dcs~rablebut which thcy are unable to control. This
eschatological materialism implies that the future is always likely to
be worse than the present and that humanity is journeying from a
primitive Eden, filled with happy hunter-gatherers, to a hell of
thermonuclear annihilation. We have already noted that neoevolutionism differed from nineteenth-century evolutionism in its
rejection of the belief that cultural change occurred as the result of
rational and willing action by human beings who sought to acquire
greater control over their environment. This new cataclysmic evolutionism also differed from previous disillusionment about progress,
which had resulted in diffusionists denying that there was any
natural order to human history. Instead of denying that thcrc was
A conscrvativc ideology may, however, be exerting a more powerful influcncc 011 interpretations of prehistory with respect to the
study of fossil hominids. Under the direct or indirect influence of
sociobiology, there is a growing tendency to stress evidence of
biological and behavioural differcnccs and to treat these differences
as correlated. This in turn leads to growing suspicion of intcrprctations of the bchaviour of Lower l'alacolith~c hon~inidsthat arc based
on analogies with modern hunter-gatherer societies. We are
informed that the Australopitl~ccincswere more like spccializcd apes
and that the tcchnological and bch~viouralcapacities of carly Homo
increasingly appear to have been unlike our own (Cartmill et al.
1986: 419). While former tendencies to emphasize the human-like
qualities of carly hominids are interpreted as an ideological ovcrreaction to Nazism, no attention is paid to the possible ideological
basis of currently popular alternative explanations.
Conclusions
Both Soviet (Klejn 1977) and American (Davis 1983: 407) archaeologists have drawn attcntio~lto some striking similarities between
the New Archaeology and the archaeology created in the Soviet
Union in the carly 1930s. These parallels arc the more interesting
becausc all but a handful of American archaeologists re~nained
almost completely unaware of the strengths and weaknesses of
Soviet archaeology until rhc late 1970s. Both approaches were based
on an evol~itionarpview of cultural change and sought to understand the regularities exhibited by that process. They agreed that
these regularitics were strong and could be studied by using a
materialist framework. Migration and diffusion were played down
in favour of tryi:lg to explain the changes that occurred within
cultural systems ovcr long periods of time. Traditional typological
studies that sought to elucidate chronologies and spatial variations ii
in material culture were regarded as old-fashioned and there was a 1
corresponding increase in functional interprctations of archaeological data.
Yct, despite thcsc sin~ilarities,there was a marked difference in the
high-level theories that guided the interpretation of archaeological
data. The New Archaeology c~llbracedvarious forms of ecological
and demographic determinism, which located the major factors
that shapcd human behaviour. Yct it now appears that, while whole
cultural systcms can be vicwed as constraincd to somc degree by the
nature of thcir adaptation to thc ccosystem, the constraints exercised
on the technology and cconomy are far stronger and morc immediatcly recognizable than are thc ones on social organization, and
thcsc in turn arc grcatcr thail arc thc constraints on specific beliefs
and values. Hence the techniques adopted by the New Archaeology
work bcst whcn dcaling with those aspccts of culture that are subject
to thc grcatcst restraint. The Ncw Archaeologists appear to havc
crrcd in assuming that ecological constraints would cxcrt the samc
degree of influence on all aspccts of culture and hencc in feeling
justified whcn they ignored alternativc factors that shapcd the
archaeological rccord. Paul Tolstoy (1969: 558) was correct when he
statcd that dcterminists consider worthy of attc~ltiononly those
traits with which thcir theories appear equipped to dcal.
Yet, almost from the beginning, doubts were cxprcsscd about the
adcquacy of this forn~ulation,cspccially by thosc who attcmptcd a
systemic approach. In the 1970s and 1980s growing awarencss of
thcsc weakncsscs challcl~gcdsomc Western archaeologists, including ones who had playcd a key rolc in establishing the New Arcliacology, to rethink thcir basic .~ssumptionsabout h11111anbehavio~r
and how the archaeological rccord shoulci be intcrprctcd. This .dso
led .I growing number of arcl~acologiststo recognize for the first
time t h ~ the
t ideological underpinnings of archaeological intcrprctations were something other than thc niistakc~lnotions of thc past
and to challcngc the positivist prctencc of ethical neutrality.
CHAPTER 9
Infersocietal contact
One of thc dcvclopments that has charactcrizcd this changing pcrspcctivc has bccn a tcndcncy to abandon the vicw that socictics or
cultures arc closed, or tightly bounded, units that can be studied
indcpcndcntly of onc another and to pay morc attcntion to thc rolc
played by cxtcrnal stin~uliin bringing about cultural changc. Wolf
Thc cxpla~r~tion
of diversity
times. In particular, hc argucs that thc rankings of cores and peripheries may have becn less stable than they arc 1 . 1 0 ~ and that political
force may havc playcd a morc overt rolc in rcgulating them. What is
of general importance is thc growing realization that societies are
not closed systems with respect to neighbouring ones any more than
in rclatio~lto thcir natural cnvironlncnt and that thc dcvclopmcnt of
a society or culture may be constrained or influenced by the broader
social network of which it is a part. Thcrc is also increasing recognition that thc rules governing these proccsscs arc thcmsclvcs worthy
of scientific investigation. Tllc cl~allcngcis to broaden not merely a
functional but also a systemic analysis to cover processes that used to
bc explained in tcrms of diff~~sion.
The studies of economic intcraction bctween a Ncar E'lstcrn corc and Europcan periphery that
were begun by Cl~ildcin The Most Ancient East (1928) anticipated
world-system theory in many important aspects and havc no doubt
predisposed European archaeologists to accept Wallerstein's
approach. Childe's ideas in turn were based on patterns of interaction established by Montclius in his diffusionist studies.
Thesc observations have raised additional questions about the
concept of sociocultural systems. N o one will deny that various
social boundaries arc defined by reduced levels of interaction. Yet
can a hierarchy of levels be distinguished in which individuals are
grouped as members of families; families as parts of communities,
co~n~l~unitics
as components of socictics, and socictics to form largcr
interaction sphcres? Or do individuals participate differentially in
patterned interactions at many levels and as members of many
different kinds of social groups (R. McGuire 1983)? One must not
minimize the importance of brokers and decision-makers, such as
chiefs, government officials, and kings, who mediate bctween different levels of society and thereby effect varying degrees o f closure.
Yet a detailed analysis of networks of social, political, and economic
intcraction calls into questio~lthc idea that socictics or culturcs are
morc significant units of analysis than are numerous larger and
smaller catcgories (cf. Clarkc 1968). The social entity to be studied is
determined by the problem that is bcing investigated.
