Anth 201 Week 2
Franz Boas
(1858-1942) aka father of American Anthropology - rejected singular explanations of culture change - developed concewpt of cultural relativism: denied the possibility of a universal standard for comparing development of different cultures - there was no way to appropriately place a value on the degree of archaeological development amongst different societies developed historical particularism: each culture is the product of a unique sequence of development, most often diffusion - human variability is important and must be studied within itself
V Gordon Childe
(1892-1957) - Pre-eminent British cultural-historical archaeologist of early 20th c - made wide use of the Arhcaeological cutlure and assemblage concepts: was not limited to the description of cultures, but also understanding them (ie origins) - also interested in the origins of urban living, farming and civilization
Lewis Binford
(1931-2011) - notable American archaeologist of latter half of 20th c - pushed Archaeology as Anthropology in 1962 - led the wave of "New Archaeology" from the 1960s onward - new goals of archaeology was to explicate and explain the total range of physical and cultural similarities and differences characteristic of the entire spatio-temporal span of man's existence - we should be interested in processes of change, making cross-comparisons to understand how things relate to each other
Ian Hodder
(1948 - ) - famous British archaeologist, responsible for popularizing the post processual agenda in archaeology - once a staunch processualism, but published Symbolic and Structural Archaeology in 1982, one of the first collections of post-processual archaeological writing
Fault of unilinear cultural evolutionists
- Ex. Tylor + Morgan in week 1 thought progress was inherent in nature because culture is cumulative - more one kept learning and changing, the more they moved towards civilization - compared cultures to study change, but were too influenced by their racial and cultural biases - influenced colonial attitudes: linking behaviour with size and shape of the cranium: bigger skull - more evolved - race was a biological category
Levels of Theory
- Low range: Data, relevant facts about the archaeological record (artifacts, structures, features, etc.) based on observation, Just describing things we find - Middle range: Links specific set of archaeological data with the human behaviour or natural processes that produced them; Most important: ways that modern archaeology is done - Start with hypothetico-approach, not just a description - High range: Goes beyond the archeological specifics to address "big questions" that are of concern to many social and historical domains, Data alone will not answer, need to incorporate higher social theory
Çatalhöyük, Turkey
- Neolithic proto-city (7500 - 5700 BCE) - Excavations conducted since 1958; Hodder and team excavating since 1993 - Emphasizes contextuality, interactivity, and multivocality: - Diaries and videos from excavators - Non-traditional report writing (comments from local residents) - Laboratory analysis involved in guided tours) - Not concerned with proving an overarching outcome - A lot of archaeology + fieldwork now tries to work with the public in the area
Critical theory
- Theoretical approach whereby all knowledge is historical, and therefore a form of biased communication - All claims to objective knowledge are illusory - in layman's terms: the ideologies through which we come to know the world are the central problem of knowing the world - preconceived notions, one's perspective is the biggest hurdle to understanding the world - approach came from Frankfurt school of German social thinkers in 1970s - call into question the procedures of reasoning by which archaeology has operated critical of testing used by processual archaeologist as merely importing archaeology into positivistic approaches of science
Ethnographic culture
- a group of people sharing a common material culture, economy, social organization, ideology and language - less about abstract ideas, but more of a direct reference to a group of people - also usually have a territory bounded to it and are roughly equivalent to an ethnic group Ex. !Kung people in South Africa are subject to many anthropologic studies
Culture Concept
- anthropological culture - ethnographic culture - archaeological culture
Artifacts in sub-syatems of material culture
