-
Postprocessual IAN HODDER
This essay draws some outlines for theories of social change in
which material culture is seen as actively and meaningfully
produced, and in which the indi- vidual actor, culture, and history
are central: It is not, therefore, intended to argue for an
archaeology of the symbolic order. The importance of the work of,
for example, Deetz (1977), Glassie (1 975), Wobst (1977),
Leori-Gourhan (1967), and Hall (1977) to the development of
symbolic archaeology has been outlined by Leone (1982). The concem
in this essay, however, is more with the social and historical
context of symbolic production and with an attempt to identify the
implications of the notion of the unity of meaning (belief) and
action. The sources for this latter interest are primarily outside
archaeology, in particular Giddens (1979) and Bourdieu (1977).
Other varied ideas taken from, for exam- ple, Piaget (1972), Geertz
(1973), Tumer (1969), Sperber (1975), and Douglas (1966) underline
the difficulty of writing a review in which an established ap-
proach or school is identified with its own archaeological
tradition. Rather a number of emerging trends in archaeology and
material culture studies are noted and their potential implications
within archaeology assessed.
INTRODUCTION
The conception of humanity underlying the behaviorism that
dominates the _ocial sciences, and archaeology to a greater extent
than most, can be described as passive. The key words within this
viewpoint are that people react to externa1
ADVANCES IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHOD AND THEORY, VOL. 8
Copyright O 1985 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of
reproduction in any form rese~ed.
ISBN 0-12-003108-6
-
2 IAN HODDER
stimuli such that their behavior reflects the rules and goals of
the wider society to which the individual is subordinate so their
culture serves the function of adapta- tion within and between
systems. I attempt below to justify these statements in relation to
archaeology by reference to particular authors, but for the moment
it may be helpful to identify some contrasts, despite the
oversimplification that is involved. The first characteristic of an
alternative viewpoint is that people are seen as active. They
actively negotiate social rules, creating and transforming the
social structure that is constructed by the individual. These
various contrasts (behavior/social action,
reflection/transformation, reaction/construction, soci-
etylindividual) are based on the passive/active distinction and are
closely linked to another, that between function and meaning.
The attempt to break down the split made in archaeology and the
social sciences between function and meaning, process and norm,
system and culture is the second characteristic of an alternative
viewpoint. In the behaviorist model, the reasons given by people
for their actions often appear irrelevant and in archaeology a
materialist bias at times emerges (see for example, Binford 1982;
Gould 1978). What people think is disregarded because the search is
for cross- cultural behavioral generalizations to which the
individual is subordinate. The functions of social institutions
with respect to their environments are discussed without reference
to meaning and cultural context. The behavioral position ap- pears
to suggest that one can understand behavior, be it of humans or
dogs, without going through any cognitive processes that are
supposed to lie in the actors. Within the contextual altemative
this split is denied because actions are seen as involving
intentions and an everyday knowledgeability that may be tacit or
unexpressed, but is nevertheless culturally constructed. The fact
that an item or institution functions to achieve an end
necessitates that an end exists (so involving human choice of
goals), and necessitates monitoring and judgement of the
suitability of the item or institution for its tasks. The unity of
meaning (belief) and action is claimed because, following Geertz
(1973:45-46), the individual is innately given only extremely
general response capacities that allow himlher great plasticity,
complexity, and effectiveness, but that lead to a dependence on
culture to organize human thought and existence. Without the
constructed, cul- tural world, behavior is seen by Geertz as being
virtually ungovemable, a mere chaos of pointless acts and exploding
emotions. "There is no such thing as a human nature independent of
culture" (1973:49).
Linked to the dichotorny set up between function and meaning is
that between objectivity and subjectivity. It is assumed within the
materialist conception of humanity that cross-cultural
generalizations can validly refer only to the visible products of
adaptive systems. Fact and theory are divorced and opposed (Ren-
frew 1982). But it can be claimed (Leone 1982; Renfrew 1983) that
we can make valid generalizations about how individuals act
meaningfully. Indeed, a11 state- ments about human behavior
necessarily involve reference to cultural attitudes,
I and observation of the material world is itself an active
process, a giving of meaning to experience. Fact and theory are not
opposed, they are intertwined. The final aspect of an alternative
viewpoint follows from the rest. Social change is historically
dependent. That is, it is subject to contextual, cultural
particularities. Any adequate understanding of social change must
take into account the knowledgeability of human actors, that is,
their monitoring and observation of the intended and unintended
consequences of their actions. Be- cause the dichotomies between
function and meaning, process and norm, objec- tivity and
subjectivity are to be broken down, the split between process and
history can be denied. The coping systems that individuals and
groups create are particular and unpredictable. Modem
archaeologists and social theorists are not the only individuals
who have tried to understand the actions of others. We must allow
that individuals in other places and other times are and have been
able to penetrate the "causes" of behavior and the "reasons" for
reactions. They are also, then, able to act otherwise and to change
the world through knowledgeable action. Because humans are
intelligent they are able to contrive novelty as part of the
process of transformation and negotiation. Each action has sense
only with reference to past actions. It does not exist within a
vacuum but within a historical context. While we can, as
scientists, interpret the actions of others, using gener-
alizations about the construction of meaning, and seeking to
understand the principles of human social relation; such
generalizations will be about the con- struction of difference,
about the way in which humans create for themselves unique cultural
experiences within specific historical trajectories.
The oppositions identified in these introductory paragraphs
indicate that devel- opment from the processual approach can be
contemplated. So far, however, I have simply provided some hooks,
key words, and ideas on which to hang alternative social theories.
The theories are centered around the notions of action, meaning,
unity of fact and theory, and history.
ASPECTS OF SOCIAL ACTION THEORY
Attempts have been made (Hodder 1982a,b) to outline and discuss
emerging components of a theory of social action. Such a theory or
group of theories has not yet been clarified within archaeology and
in relation to material culture. The following section of this
essay identified various aspects of theories that can be discussed
in relation to processual archaeology and that might be described
as postprocessual.
Belief and Action Each individual grows and learns by giving
meaning to experiences and by
interpreting those experiences in terms of his/her own
understanding and knowl-
-
Bi 4 iAN HODDER r.
edge. Helshe makes sense of the world and copes with it by
fitting it around general assumptions. The world is ego-centered
according to sets of values that work, for that individual, in the
practice of daily life. These systems of durable, transposable
dispositions, Bourdieu's (1977) "habitus" (see also Giddens 1979),
have a partly cognitive purpose. Geertz's (1973) view that it is
human
n L nature to depend on culture has already been referred to.
Sperber's (1975) cog- nitive account of symbolism emphasizes the
necessity for organization of memo- ry and responses through the
cultural world. But it is also recognized by such authors that
culture, though ideational, does not exist merely in someone's head
(Geertz 1973110). The oppositions set up within anthropology
between subjec- tive and objective, idealist and materialist, are
not helpful because it is through the actions of individuals that
cultural forms find articulation. Man creates him- self. The acts
of individuals are not determined by a cultural code because the
culture is itself constructed in those acts. Neither do the
internal, intrinsic rela- tionships of the code determine their
meaning. Rather, artifacts and social acts draw their meaning from
the roles they play, their use, and in the daily patterns of
existence. Each moment is created. Each act and each artifact exist
only after their construction. They have to be produced, to be
"brought off," and it could have been otherwise. The notion of
social action involves a unity of meaning and experience, subject
and object, interpretation and observation. It involves the idea of
the development of understanding through construction (Piaget
1972).