There is also growing interest in the degree to which cultures or
societies constitutc systcms in any rigorous sense. Are they in fact
strongly integrated and hence highly selective with respect to
innovation or, providing that thcy fulfil a minimal numbcr of
prcrcquisitcs to supply enough food, clothing, shcltcr, rcproduction, and child carc to cnsurc tltcir continuity (Abcrlc et al. 195o), is
the rcst of thcir contcnt frccly variable and l~cnccliltcly to bc
influcnccd by a random selection of idcas pickcd up from ncighbouring culturcs? Wolf (1982: 390-1) argues that we cannot 'imaginc
cultures as intcgratcd totalities . . . [thcy] arc only cultural scts of!
practices and idcas, put into play by dctcrminatc human actors
under dctcrn~inatccircumstances'. Thc lattcr view of culturc as a
collection 'of multifarious and often ~ I I C O I I ~ ~ U O L I~SI C I I I C I ~ ~ S
work(ing] togcthcr in tolerable harmony' (Hunburp-Tc11iso111986:
108) is closc to that of historical particularism, cspccially when we
rcmcmbcr that Boas and his s t ~ ~ c l csaw
~ ~ tthe
s nccd for some degree
of pspchological consistency in cach culturc (Bcncdict 1934).While
fcw archacologists have cxplicitly abandoned thc terminology associated with a systcmic vicw of culturc, many would no longcr agrcc
with Stcward that diffusion can d o no morc than duplicatc intcr~tal
processes of causc and cffcct. A largc number of archacologists now
acknowledge that socictics can bc altcrcd not only by political and
cconomic prcssurcs from ncighbouring groups but also by idcas that
arc borrowcd from adjacent socictics, to the cxtcnt that the rccipicnt
culturc may dcvclop in ways that it would not havc donc in the
absence of these external stimuli (Lanlbcrg-I<arlovsky 19853:58-60).
Accon1panying this is a growing intcrcst in thc roles piaycd by noneconomic factors, such as religious bclicfs, in bringing about social
changc. While nlost arcl~acologistsprofcss a lnatcrialistic oricntation, thc dcgrcc to which ecological adaptation dctcrrnincs cultural
systems is increasingly scen not as givcn in thc study of society but as
an issuc that in due course must be answered empirically.
Changing vicws of interaction among culturcs havc rcopcncd the
oftcn-dcbatcd question of the significance of ethnographic analogies
for archacological intcrprctation. Evolutionary anthropologists
assumed that thc carlicst rccordcd dcscriptions of native culturcs
revcalcd what thcsc had bccn likc prior to Europcan contact and that
such information could bc uscd without scrious question for crosscultural studies of bchavioural variation. For example, thc San, or
Bushmen, of southcrn Africa wcrc trcatcd as a paradigmatic huntergatherer society. Archaeology is now rcvcaling that many native
culturcs wcrc vastly altcred as a rcsult of Europcan contact before
thc carlicst dcscriptions of thcm wcrc rccordcd by Europcans
(Ramsdcn 1977; Cordcll and Plog 1979; Wilcox and Massc 1981). It is
possiblc that every huntcr-gatherer and tribal society in the world
was influenced to some degree by contact with tcchnologicaIIy more
advanced societies prior to ethnographic study (Brasser 1971; Fried
1975;Wobst 1978; Monks 1981: 288; Triggcr 1981b).There is growing
arcltacological and historical cvidencc that thc Bushman way of life
has bccn modified significantly in reccnt ccnturics by contacts with
Europcan scttlcrs and ovcr a longer period by interaction with their
pastoral Bantu and Hottentot ncighbours (Schrirc 1980,1984). Thc
impact that thcsc otllcr groups havc had on thc southcrn African
environment also may have altcred Bushman life in many ways.
Undcr such circumstnnccs, it is dangerous for anthropologists to
assumc that Bushmen, or any othcr modern huntcr-gathcrcr socictics, arc ncccssarily equivalent to Palaeolithic ones. These studics,
although revolutionary after a long pcriod dominated by neocvolutionism, rcsumc a pattern cstablished by Strong (193s) and
Wedel (1938)~with their archaeological demonstration that thc
highly mobile equestrian hunting populations found on the Great
Plains of North Amcrica in thc historical pcriod wcrc a rclativcly
rcccnt phcnon~cnonand that in sornc arcas scdcntary agriculturalists
had prcccdcd thcm.
Thc various cconomic tics that link modcrn hunter-gathcrcrs to
thcir nan-h~~ntcr-gathcrcrncigltbours also call into qucstion
whcthcr modcrn and ancient 'hunter-gathcrcrs (or tribal socictics)
sharc the same mode of production and can thcrcforc bc trcatcd as
societies at the same stage of development. Binford (1983a: 337-56)
used northern native groups that havc been engaged for generations
in trapping and exchanging furs with Europcans as a basis for
suggesting certain generalizations about thc nature of huntcrgatherer adaptations to high-latitude environrncnts. Some anthropologists bclicve that because of the inherent flexibility of their
adaptation to thc boreal forest, the cconomies of at least some of
thcsc groups havc not bccn radically altered by the fur trade (Francis
and Morantz 1983: 14-15); othcrs disagree. Only detailed archaeological studies can determine objectively to what extent ethnographic descriptions of hunter-gatherer or tribal agricultural
socictics provide a rcpresentativc picture of what these socicties
wcrc likc in prchistoric times (D. Thomas 1974). Until more such
investigations havc been made, the significance of major cross-
What she docs not point out is that this approach is almost identical
to thc traditional method of historical cxplanation. Yct historians
tend to be morc sceptical about thc possibility of identifying all
rclc~antfactors and rccognizc that, in thc short tcrm, probability
valucs can be assigncd to many of thcm only provisionally and on the
basis of con~monscnsc (Dray 1957).This docs not diminish thc valuc
of archacology for producing gcncralizatio~ls about human
bchaviour or long-tcrm trends in cultural dcvclopmcnt. It docs
suggest, however, that cxplanations of changc in spccific socictics
must bc based on dctailcd knowlcdgc of what happcncd as well as
sound thcorics, and cvcn thcn allowanccs must bc madc for the
intcrvcntion of uncxpcctcd factors.
Thc prolonged, and by archacological standards, sophisticated,
debatc conccrning thc collapsc of thc Classic Maya civilization
demonstrates that more data are necdcd to narrow the range of
possible cxplanations and permit thc formulation of more refined
rcscarch problcms (Culbcrt 1973; Hammond 1977).While increasing
thcorctical sophistication rcduccs the range of the unpredictablc, it
is no morc possiblc for social sciclltists to rctrodict the past in detail
than it is for thcm to prcdict the future. The cxplanation ofthe past is
thus sccn as bcing of ncccssity idiographic, cven though general
principles must bc invoked to support arguments in every possiblc
instance.
Historical knowlcdgc, in the scnx of ~lndcrstandinghow and why
spccific socictics dcvcloped as thcy did in thc past, is csscntial for
explaining thc currcnt statc of socictics around thc world. Because
only archaeology and documentary history provide the evidence
required to delineate cultural development in the past, they arc
essential for understanding thc historical background of the data
which all of thc othcr social scicnccs analysc. The growing realization that this is so is slowly providing thc basis for a ncw and
bctwccn archacology and ethnology. In
complementary rclatio~lsh~p
this relationship archacology docs not try to emulate ethnology but,
by studying the dcvclopment of co~lcrctcsocial systems, provides an
indispensable basis for producing rcliablc gcncralizatiolls about
structure and changc. Far from being pcriphcral to thc othcr social
sciences, archacology and history arc crucial for understanding
them.
Dcspitc thcsc dcvclopn~cnts,mainstream American proccssual
of divcrsity
The cxpla~latio~l
A history of arcl~aeologicalthouglit
problematical.
