Book Reviews ISBN 0–521–84076–7(hardcover)US$90.0–521–60049–9 by Bruce G. Trigger. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 710 ofArchaeology Thought(SecondEdition) A History Canadian Journal ofArchaeology/Journal Canadiend’Archéologie 32:128–134(2008) archaeol Canadian gives distance This archaeologists. American and British among and between debates theoretical the from distance critical important an possesses archaeology Canadian suggest opens Many Influences of Bruce Trigger”) that ham, and Jane Kelley, in the essay (“The from beingaCanadianarchaeologist. stem influence and position distinctive Trigger Bruce in chapters 16 the of third ground, not a middle course. Some as such does that explicitly in some publications,quite in others,he while because ent” relativism during his career. I say “appar positivism and the extreme Charybdis of extreme of Scylla the between course intellectual middle apparent an steered successfully having archaeology, phone B (paperback) $29.95.2006. ISBN 0–7735–3127–0 (hardcover)$80.0–7735–3161–0 McGill-Queen’s UniversityPress,MontrealandKingston. edited byRonaldF. WilliamsonandMichael S.Bisson. TriggerThe Archaeology ofBruce and (paperback) US$31.99.2006. Ronald Williamson, Jeremy Cunning ing and distinctive position in Anglo tower a occupiesTrigger ruce The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger Bruce of Archaeology The A History, History, A also wonder whether his his whether wonder also he seems to offer a offer to seems he The Archaeology of of Archaeology The - , - - - - cerned witharchaeologicalpracticeand more whereas cess, pro culture with concerned be to likely (AA) Antiquity Archaeology Canadian the of contents the between contrasts interesting find They turn. in influenced he Triggerwhich enced and influ both that perspective skeptical somewhat perhaps and distinctive a ogy book celebrating Lewis Binford, for for Binford, example, wouldcontainpapers contem Lewis celebrating book with practice, although I doubt an edited concerned less is archaeology American think don’t I countries, both in worked to publication Record Archaeological SAA in published are States United the 1999). On the other hand, most such papers in Guppy and (Pokotylo authors in that one of the major papers on practice society.temporary They do not mention con broader the in role archaeology’s AA in the last decade was by Canadian . AA AA . As someone who has who someone As . papers are far more more far are papers CJA

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American pp. The The - - - - -  History of Archaeology Thought/Archaeology of B. Trigger • 129 plating the degree to which his impact statements if one looks. While Trigger can be related to his nationality. steered a consistent intellectual course Allison Wylie further develops the during his life, his thinking evolved notion of Canadian archaeology having over time. Wylie also examines Trigger’s a critical distance, applying what she “moderate relativism” (on that, more terms “standpoint theory,” the argument below) and while being generally sup- that those situated on the margins may portive, criticizes him for arguments he be able to “develop a critical perspec- makes in his 1998 article, “Archaeology tive on knowledge production” (p. 32). and Epistemology: Dialoguing Across This view of Trigger’s position and the Darwinian Divide.” In that paper, role in global archaeology reminds me Trigger develops ideas that appear again of Winston Churchill’s comment that in A History and his “Retrospection,” that Canada is the lynchpin of the English- it is important to understand what he speaking world. The discussions about terms evolved human nature and how the marginality of Canadian archaeol- that operates within the constraints of ogy also brought to mind a comment by cultural and social systems. Wylie seems H. L. Mencken, the famous Baltimore to misunderstand Trigger’s point here. curmudgeon of the early 20th century, Stephen Chrisomalis examines that living in Canada must be a lot like Trigger’s favoured methodology, the living in an apartment over a loud, noisy comparative method, in studying the bar. Throughout the collection of arti- development of civilizations. Lynn cles is the thought that Trigger’s strong Meskell discusses Trigger’s contribu- emphasis on diversity and multivocality tions to social archaeology, noting that reflects deep Canadian values. Over his Trigger’s approach differs from that of career Trigger stressed the importance the journal Social Archaeology. Randall of different traditions of archaeological McGuire examines Trigger’s Marxism practice and this is an important theme (discussed further below). Junko Habu in A History. He expands on his commit- and Clair Fawcett discuss V. Gordon Chil- ment to Canada and Canadian archaeol- de’s impact on Japanese archaeology. ogy in his “Retrospection” at the end of Silvia Tomaskava reviews the history of this volume. thinking about shamanism and gender Other chapters in The Archaeology of in archaeology, following Trigger’s Bruce Trigger include Ian Hodder’s brief advocacy of disciplinary histories. These essay entitled “Triggering Post-Proces- are followed by five chapters exploring sual Archaeology and Beyond,” in which in varying ways Trigger’s contributions he both lauds Trigger’s efforts to steer to Native issues through ethnohistory, his middle course and criticizes him archaeology, and advocacy: “Bruce for being trapped by the subject-object Trigger’s Impact on Ontario Iroquoian dichotomy. Besides being the one who Studies” (by R. Pearce, R. MacDonald, here seems trapped in his own thinking, D. Smith, P. Timmins, and G. War- Hodder falls victim to two qualities of rick); Martha Latta on The Children of Trigger’s work that contribute to what Aatentsic, Trigger’s monumental study some see as its ambiguity: it is vast and of the Huron; Toby Morantz’s “In the it has evolved. The corpus of Trigger’s Land of the Lions: The Ethnohistory of publications is so enormous that, like Bruce Trigger”; Alexander von Gernet’s the Bible, one can find contradictory “The Influence of Bruce Trigger on the