Material and Historical Context Individuals learn how to cope in
the world and they find that certain strategies
work for them and make sense to them. Their goals develop in
terms of the values generated within a cultural context and within
a particular social and material environment. A11 societies, animal
and human, have divisions of labor. For humans, these divisions
have to be constructed and given meaning within a cultural and
historical context. As individuals grow and make sense of the world
in which they find themselves, they develop a value system that
works for their material interests, and that disposes them to act
in the future in particular ways (e.g., see Willis 1978). This is
not to give primacy to the material conditions of existence, but to
argue that those conditions result from practices produced by
cultural dispositions that are themselves reproduced in those
practices (Bourdieu 1977). So individuals find that they accomplish
certain things by using and manipulating the cultural world in
specific ways. They find they can make sense of their existence by
certain attitudes and strategies. Although different people cope
with and construct their similar situations in different ways,
there is a commonality of interests within groups and, within a
historical tradition, a com- monality of ways of coping. This
commonality of interests and cultural disposi- tions-is both
produced because of a similarity in material conditions within
a
- .
POSTPROCESSUALARCHAEOLOGY
historical context and reproduced by the sharing of views in
order to further material interests.
Negotiation No group of shared interests is independent, but
exists in reference to others
(as in relations of parent-child, mother-father). The interests
and coping sys- tems of individuals contrast with but are dependent
on the material and cultural orientations of individuals in other
groups. Social experiences have to be con- structed and coped with
from many different standpoints, from different points of view. The
social world is thus negotiated by individuals with different
expecta- tions and experiences. Absolute control by one individual
over another or by one group of individuals over another is rarely
achieved solely by physical might. The prisoner isolated with only
his naked body in an empty cell can still act with great social
effect and can negotiate his position, by smearing his excretions
on the wall or by refusing to eat. He still has power over his
jailors, if in a rather special sense. A manager may have power
over a worker, but that worker may have control in the arena of
herlhis own body and leisure. Each group (e.g., management and
worker) has different expectations and, from their own point of
view, they may use each other to achieve their own ends. These are
not false ideologies. Individuals are able to monitor the effects
of their social actions and of their understanding of the world.
People are not duped, although they may be thought to be duped when
considered from an opposing point of view. Actions are evaluated
according to different expectations and the cultural framework that
makes the actions possible is negotiated and played out in the
practice of the lived world. Control through physical dominance or
through restricted access to the means of production is only part
of a broader picture in which the position of individuals in the
world is negotiated.
Material Culture Material symbols and changing styles of
artifact manufacture play a central
part in, for example, the analyses of Deetz (1977) and Glassie
(1975). But as Leone (1982:746) suggests, the historical context is
not fully incorporated in such studies. It is possible, on the
other hand, to see material culture as involved in historical
change through the negotiation of meaning in social action.
Material culture patterning evokes and forms values and
expectations. It is through the arrangement of the material
world-the association of forms and uses-that the social world is
produced and reproduced. Material culture provides the environ-
ment within which individuals find their places and learn the
places of others, their goals and expectations. Yet it also
produces new situations and is, with language and gesture, the
medium through which individuals achieve their ends.
-
IAN HODDER
Control over material culture (e.g., the organization of space
and artifacts within a house) gives power and control over others
in that the values and expectations of others can be changed or
negotiated by providing a world of experience that creates new
associations and evokes new relationships and values. But, again,
individuals are not duped by the material world. Rather, they make
sense of it in terms of their own interests. The same item can mean
prestige or ridicule, control of freedom when used in different
contexts or when viewed by different people in the same
context.
According to the dynamic notion of social action preferred here,
change is inherent and continua1 in the mundane actions of daily
life, forming and creating attitudes often at a nondiscursive
level. There should be no dichotomy between statics and dynamics.
Social position is continually negotiated in the rela- tionships
between individuals and groups with different interests and with
differ- ent conceptions of those interests. There are, of course,
different scales of change, and the innovations of the competent
social actor may be copied because they work in new situations
brought about by the intended or unintended conse- quences of
actions. Revolutionary change is not different in nature from the
gradual alteration of house layout or other minor aspects of
material culture patteming. It may be more explicitly sought, it
may have more far-reaching effects and different extemal
conditions, but in both cases the position of indi- vidual~ in the
world is altered through the negotiation of meaning, and relations
of power and dominance are realigned along their various
dimensions.
As already intimated, the intentionality of individuals that
must play a central role in social theory is based on stocks of
discursive and implicit knowledge about how the world is put
together. The interpretations of actr and symbols given by social
actors themselves do not constitute an explanation of them. As
Sperber (1975) demonstrates, symbols are not tied to
interpretations in any one- to-one relationship. Rather, the
interpretation that adds to the symbol is itself to be explained as
a social act. The elaboration of explicit meaning is a social ploy,
and when associated with restrictions on access to knowledge can
have powerful social effect. The interpretations given to the
anthropologist are part of a broader picture of evocations, many of
them implicit, that the anthropologist hopes to discem. The
archaeologist, relying on general theory derived from such an-
thropological studies, must acknowledge that much material-culture
patteming of the pots and bones type is organized by implicit
knowledge that is often ambiguous and multivalent but is
nonetheless a central part of social action.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY
An archaeological application of the ideas sketched above is
referred to below. For the moment I wish to explore some of the
implications of an alternative
outlook for recent developments in archaeology that go under the
various head- ings of processual, new, and behavioral. It is
realized that many of those referred to here in these categories
would deny any contemporary association and would point to
differences in scope of the authors involved. Denials and
dissatisfaction (e.g., Fiannery 1982; Meltzer 1979; Salmon 1978;
Trigger 1978; Whyte 1978; Wylie 1982) perhaps foreshadow the
emergence of postprocessual phase. What- ever the divergences of
opinion between modern non-culture-historical, pro- cessual
authors, I would claim that many contemporary archaeologists have a
notion of humanity as passive in the way outlined at the beginning
of this essay, and I hope to justify this claim in what
follows.
The Individual and Society Within the processual view men and
women often appear as determined by
and within a larger system. The aim is to reach not the Indian
behind the artifact, but the system behind both Indian and artifact
(Flannery 1967). Flannery (1967) believed that the process approach
involved moving decisions about behavior farther away from the
individual. It is argued by the process school that there are
systems so basic in nature that culture and individuals are
powerless to divert them. This trend towards determinism is linked
to the quest for laws and scien- tific method as is examined
further below, but the underlying conception is of the individual
controlled by processes that are stochastic within determined con-
! straints. Behavior is predictable because there are necessary
linkages between the components of sociocultural systems, and
between material culture and human behavior (Binford and Sabloff
1982:138). Theory building is seen as being concemed with
discovering deterministic causal relationships (Binford 1982:161).
It can be claimed that within any social situation the results of
volitional acts are predictable, provided only that enough
information is available and the analyst is able enough. However,
it is suggested here that while behavior can be interpreted after
the event, it cannot be predicted, for the following reasons.
First, it is acknowledged that predictability of human behavior
occurs within specific cultural contexts because actions and
responses are mediated by cultural values. Prediction is, then,
possible, but only "from the inside." Sec- ond, however, the
knowledgeability of lay actors includes the ability to discem
predictability of responses within historical traditions. Such
knowledge can be used to contrive power and social change. The
generation of the unpredictable is a social process and individuals
create laws by their activities. As anthropologists we cannot make
general deterministic laws about human behavior but we can identify
the general principies by which individuals construct their worlds
within culture-historical contexts. Some such generalizations will
be near universais (the incest taboo, or Sperber's theories of
symbolic evocation and focalization), and most will be historically
contextual, but none are deterministic.