- artifacts involved primarily in the technological and economic spheres are referred to as "technomic" - artifacts in social and political spheres are called "socio-technic" -artifacts that carry ideological info and called "ideotechnic" - in practice, these categories often overlap, so that objects have multiple meanings
Marxist Archaeology
- based on writings of Karl Marx.+ Friedrich Engles - change within a society is seen as the result of contradictions arising between forces of production (technology) and the relations of production (social organization) - contradictions emerged as class struggle - weakness: handling actual archaeological data, research in field is unnecessary
Classic Maya Collapse
- collapse of Mayan society came in cycles of smaller collapses - Classic period (250-900 AD) saw many small collapses, with a final collapse in 10th c - collapse of Southern lowlands hard to explain because of its large scale for several million people and 40-50 kingdoms - collapse caused by cycles of destructive warfare, resulted in disintegration of centralized political organizations - multivariate explanations: - overpopulation, deterioration of agricultural landscape, famine, disease, warfare - researchers found that series of droughts from 770 to 1100 could have been single most important trigger for the collapse
Agency
- concept has been introduced to allow discussion of the role of the individual in inciting change - scope of term is not always clears, has been applied to artifacts as well as people - difficult to determine how the actions of one individuals had a wider and longer-term impact
Normative dimension of culture
- concerned with the rules society uses to evaluate behaviour and other things - more abstract; gives the structure of how one makes decisions and what is acceptable (ex. what traditions one follows)
archaeological culture
- constantly recurring assemblage of artifacts assumed to be representative of a particular set of behavioural activities carried out at a particular place and time - assemblage: group of artifacts recurring together at a particular time and place, representing the sum of human activities - artifact: any portable object used, modified or made by humans: ex. lithic tools, pottery, metal weapons
Roy Rappaport
- cultural anthropologist -worked in New Guinea, and used strategy of distancing himself from the symbolic forms of its agricultural society - looking at what it does, not what it says it does for ritual behaviour - position is good for archaeologists who are unable to discuss aspects of the ritual with its participants
Experimental archaeology
- cultural anthropologists did not often collect data on material culture that was useful to archaeologists, so this methods is where we go make the information ourselves 1. reproduction of archaeological sites to test formation processes and excavation techniques 2. reproduction of prehistoric technology - usually to test feasibility and/or to develop comparative collections for use in forensic or residue analysis ex. stone tools with flinknapping - looking at sequence of steps in production
Two components of normative dimension
- cultural values: beliefs or feelings that are widely shared by members if a society about what is important to the society's well-being and identity - norms: expectations shared by members of the group that specify behaviour that is considered appropriate for a given situation - also reflected in material culture of a society (ex. wearing red in China at weddings)
limitation of archaeological culture
- definition assumes that basic human behaviour patterns have remained unchanged throughout prehistory, but this is unlikely for older materials - difficult to say the objects we find are representative of one particular people ex. acheulian hand axe made for over 1 million years of prehistory, where 1 mil. years represents 1 group of unchanging people; many groups of hominins produced this axe
Structuralism
- developed in large part by French anthropolgist Claude-Lévi Strauss in 1960s and 70s - argued for rules underlying myths, marriage and rituals - In layman's terms: - meaning is rooted within deep structures in all cultural practices - these structures of thought are the basis of knowing the past, have to understand structures behind creation of human practices to know human culture - there are recurrent products in human thought in different cultures, many of which are polar opposites: cooked/raw, man/woman, etc.
