View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UNL | Libraries University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Anthropology Faculty Publications Anthropology, Department of 2008 Time in Archaeology: An Introduction Simon J. Holdaway Auckland University, [email protected] LuAnn Wandsnider University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Holdaway, Simon J. and Wandsnider, LuAnn, "Time in Archaeology: An Introduction" (2008). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 81. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub/81 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. In TIME IN ARCHAEOLOGY: TIME PERSPECTIVISM REVISITED, edited by Simon Holdaway and LuAnn Wandsnider. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008. Copyright © 2008 University of Utah Press. 1 Time in Archaeology: An Introduction SIMON HOLDAWAY AND LuANNWANDSNIDER University of Auckland and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lifeway reconstruction is listed as one ofthe objec­ by people in the past. And from the late twentieth tives of "World Prehistory," the ubiquitous course century, the indigenous voice can be added. No taught in universities and colleges the world over longer do archaeologists have a monopoly on ex­ (e.g., Fagan 1995:8). It complements well the other plaining what went on in the past. There are com­ subdisciplines of anthropology, at least for begin­ peting views and multiple lifeway reconstructions. ning anthropology students, offering them a fa­ As archaeologists, we are being openly challenged miliar approach to foreign material: if cultural to defend the veracity of our reconstructions (e.g., anthropologists study the behavior of present-day Bender 2002). (or at least near-to-present-day) peoples, then ar­ The postprocessual critique has been well re­ chaeologists may be expected to deal with peoples' hearsed in a variety of monographs and edited behavior from the past. Certainly, some archaeol­ essay collections, and we do not intend to add this ogists study the past aided by textual records, and volume to the stack. Rather, the authors collected some cultural anthropologists are interested in herein wish to address the question of meaning in past historical experience. But this overlap only the past from a different tack, one that we develop enhances the perceived integration of approaches. by taking inspiration from articles written in the The clear message is that archaeology is about do­ early 1980s by Bailey, Binford, and others grouped ing the ethnography ofthe past. here under the term time perspectivism. As Bailey The problem is that our cultural anthropology defines the term in chapter 2, time perspectivism colleagues have changed the way they do ethnog­ treats all archaeological material records as palimp­ raphy. The postmodernist critique has laid bare sests and asserts that there is a relationship between the fictive nature of the objective anthropological the scale at which such records can be resolved and experience. Ethnographies tell a story from a par­ the types of research questions they can be used to ticular point of view that is only one of a range of answer. understandings of why things happen. What, then, That different explanations of the past are pos­ is the status of the archaeologists' lifeways recon­ sible depending on the temporal scale at which struction? To some, particularly the more radical past human behavior is viewed is hardly a new members of the postprocessual archaeology of the point or one that has been cast aside since Bailey 1980s, all archaeological reconstruction was seen as and Binford published their seminal papers (e.g., theory dependent and therefore subjective. Life­ Rarnenofsky 1998). Other theoretical approaches way reconstruction, therefore, was held to reflect as such as historical ecology (e.g., Balee 1998) and much about the society from whence the archaeol­ Annaliste treatments (e.g., Bintliff. ed. 1991; Knapp ogist originated as it reflected a reality experienced 1992) have insisted on multiscalar views of the past. SIMON HOLDAWAY AND LuANN WAND SNIDER What sets time perspectivism apart from other ap­ To be sure, archaeologists have kept up with and proaches, however, is the insistence on readings adopted many of the advances in social theory. But of the archaeological record as a unique historical in seeking to make archaeology relevant, they have data set on which to base multiple scales ofexplana­ in many instances left the archaeological record be­ tion. It is the rise of formation studies over the Jast hind. Archaeologieal explanation is often treated 30 years that has provided the means to view the ar­ as just another form of social explanation, the dif­ chaeological record in this way. The authors of this ficulty ofwhich should immediately be obvious to volume seek explanations of the past that conform someone