The study of the symbolic meaning of material remains during
recent millennia has been facilitated by the dircct historical
approach. R. L. Hall (1979) has drawn upon ethnographic and
etl~nol~istorical
material concerning native religious bcliefs and symbolism collected in eastern North America since the seventeenth
century to explain thc structure of Adcna burial I I I O L I I I ~ Sin that
rcgion over 1,500 ycars carlicr, as wcll as why ccrtain classcs of
artifacts wcrc included in latcr Middlc Woodland burials. George
Hamcll (1983) h,ls used rcg~~l,l~-itics
in historically rccordcd Iroquoian, Algonkian, and Siouan myths to cxplain thc significancc
of the inclusion of natural crystals, objects made from marine shell
and native copper, and certain other materials in eastern North
American burial contexts for over 6,000 ycars, from late Archaic
times into the historical period. Both of thcsc anthropologists offcr
detailed syn~bolicexplanatio~lsof rcgularities in burial customs for
which no cross-cultural gcncralizations could account. The main
problem that is poscd by this work is that of verifiability. In the cases
of Hall and Hamcli, proof rcsts upon thc applicability of analogies
drawn bctwccn ethnographic and archacol~gicaldata that thcrc are
sound rcasons to believe are l~istoricallyrelated. Hamell's evidence is
particularly convincing becausc there is strong proof in the archacological record of continuity in the use of these materials from their
earliest appearance into the historical period. In recent years San
ethnography has bee11 used to indicate the shamanistic significance
of much southern African rock art and the mcaning of specific
symbols, such as thc eland (Schrirc ct al. 1986: 128). Yct in his study
A history of arcl~acologicalthought
how other types of information can be combined with archaeological data to promote a bcttcr undcrstanding of the past. The
result will be a still broader and morc enriched version of contcxtualism. Implemc~ltingthis sort of approach requires cultivating a
wider range of cultural i~ltercststhan have been associated with
processual archaeology. In their book on thc Inca town of Hudnuco
Pampa, Craig Morris and Donald Thompson (1985: 58-9) are
content to describe the ushnu or platform in the celitrc of the town as
life. While thcy discuss its
a structure rclatcd to aspects ofcercmo~~ial
use in statc ceremonies, thcy do not note that the ushnu was
symbolically the place where the powcrs of heaven and earth met and
that control of these powers was a central claim of thc statc (Gasyarini and Margolics 1980: 264-80).
Avzhaeolog;y as itself
In mainstream Wester11 archaeology there has been a growing
awarcncss of the distinctive qualities of archaeological data and of
thc nccd to understand these qualities if archaeology is to provide
rcliablc informatio~labout human bel~aviour.In England this has
taken thc form of an enhanced awareness of the differences between
arcl~aeologicaland historical mcthods (Clarke 1968: 12-14) and in
America a growing co~lvictionthat arch,lcology is different from
ethnology and the othcr social scicnccs. Thc most obvious difference
is that prchistoric archacology is the only social science that has n o
direct access to information about human behaviour. Unlike economists, political scientists, sociologists, and ethnologists, archaeologists cannot talk to the people they study or observe thcir
activities. Unlike historians they have no written accounts of what
human beings thought or did in prchistoric times. That must be
inferred as far as this is possible from the remains of what they made
and uscd.
It has long been recog~lizedthat the archaeological record normally contains a far from complete sample of the material remains of
the past. In 1923, John Myrcs (1923a:2) observed that it consisted of
thc equipment which the people 'of each generation were discarding'. In Archaeology and Society, Grahame Clark (1939) examined in
grcat dctail factors that influence the preservation of archacological
data. I11 thcir initial cntl~usiasm,New Archaeologists tended to
--
----
50
A history of arcl~aeologicalthougl~t
Conclusions
The growing realization that archaeology is methodologically
diffcrcntiatcd from thc othcr social scicnccs because of its inability
to obscrve human behaviour o r speech first hand, particularly as
rcprcscntcd by Binford's middlc-rangc theory, closely parallcls thc
arguments advanced by Klcjn and his associatcs in thc Soviet Union
that archaeological data first must be understood in their own right
bcforc thcy can be used to study historical problems. I n both cases
thc qucstion arises whether a body of strictly archaeological theory
that is concerned with inferring' human bchaviour from archaeological data can be more objective than high-level theories that are
concerned with explaining human behaviour and are demonstrably
influenced by archaeologists' responses to contemporary social
issues. That archaeologists around the world, regardless of their
political orientation, appear to be able to adopt each other's interpretive innovations while maintaining differcnt high-level views of
human behaviour, suggests that to some degree middle-range
thcory and the opcrations uscd to infcr human bchaviour from
archacological data may bc rclativcly uninflucnccd by social biascs.
Yct thc formulation of middlc-rangc thcory involves the use of
conccpts that acquire thcir significance in social settings. This indicates that the differentiation between middle-range and general
theory may not be as great in that respect as many archaeologists
believe.
Although a fcw archaeologists maintain that deterministic forms
of evolutionism are 'returning t o center stage' (Dunnell in Rindos
1984: ix), most American and Western European ones seem to be
increasingly convinccd that human behaviour is complex and that
accounting for its development requires nothing less than
cxplaining t11c course of human history in all of its bewildering
diversity and spccificity. In thcir morc extrcmc manifcstations, thcse
developments are moving in the direction of historical particularism, a doctrine that is in accord with the intellectual obfuscation and
despair about effecting constructive change that are currently
rampant in Amcrican popular culture. Yct most American archac367
topic. It is also uncertain whether concepts, such as planning, intentionality, and foresight, will play a significant role in understanding
cultural change within either a materialist or a non-materialist
framework, since they are theoretically compatible with both. For
them to do so, archaeologists will have to adopt a much more critical
role with rcspcct to their social milicu than is currently thc case.
Whatever happens, the growing sense of the unity and complementarity of historicism and evolutionism in Western archaeology should allow archaeological explanation to move beyond the
vulgar materialism of processual archaeology, the stcrile idealism of
historical particularism, and the ersatz Marxism of the critical and
structuralist approaches. This moderate shift, following a short
pcriod whcn nco-evolutionism was in thc ascendant, would contrast
with the radical swing from unilinear evolutionism t o historical
particularism at the end of the nineteenth century and the long
periods during which each of these two extreme positions was
dominant. If a similar radical swing does not occur today, it is at
least partly because archacologists have learned from expcricnce the
unproductivcncss of thcsc dichotomous and extreme views of
human behaviour. This saggests that a body of procedures for
inferring human behaviour has dcvclopcd within Wcstcrn archacology t11.1t is now sufficiently mature to influence how it intcrprcts
its d,lt,l, sometimes in opposition to cxtcrnal beliefs and values.
CHAPTER I 0
We have now reached the point where we can discuss the significailcc of the history of archaeology for understanding the nature
of archaeological interpretation and assess the discipline's relative
degree of objectivity or subjectivity. These questions are relevant for
dctcrrni~lingthe role that archacology can aspire to play in human
history. Is it restricted to rcflcctiilg society and passively participating in the political movements that transform our lives or can it,
as Childc (1946b, 1947b) hoped, play an important part alo~lgsidc
the study of history in creating a more objective 'science of progress'
that will help to elucidate major social issues and guide humanity
towards a better future?
(Deagan 1982: 167) and Binford (1981: 28) objects that it cannot be
the central focus for archaeology 'since the archaeological record
contains no direct information on this subject whatsoever!' Daniel
(1975: 370-6) has argued that to restrict the discipline to the study of
material remains would be to cultivate a new artifact-centred antiquarianism. Most archaeologists continue to regard archaeology as a
means to study human bchaviour and cultural change in the past,
although they are far from agreed about what is involved in doing
SO.
Thcsc various definitions of the ultimate goals of archaeology
have significailt implications for establishing the scope of what are
considered to be archaeological activities. Traditionally archaeology
hw bccil e ~ ~ i ~with
~ ~ tthe
e drccovcry, analysis, and intcrprctatio~lof
the material remains of the human past. Yet archaeology has always
extended beyond these limits. N o one has ever considered replicative experiments as other than archaeological. Although strictly
speaking they d o not study material from the past, their relevance for
archaeological interpretation, and for it alone, is unquestioned. O n
the other hand, while arcl~aeologistshave long relied on ethnographic analogies to interpret archaeological data, only recently has
the carrying out of major project; of ethnoarchaeological research in
an effort to learn more about relations between material culture and
human bchaviour been regarded as integral to arcl~aeology(Binford
1978; R. Gould 1978, 1980; P. Watson 1979; Hodder 198zb). It can
equally be considered as an ethnographic activity carried out by
archaeologists. Schiffer (1976: 8-9) has added to these activities the
study of matcrial objects in ongoing cultural systems in an effort t o
describe and explain present human behaviour (see also Reid et al.
1974). This includes research ~ u c has William Rathje's (1974)
Garbage Project, which employed tecl~niquesof archaeological
analysis to study changing pattqrns in the use and disposal of
resources within the modern city of Tucson, Arizona. While they
admit that archaeological methods and expertise are employed in
such analyses, far fewer archaeologists are prepared to view research
of this sort as an integral part of their discipline. Most archaeologists
continue to regard studying the past as an essential attribute of
archacology.
Yet, while each of the above goals has implications concerning
priorities in archaeological research, they are not mutually exclusive.
discover in 1492, or had it contained n o gold and silver and populations to mine these metals, there is n o doubt that the subsequent
cconon~icand political development of Europe would have been
very different (Marx 1906: 823-4). It has also become increasingly
obvious that, because of this, ethnologists must understand the
historical significance of the data that they use to generalize about
human bchaviour before the significance of thesc generalizations can
be understood. Finally, it is being recognized that to refuse to
consider regularities significant if they are not universal ones is t o
ignore and bclittle large and important areas of human experience. If
structuralist claims concerning the role played by cultural patterns in
moulding human bchaviour are cvci~partially correct, such refusal
may severely limit the ability of archaeologists to explain why
change has taken place. Attempts to understand numerous cultural
sequences in all of their idiosyncratic complexity will also lead t o the
recognition of unsuspected regularities in cultural behaviour that
can contribute to a more detailed understanding of evolutionary
processes. The elaboration of world-systems theory appears to be a
significant niovc in that direction. All of this indicates the bankruptcy of the traditional dichotomy between history and evolution.
Nomotlictic gc~icralizatio~ls
and historical cxpla~iationsare indissolubly linkcd proccsscs, ncithcr one of which can make progress
without thc othcr or bc rcduccd to thc othcr.
These arguments also suggest some major limitations on the role
of covering laws in archaeological explanation. Many evolutionary
generalizations may be formulated inductively as a result of detailed
efforts to interpret individual cultural sequences and then raised to a
higher level of significance after their cross-cultural applicability is
noted. Because of the overlapping nature of many competing highlcvcl theories of human behaviour, it often remains unclear which of
thcm best accounts for such empirical generalizations. It may further
be argucd that the ultimate task of evolutionary theory, and the
standard by which it must be judged, is its ability to explain what has
happened in the past, as revealed through idiographic studies, rather
than to construct hypothetical schemes of development that are
invariably too general to predict what actually happened in the past
(Murdock 19jgb).
For explaining specific historical events or sequences of change,
the approaches that Wesley Salmon (1967, 1984; Salmon et al. 1971)
and Merrilee Salmon (1982) have called 'statistical-relevance' explanation and William Dray (1957) has discusscd as 'how possibly'
cxplanations arc csscntial. Thcsc should not be vicwcd as an alternative to dcductivc explanation sincc both cxtensivcly employ arguments of this sort. An important charactcristic of 'how possibly'
cxplanations is thc reconstruction of a chain of cvcnts, accompanicd
by an effort to account for thcsc cvcnts ~ n the
d scqucncc in which
thcy occurrcd. Explanations ideally should be bascd on wcllcst~blishcdlaws of hum.ln b c h a v ~ o ~althoug11
~r,
common sc~lscmust
often bc L I S C ~as .I 'filler' bcca~~sc
of the lack of such thcory. Many
answers to questions that arise as part of 'how possibly' explanations
take thc form of additional data that climinatc one or morc alternative possibilitics (Dray 1957: 156-69). The concept of archaeological explanations taking the form of alternative possibilities, some
of which eventually may be eliminated by new data, is a corollary of
this approach (Chambcrlin 1944; G. Isaac 1984). I11 due coursc new
archacological findings or research in othcr fields also may help to
providc generalizations that can replacc common-sense or empirical
solutions to problems.
As the result of a declining preoccupation with neo-evolutionary
thcory, therc has also bccn In rcccnt years a widening appreciation
that a holistic knowledge of what has happcncd to specific groups of
pcoplc in thc past is a matter of great humanistic as wcll as scientific
interest. Arcl~acologicalstudics havc rcfuted the idea, sustained if
not crcated by nineteenth-century anthropologists, that non-literate
pcoples wcrc primitive and unchanging. Scholars in emerging
nations in Africa and elsewhere look to archaeology to provide
knowledge of their pre-colonial dcvelopmcnt and treat archaeology
as a vital instrument of historical research. In North America,
Australia, and othcr parts of thc world whcrc nativc pcoplcs havc
bccn ovcrwhclmcd by Europcan scttlcmcnt, thc image of thc
'unchanging savage' has bccn dcmonstratcd, with thc help of
archacological data, tb have bccn a myth that dcvcloped as part of
thc proccss ofEuropean colonization. In this contcxt thc notion that
archaco~o~ical
data-should bc uscd only to formulate and test as an
cnd in thcn~sclvcsa potpourri of general thcorics about human
bchaviour and cultural changc is increasingly being viewed as not
only conceptually inadequate but also neo-colonialist and insulting
to the Third World and to nativc pcoplcs (D. Miller 1980; Langford
&
Relativist critiques
Because ~rchaeologydeals with co~nplcxphenomena and is not an
expcr~mcntaldiscipline, it is particularly vulnerable to what is
acccptcd as truc at any one time being whatever appears to be most
rcasonablc to cach successive generation of archaeologists. They
may establish sound correlations, weed out logical inconsistencies,
and dcmonstratc that acccptcd interpretations d o not accord with
new data. Yet a historical survey reveals that interpretations are
often subtly influenced by social and personal preconceptions of
reality that preclude an awareness of the full range of alternative
explanations that would allow more cdmprehensive formal testing
and dcternlining the actual limits within which a generalization
holds true. In many instances neither adequate data nor strong
enough correlations arc available to counteract such biases. Under
thcsc circumstances the diffcrcncc bctwce~la nomothetic gcncralization and an informal argument by analogy is by no mcans clcarcut.
