A scholarly book by Ian Hodder
The first pages of the book provide a thorough explanation of the Archaeology Theory. Ian Hodder provides the opening salvo which deals on some theoretical debates on archaeology. He explains the increase in the study of archaeological theory or in theory teaching and research. There are two reasons for this. The internal reasons dealt on the development of archaeological theory which emphasizes the New Archaeology on a critical approach to method and theory.
One subject focuses on processual archaeology, which deals on theory rather than method and brings us to more theoretical positions in the historical and social sciences. There are shifts here: the New Archaeology has become more theoretical, and the theorizing has become very abstract and specialized, making it more difficult to understand. This is a big challenge for the students of Archaeology.
In the humanities and social sciences, there are various discussions and debates. Some scientists like Meskel argue that feminist writers seek to open debate to a theoretical pluralism. Archaeology is now being linked to other disciplines like philosophy. Cultural studies are also being linked to the New Archaeology. But archaeology’s interaction with branches of psychology like evolutionary psychology and cognitive science are also given emphasis.
Hodder explains Thomas’s archaeological work on landscapes which are largely influenced by geography, more specifically by cultural geographers and art history.
“Behavioral Archaeology: Toward a New Synthesis”
The chapter entitled “Behavioral Archaeology: Toward a New Synthesis,” written by Vincent M. LaMotta and Michael B. Schiffer, deals with behavioral archaeology, which refers to the study of the formation processes of the archaeological record and with the reconstruction of the cultural past through behavioral inferences. The authors argue that this is different from many other social sciences because behavioral archaeology is based on the study of interactions between people and material objects, which is collectively termed “behavior”, i.e., in the point of view of Archaeological study. The authors opine that behavioralists seek to develop appropriate method and theory for studying and explaining all forms of variation in human social life in terms of behavior.
For instance, there is a variation in the form and arrangement of artifacts, architecture, and cultural deposits in living systems and in the archaeological record: archaeological record is the product of human behavior and not of some mental states (LaMotta and Schiffer, 2001, p. 15).
A behavioralist can dig into every aspect of human life using scientific methods, and the research is framed in terms of people-object interactions. To behavioralists, the irreducible core of archaeology is simply “the study of material objects … in order to describe and explain human behavior (LaMotta, and Schiffer, 2001, p. 15).
Human behavior therefore is linked to material objects of the past, meaning you can get the explanation of what we are today, or how we do react with the environment and with one another (meaning behavior) from the records of the past. The authors argue that the explanation for this was directed toward the behavioral variation at many scales.
Behavioral archaeologists explained and formed a science of human behavior grounded in what the authors called nomothetic statements about people-object interactions under specified boundary conditions – ranging from highly specific to highly general.
Behavioral archaeology is an extension of processualist agenda, and the behavioral archaeologists questioned this processual theory; in a sense, they departed from the concept of New Archaeology in their treatment of the archaeological record.
It was argued that new archaeologists had adopted simplistic conceptions of inference and upon these built inadequate methods for constructing past behavior, conflating traces of formation processes with traces of the “cultural” process of interest. Behavioralists then formulated new models of inference and insisted on the need to investigate formation processes, seen as the major source of uncontrolled variables. The authors conclude that we are now in a position to synthesize a methodological and theoretical framework for achieving these goals.
Behavioralists are committed to building explanatory theory that operates anywhere along the continuum from general to specific.
Behavioral archaeologists define human behavior as the interaction of living individuals with the elements of the material world. Behavior therefore involves people and objects.
There is a barrier that divides the animate organism from the inanimate world of material objects. Explanations for actions of the human organism are in the form of variables such as “the environment” or states such as “ideology,” “values,” “attitudes,” or “intentions”.
On the other hand, at the core of behavioral methodology lies the life history concept. We can say that an artifact’s life history in the sequence of behaviors lead from the procurement of raw materials and manufacture of that object through various stages of use, reuse and/or recycling until it is not anymore of use or the so-called discard stage.