Cognitive archaeology
- emphasizes importance of generalization within its theory, and importance of hypothesis testing - rejects total relativism of critical theory, and suspicious of structuralist archaeologists to put privileged meaning into ancient societies - more rigorous and explicit methods than the processual approach - applies methods to the symbolic and ideological issues first addressed my postprocessual approaches - addresses the symbolizing and reasoning of hominins before Homo Sapiens, possibly in an evolutionary framework - accepts the postprocessual emphasis of the active role of material culture - recognizes that cognitive developments are also social developments
Sources od archaeological interpretation
- ethnographic analogy - experimental archaeology
Lejre, Denmark
- example of experimental archaeology - a stone age campsite, iron age village and viking marketplace -also a 18th c farmstead - kind of like a theme park, public can come visit - archaeologists work onsite for experimental projects: material culture, settlement, farming practices
Hypothetico-deductive method
- formulation fo hypotheses and drawing conclusions from them - through deduction, establishment of resulting consequences (from hypotheses) can be tested against archaeological data - a consequence = test implication - a prediction of what you will find IF the hypothesis is true; if ... then statements - can compare expectations to archaeological data
Processualism and material culture
- good at explaining environmental and ecological culture Yes: technomic + socio-technic: can deal with stone tools changing over time in different conditions, how lifestyle changed on food collecting habits, etc. No: ideotechnic: struggles to get to level of symbols + meanings, scientific methods don't really allow for people to find out what people were thinking, their ideologies
Personal Values
- individual's feelings about what is important to their identity or well-being - does not have to be consistent with cultural values, but often are - deciding what to do is easier if personal values and cultural values are congruent
Post-Pleistocene Adaptations
- influential paper published by Lewis Binford in 1968 explaining the origins of farming + food production - different bc of its generality: explained the origins of farming not only in Near East or Mediterranean, but worldwide - payed attention to global events at the end of the last Ice Age - centered explanation on demography: once.q formerly mobile group becomes sedentary, its population will increase - lead to increasing use of plant foods like wild cereals and the means of processing them - lead to cycle of sowing and harvesting - lack of mobility caused by worldwide rising sea levels (less space, more fish)
Neo-marxism
- loose term for approaches concerned with modern interpretations of social inequality, status, power, anti-colonialsm and anti-capitalism - theory developed 150 years ago, core themes are still relevant but neo-marxists bring in more modern interpretations - ex. of Mark Leone and his examination of the Annapolis garden of wealthy landowner William Paca - emphasizes the contradiction between a slave-owning society and US society proclaiming independence for increased individual liberty
Ethnographic analogy
- match your archeological data to the behaviour of modern or historicall recorded peoples to help you infer the behaviour that the archeological data represent - most important source of models for interpretation Ex. Saami hunter in Lapland help us understand how past human societies lived in northern environments Ex. unusual pattern of post-holes in an Iroquoian village archaeological site: refer to historical literature having an "entrance maze", forcing raiders to zig-zag to make them move vulnerable to arrows - interpretation: your feature is probably a maze, but your research does not prove that it is
James Watson + Francis Crick
- molecular biologists, awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1962 - co-discoverers of of the structure of DNA in 1953, double-helix structure; illustrated and describes structure of DNA - a critical step in illuminating the genetic history and evolution of humans (and all living things) - we could know our relation to primates not just through behaviour, but genetically
Environmental Circumscription hypothesis
- monocausal - Robert Carnerio, uses example of the formation of state society in Peru - focus on limitations imposed by the environment
External Trade hypothesis
- monocausal - formation of state is linked with trading links with outside communities - William Rathje + emergence of state societies in Maya lowlands - lowlands lacked raw materials, so the demand for these materials for the development of the sate must have come from external links
Warfare Hypothesis
- monocausal - warfare between adjacent groups is seen as an angent of change - could result in conquest, formation of larger, incusive state societies - Kent Flannery: role of military leaders in the formation of state societies
Population Growth Hypothesis
- monocausal -18th c. Thomas Malthus argued that human pop. growth is limited by food supply - once carrying capacity is reached, this leads to food shortages and increased death rate, lower fertility and some armed conflict which places a firm ceiling on population - Esther Bosercup refused this that farmers will produce more food on same land if population increases - new farming methods caused pop. increase and leads to more efficiency, and society works harder because they have to, to sustain themselves
Internal Conflict Hypothesis
- monocausal - Igor Diakonoff hypothesized that states come from increased wealth - state arises as order for class conflict - internal differentiation in society is a major causative element for the state
The Hydraulic Hypothesis
