Processual archaeology

Processual archaeology is the study of process, that is to say, investigation of the way humans do things and the way things decay. Also this processual archaeology calling itself new archaeology, and it’s reaction beginning in the 1960’s. It against traditional culture historical and descriptive approaches to the material past. And the prominent of this processual archaeology is Lewis Binford.

                      Before the begging of processual archaeology there was traditional archaeology or culture history. The traditional archaeologist or culture historians believed that their job was to create catalogues of artifacts, to establish a link between a particular set of cultural activities or traits and those artifacts, and to order the artifact (and culture) spatially and temporally. The emphasis her as on the reconstruction of events from history. The result of the culture historical approach would be analogous to create a sort of scrapbook of image. Example images (like a set of photography taken on vocation), could be placed in order, providing the viewers with a full account of the vacationer’s activities. However anyone who has been on vocation knows that the pictures provide a hollow account of what happened. If some of the pictures did not come out, or if the camera was not handy, there will be gaps in the record. Further even if the trip is fully documented, the viewer still needs a running commentary from the vacationer in order to understand the photos. The photographer can talk about the reasons for going to a location, the story represented by a single photo, or the context of the scene in view. Without the storyteller, however, the photographs are meaningless.

                    Also traditional archaeology has the features which lead to the rise of new archaeology or proseccual archaeology as follow;

                   It base on descriptive simply reconstruction of the past life how people lived; traditional archaeologist study the past life ways of which people made their living in changing environments of past. This involves the reconstruction of how people lived in the past and how their societies were organized. The archaeologists reconstruct ancient subsistence patterns from animal bones and remains recovered through careful excavation. The aim is to look on changing patterns of human settlement, subsistence strategies and ancient environment.

                It was based on reconstruction of culture history; this involves the description of human cultures extending thousands of years into the past. An archaeologist working on culture history of an area describes the prehistoric culture of region. Culture history is normally derived from the study of sites and the artifacts and structures in a temporal and spatial context.

               It based in writing and verbal approach, archaeologist use written document to provide evidence of human past history. For example the use of books, journals, magazines and etc. also archaeologist use verbal approach such as narratives it mainly involves face to face interview of various human events.

               It based on inductive procedure, this means piecing together the past. Inductive procedure assumes as self-evident a single context of relevant for facts as they relate to scientific method. The inductive procedure is to gather or collect facts, study them inferentially and interpret them in term of assumed laws of culture or human behavior.

              The following part is the main body which concerning with features of new archaeology.

               New archaeology focused on dynamic cultural processes, as opposed to culture history would focus on a more lifelike reconstruction of the past. Here the study of history is a dynamic process, with many interlocking and interactive past. An archaeological reconstruction for a new archaeologist would be more analogous to full video recording of a vacation taken from a removed omniscient perspective. Not only would the visual evidence be described, it would also be put into context. Dynamic processes could be observed interacting with the subjects under study and the end, the archaeologist would not know only what happened but why it happened as well.

              Also in processual archaeology there were features which describe it as the scientific methods in archaeology as follows;

              It based on deductive strategies, processual archaeologist rely on deductive strategies that begin with formulating testable hypothesis and proceed to the gathering of data to test them. Very often, however the initial hypothesis based on data derived from in deductive cultural history.  

               It is based in explanation of cultural process; the new archaeology drawing on the philosophy of science was meant to explain culture processes of how changes of economic and social systems take place, not simply to reconstruct the past and how people had lived. This involved the use of explicit theory.

                It is scientific approach; in a scientific approach providing interaction among old data, new ideas and new data we can approach a research problem from a collection of observation data that enable us to pose research hypothesis. Some general problem may have to do with change. As Binford made his case Hempelian processual archaeology, other saw the future of archaeology as being tied in some way to scientific methodology. In 1917 Clark Wissler, having read of Nelson’s excavation of Chaco canyon, claimed that Nelson’s methods where groundbreaking in there scope attention to detail. Wissler, forecasting the reasting of archaeology as science (tied to anthropology). Complimented Nelson’s work; ‘such are the results of the real or new archaeology as the part of the science of anthropology’ (Wissler 1917, 100 emphasis added).

                 It emphasis in generalization; the general law are derived from anthropology and other social sciences. Laws have been formulated about the relationship between human cultures and the environment, about ecological adaptation and about cultural evolution. Most of them are so generalized, however that it is difficult to test them with specific data. Never the less, some archaeologists believe that archaeological can be used to formulate and test hypothesizes that identify the general and universal laws governing cultural process.

                It involve the use of quantitative plus  computer; In particular computer based have developed in line with developing range of  new concepts, aiming at extracting more knowledge documented patterning in archeological data. Also the application of digital computer is order and handle extremely large number of tools brought about this new approach to archeological evidence .Albert Spaulding, forecast that archeology’s future depended on how successful we are in applying quantitative methods to archaeological data.

                It based on development of hypotheses, Binford’s approach  was different because he advocated that these hypotheses be tested explicitly against archaeological data collected in the field and against other alternative that have been rejected. Once a hypothesis is tested against raw data, it can join the body of reliable knowledge upon which further hypotheses can be erected. And these turn may require additional data or even entirely new approaches to the excavation and collection of archaeological information. Binford suggest that the explicit scientific method commonly used in science should now be applied to archaeological research.

                It based in project design; economically answering specific research question and it develop project before going to the study. Processualist especially Stuart Struever insisted that field project would have to grow in scale, duration and obviously cost, if the new line of evidence were to be successfully integrated. His large-scale excavation at koster site in lower Illinois River valley (S. Struever and F. A Holton koster 1979) which involve full time specialists in palynology, geology, malacology and so on, become a model for the kind of project that processsual interest demand.

                       In conclusion, processual archaeology was there to criticize the traditional archaeology. Not only that but also processual archaeology have weaknesses such as the processualist ignore other factors which determine the culture change example language, time and space, interaction and technology. Also processualist observed the material without going beyond the reality. These weaknesses lead to the rise of post prosessuai archaeology.