Journal Canadien d’Archéologie 32 (2008) 130 • Ames

Forensic Reconstruction of Aboriginal personal self-interest of archaeolo- History”; and Eldon Yellowhorn’s “The gists that objectivity is impossible. Awakening of Internalist Archaeology in There is no such thing as objec- the Aboriginal World.” The final three tive knowledge, and, therefore, chapters are Michael Bisson’s appre- no one truth but many possible ciation of Trigger at McGill University, antithetical truths. Moderate rela- Brian Fagan on “Bruce Trigger: Ambas- tivists concede that archaeological sador for Archaeology,” and Trigger’s interpretations are influenced by own “Retrospection.” This is followed by society, culture and self-interest Trigger’s truly overwhelming bibliogra- but maintain that archaeological phy. I apologize to article authors for not evidence constrains speculation discussing each of their contributions, (p. 2). but I have to move on to A History of Archaeological Thought. It is also his purpose to demonstrate the The second edition of A History of importance and usefulness of historical Archaeological Thought is expanded and and comparative analyses in filtering considerably reworked relative to the through competing knowledge and epis- first edition (548 pages of text vs. 411, temological claims. Trigger’s account not counting bibliographic essays). and analysis of archaeology’s history is In grappling with A History, I found structured by his historical materialism Understanding Early Civilizations (Trigger and by his commitment to a Realist phil- 2003), Trigger’s other recent vast book, osophical stance (e.g., Bunge 2006). extremely helpful. The primary goal Trigger’s Marxism is examined by of both editions of A History is to assess Randall McGuire in The Archaeology of “problems of subjectivity, objectivity, and Bruce Trigger. This fine essay is both an of the gradual accumulation of knowl- excellent explication of Marxist funda- edge” (p. 1). These problems arise from mentals, perhaps the best one-chapter the conflicting claims of what he sees as account of Marxism of which I am the three “alternative epistemologies … aware, and of Trigger’s development currently being applied to archaeology”: as an historical materialist. McGuire positivism, extreme relativism, and mod- reviews V. Gordon Childe’s profound erate relativism. In Trigger’s words: influence on Trigger and notes that Trigger embraced Marxism’s three Positivist epistemologists maintain goals: to know the world, to critique the that society and culture exert no world, and to change the world. One significant influence on the devel- of McGuire’s goals is to demonstrate opment of archaeology, which is the role of the dialectic in Trigger’s shaped by explicit theories being thinking. McGuire suggests that much tested in the light of adequate of the apparent ambiguity of Trigger’s evidence and according to proper published thought (e.g., the difficulties scientific methods. Extreme in pigeonholing him into ready-made relativists argue that the interpre- theoretical boxes) stems from the dia- tation of archaeological data is lectical nature of his thinking. The dia- so influenced by the intellectual lectic is perhaps clearest in Understanding persuasions, class interests, ethnic Ancient Civilizations, in which Trigger sets loyalties, gender prejudices, and up a clear opposition between what he