-
Culture and Process Within the process school the individual was
submerged beneath systemic
exigencies perhaps because of a concem with scientific control
and the desire to make a relevant contribution to the ruming and
administration of a modem world. In the same way the particularity
and otherness of culture needed to be denied, to be replaced by the
universally predictable character of human and animal behavior. The
rarity of occurrence of the word culture in the new Ameri- can
archaeological literature is remarkable and Flannery (1982:267-268)
has described the demise of the concept of culture and the current
emphasis on behavior. Binford and Sabloff (1982:139) refer to the
replacement of the nor- mative paradigm by the preferred systems
paradigm, in the same terms as was argued in the 1960s and 1970s
(Binford 1965, 1972, 1978). The distinction between normative,
cultural, and historical on the one side and processual, systemic,
adaptive, and behavioral on the other was admirably clarified by
Flannery in 1967. Culture historians were described as using a
normative the- oretical framework in which culture was treated as a
body of shared values and beliefs. Prehistoric artifacts were seen
as the products of shared ideas, with normally distributed
variation. Culture change was viewed as being the result of a
change in shared ideas and similar cultural assemblages were
thought to be spatially and temporally proximal.
Instead, Flannery suggested that the processual school was going
to examine the locus of human behavior within a vast number of
cultural and noncultural systems. Multivariant functional
relationships would be sought and cultural change would be shown to
have adaptive advantage. Laudable as these aims might appear, it is
not apparent that they necessarily involve a rejection of the
normative approach. The latter largely functioned as a
classificatory device and there is cerainly no necessary
incompatability between the study of history and the study of
process (Trigger 1978). The desire to shrive archaeology of any
taint of the subjective and nonmaterial can only be understood as
part of the quest for scientific control already referred to.
Binford (1972:9) claimed that culture is a material-based
organization of behavior, not a mental phenomenon, and again more
recently "we do not have to try to study mental phenomena. In fact
we study material phenomena " (1982: 162; original emphasis).
Binford (1982) goes so far as to equate any attempt to understand
the principles of human nature with uniformitarian assumptions
about psychic propensities and with empathetic un- derstanding. It
is assumed that the consideration of cultural contexts necessarily
involves equating culture with ideas, and the same viewpoint,
caught within the trap of an ideaiistlmaterialist dichotomy, is
expressed by Renfrew (1982).
The materialist view espoused by some new archaeologists, but
foreshadowed in the 'ladder of inference' of many traditional
archaeologists (see Hawkes 1954), can be seen to restrict the scope
of archaeology if it rules out theories conceming the way
individuals give meaning to experience. The recent re-
POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY 9
awakening of interest in recovering past ideas (summarized by
Leone 1982; see also Hodder 1982b and Renfrew 1983) argues against
earlier views that the mind could not be reconstructed and that
paieopsychology should be condemned (Bin- ford 1965:203-210). But
many existing structural and symbolic studies do not use theories
in which there is an adequate notion of the unity of meaning and
action or in which there is interpretation of the generation of
symbolic codes. The split between culture and process is thus
retained. In the theories preferred in this essay it is not
possible to divorce process from culture, to study one without the
other, because the emphasis on action rather than behavior states a
unity of idea (intentionality) and material event, and the
challenge is to develop theories that specify integration and allow
both for general principles of human action and for the
particularity of cultural constructions. Equally, within existing
symbolic and structural studies in archaeology the role of the
individual negotiating social position through the medium of
cultural values is underplayed. As in stmctural anthropology, the
individual often appears subordinate to the cultural code in the
same way that in processual archaeology, hetshe had been
subordinate to the system. In the archaeological reconstruction of
ideologies similar criticisms can be offered.
Ideology Within materialist anthropology there has been
increasing discussion of ide-
ology and it is perhaps to such accounts that social action
theory should be most closely linked (Leone 1982). However, I have
avoided adopting the t e m ide- ology in this paper. In the work of
Flannery and Marcus (1976), Hall (1977), Fritz (1978), and Friedel
(1981); religion, ritual, and ideology allow the smooth running of
the material system and, in contrast to the viewpoint presented
here, the material is primary. Culture and the ideational are the
servants rather than the media of activity. Within
Structural-Marxist and Neo-Marxist anthropology, ideology is often
seen as functioning to hide, mask, or suppress conflict (Leone
1982:748). Once again, in the viewpoint preferred here, ideology is
the medium of conflict and it at the same time hides and reveals
conflict, from different standpoints, within the process of the
negotiation of power. The t e m negotiation is used to refer to the
view that individuals are not duped by an all-embracing set of
ideas serving a sectional interest and to suggest that social
control and interde- pendence are achieved through the use of
different types of power to which there can be varying attitudes
within a specific historical context.
The challenge to behavioral, functionalist archaeology posed by
questions of style has been admirably met (Dunnell 1978, Plog 1980,
Sackett 1977, Wobst 1977). According to the viewpoint presented
here, on the other hand, style is the
-
10 IAN HODDER
particularity of action and meaning that is built up within an
historical context. 'Style' refers to the fact that in British
society punk is evoked when a safety pin is wom by adults (Hodder
1982c) but not when an ivory knife ora daisy chain are wom. We can
generalize about the principles of evocation, analogy, and context
that are involved in the use of such material items, but the
particular construction is unique and has an effect particular to
its context. Questions of style must involve not only the
principles by which individuals give meaning to the world, but also
the social acts within which style is created and manipulated. The
integration of meaning and function is evident in the work on
pottery decoration discussed by Braithwaite (1982b), in studies of
domestic space (Bourdieu 1977), and M studies of burial practices
(Parker Pearson 1982). In all these cases, material styles in, for
example, pottery decoration are created as part of the negotiation
of power, defining boundaries, and producing social differences.
Hypotheses about the effects of such strategies depend on a general
understand- ing of how symbolic evocations occur and act. The
concept of style comes to have a central place in archaeological
discourse because it refers to the historical particularity of
culture and can be observed in a11 spheres of life, since a11
spheres are meaningful. Thus the economy is as much stylistic as
the decoration on a potsherd. Elaboration and variation in stone
to01 assemblages relate to the way in which food and food
preparation are involved symbolically in social strategies of
control. The diffusion of styles is a legitimate topic of study in
that it is an active social process. Styles may diffuse from A to B
in order to cause change in society B by reference to society A.
The diffusion creates a new situation in B on analogy and in
reaction to that in A. In such cases we see how the notion of
social action involves, in the instant of use of material items,
meaning, power, and change. We also see how traditional concems
with typology and culture-history need to be integrated with
processual approaches. A social adaptive system cannot be
understood without reference to its style, which can itself only be
explained in relation to the origin and diffusion of cultural
traits and the con- tinuity and transformation of the meaning
content of attributes, types, and con- figurations. On the other
hand, the culture-history of material traits must be understood as
a social process.
Ethnoarchaeology Another area in which the theory of social
action has impact is the conduct of
ethnoarchaeology. It has been claimed (Gould 1978; Schiffer
1978) that study of living societies should be concerned primarily
with recording observable behav- ior and residues. For some, the
appropriate perspective for ethnoarchaeology should be
nonparticipatory and from the outside (Binford and Sabloff 1982:
151). In the viewpoint expressed here, however, it is inadequate to
examine the rela-
. tionship between statics (archaeological residues) and
dynamics (human behav-
POSTPROCESSUALARCHAEOLOGY
ior) without understanding the generation of that relationship
by individuals in an active social context. The aim of the
ethnoarchaeologist is widely recognized to be the understanding of
the variables relevant for the explanation of past material
remains. But if the ethnoarchaeologist does not participate, or
does not attempt to understand the culture in which helshe works,
it is difficult to claim that the relevant variables have been
examined. To disregard variables that might have been relevant
because they are "not observable" or because they are not thought,
a prioi, to have long-term evolutionary effects (Binford 198 1) is
insuffi- cient. Binford's (1978) work on Nunamiut ethnoarchaeology
makes little refer- ente to Nunamiut dispositions and social
strategies that could have been subject to the same analytical
rigor applied to the distances bones were thrown and to the way
carcasses were cut up. An analysis of Nunamiut culture history
would have provided a context for the understanding of past
activities and for an assessment of the relevance of the data for
prehistoric examples.
Epistemology The gradual search for adequate theories of social
action can thus be seen to
have varied effects in the arena of archaeological theory. But
the claims for a scientific archaeology made by its proponents
related less to explanatory goals and more to explanatory methods.
While there has been little general agreement on the use of logical
positivism and the hypothetico-deductive method, for most new
archaeologists, the theory that explains the observed data is
separate from those data. Predictions are made and tested against
the data and any residual patteming is noted (Hannery 1967). The
confrontation of fact and theory, is the hallmark of the
archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s, but it is also the heritage of
archaeology through most of its history. In 1925, Childe was
concerned "objec- tively" to set out the data (p. xiv) and to
survey "the facts" (p. xiii), and the same concem for empirical
rigor is evident in much, although not all, of his later writing
and in the writing of many of his contemporaries. More recently,
Ren- frew (1982:143) has restated "the old relationship between
theory and data" as
n Theorv Data
and welcomes the stress within the hypothetico-deductive method
on the passage from theory to data, by means of deduced hypotheses
and hypothesis testing. While Binford and Sabloff (1 982: 137) are
correct in locating an important source of this factltheory
contrast in logical positivism, and while earlier archaeologists
may have embraced a more "strict empiricism" (1983), it is clear
(pace Binford and Sabloff 1982) that an explanatory methodology
based on confronting theory with obsemed facts is, at least in some
sense, empiricist.
-
12 IAN HODDER
However, the "facts" are interpretations made by field
archaeologists as they work. As already stated, any process of
observation involves making sense of the world (in this case
artifacts in the ground and their relationships to each other). It
is thus an interpretive experience. There can be no confrontation
because theory and data are both part of one formulation and
argument. Equally, the separation of data and theory raises the
problem of how to evaluate the fit of predictions to observations.
While archaeologists can support theories by analogical argument,
using closeness of fit and cross-cultural regularities, the
relevance of the theory to the data depends ultimately on an
understanding of social process that is culturally contextual.
Binford and Sabloff (1982) recognize the difficulty but assume that
independent tests can be used to evaluate hypotheses. "The chal-
lenge today is how to achieve some independence for the experiences
to which archaeologists appeal" (1982:149). Archaeological
knowledge of the past is based on meaning given to the
archaeological record within current cultural paradigms. Because
theories cannot be tested independently, in the past, many
archaeologists claim that theories must be tested in the present by
the develop- ment of "middle range theory." The problem here is
that our cultural paradigms infuse not only our evaluations of the
past, but also our evaluations of theories developed in living
societies. If Binford and Sabloff accept that knowledge of the past
is dependent on contemporary paradigms of thought, they must also
accept that modern material culture studies are subject to
identical problems of evalua- tion, and that the paradigms within
which we work cannot be evaluated objec- tively (1982: 150).
observation of a contemporary event, such as the raising of an
arm, will be coupled with interpretations (e.g., the raised arm is
a salute or it means good bye) depending on context. The
observation itself, and its explanation, depend on the largely
implicit intentions and knowledge of the individuals involved.
Equally, to know what an object is and whether it can be described
as, for example, flat, we must theorize about and make attempts at
interpreting the implicit knowledge and intentions of the actors
within the relevant cultural con- text. Archaeological
classification does not equal description. There is virtually an
infinite number of attributes that can be recorded on any artifact
and normally "common sense" is used to make a choice. As Clarke
(1968:15) argued, this choice is "arbitrary and dependent on the
observer and his view or model of the mind of ancient man."
From such statements it has often been concluded that the
archaeologist has no choice but to indulge in speculative,
emphathetic understanding (Binford 1982:162). It is assumed by some
processual archaeologists that if one talks of subjective meaning
an idealistic stance is being taken. However, because obser- vation
and theory are one, and because archaeological theory building has
always involved adding to (in the process of interpreting) data,
there is no logical reason why those theories should not include
contextual meaning and intentionality. No epistemological break
with what archaeologists actually do (however they may
POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY 1 3
describe what they do) is needed. In addition, the theory of
social action sketched at the beginning of this essay does not
necessarily involve thinking the thoughts of paleoIndians. Most
knowledge of "how to go on" is practical and nondiscur- sive and it
is possible to generalize with theories about the principles
involved. Because verbal interpretations by social actors are just
that-interpretations and explanations in their own right-we can
generalize about how people "get on with" material culture,
creating historical traditions, and we can interpret the past in
the light of such generalizations. Our theories must also consider
the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge. That no
objective test is possible is as true of such interpretations as it
is of those based on behavioral assumptions.
Before illustrating the theory of social action with some
specific applications to archaeology, it should be emphasized that
the divergences identified here with processual archaeology could
contribute to an emerging postprocessual phase only in the sense
that poststructuralism differs from structuralism (Ardener 1978;
Harstrup 1978). The critique is built on that which went before.
The broad concems with process, generalization, archaeology as
anthropology, and meth- odological rigor remain. The
generalizations may be of a different kind but they both develop
from, and are in conflict with recent trends in archaeology. While
it does not seem possible to identify and it is not my purpose to
encourage, a unified postprocessual stance, it is conceivable that
the varied recent attempts to deal with the ideational andlor the
subjective will lead to a departure from and a questioning of many
of the assumptions of the "new archaeology. " In particular it is
claimed that it is impossible to consider process without culture,
social systems without individuals, adaptive change without
history, science without the subjective. As these questions are
grappled with and answered in varied ways, a postprocessual phase
may be defined.
MATERIAL CULTURE THEORY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPLICATION
Theories basic to archaeological knowledge must be concemed with
the prin- ciples according to which individuals construct their
social worlds; and some aspects of a general set of theories of
social action have been outlined. But there is also a need for
theory concerning general principles involved in the meaningful use
of material culture for social ends. Aspects of such a material
culture theory have been described (Hodder 1982c), and will be
referred to again here.
Material s y ~ b o l s do not mean anything in the semiotic
sense. That is, their meaning is not entirely explicable and is not
expressible by semantic analysis. Symbolic knowledge is different
from encyclopedic knowledge (Sperber 1975) and we cannot look up
the meaning of a safety pin or a black pot. As already claimed,
cultural knowledge is largely implicit and the explanations given
by
-
POSTPROCESSUALARCHAEOLOGY
social actors within a cultural context add to the symbolic
process. The explana- tion of a symbol is itself a social process,
a rationalization within a social matrix. The symbol itself has no
meaning, no labels attached to it. Rather, it works in the
practical world by focusing attention and by evocation. Any
material culture item evokes conditions, ideas, or sentiments
within the instant of social practice, and (re)constructs by
recollection or imagination. The meaning of material symbols is not
abstract and semantic but immediate and practical. The verbal
descriptions of the safety pin wom by punks are numerous and as
ingenious as the human brain can provide (Hodder 1982~). The safety
pin is seen by different people in contemporary Britain as meaning
aggression, pity, children, or bondage. Ra- tionalizations are
provided. But these explanations do not affect the practical use of
the safety pin. The pin is highly evocative and articulate in a
nonsemantic sense. It is widely used as a symbol in the daily lives
of numerous teenagers. It focuses attention and evokes connotations
in an active social context. It changes the world in a way that is
seen as appropriate.
While the concept of evocation is of central importance in
material culture theory, it is closely tied to a second concept,
that of context. The practical meaning of an item of material
culture varies according to the context in which it is used
although, as has been suggested above, the use of an item in one
context is not independent of its use in others. 'Context' does not
refer to any particular scale of analysis. The context can vary
from the microcosm of traits on an artifact, or artifacts on the
human body, to regional and interregional cultural groupings. Pader
(1982) has shown, for example, how the significance of an item of
dress can vary within one cemetery. In some parts of a cemetery a
brooch wom on the left shoulder may signify sex differences, but in
other graves in the cemetery the same brooch type wom on the breast
may signify age differences or status. The practical meaning of an
item is affected by, and affects the set within which it occurs and
is also related to the location of the item within the set. At a
larger scale, items come to have meaning through use within
historical traditions. An artifact type found in graves in one area
may occur in domestic contexts in another and its social
significance in the two areas will be different but interde-
pendent. Equally, similar items and similar organization of space
may occur in the same culture at two time periods but their
practical meaning and social impact may change. It is because of
the contextual, particular characteristic of human culture, tied
with its creative, active use, that prediction is impossible. But
by referring to principles such as evocation (through use, formal
analogy, and contrast), context, and ambiguity (the latter to be
described below), and to theories of social action within which the
symbolic mechanism takes its place, interpretation of unique
cultural contexts becomes feasible.
The evocative effect of a material symbol depends on context and
the same item may be viewed from different contexts at the same
time. Each person brings an individual understanding, a particular
coping system to the perception and use of each artifact. The
meaning and cffects of the material item are necessarily
ambiguous and the ability to "bring things off" is closely tied
to this ambiguity. In some situations in certain societies, the
evocational field may be highly undetermined. In others, there may
be numerous beliefs, rituals, and so forth that are taken into
account, the range of possible evocations may be restricted, and
more members of a single culture are led to similar evocations
(Sperber 1975: 137). But the evocation is never totally
determimed.
Cultural symbolism focuses the attention of members of a social
unit in the same direction, but leaves the individual free to make
individual opinions. Evo- cation is an active process of the
creation of meaning. The effective use of material symbols is thus
part of the negotiation of power. It has no set lines and
everything is to be played for. Ambiguity is thus a necessary and
central part of the symbolic process. Without it, individuals could
not, from their different standpoints, agree to differ, they could
not be competent (or incompetent) social actors; and they could not
change the social world by changing the material world.
An outline of a material culture theory includes, along with
theories of social action as described in an earlier part of this
paper, the concepts of evocation, context, and ambiguity. The
development of a fuller and more adequate material culture theory
is necessary (Miller 1982a; Tilley 1982) and is sought in eth-
noarchaeological studies (see Hodder 1982b). In the latter
instances, studies have been made of house and settlement
organization, pottery decoration, burial, production, and exchange,
in order to explore the social and the material together and to
derive principles of wider applicability. More mature studies are
forth- coming (Miller and Tilley 1983), but it can at least be
claimed that material culture theory linked to theories of social
action is by no means waiting to be shown "to work" (Renfrew
1982:143). As has been suggested, assessment of the working of a
theory partly depends on the paradigm within which the theory is
produced. But it is demonstrable that the types of theories
espoused in this essay have engendered and continue to engender new
interpretations of archae- ological and ethnographic data (see also
Bourdieu 1977 for applications). In- deed, it is claimed that the
removal of rigid boundaries to what is, or is not, valid
archaeological science, will encourage more varied interpretations
of a wider range of evidence. The published examples also
demonstrate the nature of gener- aiizations concerning principles
of social action. They do not state "in condi- tions A, behavior B
will result. '' In any archaeological application, statements of
the latter type will be required in order, for example, to set up
social conditions within which particular types of negotiation of
power might occur. But there are
-
also propositions concemed with the principles according to
which individuals create meaningful acts.
In order to illustrate the applicability of the approach and the
nature of its assumptions, a more detailed example is provided,
drawn from a study of Neo- lithic houses and burials in central and
westem Europe (Hodder 1983). Recent Processual attempts at
explaining the megalithic monuments of western Europe
-
(Chapman 198 1 ; Renfrew 1976) have paid scant attention to the
megaliths them- selves. The monuments become instances of a general
relationship in which temtorial markers (in this case the tombs)
occur in conditions of population stress, competition between
segmentary units, and legitimation of control of crucial but
restricted resources. The particular form of the tombs and the
associ- ated complex rituals are not accounted for. No attempt is
made to interpret the cultural meanings constituted by the tombs
and, as a result, it is impossible to evaluate the functional
hypothesis. Unless one has some notion of what the tombs evoked,
what they meant, it cannot be possible to determine their social
effects.
Traditionally, however, archaeologists have recognized strong
formal sim- ilarities between the long burial mounds of westem
Europe and contemporary and earlier long houses in central Europe.
The detailed similarities between the westem tombs and the houses
can be listed: (I) similar post construction; (2) trapezoidal and
rectangular shapes with similar lengthlbreadth ratios; (3) en-
trance of trapezoidal mounds and houses at the broader end; (4)
entrances fre- quently face the southeast; (5) the entrances are
elaborated; (6) there is frequently a tripartite division of the
long house or burial mound; (7) tombs and houses frequently have
intemal decoration; and (8) ditches flank the long sides of houses
and barrows. These similarities specifically concem the long
barrows, gallery graves, and rectangular and trapezoidal long
houses. But other traditions are known that again show similarities
between houses and tombs. It is claimed, as a result of these
formal similarities, that the Neolithic burial monuments of westem
Europe could have evoked the earlier and contemporary houses of
central Europe.
In order to understand the significance of this evocation it is
necessary to examine the social strategies within which houses and
tombs were constructed and used in central and westem Europe. It is
widely accepted that burial and settlement evidence suggests a
lineage-based organization of society in the Euro- pean Neolithic.
As initial agricultural settlement expanded on the loessic soils of
central Europe in the fifth and early fourth millennia b-c.,
settlement densities were initially low with ready availability of
light, rich soils. Labor rather than land would have been the major
restricting resource. It seems reasonable to suggest that increase
in lineage size and the dominance of groups within society (such as
elder men) depended to an important degree on the reproduction of
labor. Ethnographic evidence conceming such societies (summarized
by Hodder 1983) indicates that where there is dependence on women
for the reproduction of
1 labor, the domestic world (house construction and
organization, domestic pot- I tery, etc.) may become elaborated by
both men and women as the focus of
strategies of negotiation and control. Women are able to
negotiate social position by drawing attention to their
reproductive roles in the domestic context. On the
f other hand, the domestic elaboration is central to male
interests and allows male s -*
POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY
control through such strategies as the seclusion and separation
of women. The elaboration of the domestic world might be expected
to become more marked in contexts in which there is lineage
competition for dominance, increased lineage size, and control of
women. In the central European Neolithic of the fifth and early
fourth millennia, the domestic world is elaborate; and the
elaboration increases through time as evidence for competition and
defense also increases. In many parts of Europe houses become more
elaborate in form during the early Neolithic (e.g., Sherratt 1982).
Similarly, domestic pottery often starts decorated and the
decoration becomes more elaborate through time.
By the third millemium b.c., however, there is evidence of
filling up of the I landscape and of shortages of, and pressure on,
light, rich agricultura1 soils. L Land rather than labor became the
main restricting resource. Women had less
ability to negotiate social position by drawing attention to
their roles as re- I producers in the domestic context and other
strategies were chosen. For both men
and women the domestic context became of less central importante
and the I domestic role was not elaborated symbolically. By the
beginning of the third
millennium in central Europe, domestic pottery has simpler and
less frequent I decoration and houses are less elaborate. The
simplification of houses and pot-
tery through time could have played an active part in forming
new social relations.
The long barrows in Atlantic Europe then, evoke a situation in
central Europe in which lineages were competing for reproductive
potential and in which wom- en could negotiate real social position
because of the emphasis on the reproduc- tion of labor. But the
houses used by those building the megaliths are small and simple,
and the domestic pottery is simple and sometimes undecorated. While
in parts of Atlantic Europe such as Scandinavia, ritual pottery is
highly decorated, 1 domestic pottery is less elaborate. Context
such as the SOM (Seine-Oise-Marne) culture (Paris Basin) where
pottery is undecorated, and the general lack of complex houses in
Atlantic Europe indicate that the position of women is only
elaborated and emphasized in the context of comrnunal ritual,
outside the domes- tic sphere. For example, in burial ritual, women
are depicted in Atlantic Europe and the domestic "house" context is
evoked. Women as reproducers, as the
i source and focus of the lineage, are celebrated here-but only
in the house of the ancestors, in a context in which communal
participation is stressed in the nature of the burial rituals.
Women, as reproducers, and their social positions within the
domestic context are, in ritual, appropriated for the lineage as a
whole. Their . services are for the lineage and this control is
legitimated by the ancestors and by
higher authorities. A difference thus emerges between central
and Atlantic Europe. In both areas
competition developed through the control of reproduction. But
in the former I m a there was direct negotiation of the position of
women in the domestic
context while in the latter area tombs were built to legitimate
the absolute control
-
of lineage heads. It is difficult to explain these differences
in adaptive or ecologi- cal terms. The task is to explain two ways
of coping with similar problems, and these two coping systems can
be interpreted as meaningfully constituted within historical
traditions. The differences between Atlantic and central Europe
occur not only in megaliths and not only at one time period.
Monumental burial is one type of ritual occurring outside, if
referring to the domestic context, but there are others. From Camac
to Stonehenge and to the Maltese temples, from the fifth to the
second millennia b.c. Atlantic and west Mediterranean Europe are
charac- terized by the occurrence of separate, nondomestic ritual
that is wholly alien to the central European tradition. In the
latter area ritual occurs, but it is normally closely linked to the
domestic context. In Atlantic Europe the ritual extends into a
separate sphere where much of the art and cultural elaboration
center. It is provocative to note the same structural difference at
much later and earlier times. For example, in the Upper Paleolithic
in Europe, painted caves are found in westem Europe but not in
central Europe despite (1) careful research in the latter area, (2)
the existence of appropriate caves, and (3) the occurrence of
portable art in domestic contexts in central Europe. Upper
Paleolithic cave art is largely confined to Atlantic Europe and
often occurs in clearly nondomestic contexts, in caves and parts of
caves that are not used for habitation.
While much research needs to be carried out into the existence
of long-tem traditions, the example suggests that an adequate
explanation of an artifact such as a megalithic tomb must make use
of the unique potential available to archae- ologists of exarnining
continuities over long time periods. Individuals act in society
through the medium of their cultural hentage and in doing so they
change that heritage. It cannot be adequate to disregard symbolic
meanings and inten- tions. The example of the European Neolithic
has indicated both the potential for studies of long time spans and
that the intemal meaning of artifacts can be interpreted by
reference to comparisons of form so long as the formal similarities
and contrasts can be hypothesised to play an active part within
social strategies. When meaning and function are integrated in
reconstructions of the past, fuller interpretations can be
attempted of a wider range of information.
CONCLUSI0N:PROCESSUALARCHAEOLOGYANDA TIMELESS PAST
Focus on the individual as an active social agent brings to the
forefront the meaningful constitution of human behavior and its
material products. In my conclusion the same approach is applied to
archaeologists themselves, in order to set processual and
postprocessual trends in a wider perspective. Any reconstruc- tion
of the past is a social statement in the present. It orders
experience and creates social positions. The past is used as an
effective stmcturing principle in
POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY 19
many walks of contemporary life. The emphasis in this essay on
meaning and culture in the past is part of a contemporary social
reaction against a legitimating ideology of control that has
dominated archaeology throughout much of its history .
Since the Enlightenment, the objective within which archaeology
found its place was control of the natural world by rational means.
In the eighteenth century, nature took on a changed meaning (Bloch
and Bloch 1980). It was no longer something despised as low,
associated with The Fall, savages, and the failure of education.
Now nature became cherished as the source whereby soci- ety,
morals, and education were to be reformed and purified. Before the
eigh- teenth century, the source of light and legitimacy came from
God through mon- arch and church. From the eighteenth century,
light came from an antecedant and superior basis for society and
morality-from nature. In archaeology, culture became equated with
the control and capturing of nature not only in the sense that past
material culture was labeled, categorized, controlled, and
administered, but also in the sense that a past was erected in
which Man gradually pulled himself out of the mists of irrational
beliefs, achieved intelligent enlightenment, and obtained mastery
over nature.
This emphasis on the past as a symbol of Man's delivery from
irrational beliefs is seen clearly in Childe's (1925) first edition
of The Dawn of European Civilisa- tion. In his preface, Childe
noted that the Bronze Age of Europe saw new and particularly
European qualities that were "energy, independence and in-
ventiveness," the hallmark of the "Modern West." This new rational
force "ultimately transformed the face of the world." The monuments
of the past embody "the achievements of our spintual ancestors"
because they show the energy and success of our European
forefathers. "In such rude implements are revealed the
preconditions of our gigantic engines and of the whole mechanical
apparatus that constitutes the material basis of modem life.
Progress is an indi- visible whole" in which the invention of the
hafting of an axe leads to and is the basis for modern technology.
"In the first innovation, the germs of a11 subse- quent improvement
were latent. . . . The achievements of our nameless forerun- ners
are in a real sense present in our cultural heritage today" (Childe
1925:xiv and xv).
The past, then, indicates the progress of control over nature by
rational means. Childe (1925:301-302) talked of progressive
cultures, the pioneers of progress, in contrast to stagnant
cultures in which cults and superstitions stifled develop- ment.
Paleolithic hunter-gatherers were ' 'miserable' ' and '
'barbarians' ' because they were still held in bondage by the
environment. Minoan Crete, however, was seen as European and modem
because it was practical, it was not tied by superstitions and the
building of pyramids, it was concemed with invention and the
elaboration of tools, and it exemplified a "modem naturalism" in
decorative designs and frescoes (1925:29). While Childe in later
years developed rather
-
IAN HODDER
different outlooks, the theme of rational progress, which is
possible only in the absence of hindering beliefs and
superstitions, frequently reappears (e.g., Childe 1936). It does
not seem too big a jump to read Binford in recent decades, where
the main theme is again the reaction against norms and beliefs in
favor of adaptive expedience.
Since Childe's early writings, however, a11 of the human past,
not only the period since the Bronze Age, has become celebrated as
an arena for the display of Man's place within, yet controlling,
nature. Since the influential Lee and De Vore (1968) volume, it has
become customary in many quarters to see early hunter-gatherers as
far from miserable barbarians and the noble savage has returned
with a vengeance. The materialist and utilitarian character of the
mod- em West is fully legitimated because all societies that have
survived at a11 times are presented as having followed the same
rational procedures, having followed the same natural plan.
The emphasis on control through universally rational means has
been seen particularly in recent years. The procedures used have
included the use of sys- tems theory, the label science, and the
development of an appropriate language. Examination of these
various procedures demonstrates the way in which the past was and
is actively used within an expanding discipline.
