What is Post-processual archaeology?

                 

Post-processual refers to the interpretive archaeologies by its adherent. It emphasizes the subjectivity of archaeological interpretation despite having a vague. This is sometimes refers to as interpretative archaeology which is movement in archaeological theory that emphasizes subjectivity of archaeological interpretations. The post-processual movement originated in the United Kingdom during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s are pioneered by archaeologist such as Ian Hodder, Daniel Miller, Christopher Tilley and Peter Ucko were influenced by processualist archaeologist. (Fagan B. M. 1985)

Processual archaeology is a theory that emphasizes on deductive research methodology that employs research design formation of explicit research hypothesis and testing of these against basic data, it was a phenomena of 1950’s and 1970’s that was from the research of W. W. Taylor, Albert Spailding and Lewis Binford, who based on objectivism of culture change, processual archaeology has the following Features. (Fagan B. M. 1985)

The processual archaeological rely on deductive strategy. The processualist begin formulating testable hypothesis and proceed to the gathering of data to test them, very often, however the initial hypothesis are based on data derived from inductive culture history.

It is based on scientific approach, archaeologist who use this approach are firmly committed to highly formal scientific methodology which is based on the work of Carl Hampel and other Philosophers of science (Watson, Le Blanc and Redman 1984)

They base on generalization, processual approach deal with the ways in which cultural system function both internally and in relation of external factors, such as natural environment. It involve three basic model of cultural change system models which are based on general system theory.

They gave explanation of cultural process they argue that the key to cultural process lies in understanding the instructive relationships among the various systems, William Sander has pointed out that every biological and physical environment offers for human utilization. (Sanders and Price 1968)

Due to the emergence of processual archaeologist 1960’s to 1970’s which was characterized by the above feature they influenced the emergence of post-processualist as an interpretive theory which emerged to counter attack them. So it rised with eight critiques over processual theory as follows; -

It reject a processualist view of science and the theory or data split, the data are always theory laden post-processualist reject the claim of science as a unique form of knowledge for the reasons. They align themselves which other non-positivist concept of what sciences are or do particularly social construction whether in its strong or weak forms. In another way, post-processualist do not argue that they should not test thing rather they suggest that practice neither scientist nor archaeologist criteria “they suggest that we can never confront theory and data instead we see data through a cloud of theory”. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 102)

Interpretation is always hermeneutic, this is a variant on proposition one, hermeneutics is the study of meanings when we are interpreting things it is argued archaeologist do this by assigning meaning to them, meaning that we assume were also in the minds of the ancient peoples who made and used them. Post-processualist argued that all archaeologists do this whether they overtly admit it or not. They deconstruct accents of scientific testing to show that even Benford and others implicitly assume meaning and value in the minds of ancient peoples. Hodder for example looks at the day to day process of reasoning during archaeological excavation and argues that this is always a hermeneutic circle regardless of whether or not the excavators consider themselves theorist. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 102 – 103)

Rejects the opposition between material and ideal they have seen low normative and culture historical approaches were rejected by processual archaeologist as idealist and how processual archaeologist introduced materialist emphasis. Also looked at the idealist approach taken by structuralism and at how maximum moved away from a purely materialist base. Many post-processualist claim that they should reject the whole opposition between material and ideal in the first place. A good example is the idea of landscape on the other hand a materialist view of landscape tends to stress low it may be seen in term of a set of resources, for example hunter and gatherer or early farming groups. This leads one to turn, for example to optimal foraging theory and other economic models for an understanding of how people exploited the landscape rationally. They argue that landscape are always viewed in different ways by different peoples for the reject the rational view of landscape as set of resources as that our own society and one that is ideologically loaded in its own way loaded towards idea of commodity and exploitation found in our own society. They suggest that instead that was real in the landscape, therefore post-processual like to stress that such an understanding of landscape was not formed in the abstract that the way people moved around and used that landscape affected the understanding of it. They argue that ancient people understanding of landscape was not just a set of thought they happened to process, every moment through the landscape farming domestic activities of the landscape was perpetuated and transformed. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 103)

They need to look at thoughts and values in the past, the most coherent example of this proposition as Hodders advocacy of R. G. Colling Woods’s position of historical idealism. Cooling Wood was a philosophy by training though he also practiced history and archaeology he argued that in practice, historians always try to re think the thought of the past, so he argued that archaeologist do this all time no matter what theoretical pose they claim to adopt for example traditional archaeologist explained the placement of Roman commanders and archaeologist actually practices empathetic thinking whether they admit it or not. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 104)

The individual is active; post-processualist dislike the way they fed the individual is lost in most archaeology theory. Individual complain are just pawns in some set of normative rules or adoptive systems/set of deep structures, they argue that all these different views of the world portray people as passive dupes who blindly follow social rules instead, post-processualist want to want to look at agency. Agency is a term used to refer to the active strategies of individual. They suggest that women and men are passively duped by the system around them example the archaeologist borrowed the idea of a recursive relationship between structure and agency from the sociologist Anthong Giddens. Gidden suggested that there social rules the world around us but that people understand these rules in manipulating them creatively rather than follow them positively therefore in a theory of practice individual as social actors actually practiced living in reproducing and transforming the culture around them.

Also in terms of interpreting the archaeological record need to look at rules which help to understand the cultural system.

Post-processualist also claim to take a bottom up rather than top-down meaning that any interest in the routine of everyday life, the way ordinary people would experience the landscape around them. Also a conflict driven rather than consensus model of society post processualist look for conflict between social groups for example along gender or class lines. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 104 – 105)

Material culture is like a text in order to understand the meaning of material culture need to think about the way people read any written text, such that a text can mean different things to differentiate people and different people can read texts different ways. These meanings can be actively manipulated with material culture in obvious and trivial ways, most obviously with clothes example in formality way on putting skirt or tie. The manipulation is often impact and unspoken people don’t consciously think through grammatical rules as they read a text, similarly people don’t consciously think through rules governing material culture example the action of coming into a room without knocking we might consider somebody doing this to be impolite. Therefore post-processualists encourage experimentation with multiple interpretations concerning material culture by considering ancient material culture in general page. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 105-106)

Have to work at context, according to Hodder context is the central and defining feature of our discipline, for this reason post-processual approaches are often referred to as contextual archaeology, that through looking at the context of the artifact or the practice of some societies in the burial a particular good grave has a particular meaning through its context example a person buried with the object which is associated like Nubia society.

The meaning we produce are always in the political present and always have political act but when there is application of scientific method an interpreting the past it shows the mythical things therefore the past are never cool objective judgments detached from the real world. Example new archaeologist working on native America sites stressed that the value of their work lay in their ability to use this material to generate cross-cultural generalization, this statement is true about all argued that these archaeologists implicitly devalue the importance of looking at native American tradition in its own right. (Johnson M. 2010, p. 107)

The distinction between the processual and post-processual approaches is that processual agenda saw itself as an integral part of anthropology but the post processual critique argues that because archaeology is uniquely qualified to study material culture, archaeology should be central to a new arena of social theory quite apart from anthropology so that archaeology is archaeology and archaeology is history not archaeology is not anthropology.    

 REFERENCE

Johnson, M. (2^nd Ed), (2010). “Archaeological Theory; An Introduction”.

Fagan, B. M. (5^th Ed.) (1985). “In the Beginning; An Introduction to Archaeology”. University of California, Santa Barbara.