Past behaviors and behavioral systems can be explained and understood from life histories through so-called archaeological remains. A lot more subjects of LaMotta and Schiffer dealt on behavioral contexts. They explained the locus of a “process” reveals a specific problem. We can point to a comparison of behavioral interactions with certain characteristics, also known as variables relevant to research questions.
The chapter on “Evolutionary Archaeology,” by Robert D. Leonard, explains more deeply the complex discipline of Archeology. The author argues: “Divorce from the biological sciences has been uncontested and amicable.
Anthropology has been able to provide the grounds for the divorce by providing expert testimony on how humans are totally unlike the rest of creation. We are really different from each other and from the rest of the living organisms – that’s what Leonard would like to impart.
In providing itself with the justification of its own existence, anthropology has provided the rest of biology with defenses for continued belief in the fundamental difference between our own species and the rest of the animal kingdom.
In a rather rare instance of interdisciplinary cooperation, anthropology has been able to provide biology with all the reasons necessary to maintain an unquestioned and unquestioning acceptance of the incommensurability of one species with all others. One might expect a critical mind to note the self-serving nature of the argument and question it on those grounds if no other. (Leonard, 2001, p. 65).
One of the highlights of Leonard’s paper is on evolution and archaeology. Evolutionary archaeology (EA) had its origins in the late 19760s and 1980s when a small group of individuals sought to break down the barrier Rindos refers to between human evolution and the evolution of the rest of organic life by bringing Darwinian theory to archaeology. Of course, archaeology has long discussed evolution before that time, and used a few evolutionary terms, but they discussed it in ways that had nothing to do with the evolution spoken of by Darwin (1859). Evolutionary Archaeologists refer to these early evolutionary efforts as Cultural Evolution in order to minimize confusion and maintain this important distinction between Darwinian and non-Darwinian thought. Leslie White, one of the great Cultural Evolutionary thinkers in anthropology, noted that Darwinian theory was absent in Cultural Evolution in the following quote:
Cultural anthropologists had borrowed the concept of evolution from Darwin and had employed this concept to establish and enrich their science. Unfortunately, they do not explicitly recognize this. We have to point out that the theory of evolution was introduced into cultural anthropology independently of Darwin and indeed of biology in general. The New Archaeology had evolutionary aspirations, but it is clear that they were not founded upon Darwinian theory.
Leonard (2001) explains White’s theory that is now viewed in two ways:
First, if one sees the evolution of humanity as unique with respect to other forms of life. The Darwinian theory was irrelevant requiring a different theory now known as Cultural Evolution. Ultimately, it became what is called processual archaeology today. However, this one rejects the position that humans are unique, and largely immune to the effects of Darwinian processes. In other words, as it ignores the Darwinian theory, it lacks the perspective on archaeology. As we can see the Darwinian evolution has increased our knowledge of life on earth and the evolution of human behavior.
Our ordinary belief of archaeology is that it is a record of nothing but the evolution of human behavior, but several generations of archaeologists have turned their back on their incredible knowledge-generating machine of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Leonard states that this loss was not unlike the loss that would have come to the physical sciences had physicists turned their back on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
Leonard (2001) explains more on the Darwinian theory. He offers an easy understanding of the Darwinian theory but he adds that many of the anthropologists and archaeologists have made it so difficult to understand and have confounded it with Cultural Evolutionism. These anthropologists and archaeologists have not really taken the time to learn the difference, making a mistake and the naturalistic fallacy. Others mistakenly believe that Darwinian theory reduces the complexity of human existence.
The Darwinian theory that states:
- there is variation in organisms;
- there is transmission of that variation, or inheritance; and
- some variants do better in certain circumstances than other variants. This third component is the process of natural selection – the difference persistence of variation.
These three facts constitute the basics of Darwinian evolution. Leonard explains that we are today because certain characteristics that our ancestors possessed were favorable in specific environments, and as a consequence our ancestors had more offspring than others who lacked those characteristics. That is natural selection.