Canadian Journal of Archaeology 32 (2008)  History of Archaeology Thought/Archaeology of B. Trigger • 131 calls rationalist and romantic accounts tence of a past separate from and inde- of human behaviour and it is also at pendent of the ideas and perceptions of play in A History, although more subtly. archaeologists or others about it, and of However, in his focus on the dialectic, an archaeological record independent of McGuire misses one of Childe’s most archaeologists in the same way the world important influences on Trigger: Chil- is separate from our imagining of it in de’s propositions: “(1) that the world Childe’s syllogism. Realists study both people adapt to is not the world as it things (appearances) and the effects of really is but the world as people imagine things or processes that cannot them- it to be and (2) that every understanding selves be directly observed (e.g., ideas). of the world must accord to a significant For Trigger, this provides a materialist degree with the world as it really is, if basis for studying ideas and their effects. people and their ideas are to survive” Why does a materialist basis matter? Else- (A History: p. 482). where Trigger asserts that it would be dif- This syllogism grounds Trigger’s ficult to be other than a materialist if one “moderate relativism” and is his bridge accepts that we humans, our bodies and between positivism and idealism by brains—and by implication what they making both ideas about the world and do—evolved as adaptations to a material the real world important and the proper world (Trigger 1998: 10). subjects of archaeological investigation. Trigger did not regard materialism He comments ruefully in A History that as an epistemology (a way of knowing if archaeologists had paid attention to it, about the world) but as an ontology we might have been spared considerable (in his terms, how we understand the bootless theoretical debate, although he world). He distinguished ontological also suggests that archaeology had to go materialism from ontological idealism, through the debate, had to struggle, to which “in its most extreme form denies be able to appreciate Childe’s insight. the existence of the world, holding only The recognition that there is a real ideas to be real. A less extreme version world to which ideas about the world of ontological idealism that is prevalent have to correspond or which at least in the social sciences accepts the exis- limits ideas about the world is also at the tence of the material world but asserts core of Trigger’s advocacy of realism, an the autonomous existence and primacy epistemological approach that he saw of ideas” (Trigger 1998: 10). It is these as an alternative to both positivism and latter two positions together that he idealism. Mario Bunge, one of realism’s labels “extreme relativism” in the lengthy chief architects (e.g., Bunge 2006), is a passage from A History quoted above. Professor of Philosophy at McGill Uni- However, he does not equate ontological versity, where Trigger taught for most materialism with the positivism of that of his career. It interests me that despite statement. For Trigger, we have ideas his presence at McGill and the frequent because we evolved to be a symboling citations to Bunge’s work in A History species and our ideas and perceptions and elsewhere, he is not mentioned in mediate between us and the world as The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger, even by it is. Archaeological interpretation and Trigger in his “Retrospection.” Realism explanation therefore must grapple with for Trigger is a materialist epistemology ideas in the past or at least their effects that, for archaeologists, accepts the exis- as visible in the archaeological record,

Journal Canadien d’Archéologie 32 (2008) 132 • Ames as well as our own ideas about the past. ideas and the specific misinterpretation In the 1998 article, he suggested that the of archaeological data” (p. 484). A key three available epistemologies—realist, issue is how that body of data grows. positivist, and idealist (distinguished Trigger looks to what he calls “Middle- from ontological idealism)—actually are Ranging Theory,” distinguishing it complementary approaches, accounting from Binford’s middle range theory for different aspects of human behavior. (which he includes in middle-ranging It is not so clear that he saw them in the theory), as essential to accomplishing same way in A History. this. He sees middle-ranging theories In A History of Archaeological Theory, as methodologies that archaeologists Trigger sets out to explore the extent are converging upon globally, regard- to which archaeological theories about less of local traditions of archaeological the past are independent of the accu- practice and commitments to high-level mulated empirical knowledge of that theory. He identifies some middle-rang- record and the extent to which that ing theories as better than others. He empirical knowledge accumulates inde- also sees multivocality as ensuring what pendently of our ideas and the cultural might be called cumulative objectivity context through the explicit application and endorses both the notion of mul- of scientific methodologies. He begins tiple working hypotheses and Wylie’s with “Classical and Other Text-based analogies of archaeological lines of Archaeologies” (Chapter 2), which evidence and inference forming infer- start in antiquity, and ends in the 1990s ential cables and of tacking between with the debates between processualism cables. Beyond that, the history and and postprocessualism (Chapter 8). state of archaeology is too complicated Between them he examines “Antiquari- for simple summation. A selected list of anism without Texts” (Chapter 3), “The other conclusions that I found particu- Beginnings of Prehistoric Archaeology” larly interesting includes: (Chapter 4), “Evolutionary Archaeol- ogy” (Chapter 5), “Cultural Historical • The development of archaeology does Archaeology” (Chapter 6), and “Early have a degree of directionality not Functional-Processual Archaeology,” allowed by extreme relativism and the which includes his discussions of Soviet on-going accumulation of archaeo- Archaeology and V. Gordon Childe logical knowledge does allow for the (Chapter 7). He concludes with what he detection of error; calls a “Pragmatic Synthesis” (Chapter 9) • Perhaps the most important distinc- and “The Relevance of Archaeology” tion in the development of archaeol- (Chapter 10). ogy will not be among theoretical Trigger finds that, indeed, “there is schools but between text-based and no evidence that in their interpretation non-text-based archaeologies, because of archaeological data archaeologists it is only in the former that anthropo- today are less influenced by the milieu logical theories can be fully explored in which they live than they were for- while only in the latter can archaeol- merly … By contrast, the history of ogy investigate long-term sociocultural archaeology suggests a growing body of change, a task only archaeology can archaeological data offers ever stronger undertake and which is its primary resistance to the misapplication of such contribution to the social sciences;