As archacologists bccomc more aware of the complexity of what
thcy have to explain, they also become more interested in learning
how and to what extent their experience of the present influences
their interpretations of the past. Many see the milieu in which they
work affecting both the questions they ask and the answers that they
are predis osed to regard as reasonable. It is perhaps deceptively
easy to sho that throughout the world the interpretation of
archaeological vidence is influenced by specific social, economic,
and political co ditions, as well as by the tendency for individuals
and groups to promote their own interests by representing selfish
goals as altruistic ones. It can also be documented that in a very
general fashion analogous social situations independently have
encouraged similar treatments of archaeological data. In particular
in the Western and Third Worlds these interpretations reflect the
political and economic concerns of the middle classes, as expressed
in various cxpansivc and dcfcnsivc postures. In addition, archacological intcrprctations arc influcnccd dircctly by gcndcr prcjudiccs,
cthnic concerns, the political control of rcscarch and publishing, thc
financing of archacological activities, gcncrational conflicts among
rescarchcrs, and the idiosyncratic influcnccs of charismatic archacologists. Thcy arc also influcnccd by socicty indirectly through
analytical modcls that are offcrcd by the physical, biological, and to a
still greater degree the social sciences, as well as by the continucd
acceptance of cstablishcd archacological explanations, the outmoded character of which has not yet become apparent.
Yct simplc correlations bctwccn archacological i~lterprctations
and social conditions arc cncountcrcd only rarcly. Most intcrprctations arc not straightforward rcflcctions of such conditions but
vcrsions of the past crcatcd by archacologists trying under spccific
historical circu~nstanccsto promotc or dcfcnd prcfcrrcd social intcrcsts. Thcsc interests arc varied and each of thcm can be supported in
many diffcrcnt ways. Racial doctrines can be used to promotc
national unity or to justify colonial aggression. Strongly hcld rclig-.
ious bclicfs can be hcld rcsponsiblc for retarding t~chnological
progress or hailed as a major factor promoting cultural dcvclopmcnt. The options that arc sclcctcd rctlcct the spccific balance of
s the relationship of particular
interests in individual c u l t ~ ~ r cand
archacologists to thcsc intcrcsts. Such considerations not only play a
major rolc in shaping variations in archacological pr.~cticcbut also
respond to changing social conditions. The tendency for archacological intcrprctation to bc influcnccd by socicty docs not appear to
bc diminishing as archaeology bccomcs morc thcorctically sophisticatcd, as somc archacologists have suggested it would (Clarkc 1979:
154).Instcad it appears to remain one of archaeology's permanent
fcaturcs.
At worst this could mean that thcrc is no past to study, not only in
tlic undcniablc positivist sense that what wc interpret is mcrcly 'thc
marks of thc past in the prcscnt' but also in accord with Collingwood's morc profound definition of history as a discipline in which
onc can only rclivc thc past in one's own mind. This implies that
tlicrc is no way in which thc archaeologist o r historian can vcrifiably
reconstruct thc past as it actually was. Yet Gellncr (1985: 134) points
out that niost archacologists bclicvc that 'thc past was oncc prcscnt,
as t l ~ pvcscnt,
c
and it W;IS rc;~I'.Thcy arc convinced that thc things
pcoplc did in thc past rcally happened and that thcir having happened has playcd a significant rolc in shaping thc archacological
rccord that wc study. The past thcrcforc had, and in that scnse
retains, a rcality of its own that is indcpcndcnt ofthc rcconstructions
and explanations that archacologists may givc of it. Morcovcr,
because the archacological rccord, as a product of thc past, has bccn
shaped by forccs that arc indcpcndcllt of our own bclicfs, thc
cvidcncc that it providcs at lcast potentially can act as a constraint
upon archacologists' imaginations. T o that cxtcnt thc study of thc
past differs from writing a work of fiction. Thc aim of archaeology
can thus bc to rccovcr knowlcdgc of what has bccn forgottcn. Yct
the crucial questions remain how far wc can g o in acquiring an
objcctivc undcrstanding of thc past and how ccrtain wc can bc of thc
accuracy of what wc bclicvc we know about it, givcn thc propensity
of value judgcmcnrs to colour our intcrprctations.
In rcccnt years prchistorit archacology has shifted from a naivc
positivism t o a morc far-rcaching acccptalicc of rclativism than at
any time in t l ~ cpast. After scvcral decades of positivist optimism, a
growing number of archncologists arc prcpi~rcdto bclicvc that thcy
can never achieve an objcctivc historical understanding of thc past.
Some of the niorc radical relativists havc concluded that bccausc of
this thcy havc the right to use archacological data for any purposc
that thcy wish. Thcy scc them as a source of aesthetic plcasurc o r as
providing material for f;i~itasics.aboutthe past that offcr pcrsonal or
public satisfaction. This vicw rcduccs archacology to thc status of
antiquarianism, which trcats archacological data as ends in themselves. Thcrc a y a l s o thosc who proposc to usc archacological data
as propaga da to promotc political or social causcs, which arc
usually i cntificd as bcing of a Icft-wing or populist varicty. Yct thc
histor of archaeology indicates that thc political causcs that archacologists have willingly promotcd and supportcd, including Nazism,
havc as oftcn bccn harmful to humanity as thcy havc been constructive. Archacology is currently bcing uscd to support somc curiously
reactionary positions, as cvidcnt in thc work of Graliamc Clark and a
few American archacologists. While somc scholars find thc intcllcctual cgalitaria~lismof cxtrcmc rclativism appcalitig, it cncouragcs
a philosophical nihilism in which not only 'anything goes' but also
archacology can bc uscd to support 'any causc.
The qucstion that archacologists face is thcrcforc not whcthcr
*$
A history of arcl~aeologicalthought
'
Internal dialo~ue
Archaeologists havc also made dramatic advanccs in inferring
human bchaviour from archacological data, cspccially with respect
to tcclinology, subsistence, csclian~c,rcsidcncc patterns, nnd some
aspects of political organization. This contributes to a more comprchcnsivc and disciplined undcrstanding of what has happened in
thc past. Many of these advanccs utilize analytical methods that
analysis to
originate in the physical sciences, such as trace-elc~i~cnt
identify the spatial movement of raw materials. Yet Hoddcr (1984-b)
has dcrnonstratcd that such data arc insufficient to rcvcal the social
l i goods wcrc transported. In cooperation
contexts within ~ ~ h i cthese
with zoologists, archaeologists have tried tlirough the analysis of the
age, size, and sex variations of different animal species to determine
how prehistoric hcrds were nlanagcd or what sort of hunting practices wcrc followcd. These studies have become of major importance
as part of efforts to determine whether early hominids were
big-gamc hunters or mcrcly scavengers (Binford 1984). Likewise the
identification of population movements and even patterns of comon advanccs in the physical
munity exogamy rclic~~increasingly
anthropological analysis of human slzclctal remains (ICenncdy 1981;
Molto 1983), while the cco~lomicand political i~~terprctation
of site
distributions e ~ ~ ~ p l techniques
ops
of spatial analysis that were pionccrcd in economics and geography (Hoddcr and Orton 1976).
The bchavioural interpretation of archacological data, whether
produced directly by archaeologists or as a rcsult of physical and
387
duction of empirical generalizations, is truly international and displays a pattern of growing elaboration.
This internationalism is particularly evident in tlic convergent
trends exhibited by Western and Sovict archacology since the 195os,
despite their commitment to diffcring high-level paradigms. From
this convergence 3 number of important lessons can bc Icurncd. In
the early stagcs o f its cicvclopmcnt, Soviet archaeologj~rcjcctcd
traditional culture-historical approaches and emphasized the interpretation of archacological data in tcr~iisof economic and social
bcliaviour as well as tlic analysis of social change. Sovict archacologists pioneered the systematic investigation of settlement archaeology and of modern use-wear analysis. Only recently have they
recognized the importance of systematic typology and of processes
such as diffusion and migration for explaining the archaeological
record. In contrast, since the rg~os,Western archaeologists, who for
a long time were concerned almost exclusively with typology, diffusion, and migration as the key elcmcnts of tlic culture-historical
approach, have paid growing attention to the societal factors promoting cultural change. Both Sovict and Western archaeologists
have displayed a growing interest in ecological interpretations. Each
of these elenients is of demonstrable importance for achieving a
more rounded understanding of the behavioural significance of
archacological data.
It appears that archacology everywhere has a package of topics
that must be investigated if the full range of information about
human bchaviour is to be extracted from its data. In earlier times,
and still today to a lesser extent, different kinds of data are studied
selectively by different scliools of archacology. The order in which
different modes of analysis are adopted in particular research traditions also seems to be highly variable and to reflect the diffcring
values and political orientations of the various societies to which the
arcliacologists belong. Yet, as archacological research develops, it
becomes increasingly mident that such selectivity about low- and
middle-range theory is unproductive, even if archaeologists disagree
about the ultimate use that is to be madc of thcir data. It appears that
in the absence ofdogmatic idcological controls archaeologists in any
particular country eventually will adopt the complete range of
analytical concerns, at least so far as these are economically supportable. This suggests the recognition of a corpus of methods for
terns. Yet it quite properly urges the need for caution in assuming
the universality of particular forms of human behaviour. In applying
for archacologists to try to
uniformitarian concepts it is cssc~~tial
dctcrminc thc rangc of socictics to which a particular generalization
is applicable. At prcscnt, howcvcr, doing this remains more art than
scicncc.
Yet ~t IS clear that carefully invcstigatcd middle-rangc propositions applied in appropriate cases can help to reduce the subjective
elcmcnts involvcd in inferring human behaviour from archacological data. Thesc propositions d o not guarantee intcrpretations of
archaeological cvidencc against distortions resulting from the interests, valucs, or fantasies of archacologists but they d o provide a
scttlng in which intcrprct,~tions arc sr~bjcctcd to thc maximum
dcgrcc possiblc to thc co~lstraintsiiqposcd by archaeological cvidcncc. Where universal generalizations d o not apply, strong
argumcnts arc required to demonstrate that correlatio~tsbetween
material culture and some culturally specific behavioural pattern o r
belief arc valid. Such dcmonstrations frequcntly take the form of the
direct historical approach, whcrc cvidcncc of continuity in material
culturc is sccn as justifying thc extrapolation of associated aspccts of
bfhaviour and bclicfs from cthnographic cultures back into prc11' toric timcs. Yet to what cxtent would it be justified to cmploy
. wh t IS known about Chincsc scapulimancy in the Shang Dynasty to
intc rct protohistoric cvidcnce of scapulimancy among thc
Nask i of caster11 Canada? In part that would depend on what is
known about thc liistorical relations between eastern Siberia and
North America in terms of scapulimancy and perhaps shamanism in
general (Furst 1977; Chang 1983). The use of culturally specific
analogies is a ficld awaiting systematic d c v e l o p ~ ~ ~and
c n t one that is
vital if arcl~acologistsarc to understand the past in terms of culturally specific as well as gencral aspects of human behaviour.
,- ,
pattcrns, hicrarchical social organization, and some aspects of political organization. T o appreciate the progress of archaeology sincc
the 195os, one has only to compare current inferences about human
bchaviour in prchistoric timcs with Childc's gloomy prognostications about what was possiblc in The Prehistoly ofEuropean Society
(1958a), a book written when he fcrvcntly wishcd to Icarn morc
about social and political bchaviour. Yct survcys of rcccnt advances
in archaeology suggest that morc progrcss continues to be made in
understanding prehistoric economics than soc~al o r g a n i ~ ~ ~ t i o n ,
while relatively few adv'unccs have bccn made in the study of prchistoric ideology. Among the papers dealing with the interpretation
of archacological cvidcncc in the first cight volumcs of Schiffcr's
Advnnces in Archaeological Method and Theory (1978-86) 39 per ccnt
dcal with data rccovery and chronology, 47 per cent with ecology,
demography, and cco~~omic
bchaviour, 8 per cent with social
bchaviour, and only 6 pcr ccnt with ideology, religion, and scientific
lu~owlcdgc.Thcrc is also a marked econornic bias in recent syntheses
of European prehistory (Jarman et al. 1982; Denncll1983; Champion
e t a/. 1984; Wells 1984; Barker 1985). This limitation has bccn
rcpcatcdly commcntcd on in rcccnt ycars and calls havc bccn madc
to dcfinc new and broadcr goals for archaeology in ordcr to ovcr-,
comc what is see11 as the domination of current rcscarch by
methodological concerns (Moore and Kccnc 1983).
As early as 1954 Hawkcs had postulated that thcrc was an
ascending scale of difficulty in interpreting archaeological data in
tcrms of human activities: technology was the easiest category,
while economy, social and politicai organization, and ideology
cxhibitcd escalating difficulties. Sincc thcn archacologists have
dcbatcd whcthcr this hicrarchy is inhcrcnt in the naturc of archacolog~caldata or results from thc failurc of archacologists to addrcss
rclcvant intcrprctativc problems. Binford (1972: 93-4) inspircd a
whole generation of American archacologists by asserting that it was
the rcsult of the mctl~odologicalshortcomings of archacologists. H c
argucd that all aspccts of sociocultural systcms were rcflected in the I
archacological rccord. Yet, during the last 25 years, processual
archacologists, including Binford (1978, rg81), have continued to
study mainly thc lower echclons of Hawkes' hierarchy.
Binford's view of what archaeology can d o is linked to his commitment to nco-evolutionism. Nco-evolutionists bclicvc that cul-
'
'\
"1
cates that human beings evolved from higher primate stock, most
about thc siglikely in Africa. Thcrc is considcrablc disagrecnlc~~t
nificance of morphological variations among early hominids and
which of them were the direct ancestors of modern human beings.