Biologist Ernst Mayr (Leonard, 2001, p. 68) defines the phynotype as: “The totality of characteristics of an individual.”
The phenotype is all aspects of us, behavioral and physical, and it is the phenotype upon which natural selection operates. We unfold as individuals as our genetic structures dictate, yet the final package – our phenotype – is shaped both by our genes and by our environment – both physical and social. Our particular phenotype concerns our physical appearance, and also the behavioral traits that are influenced even more directly by the environment, and so forth.
We all have unique phenotypes, as do all life forms, yet we may also share a wide variety of individual characteristics. The sources of variation for many of these heavily environmentally determined characteristics are history, chance, and human behavior played out on top of the genotypic instructions.
We learn behavior through a process that is called cultural transmission. We attain cultural transmission vertically from our parents, obliquely from the other elders, and horizontally from our peers. Some of our behavior is more than simply learned, but is invented, and sometimes invented over and over again, without transmission.
There is also the current work focused on the concept of memes (Leonard, p. 70). Memes are minimal units of information that are transmitted.
With respect to transmission in the past, memes were ultimately translated into technology, leaving us an empirical record of cultural transmission (Neiman 1995; Leonard, p. 70).
Therefore it is first and foremost archaeologists who “see” transmission the past.
Leonard enumerates the assumptions of the Darwinian theory:
- Humans are life forms.
- Natural selection operates on phenotypes, making evolution in part a phenotype phenomenon.
- Behavior is part of the human phenotype, and it is transmitted partially through learning.
- Technology is the product of human behavior, and consequently a component of the human phenotype.
- The differential persistence of behavior will be reflected by the differential replication of technology through time.
The last subject we can discuss in this paper as Steven Mithen’s (2001) “Archaeological Theory and Theories of Cognitive Evolution.”
Archaeologists are continuously seeking ways to explore new aspects of the past to explain present aspects of human life. One of these aspects is cognitive archaeology, which began to emerge in the 1980s and sought new issues in archaeology. Evidence of the past points to understanding of the modern mind.
Mithen (2001, p. 98) explains cognitive evolution as a means to explore the role of archaeology in understanding both past and present minds. A key argument is that archaeologists need to make greater efforts to engage with the theories, data, and ideas within the cognitive sciences.
Scientists explored significant developments involving archaeologists, anthropologists, and cognitive scientists, while there are others who have sought to synthesize evidence and data from archaeology with that from various branches of psychology.
Cognitive scientists are now focused on archaeological evidence and ideas when seeking to understand the nature and evolution of the mind. Archaeologists now have the opportunity to play a substantial role in the interdisciplinary studies of cognitive evolution.
Mithen (2001, p. 99) argues that archaeologists must not only contribute data and ideas for the evaluation of theories generated within the cognitive sciences but must also play an equal role in setting the agenda for studying cognitive evolution.
Mithen cites Merlin Donald’s (1991) Origin of the Modern Mind, saying that archaeological evidence can be integrated with cognitive science.
Archaeological evidence can be of great use in the study of cognitive evolution. Mithen also cites Brian Butterworth (1999) and his book The Mathematical Brain. Again archaeological evidence points us as to why and how the brain is so effective at using brains.
Conclusion
There are new concepts that sprung from more studies of archaeology and this linking the past to the present in explaining and understanding human behavior. The evidence does not only revolve around living individuals but also objects and other things found in nature from the past; they explained human behavior and other various disciplines that are now interlinked with each other to understand the complexity of man.
References
LaMotta, V. M. and Schiffer, M. B. 2001. Behavioral Archaeology: Toward a New Synthesis. In I. Hodder, Archaeological Theory Today. Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell.
Leonard, R. D. 2001. Evolutionary Archaeology. In I. Hodder, Archaeological Theory Today. Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell.
Mithen, S. 2001. Archaeological Theory and Theories of Cognitive Evolution. In I. Hodder, Archaeological Theory Today. Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell.