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Post-Processual Archaeology and After Michael Shanks

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Post-Processual Archaeology and After Michael Shanks C H A P T E R 9 Post-Processual Archaeology and After Michael Shanks The term“ post-processual” tells you only that this archaeology may skip the rest of this section and take archaeology came after processual. Implied is a coher- the point simply that it is controversial. ent program, approach, method, body of theory. But Post-processual archaeology is not the result of a post-processual archaeology cannot be said to have paradigm shift in the discipline, a revolution from any of these. Processual archaeology is still a dominant one kind of science to another. No new normal sci- orthodoxy in the largest community of archaeologists ence (with a new orthodoxy of method and research in the world, in the United States, so even the “post” is agenda) has emerged among a community of archae- a misnomer. Nevertheless, archaeology textbooks, in ologists to replace processual or any other kind of their treatment of theory, regularly have a section on archaeology. this archaeology. Post-processual archaeology is not a coherent the- Post-processual archaeology usually poses as a con- ory of the past or of archaeology. Nor is it a body of tainer for all sorts of trends in the discipline since the armchair theory that has grown in the rarefied atmo- 1970s, many arising as a critique of the processual or- sphere of some university in the absence of any con- thodoxy in Anglo-American archaeology, and of tra- nection with archaeological practice. ditional culture historical archaeology. Included here The core of post-processual archaeology is not a are neo-Marxian anthropology, structuralism, various celebration of the individual set in a particular histori- influences of literary and cultural theory, feminism, cal narrative, as opposed to the generalizing explana- postpositivist social science, hermeneutics, phenom- tion of processual science. enology, and many others. This is not the place to deal Post-processual archaeology is not the archaeo- with these trends in detail. logical offspring of a postmodern mentality which It is enough to start by saying that post-processual denies the possibility of secure knowledge of the past archaeology is a matter of controversy. Nor is not dif- or indeed denies the significance of the past itself in a ficult to find a caricature of post-processual archaeol- play on the meanings of the past for the present, where ogy, in textbooks, among excavators on a field project, multiple contradictory pasts can claim equal validity. anywhere archaeology is a matter of debate rather than I take the caricature seriously because the polariza- simply a source of information about the past. The tion of extremes it involves is a genuine feature of An- caricature takes the form of an archaeology rooted in glo-American academic archaeology. By this I mean an abstract body of difficult (and probably irrelevant) that many of my colleagues and their committees and theory which, in opposition to processual archaeology, institutions act as if this caricature were accurate. I celebrates historical particularity and the individual know many archaeologists in the United States who (see Gardner, chapter 7), and lacks a methodology that see the only alternative to orthodox processual sci- can deliver any kind of secure knowledge. The propo- ence (however modified by the demands of contract nents of post-processual archaeology, in this carica- archaeology) as an extreme and politically motivated ture, are often seen as overly politically motivated, as relativism—post-processual archaeology. The debates much interested in contemporary cultural politics as in conference halls and in the pages of the professional in developing knowledge of past societies. I call this journals have been heated. Academic and professional a caricature because a careful reading of the primary appointments have hinged on whether someone is seen literature shows that it makes little sense. as a proponent or not of post-processual archaeology. One of the lesser aims of this chapter is to correct The polarization is real (and parties on both sides have these misconceptions. And, given this caricature, I will been responsible for the caricatures, or straw men as begin with what post-processual archaeology is not. they are sometimes called). It has been and is part of The reader who has never come across post-processual the social and historical dynamic of Anglo-American 133 archaeology. It is partly also, I think, a particular cam- be called post-processual archaeology (Thomas 2000; paign in the old culture wars between ideologies of the Johnson 1998; Preucel and Hodder 1996; Gamble sciences and humanities (see below). 2001; Hodder 2001). For this very reason my colleagues from other tra- ditions (in India, Japan, France, Germany, and Spain) EMERGENCE AND DISTRIBUTION can find the debate sterile; their archaeologies have a What prompted the emergence of post-processual ar- different social and political dynamic. Their culture chaeology? It first appeared as critique, rooted in dis- wars have been different and so too field archaeolo- satisfaction with the way archaeology was going in the gists. 