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1. Processual and Postprocessual Archaeology: A Brief Critical Review
- The University of Alabama Press
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12 Duke and Wilson postprocessualism into Marxist (and neo-Marxist) and cognitive/symbolic /structural approaches. Preucel (1991) has identified hermeneutic and critical emphases. The former is essentially Hodder's (1991) interpretive archaeology, whereas the latter is concerned with neo-Marxist concepts of social power and the oppressive or emancipatory roles of the past in the maintenance or disruption of contemporary social relations. Because of its internal variation, as well as its inherent avoidance of exclusive methodologies, the exact paradigmatic status of postprocessualism may be questioned. However, given the eclectic approach to theory taken in this volume, we are not especially concerned whether postprocessualism is termed a paradigm, a research strategy, or just an approach. This lack of concern with the precise classificatory status of a postprocessual archaeology is perhaps also behind Trigger's (1989a) avoidance of the term (postprocessualism is not even listed in his index), in favor of more restricted ones such as neohistoricism, idealism, neo-Marxism , and contextual archaeology. Watson (1991) has portrayed the debate between the processualist and postprocessualist camps, as represented in some of the writings of Binford and Hodder, as akin to a gladiatorial combat, but it is encouraging to note that increasingly researchers are for practical purposes investigating how the two approaches can legitimately be combined. For example, Rogers (1990: 228) stressed the need to consider "cultural relevance" with "economic , social, demographic, and other factors," in explaining the changes to Arikara material culture as a result of European contact. Duke (1991) has combined culture-historical, processual, and postprocessual approaches in a Braudelian Annales model and applied it to Northern Plains prehistory . Watson (1991) has identified at least five areas of reconciliation between the processual and postprocessual positions. Preucel (1991: 28) maintains that processual, hermeneutic, and critical approaches must be seen as complementary. Saitta (1992a) has demonstrated the complementarity of processual (economic) and postprocessual (social) models in several contemporary studies of the Anasazi of southwest Colorado and has elsewhere argued for the application of explicitly middle-range theories to radical archaeology (Saitta 1992b). Even Hodder (1991) has now advocated an explicitly interpretive archaeology in which a "guarded objectivity," drawing on processual, ecological, evolutionary, behavioral, and positivist archaeology, has a role to play, together with hermeneutic and reflexive approaches: "processual archaeology needs to be subsumed within a relation to critique and hermeneutics, and postprocessual archaeology needs to react to the charge of methodological naivete" (Hodder 1991: 13). Kosso (1991), from a detached philosopher's position, has ar- Introduction 13 gued for a methodological similarity between middle-range theory and hermeneutics. It is important to acknowledge, therefore, that postprocessual archaeology can legitimately be seen as a logical descendant of processual archaeology and not necessarily as a paradigm opposed to it. Earlier, we identified tyrannies current in Plains archaeology. How then can postprocessual archaeology contribute to their solution? First, postprocessual archaeology has shown the potential to develop the unique attributes of archaeology: the study of material culture using a long-term perspective. Recent analyses by Duke (1991/ 1992) are preliminary attempts to apply this approach to the Plains and to solve the tyrannies of institutional placement and the ethnographic record. Second, the recognition of meaning-driven rather than content-driven units is an attempt to move archaeology away from traditional taxonomic units, both spatial and temporal. Third, the explicit recognition of the political content of archaeological interpretation attempts to reduce ethnocentrism. Similarly, although a completely emic approach is untenable with archaeological data, the advocacy of contextualism and the definition of "inside" history (Collingwood 1946) removes archaeology, at least a little, from a purely "outside" and etic position and provides for an examination of intentionality in human action. The following chapters explore some of the issues we have raised here. We have structured the chapters into three general categories. The first group considers general conceptual and theoretical issues raised by the application of postprocessual arguments to Plains archaeology. Alice Kehoe situates the development of Plains archaeology into the wider social and cultural as well as specific disciplinary contexts of North America. She argues that processual archaeology's popularity is partly explained by the wider infatuation of American society with science during the 1960s and 1970s. One of the political bases to archaeology is thus exposed. Larry Zimmerman considers the ways in which archaeology and Native American concerns can be reconciled without reverting to a futile hyperrelativism. Through an examination of two case studies, Zimmerman shows that it is not necessary for archaeologists working with Indians to reject historical or...