- monocausal explanation - Karl Wittfogel, 1950s, explained the origin of the great civilizations in terms of large-scale irrigation of the plains of the great rivers - fertility and high yields of river plains led to considerable density in early civilizations snd led to the possibility of urbanism - irrigation needed hydraulic organization - system of leadership and wealth emerged - hypothesis has been applied to: Mesopotamia: Sumerian civilization from 3000 BC Ancient Egypt: Valley of the Nile from 3000 BC India/Pakistan: Indus Valley civilization from 2500 BC China: Shang civilization from 1500 BC
Material engagement
- notion that changes arises from conscious and often purposeful human activities - related to concepts of materialization - try to overcome the duality in discussions of human activities between the practical and the cognitive, material and conceptual - long-term changes in societies have both a symbolic and material dimension - gives greater attention to the different interactions between humans and the material world that cine through developing technologies and social and economic relations
Evolutionary Archaeology
- notion that processes responsible for biological evolution also drive culture change - complexity of human mind came out of natural selection: human mind evolved bc of selective pressures faced by hunter-gatherersin Pleistocnene period that impacted our way of life - not yet supported by neurological analysis
Critiques of Post-Processualism
- overly relativist (What's an archaeologist to do? can we truly know the past? doesn't explicitly lay out methodologies) - interpretations are not often falsifiable (no way to pitch a theory and have someone fact-check it) - lacks an explicit methodology
Anthropological Culture
- patterned learned behaviour of the members of a society that is passed on primarily through language - provides context of meaning and provides tools for divining meaning - ex. how to live, what to do
Positivism
- philosophic position developed by Auguste Comte in the 18th c - emphasizes the testability of statemnts and the separation of data from the theories that explain them - society, like the natural world operates according to general laws - the world, including past societies is knowable know empiricism (direct observation of the world) and the scientific method
Material dimension of culture
- physical residues of a behaviour in a culture, especially things with special meanings - refers to all objects produced or modified by a society: artifacts, food remains, structures - objects used for subsistence are especially important Ex. stone tools, iPhone, monuments like El Castillo in Mexico
Post-Processualism
- reactionary to the limits of Processualism - reject ecological explanations, and concentrate on ideology and symbol systems: focus on ideologies rather than adaptation - rejects generalization in favour of an individualizing approach that is influenced by: structuralism, critical theory, and neo-marxism
Differences between Cognitive-processual archaeology and functional-processual archaeology
- seeks actively to incorporate info about the cognitive and symbolic elements of early societies into its theories - recognizes that ideology is an active force within societies and must be given a role in many explanations - material culture is an active factor in making up the world we live in: mater culture has an important role in the way individuals and societies construct their own social reality - role of internal conflict within societies should be considered for fully - the limited view of historical explanation being related to the human individual should be revised - can account for creative role of individual without relying on intuition or becoming overly subjective - facts can no longer be viewed as having an objective existence independent of theory
Universal laws
- some archaeologists looked for universal laws governing cultural behaviour - wanted ways to studu transitions between material culture and have standard interpretations - however, preceding general theories were often too vague to explain culture change -ex. diffusion alone cannot explain variation in archaeology
Two forms of explanation
- specific: seeks to know more of the details surrounding an event - if we can establish enough of what led up to an event, the event will become clearer to us; sometimes referred to as "historical" - general: related to New Archaeology - Carl Hempel and natural laws; try to explain human behaviour through universal laws
Symbolic Dimension of culture
- system of meanings a group has for interpreting and making sense of the world around them and communicating meaning - most important element: language - also body language, cultural icones (flags), collective memories (JFK assassination ;-;)
Ethnoarchaeology
- the study of contemporary cutures with a view of understanding behavioural relationships that underlie the production of material culture - linked with using analogies between living cultures with past cultures
Processualism
- theoretical sucessor to cultural ecology of the 1940s and 50s where culture was an adaptive system - an approach that stresses the dynamic relationship between social and economic aspects of culture and the environment as the basis for understanding of processes of cultural change - strong advocate for the scientific method
Three Dimensions of Culture
1. Material dimension 2. Normative dimension 3. Symbolic dimension
Characteristics of Processualism
1. culture is exosomatic: part of human adaptation outside of the body, culture is the external part of our bodies that has allowed to evolved (in addition to biological adaptation) 2. culture change happens along a predictable framework 2. culture change is an evolutionary process
How do cultures change according to cultural-historians?