standing in front of a midden, eroding to our understanding of how the archaeological house wall, or deflated hearth. The danger archae­ record was formed while at the same time dealing ologists face is that in failing to emphasize the ar­ with deposits as palimpsests and seeking explana­ chaeological nature of our perspective on the past tions that are scale dependent. and our perspective on explanation, archaeology will fast become an irrelevance (van der Leeuw and THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD Redman 2002). Why should indigenous people or If archaeological explanations are to be taken seri­ anyone else consider our explanations as valid in ously, on a par with, rather than replacing, other their own terms, if we couch them in contempo­ kinds of explanations of the past, then we need to rary social theory while failing to convey that the be clear how our explanations are derived from the archaeological basis for explanation is quite differ­ archaeological record. Archaeologists have spent ent from that provided by contemporary "human a great deal of effort searching the theoretical lit­ time" (Stein 1993) observation? erature to learn what drives humans to act the way Of course there are exceptions to the blanket they do. Much of this searching has ranged across criticisms made in the paragraphs above. Some ar­ the social sciences, often delving into studies con­ chaeolOgists have considered the relationship be­ ducted over the short term, using observational tween the formation of the archaeological record scales rarely exceeding the lifetime. To what extent and the nature of archaeological explanation. The do these studies actually engage the content of the authors in this volume draw inspiration from a se­ archaeological record? ries of essays by Geoff Bailey (1981, 1983, 1987) The need to show that archaeology may be published in the early 1980s and a series of essays used to study the same types of phenomena as published by Lewis Binford (1977a, 1978a, 1980, those studied by social scientists when dealing with 1981a, 1981b, 1982, 1983a) during the same time pe­ contemporary peoples seems to have largely over­ riod. Bailey (2007, this volume [ch. 2]) has pro­ taken the need to answer this question. As Yoffee vided his own introduction to the genesis of his and Sherrat (1993) comment, archaeology alone ideas. Similarly, Murray pur~ues the intellectual tra­ among the social sciences has failed to build its jectories of time perspectivism in chapter II, using own social theory. The contemporary social the­ the term introduced by Bailey. Murray (1999a) has ory of other disciplines, first seen as a source for also recently written on Binford and time within explanatory inspiration, has in some cases become the context of the "Pompeii premise" debate with a prescription for how archaeology should be un­ Michael Schiffer. dertaken. Shennan (1989 ), when retrospectively re­ Despite the lingering interest in time perspec­ viewing the impact of Binford and Binford's New tivism by Murray and others, it must be said that Perspectives in Archeology (1968) and Clarke's Ana­ both Bailey and Binford ultimately failed to pro­ lytical Archaeology (1968), makes it clear that this vide programmatic statements that inspired a' new charge is not unique to postprocessual archaeol­ body of research, something that Bailey addresses ogy. New Archaeology's initial interest in culture in this volume. What their work lacked was a clear process rapidly gave way to interests in social, eco­ method for implementing the theoretical insights logical, economic, and ideological processes, isolat­ they developed. There are therefore two objectives ing what to Clarke was unique about archaeology. for this book: to demonstrate that the problems 2 Time in Archaeology: An Introduction identified in the early literature have not gone away resent individual items accumulated at the time of and to illustrate, through a series of case studies manufacture, construction, and initial use, they are presented in the chapters that follow, a set ofmeth­ also reflective of the reuse and redeposition ofarti­ ods that can be applied to overcome these problems facts as well as the reoccupation of places by a va­ and thereby reinstate time perspectivism in the riety of peoples for a variety of purposes. Features, agenda ofarchaeological theoretical discourse. for example, show the accumulation of instances In this introduction, we review time perspectiv­ of refurbishment, destruction, and reconstruc­ ism and provide a brief intellectual history of time tion (M. E. Smith 1989), whereas artifacts may be in archaeology, indicating why we have brought to­ reduced through wear or resharpening, acquir­ gether a group of authors to talk about their ideas ing traces that reflect their use-life histories (sensu for an archaeological concept of time derived from Sullivan 1978).