Yet it is clear that throughout most of their history human beings
and their horninid ancestors subsisted by eating wild plants and
animals. By late Lower Palaeolithic times hominids had spread from
troplcal regions at least into colder temperate climates and by the
Middle and Upper Palaeolithic pcriods somc human beings had
adapted to living in periglacial conditions. Prior to 40,ooo ycars ago
humans had made their way across a narrow stretch of occan into
Australia-New Guinea and by 11,000 ycars ago thcy had spread
throughout the New World fro111Bering Strait to Ticrra dcl Fucgo.
By the end of the last Ice Age, if not earlier, denser and more
sedentary collecting populations had developed in richer natural
environments in many parts of the world. Food collecting was
supplcrne~~ted
by food production, which gradually became the
principal source of nourishment in many parts of the Old and New
Worlds. There is no suggestion of a historical connection between
major zones where plant and animal domestication occurred and
s cadily growing cvidc~lccof conti~luitieswithin various rcgions
s gcsts that this was a process that happcncd indcpcndcntly in
ma ~yplaces. The sa~necan be said about the first civilizations, which
evo ed as some tribal agricultural societies were transformed into
hiera~cl~~cal,
class-based ones, dominated by a small elite who used
part of the surplus wealth thcy co~ltrolledto produce monumental
architecture and works of art that served as status symbols.
It is also clear that many societies did not advance through this
sequence. Some remained at the hunter-gatherer stage into modern
times, while occasionally agricultural o r pastoral societies adopted
hunter-gatherer economics. As some cultures grew more complex,
relations between neighbouring societies of differing sizes and often
with dissimilar economies became more common. Under certain
ecological conditions more complex societies were able to dominate
and exploit their less evolved neighbours, but in other situations
pastoral or swidden agricultural societies maintained their autonomy into modern times.
Historians and social scientists from Arnold Toynbee to Julian
Steward have also considered thc role played in human history by
'h,
past seemed anomalous and difficult to ,understand. O n other occasions ncw insights camc about as a rcsult of archacological discoverics. Michael Coc's demonstration that the Oln~cccivilization, which
flourishcd along thc Gulf coast of Mcxico, datcd to thc first millcnnium B.C. callcd into qucstion the long-held belief that early civilizations dcvclopcd only in arid rcgions whcrc irrigation was ncccssary for a g ~ - i c ~ ~ l (COC
t ~ l r eand Dichl 1980). Sincc thcn it has bccon~c
increasingly obvious that, bccausc of poor prcscrvation and difficultics of rcscarch, tropical-forest rcgions arc poorly rcprcscntcd in
studics of thc dcvcloprnent of civilization. Coc's discovcry also
callcd into qucstion ccrtain high-lcvcl evolutionary thcorics that had
attcmptcd to explain the origin of co~~lplcx
societies (Sandcrs and
Price 1968).
This indicates that erroneous interpretations ofwhat happened in
the past can be dctcctcd as a result of the discovery of new archaeological evidence, which contradicts previous conclusio~~s;an
awareness of ncw theories of human bchaviour, which provide fresh
insights into the meaning of archaeological data; and the development of middle-range thcory. The delibcratc construction and
testing of two or morc mutually exclusive interpretations of data can
enhance this process, a point noted long ago by archaeologists but
largely lost sight of as a rcsult of proccssual archaeology's insistence
on the importance of deductive cxplanations. In combination these
procedures incrcasc the capacity for thc constraints that are inhercnt
in thc evidence to countcract thc rolc playcd by subjectivc clcmc~~ts
in interpreting archaeological data. All but the most fanatical relativists will see the results of such a proccss of critical comparison and
rcintcrpretation tending in the direction of a morc objective understanding of the behavioural significance of archaeological data.
ally ruled out that they can be traced back to a common origin or
have come to be shared as a resdlt of diffusion. Yct parallels in thc
devclopn~c~it
of complex societies in distant parts of the world,
during periods when cultural connections between these regions
appear to have been extremely limited or non-existent, as well as in
rclationships bctwccn nciglibouring socictics at diffcrclit lcvcls of
dcvclop~ncntin lilally parts of the world, suggcst cross-cultural
regularities that no cxpla~latioliof human history or behaviour call
afford to ignore. On thc othcr hand, it has also bccomc clcar,
through tlic study of arcl~acologicalas wcll as ctl~nographicdata,
that thcrc arc important variations in social organiz~tionand cultural patterns among socictics at thc same level of dcvclopmc~ltin
different parts of the world that cannot bc accountcd for in terms of
neo-evolutionary theory. Both historical traditions and diffusion
clearly play a rolc in shaping not olily stylistic factors but also
significant aspects of economic, social, and political behaviour.
These observatio~issuggest that cultures are not as tightly intcgrated as evolutiollists have bclicvcd, in the scnsc that particular
changes in one aspect of a culturc arc likcly to bring about prcdictable changcs in othcr aspccts. Nor docs it appear that ally one
part of the cultural system plays an'ovcrwhclniingly prcdominant
y o l c in shaping the whole, contrary to what ecological and tccl~nolog~caldctcr~ni~lists
have claimed. 1f cit'hcr of tlicsc propositions wcrc
trb~c,tlicrc would be significantly less cultural variation than can be
obshved at a single point in time in thc cth~lographicrecord or over
long periods of time archaeologically.
This docs not rulc out a materialist approach to thc undcrstanding
of human history. It appears in lccepi~igwith what wc know about
biological evolutio~land human origilis to assumc that social cxistence has always played a primary rolc in shaping human consciousness and that the mode of productio~istrongly i~lfluenccsthc general
character of the social, political, and intcllcctual proccsses of life,
provided that it is understood that this signifies that the economic
basc (broadly defined) limits thc possibility of variation in othcr
aspects of human behaviour ratlicr than dictates what the nature of
that bchaviour will be. There is also no rcason to deny thc reciprocal
influence of thc supcrstructurc on thc basc, although the prccisc
nature and extent of this influence remains to be dcfi~icdand it may
r.
in particular, has
vary widely from one society to a ~ ~ o t h cChildc,
Future prospects
Subjective factors clearly influence the interpretation of archaeological data at every level. They are not merely a visible contaminant
that can be removed by a commitment to some allegedly morally
neutral code of science and morc specifically by proper procedurcs
\for testing hypotl~cscs,as the morc'ardcnt positivists suggcst. Thcy
mctimes function as a creative clcment in archaeology insofar as
th y serve as a major spur to research. Kossinna's commitment t o a
romantic and highly misleading belief in German ethnic and racial
superiority led him to devise new ways of studying significant spatial
patterning in archaeological data that archaeologists with very
different personal commitments haveicontinued to find useful. O n
the other hand less creative cycles can be observed in which, at least
partially in response to changing social, political, and economic
conditions, archacologists havc swung bctwcen cxtreme cvolutionary and culture-historical perspectives and between positions
that havc cithcr emphasized the biological basis of human bchaviour
or totally ignorcd it (Cartmill et al. 1986).