1. invention: invention of a new idea/artifact, usually through the modification of an existing one - underplayed this idea - believed that most inventions/innovations were rare, single occurrences: only one group could have created an idea, societies did not change much 2. diffusion: spread of ideas or technologies between societies without permanent movement of people - played up; if one group invented something, another group had it through contact between societies - much show that idea/technology existed somewhere else earlier and that contact was possible 3. migration: spread of culture traits by movements of entire populations - hard to document archaeologically because how do you tell the difference between people moving or an idea moving - less emphasized than diffusion
Key Characteristics of Culture
1. it is shared 2. it is taught and learned (not biologically determined) 3. it changes over time (cultural-historical archaeology under-highlighted aspect of change) 4. it is not random (influenced by environment, is culmination of generations of people + surroundings)
Sub-systems of Material culture
1. technology: easiest to study; can interpret tools and pottery as just what ware: ex. used to store food, for eating, etc. 2. economy - evidence is subject to uneven preservation; aspects of subsistence: can look at food remains 3. political and social organization: increasingly abstract and difficult to identify; need a lot of cultural context (ex. terracotta warriors of China) 4. ideology: most difficult to deconstruct, must know meanings to symbols of a certain people
Willard Libby
American physical chemist, awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960 - renowned for development of radiocarbon dating in 1949 - absolute dating method that measures the decay of radioactive isotope (14C) in organic material - up until this point, archaeologists could only date things relatively, through comparison - radiocarbon dating allowed to move to absolute dating - pining a date or an artifact or stratigraphic layer
Example hypothesis
An important determinant for the settlement size and location of Iroquoian villages was their defensive positioning against raiding - test implications: (just possibilities) 1. There will be navigable water within 2 km of this village 2. Villages will be located on high ground with a view of the surrounding countryside 3. All villages will have evidence of palisades or other defensive fortifications
Deduction vs. Induction
Deduction: general principles -> specific instances; ex. Hypothetico-deductive method Induction: specific instances -> general principles
Critiques of Processualism
Environmental determinism: the way that human culture adapted was completely dependent on the environment No human agency: no room for human decisions and capabilities to influence their own change Cultures are homeostatic: don't change internally, only external stimuli Ignores gender, ethnicity, social reforms Wrongly assumes objectivity of interpretation: biases are not supposed to impact experiment, but everyone has biases whether they are aware of them or not
Post- processualism and material culture
No: technomic, socio-technic Yes: ideotechnic - good at studying early civilizations with writing bc they can derive meaning from written records, but not good at prehistory
Post-Modernism
Rejects: - generalization and general law formulation: counter to creating truth - there is no singular way of explaining things - empiricism as a valid form of knowing the world: can lead one down erroneous paths, forgetting one assumes their own objectivity - assumption of the objectivity of reality Emphasizes: - pluralism (many valid perspectives) - contextualization of social, political, and historical interpretations to truth: not neglecting other trends around data - skepticism towards universal truths - subjectivity
Rise of Science and Impact on archaeology
Scientific advances of the mid 20th c: - chemistry - molecular biology shifted the focus of archaeology away from the struct description and definition of cultural chronologies; towards the search for explanation of cultural processes
Robert Ascher
from Cornell - came up with three criteria for choosing appropriate analogies between prehistoric and living peoples - both groups must have: 1. similar technologies 2. similar economies 3. live in similar environments - analogies are not explanations, but rather sources of hypotheses that require independent testing
Scientific Method
process of generating knowledge: - observations - hypothesis testing - data collection - experimentation - conclusions - a scientific theory is a falsifiable explanation derived from the scientific process