Archaeology 8

Criticisms of Postprocessual

If conclusions are all subjective and there is no right answer then why would you even do it? Archaeology grew out of colonial times and its origin is political, impossible to remove ourselves

Processual Plus

The addition of the study of symbol and agency to the Processual approach, Keeps processual features of generalization, explanation, and hypothesis testing

Criticisms of Processual

You lose sight of people themselves, and the symbols behind things. That is a large part of human existence. There is also importance of individuals and history. It is hard to study people just scientifically.

Formal Analogies

analogies justified by similarities in the formal attributes of archaeological and ethnographic objects and features. Size, shape

Relational Analogies

analogies justified on the basis of close cultural continuity between the archeological and ethnographic cases or similarity in general cultural form. (similar culture)

Experimental Archaeology

experiments designed to determine the archaeological correlates of ancient behavior; may overlap with both ethnoarchaeology and taphonomy.

Paradigm

he overarching framework, often unstated, for understanding a research problem. It is a researcher's "culture." Archaeologists sharing the same paradigm can converse with one another and leave a lot unstated.

Middle-Level Theory

hypothesis that links archaeological observations with the human behavior or natural processes that produced them.

Ethnoarchaeology

studying modern cultures to learn about past cultures the study of contemporary peoples to determine how human behavior is translated into the archaeological record. (supports a relational analogy)

Low-Level Theory

the observations and interpretations that emerge from hands-on archaeological field and lab work. (is made of obsidian, 21.5 mm long, weighs 2.1 gams)

Uniformitarianism

the principle asserting that the processes now operating to modify the earth's surface are the same processes that operated long ago in the geological past. how we do things today will give us insight into how people did things in the past. really belongs in geology.

Taphonomy

the study of how organisms become part of the archaeological record, do things today and see if it looks the same (decaying animals)

High-Level Theory

theory that seeks to answer large "why" questions. (Why did humans become cultural animals?)

Processual Archaeology

• emphasizes evolutionary generalizations, not historical specifics and downplays the importance of the individual. • views culture from a systemic perspective and takes an adaptive approach to the study of human culture. • Explanation in processual archaeology is explicitly scientific. • attempts to remain ethically neutral and claims to be explicitly nonpolitical.

Postprocessual Archaeology

• rejects the processual search for universal laws and emphasizes the role of the individual. • rejects the systemic view of culture and focuses more on the ideational approach to culture. • sees knowledge as "historically situated," and not as objective as processual archaeologists argue. • argues that all archaeology is political.