The concepts of systems theory relate to a social interest in
technical control within the modem west. Systems theory was
introduced into the social and human sciences from control
engineering, thermodynamics, and communica- tions engineenng. It
involves the drawing of boundaries and the specification of
relationships between empirically defined entities. The concern is
with regula- tion and control, particularly in relation to "the
environment." As Marcuse (1972:130) stated, this control is related
to man's control of other men. "The scientific method [can] lead to
the ever-more-effective domination of nature [and] thus come to
provide the pure concepts as well as the instrumentalities for the
ever-more-effective domination of man by man through the domination
of nature". The negotiation of the labor process depends on the
ability to achieve technical control over material and to predict
outcomes, and on the communica- tion of agreements and procedures.
Technical and communications control thus lie at the heart of modem
social life. By developing a concern with prediction and
determinism archaeologists could present themselves as relevant to
the pre- sent and future, aiding in the administration and planning
of their fellows. Lillienfield (1978:262) suggested that systems
theory was "the ideology of the administrative intellectual."
Archaeologists, by making the whole of the human past, and now the
human present, into their laboratory, make it their world, and the
conception of systems provides a world they can manipulate. Such a
claim may be fanciful, and in any case it is debateable whether
archaeologists have been successful in pressing the current
importance of their knowledge. Yet 1 would argue that the
attraction of systems and science was the potential for
POSTPROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGY 21
relevance through the ideology of control. In particular, once
again, the claim that human beings could be seen as rational, and
adaptively expedient, escaping the delusions of histoncal
traditions, provided the required aura. Ultimately, perhaps, the
vision is of a "technological democracy" of a new technocracy
making "rational" decisions over the heads of a depoliticized
populace.
The passive processual view of individuals in society, according
to which there is a system behind the Indian to which the Indian is
subordinate and helpless, has the result that the social analyst
puts himtherself forward as having specialist knowledge and
insight. The control of nature is the system, not human- ity, and
only the specialist theoretician can provide the keys. The
knowledge, the keys, are valid cross-culturally. A timeless past is
produced in which a11 is utility and control. This ideology
provides a forceful legitimation for a modem, util- itarian world.
"It has always been so" is the claim. But the political statement
is hidden with great subtlety. Societies are compared
cross-culturally by neutral, abstract means, by reference to
utility and the optimal. The historically concrete and specific in
social development is lost in "theory." Archaeology appears to be
depoliticized, and the theoretician and academic are represented as
neutral, providing professional knowledge. By this device,
implicitly arrived at, the true social nature of archaeological
knowledge is masked.
Perhaps the clearest attempt to hide the political in
reconstruction of the past is found in the embrace of the
hypothetico-deductive method, independent tests and "middle range
theory," prediction, and objective measurement. The inadequacy of
this epistemology for what archaeologists do has been outlined
above and has been more effectively treated by Wylie ( 1 982). The
scheme provided a language that was appropriately scientific. Put
another way, by using the language the work of archaeologists
became scientific. Like material culture, language pro- vides an
active force within the instant of social change. Like material
culture, also, it is the medium within which people think and act,
and so it structures society.
But it was not only the terms and the methods of the positivist
tradition that produced the "new" science. The whole of archaeology
became infused with a changed vocabulary. David Clarke (1972)
argued the need for jargon but there is clearly a distinction to be
made between necessary specialist terminology and the elaboration
of language. Much of the initial reaction against the new science
in Britain centered on the use of language. When "decrease in
quantity" became "fall-off," and then became "the law of monotonic
decrement," a different world was being evoked and created. '
'Information" became "data, " " survival and recovery" became '
'postdepositional processes, " and phrases such as "peer-polity
interaction" demonstrated a political sense of language that has
been admirably successful in creating new concepts and a new
archaeology. Systems theory itself, as applied in(,archaeology, is
largely a framework for expression, a way of thinking about the
past, that appears appropriate because it
-
22 IAN HODDER
involves scientific concepts. Within the social context
surrounding archae- ologists, archaeology began to sound good. It
sounded right. Few of us were aware of why we started using
"interaction" rather than "contact," "model" rather than "theory,"
and once again the nondiscursive nature of much practical action is
exposed. We changed the words because, implicitly, the words evoked
science, control, and professional expertise. The new discipline
had been cre- ated, or at least, that is what was thought.
That Binford and new archaeologists, among whom I include the
authors of Spatial Analysis in Archaeology, did or do not allow
generalizations about mean- ingful social action and do not allow
explanation without prediction is, in my view, because they are
caught within a language and a coping system that is based on
technical control. I have tried in this essay to sketch out an
altemative approach. By emphasizing the meaningful construction of
social acts and the historical particularity of human culture I
seek to dissolve the timeless past both in its role as the ultimate
legitimation of the modem technocratic West and in its function as
the prop of the professional theoretician.
There are already indications that a critica1 altemative
viewpoint is emerging (Hodder 1982, Milier and Tilley 1983) but it
is in the particular context of the feminist view of the past that
the potential for radical viewpoints is perhaps most evident (see
Braithwaite 1982a; Conkey 1982; Moore 1982). Tanner's (1981)
reconstruction of the early development of human characteristics
challenges androcentric assumptions. It is difficult to assess what
type of archaeology will emerge when equally fundamental
reconsiderations are repeated from other points of view. It is
possible, however, that many of the radical assessments will be
European in setting and it has been claimed (Renfrew 1982:142) that
alter- native approaches are at present more pervasive in European
than in North American archaeology. In Europe certainly the public
disillusion with science and centralized control is marked (I
cannot speak of North America in this regard). The processual
approach grew to have its greatest popularity in North America and
it was never acceptable to the same degree in Europe, except
locally and often temporarily. The new critica1 developments may
now come primarily from Europe where diachrony, not synchrony, is
the dominant cultural experi- ente and assumption.
This essay has been about breaking down the distinction between
pmess and norm, the political nature of which has been suggested.
It has sought to eradicate the dichotomy by locating human agency
and the active, monitoring individual at the center of social
theory. The social theory presented, albeit in the form of an
introductory and partia1 sketch, seems to be as relevant for
reconstructions of the past as it is for understanding the
archaeologist at work in contemporary society. Culture and the
cultural past are the media and results of practical actions. Focus
on the individual within the theory of social action reawakens an
interest in culture and in the historical specificity of material
culture production. Culture, as
meaningfully constituted, is the critica1 and desperate spirit
of Orwell's 1984. As that year passes, the complacent supportive
ideology of a timeless past in which Man the passive and efficient
animal is controlled by laws that he cannot unsurp, must be at
least criticized and can, it is hoped, be replaced by the
individual, actively and meaningfully creating his or her
world.
REFERENCES
Ardener, E. 1978 Some outstanding problems in the analysis of
events. In The yearbook of symbolic
anthropology, edited by E. Schwimmer. Chicago:Aldine. Pp.
103-122. Binford, Lewis R.
1965 Archaeological systematics and the study of cultural
process. American Antiquity 31:203-210.
1972 An archaeological perspective. New York:Seminar Press. 1978
Nunamiut ethnoarchaeology. New York:Academic Press. 1981
Behavioural archaeology and the 'Pompeii premise'. Journal of
Anthropological Re-
search 37: 195-208. 1982 Meaning, inference and the material
record. In Ranking, resource and exchange,
edited by Colin Renfrey and Stephen S h e ~ a n . Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Pp. 160-163. '
Binford, Lewis R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff 1982 Paradigms,
systematics and archaeology. Journal of Anthropological
Research
38:137-153. Bloch, M., and J. H. Bloch
1980 Women and the diaiectics of nature in eighteenth century
French thought. In Nature, culture and gender, edited by Caro1
McConnack and Marilyn Strathem. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. Pp. 22-41.
