Theory – New Archaeology

Archaeological theory underwent a change in the 1960’s and 70’s.  New ways of thinking about what an archaeologist does and why they do it began to be expressed.  Some of the writing that came from this movement is extremely hard to understand at first, however, the concept in general is not really that hard.  This post will summarize the basic tenants of “New Archaeology”.

New Archaeologists, Lewis Binford (father of the theory in United States), Colin Renfrew (father of the theory in United Kingdom), and David Clarke (among others) felt that “an accurate and meaningful history” is more than just the study of the general changes in the archaeological record.  They felt that an anthropological approach to study the processes found in archaeology was a much better way to get at history from archaeology.  Binford suggested that it was necessary to “reconstruct past lifeways” by asking the “right” questions.  They felt that traditional archaeology wasn’t able to test hypothesis scientifically, which left the world to trust the “competence of the archaeologist or theorist”.  New archaeology sought to explain the changes in the archaeological record scientifically.

Thus, New Archaeology (later called “Processional Archaeology”) established seven aspects that distinguished it from traditional archaeology.  These are:

Cultural Evolution – the change that cultures undergo is from internal dynamics and not diffusion

Theory of Systems – culture is a system and not a series of random or independent norms

Culture is Adaptive – cultural systems adapt to the environmental system they are in

Scientific Approach – hypotheses can be tested using scientific method

Cultural Process – trends must be studied not details emphasizing the process through explanation

Explicit Acknowledgment – the theories, aims, and methods of archaeologists must be stated

Recognition of Variability – studies must be comprehensive covering whole range of cultural system

As a direct result of this new approach, archaeology in the United States is studied under the department of Anthropology.  In the United Kingdom this is not the case.  Here (where I am currently studying) archaeology is studied in the Archaeology department with the aims at studying the history of the world, while anthropology is studied in the Anthropology department with the intentions of studying the history of man.

To show how hard it is to get at this theory by studying Binford, let me just offer up his nugget on what “explanation” is.

Binford suggests that explanation is “the demonstration of a constant articulation of variables within a system and the measurement of the concomitant variability among the variables within the system.”  Basically he is just saying that scientific explanation must be unbroken in its connection with itself and the association must be measurable in their changes.  But don’t worry if it still sounds like gaboldigook.  Binford is known for being hard to understand.  We spent nearly the whole two hours just looking at a few of his statements!

It is commendable for archaeologists to branch out and try to include anthropological studies in their own field.  However, I am not completely sold on the attainability of this attempt.  I come away feeling as if archaeologists are being asked to play psychologist – something I am not at all interested in doing.