Yet, if subjective factors intervene at every level in the interpretation of the past, so too docs arc11acological cvidencc, which, at lcast
within the bounds of a co111111itmcnt to scientific methodology,
partially constrains and limits what it' is possible to believe about the
'r
the difficulty of conceiving of a satisfactory explanation for a particular form o f human bchaviour will vary according to the gcncral
theory tliat is C S ~ O L I S111
Cdue
~ . C O L I ~ S Cgrowing proble~nsin using a
particular gcncral theory to explain human bchaviour may lead
social scientists, including archaeologists, t o abandon that theory o n
the grounds that it is inefficient by comp.lrison with s o ~ i l alternative
c
o ~ i c .In this way the constraints o f cvidcncc can exert a sclcctivc
influcncc over gcncral thcorics. 011the other hand, subjcctivc
f k t o r s may lend social scientists to continue ~lsing3 particulnr
high-lcvcl theory long after its incfficicnc)l has bccn clcmonstratcd.
Such theories arc often modified and upgraded t o try to adapt them
to ncw circumstances. Only rarely arc high-level tlicorics dcfinitivclp
abandoned.
Yet it is a matter o f record that the views of modern socictics
about how they canic into being and change arc radically different,
not only from the divinely ordered world of tlic ancient Sunicrian
scribes but also from the creationist views that prcdomi~iatcdin
Wcstcr~i society zoo years ago. The findings of arcliacology,
I ~ o ~ v c v csubjccti\~cly
r
interprctcd, ha\.c altered humanity's perception of its history, its rclationsliip t o naturc, and its o w n naturc in
wa!ls that arc irreversible without the total aba~ldo~lrncnt
of the
scientific nicthod. Arcliacology is itself a product of social 2nd
economic change, but what it lias led us t o bclicvc about tlic past is
rnorc than a fanciful projection of contctnporarp social coliccrns into
the past. I t is ncithcr separate from society nor a mere rcflcctio~lof it,
but lias a role t o play in a rational dialoguc about the nature of
humanity, which a better understanding of the rclatio~ishipbctwce~l
archaeological practice and its social context will facilitate. By
hclpi~lgto expand our temporal and spatial frames of rcferencc,
archacology has irreversibly altered 'thc rangc and qua1it)r o f human
thought' (Bcckcr 1938: 2 5 ) .
'1-he fact that nrchacology car1 provide a growing number of
insights into tvhat llas liappc~lcdin the past suggests that it may
constitute an increasingly effective basis for understanding social
change. That in turn indicates that in due course it may also scrvc as a
guide for future dcvclopmcnt, not in the scnsc of prol~idingtechnocratic knowledge t o social pla~lncrsbut by helping people t o n u k c
rnorc infor~ncdchoices with respect t o public policy. In a world that
has bcconlc too dangerous for humanity t o rely on trial and error,
Bibliographical essay
(1984), Trigger (1984e), a n d Gallay (1986). Trends i n interpretative
l
a n d Kelley and H a n e n
methodology are discussed by M. S a l m o ~ (1982)
(1988). T h e m o s t comprehensive illustrations o f current trends in
archaeology are t h e fifteen volumes o f prc-circulated papers that ~ O L - I I I C ~
t h e basis for discussio~lsa t t h e World Archaeology Congress: Southa m p t o n 1986. Ucko's (1987) account o f that co~lferenceis a g o o d
reference for t h e current p o l ~ t i c i z a t l oo~f ~Western archaeologists.
REFERENCES
I
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INDEX
Ahhott, C:. C . , I Z O
cn)ss-cultur.il (holistic), 52-+. 59, 68. 83, 98.
'
Abcrcn>~iiby,John. 155
115-16. 146-7, 155. 258. 294. 326. 3343. 364
Abcrlc, I)a\fid, 362
cross-cultural (specific), 80. 86, 110. 115. 147.
Aborigines (Australi.i~i),28. loo, 113. 141-5,
,
266. 288, 364
146, 267
:
culturally specific (homology). 124, 154-5,
Acadani.1 Sinica (Bcijing), 175-6
258, 263, 267. 271, 288. 353. 364. 391. 402
accidcllts, 3s forces sllapillg ci~lti~ral
cha~igc, '
disti~igttislli~lg
allal~gicsti0111lio1llo1ogie~,
301-2. 319, 405
408
acculturation, 275,330, 334-6
nccd for, 366, 371, 396
Achculean epoch, 135, 237-8
problems in applying, 364, 390
Achilles, spear of, 30
sources. 372
Acosta, fos6 dc, 68
s u g g c ~ t i \ role
~ c for, 266. 301. 342, 379
acti\.ity areas (in archaeological sites). 276,
. total rcjcctioll of. 366
284-5
v~lidityot; 408
actualistic stildics, scc ctli~~oarchacology
analytical appr aches, 203, 386
Adam (first man), 33-4, 68. 91. 112
analytical dl ,/".
oly (Clarke),. 359, 385
Ad.ims, R . McC., 236, 28s. 312. 321
matomy. 246
A~icnaculture, lo+, 353
Anau (sitc). 163. 248
ncri.11 photography, 249, 424
Andcrsson. J. G . , 174-5
acsrhcticizing approaches in arcl~acology.13,
Aiiglcscy. 70
211, 353. 381
Antliropologic.il Socicty o f Tokyo. 178
Africa, political dc\rclopmcnts, 129. 161, 184,
antlirop~lo~p
376, 419
dcrclopmcnt as a discipline, fro, 125. 356.
African archaeology, 129-38, 184-5, 356, 420,
,
372. 419. 420
422
~OJ~S
111,
, 289, 296
Afrika.incrs. 131
liisto~?of, 415, 416-17
Agassiz, Louis, 112
rcjcctioll o f by Third World. 184
agclarca theory, 160, 191
sec also ethnology, social anthropology.
Agricola, Gcorgius, 53
physical anthropology
agriculture, see domcsticatioo, food
'antitms~tivis~i~,
sec rclati\,ism
production
alltiquarianism
Ainu, 179
antiquarian tendencies in modern
Alaska, 121. 363
archaeology, 146, 371, 381
Aldrovandi, Ulissc, 53
de\~clopmcnt,416-17
Alexander, John, 336
eighteenth-century impasse, 70-2. 83
Algonkian languages, 124, 191-2
F~ilurct o develop in solllc ci~lturcs.44
alphabet, origin of, 166
\'slue. 73,74
a l t ~ r n a t i \ ~hypotheses,
c
293, 300, 319, 362,,
.
see also Britain, China, Europe, Francc.
376-9, 400,406,408
Germany, Japan. Scandina\~ia,Scotland,
altcr~~ati\,c
proofs, 396
United States
Althusscr, L., 339
Antiquaries Collcgc (S\\,cdcn), 4 9
amateur arcliacologists, 128, 141, 406-7,
, ' antiquity o f human beings, 89-94, 98, 10-2,
420
'
418
Anierican Antiquarian Society, 106, 108
Angang (sitc), 42. 175
Anicrican Museum of Natural his to^?, 271
archaeological content (Scliifir). 360
American Philosophical Society. 106
Archaeological Society (Japan), 178
Anicrican Ke\,olutiol~,119
Arcliacological Survey o f India. 181
analogy
archaeologists
hiologic.~l,organic, 115, 157, 191. 219, 246,
r c c r u i t ~ i ~ c17,
~ ~177-8.
t.
210
322, 398
relations \\,it11 native pcop
,