Braithwaite, Mary 1982a Androcentric theory and the Wessex
culture. Paper presented at Theoretical Archae-
ology Group Conference, Durham, England. 1982b Decoration as
ritual symbol: A theoretical proposal and an ethnographic study
in
southem Sudan. In Symbolic and structural archaeology, edited by
Ian Hodder. Pp. 80-88. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1977 Outline of a theory of practice.
Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Chapman, Robert W. 198 1 The emergence of formal disposal areas
and the 'problem' of the megalithic tombs in
~rehistoric E u r o ~ . In The Archaeology of death, edited by
Robert W. Chapman, Ian Kinnes and ~la ;s Randsborg.
carnbidge:cambridge University Press. 4. 71-81.
Childe, V. Gordon 1925 The dawn of European civilisation.
London:Kegan Paul. 1936 Man makes hirnself. London:Collins.
Clarke, David L. 1968 Analytical archaeology. London:Methuen.
1972 Models and paradigms in contemporary archaeology. In Models in
archaeology, edited
by David L. Clarke. London:Methuen. Pp. 1-60.
-
Conkey, Margaret W. 1982 Archaeological research, gender
paradigms and invisible behaviour. Circulated paper.
Deetz, James F. 1977 In small things forgotten. Garden
City:Doubleday.
Douglas, Mary 1966 Purity and danger. London:Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Dunnell, Robert C. 1978 Style and function. American Antiquity
43:192-202.
Flannery , Kent V. 1967 Culture history v. culture process: A
debate in Amencan Archaeology. Scientijk
American 217: 119-22. 1982 The Golden Marshalltown: A parable
for the archaeology of the 1980s. American
Anthropologist 84.265-278. Flannery, Kent V., and Joyce
Marcus
1976 Formative Oaxaca and the Zapotek cosmos. American Scientist
64374-383. Friedel, David A.
1981 Civilisation as a state of mind. In Tra-formations to
statehood, edited by Gordon Jones and Robert Kautz.
Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Pp. 188-227.
Fritz, John M. 1978 Palaeopsychology today: Ideational systems
and human adaptation in prehistory. In
Social archaeology, edited by Charles L. Redman et al. New
York:Academic Press. 4. 37-59.
Geertz, Clifford 1973 The interprerarion of cultures. New
York:Basic Books.
Giddens, Anthony 1979 Central problems in social theory.
London:MacMillan Press.
Glassie, Henry 1975 Folk housing of middle Virginia.
Knoxville:University of Tennessee Press.
Gould, Richard 1978 From Tasmania to Tucson: New directions in
ethnoarchaeology. In Explorations in
ethnoarchaeology, edited by Richard Gould.
A1buquerque:University of New Mexico Press. Pp. 1-10,
Hall, Robert L. 1977 An anthropocentnc perspective for eastern
United States prehistory. American Antiq-
uity 42:499-518. Harstrup, K.
1978 The post-structuralist position of social anthropology. In
The yearbook of symbolic anthropology, edited by E. Schwimmer.
London:Hurst. 4. 123-148.
Hawkes, Christopher 1954 Archaeological theory and method: Some
suggestions from the Old World. American
Anthropologist 56: 155- 168. Hodder, Ian
1982a Symbols in action. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
1982b Theoretical archaeology: A reactionary view. In Symbolic and
structural archaeology,
edited by Ian Hodder. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Pp.
1-16. 1982c The present past. London:Batsford. 1983 Burials,
houses, women and men in the European Neolithic. In Ideology. power
and
archaeology, edited by Danny Miller and Christopher Tilley.
Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
POSTPROCESSUALARCHAEOLOGY
Hodder, lan, and Clive Orton 1976 Spatial analysis in
archaeology. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Lee, Richard B., and I. Devore (editors) 1968 Man the Hunter.
Chicago:Aldine.
Leone, Marke P. 1982 Some opinions about recovenng mind.
American Antiquity 47:742-760.
~eroi-Gourhan, Andr 1967 The art of prehistoric man in western
Europe. London:Thames and Hudson.
Lillienfield, R. 1978 The rise of systems theory: An ideological
analysis. New York.
Marcuse, H. 1972 One dimensional man. London.
Meltzer, D. J. 1979 Paradigms and the nature of change in
American archaeology. American Antiquiv
44:644-657. Miller, Danny
1982 Artifacts as products of human categorisation processes. In
Symbolic and structural archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. F'p. 17- 25.
Miller, Danny, and Christopher Tilley (editors) 1983 Ideology,
power and prehistory, Cambridge:Cambndge University Press.
Moore, Henrietta 1982 Looking back in anger: Feminist
perspectives on the past. Paper presented at The-
oretical Archaeology Group Conferente, Durham, England. Pader,
Ellen-Jane
1982 Symbolism, social relations and the interpretation of
mortuary remains. British Ar- chaeological Reports International
Series 130.
Parker Pearson, Michael 1982 Mortuary practices, society and
ideology: An ethnoarchaeological study. In Symbolic
and structural archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder.
Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Pp. 99-114.
Piaget, J . 1972 The principies of genetic epistemology. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Plog, Stephen 1980 Stylistic variation in prehistoric ceramics.
Cambridge:Cambndge University Press.
Renfrew, Colin 1976 Megaliths, temtories and populations. In
Acculturation and continuity in Atlanric
Eurooe. edited by S. 1. De Laet. Dissertationes Archaeologicae
Gandenses, De Tem- @, Bmgge. Pp. 198-220.
1982 Discussion: Contrasting paradigms. In Ranking. resource and
exchange, edited by Colin Renfrew and Stephan Shennan.
Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Pp. 141-143.
1983 Towards an archaeology of mind. Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press. Sackett, J. R.
1977 The meaning of style in archaeology: A general model.
American Antiquity 42:369- 380.
Salmon, M. H. 1978 What can systems theory do for archaeology?
American Antiquity 43:174- 183.
-
Schiffer, M. B. 1978 Methodological issues in ethnoarchaeology.
In Explorations in ethnoarchaeology,
edited by Richard Gould. A1buquerque:University of New Mexico
Press. Pp. 229- 247.
Sherratt, Andrew 1982 Mobile resources: Settlement and exchange
in early agricultura] Europe. In Ranking,
resource and exchange, edited by Colin Renfrew and Stephen
Shennan. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Pp. 13-26.
Sperber, Dan 1975 Rethinking symbolism. Cambndge:Cambridge
University Press.
Tanner, Nancy M. 1981 On becoming human. Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press.
Tilley, Christopher 1982 Social formation, social stmctures and
social change. In Symbolic and stnrctural
archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder. Cambridge:Cambndge University
Press. Pp. 26- 38.
Trigger, Bruce 1978 Time and rraditions. Edinburgh:Edinburgh
University Press.
Tumer, Victor 1969 The ritual process. London:Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Willis, P. E. 1978 Learning to labour: How working c h s k i h
get working class jobs. Famborough:
Saxon House. Wobst, Martin
1977 Stylistic behaviour and information exchange. Universify of
Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Paper
61:317-342.
Whyte, A. 1978 Systems as perceived: A discussion of
'maladaptations in social systems'. In The
evolution of social systems, edited by J . Friedman and M. J.
Rowlands. Lon- don:Duckworth. Pp. 73-78.
Wylie, A. 1982 Epistemological issues raised by a structuralist
archaeology. In Symbolic and struc-
rural archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder. Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press. Pp. 39-46.