1970s (see Watson, chapter 3). In the United States this It is important to understand the social dynamics was the consolidation of a certain kind of scientific and organizational politics of a discipline. But the is- research methodology tied to a systemic conception sues here are at once and have always been much more of society and culture. Specifically the critique aimed than this. I think it is possible now to see through the at a redefinition of social practice, social units and polemics. For me, the case of post-processual archae- groupings, and of the nature of culture, all seen to be ology is that of a committed quest for a better and the heart of a social archaeology aiming at the recon- more thoughtful, but not more exclusive, archaeol- struction of societies on the basis of their material ogy. And the positions argued by archaeologists who remains. might be called post-processual (and usually by other Society was seen not as an extrasomatic means of than themselves) have now touched most parts of the adaptation (the premise taken up in processual ar- discipline and profession. chaeology), but a communicative medium. The first I find myself here coming too close to an inappro- studies in post-processual archaeology were of sym- priate definition. Instead I want an understanding bolism—interpretations of the meaning of things, of of the term to emerge through an outline of some prehistoric burial practices, of house design, of pot- key concepts, debates, and connections beyond ar- tery decoration. This was a cognitive archaeology of chaeology. mind (see Gabora, chapter 17). And symbolism de- manded not a fixed specification of singular meaning LOCATION AND PRACTITIONERS but a more subtle exploration of the range of possible Where might you find post-processual archaeologists? meanings. This interpretation was not the outcome Post-processualism is mainly an academic phenom- of a processual method of testing hypotheses and enon found in university archaeology departments. subsuming particular cases beneath generalizations. Its core community has been in Britain, but there It proceeded more tentatively, building connections are many also in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. A through archaeological data. It was clear from the be- significant portion of a new generation of anthropo- ginning that post-processual archaeology had a very logical archaeologists in the United States seems to be different overall agenda, often aiming less at knowl- taking up post-processual interests, while there is also edge of the past for its own sake, than a knowledge a post-processual strength there in historical archaeol- that linked intimately with contemporary issues and ogy. There are a few vocal post-processualists in the interests, such as different values placed on the past. In museum profession worldwide, fewer still in profes- spite of the differences, post-processual shares a great sional fieldwork. deal with processual archaeology: A key point is that only a minority of post-proces- sual archaeologists would accept the label. And the v An outlook critical of the prevailing status quo ideas have spread beyond the practitioners. This is v An outlook based on a traditional notion of rea- very clear from some of the main conferences held soned critical debate as the cornerstone of the acad- in archaeology, those of the World Archaeological emy Congress, the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) v A location primarily in the research-oriented acad- in Britain, and Nordic TAG in Scandinavia. All are emy thoroughly informed by post-processual agendas. So v An enthusiasm for reflection on the procedures and too, many of the latest textbooks, though not claim- concepts of a discipline, superficially an enthusiasm ing themselves post-processual, are permeated with therefore for theory (though I hesitate to call this the issues I will outline in this short sketch and which simply theory because processual archaeology is have come into archaeology through what has come to interested primarily in methodology) 134 michael shanks v An intellectual optimism that social archaeology finds to the workings of sociocultural systems—group- has something significant to say about past societies ings of structured behaviors in social totalities which and cultures rather than simply documenting their operate as systems. remains Theory since the 1970s has struggled to rethink the v An anthropological, or more generally sociological, character of cultures and systems, these structures, outlook and particularly how they come into being. Post-pro- cessual archaeology has not been at all satisfied with Right from the beginning the dissatisfaction and the cultural systems of processual archaeology. The different modes of critique comprised a diversity criticism is that the systems of processual archaeology which has not diminished but increased. If we speak are too one-sided, too deterministic, too inflexible.
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