Canadian Journal of Archaeology 32 (2008)  History of Archaeology Thought/Archaeology of B. Trigger • 133

• That regardless of inevitable struc- and in Understanding Early Civilizations tural and cross-cultural frustrations, to advocate strongly the necessity of archaeology benefits by close ties with understanding human nature, how we anthropology; are hard-wired into certain patterns of • Archaeologists should work towards thought and action. He suggests that we empowering Indigenous peoples to need to do this to counter what he terms “guard and protect their culture heri- the “vapid speculations about human tage,” including training Indigenous nature by biologists, psychologists and people to become “fully qualified social anthropologists that currently are archaeologists.” He takes the stance flooding the book market [and] may that, “Cultural heritage should be prove as socially dangerous as racial legally recognized as the dual posses- explanations ever were in the nineteenth sion of the descendents of the people and early twentieth century.” He goes who created it and of all humanity, to on to say, in what might be the best whose cultural creativity and diversity short summary of his intellectual career, it attests” (p. 545). He warns against “While these findings cast doubt upon allowing local groups that exercise beliefs I have held all my life, I regard “political or economic control” to this not as an intellectual defeat but as dictate the conclusions that archae- a welcome challenge. Cherished ideas ologists draw from their research. should not be abandoned lightly, but Interestingly, he is cautious about they should also not go unexamined” the role and use of oral traditions in (Retrospection, p. 252). archaeological interpretations; A History of Archaeological Thought is • He warns against allowing high-level humbling and overwhelming in its com- theories (e.g., Marxism, Processual- mand of ideas and evidence and the ism, Post-Processualism) to exert their lucidity of its prose. This book would own “nefarious influences on archaeo- be the largest jewel in the crown of any logical interpretation” (p. 545). He scholar’s career; that Trigger published worries, for example, about extreme two vast works within three years simply relativists treating creationist and confirms Trigger’s abilities. One could, I archaeological reconstructions of suppose, quibble that A History is a revi- the past as equally valid. We are chal- sion. Having taught with both editions, I lenged, he says, to rescue the study of can attest that the second is a thorough the past from “an aggressive miasma of revision. atavistic speculation” (p. 547). One cannot read a work of such scope and not find points of disagree- On a larger scale, in A History of ment. The dichotomies he establishes at Archaeological Thought and Understand- the beginning of the book (e.g., extreme ing Early Civilizations and elsewhere, he positivists) are over-simplifications and I seems to me to have been grappling think his narrow linking of science and with a much larger intellectual project, scientific methodology with positivism which is accounting for cross-cultural is over-drawn. I would include scientific continuities and similarities, sources of methods appropriate to an historical sci- local variation and the interplay between ence such as archaeology as the first on them to explain the course of history. my list of methods to ensure cumulative This leads him in his “Retrospection” objectivity (particularly testing through

Journal Canadien d’Archéologie 32 (2008) 134 • Ames recursiveness). On the other hand, his error, knowledge derived from archaeol- discussions of realism sent me off to read ogy may be important to human survival. Bunge (whose views I find appealing), to If archaeology is to serve that purpose, renew my long-term acquaintance with archaeologists must strive against heavy Childe, and to read a lot more Trigger. odds to see the past and the human I think he is correct to endorse realism behavior as each was, not as they or (what I call Childe’s syllogism) and to anyone else for their own reasons wish tackle evolved human nature. them to have been” (p. 548). Clearly, A History should be read by all professional and budding archae- REFERENCES CITED ologists, and The Archaeology of Bruce Bunge, M. Trigger by those interested in Trigger 2006 Chasing Reality: Strife over Real- as an archaeologist, a person, and a ism. University of Toronto Press, major figure in Canadian archaeology. Toronto. A History works well in graduate level Pokotylo, D., and N. Guppy courses on archaeological theory and 1999 Public Opinion and Archaeo- history, although I think the first edi- logical Heritage: Views From Outside tion works better because it is shorter, the Profession American Antiquity allowing students to read a wider range 64(3): 400–416. of publications. The second edition is so encompassing that students can suffer Trigger, B. G. from theory and Trigger fatigue. 1998 Archaeology and Epistomol- I end this review with Trigger’s final ogy: Dialoguing across the Darwinian words in A History, words that to me are Divide. American Journal of Archaeology a call for archaeologists to move beyond 102(1): 1–34. the sometimes sterile and trifling theo- 2003 Understanding Early Civilizations: retical debates that have absorbed us and A Comparative Study. Cambridge Uni- to get on with the business of studying versity Press, Cambridge. long-term change: “In a world that, as a result of increasingly powerful technolo- Kenneth M. Ames gies, has become too dangerous and is Department of Anthropology changing too quickly for humanity to Portland State University rely to considerable extent on trial and Portland, Oregon

Canadian Journal of Archaeology 32 (2008)