Anth 321W Intellectual Background of Archaeology

1. Anth 321WIntellectual Background of Archaeology MWF 9:00-9:55AM 008 Life Sciences Bldg

2. IdealizedEssayScheme • Introduction • State the problem or question • Foreshadow the paper • Theory • Outline explanatory frameworks • Define expectations • Background • More detail regarding case study • Context of case study • Method • Techniques to evaluate expectations • Results • Articulate what the methods produce • Results are not a discussion, they are RESULTS (common error) • Discussion • Implications of the results are evaluated • How do results bear on expectations • Conclusion • Relate back to the general theory • What new expectations may arise?

3. Abstract Checklist • Motivation: Why do we care? • Problem: What is being solved? • Approach: How is problem solved? • Results: What is the answer? • Conclusions: What are the implications? http://research.berkeley.edu/ucday/abstract.html

4. Do • Help the reader understand what the essay is about. • Up front, state the problem or purpose of the essay. • The first sentence of is ideally a question. • Use headings to separate sections. • Restrict prose under a heading to the theme of the heading.

5. Do not • Rely on gimmicks and attempts to be cute or clever. • Use multiple metaphors. If metaphors are used, employ them sparingly. • Employ complex sentence structure • Use passive voice extensively

8. No archaeologist believes there is one true past. • How can this be? • Gamble’s (2001) two alternate paradigms: • culture history • anthropological archaeology

9. Culture history • Establishment of facts about the past • Data are given primacy, “data speak for themselves” • Often self-perceived as anti-theoretical • Often largely inductive, expectations aren’t tested. Data are ordered rather than brought to bear on expectations. • Ordering is still theoretical • Theories just implicit—chronologies are theoretical statements • Data that force revision of chronologies or reinforce existing chronologies are, in some senses, tests of theory.

10. Culture history • Explanations of Change • In-situ development/innovation • Migration • Diffusion

11. Three “new” archaeologies of North America • 1910s: the stratigraphic revolution • 1940s: cultural ecology • 1960s: processual archaeology

12. Teaching archaeology:A possible reason for archaeological revolutions? • US: four field or three field anthropology • Europe: history and humanities • Latin America: history or humanities

13. Processual Archaeology • Binford (1962) “Archaeology as Anthropology” • Explanations explicitly stated and tested • Culture as a means of adaptation • Technology, Economy, Ideology • Environmental Context • Where does change arise?

14. Processualism:Culture as extrasomatic adaptationChange not sui generis White Binford Ideology Economy Technology Environment

15. Pro • Clearly stated methods for linking behavior with archaeological data • Provided a starting point for a more reflexive approach • Con • Law-like approach to archaeology • Positivisim • Limits of middle range theory

16. Middle-Range Theory • A linking between large theoretical issues and data. • A focus on the archaeological record • Clear middle range theories help provide sound tests of theory with archaeological remains.

17. Feminist Archaeology • Explicit attempts to “see women” in the past were a relatively late development in archaeology • Processualists countered that clear methods were required. • Why aren’t such methods required to find males? • Gender is about socially constructed categories • “Gender doesn’t survive in the archaeological record” • Yet consider some “Laws” • Men hunt & women gather • Women make pots & men make plowshares • These laws tell us more about academic ideologies and cultural logic then they are inquiries of the past. • What one does not believe in one does not find. • Feminist and gender archaeology can help expose implicit assumptions that may shape interpretations.

18. Marxist Archaeology • Gordon Childe (1893-1957) • Marxist culture historian • Emphasized the relations of production • Reinterpretation of the three age system in terms of two socio-economic revolutions. • Neolithic revolution • Urban revolution

19. Anglo-American Marxist Archaeology • Marx is a starting point, not an end • Social relations are fundamental • Society is a whole, not parts • Contradiction and conflict are sources of change. The dialectic approach rejects the notion that society is a set of functional adaptations to external conditions. • Human action (praxis) is significant in creating history. Technological and environmental determinism are rejected. • People create knowledge, knowledge of the past depends on socio-political context. • Modern power relations are questioned.

20. Post-processual/Interpretive • Mosaic of theoretical positions and goals • No strict creed or intellectual messiah • What purposes are served by the creation of archaeological knowledge? Who is it for and how has it been used? • Material culture plays a role in how we make social relationships • Individuals must be a part of theories of material culture and social change • Archaeology has close explanatory ties with history