Show how processualism OR postprocessualism would be applied to an archaeological problem other than

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Assignment 2
Show how processualism OR post-processualism
would be applied to an archaeological problem
(other than the origins of agriculture).
due Mar 15
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Assignment 2
Take the position of a practioner e.g., imagine
that you are Hodder attempting to explain the
origins of complex society, or Binford explaining
the origins of pottery.
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Assignment 2
The objective of your assignment is to
demonstrate definitively your familiarity with
the paradigm you select.
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Assignment 2
Any archaeological problem is appropriate, but
care should be taken to choose a n issue that
will illustrate your investigation to advantage.
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Prof. Jeffrey Schwartz St. George Wed., Mar. 9
12-2 pm Did the Carthaginians Sacrifice their
Children? Room SS560A
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Prof. Martin Paul Evison UTM Fri., Mar. 11 12-2
pm Interdisciplinary Approaches to Human
Identification
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Prof. Debra Komar UTM Fri., Mar. 18 12-2
pm The Myth of Fingerprints, DNA and Mass
Graves Why Anthropology is NOT Inherently Bad
Academia
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ANT411H5 S
Topic 9 Post-Processualism in the 1990s
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Hodder 1989 Post-modernism, post-structuralism
and post-processual archaeology
material culture as text
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Material culture versus language
First, it can be argued that material culture
meanings are less logical and more immediate,
use-bound and contextual than meanings in
language. Thus material culture meanings are
often non-arbitrary.
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Material culture versus language
Secondly, perhaps because material culture is
often more practical and less immediately
concerned with abstract meaning, the meanings it
does have are often often non-discursive and
subconscious.
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Material culture versus language
Thirdly, if material culture meanings are often
practical and subconscious, then it is hardly
surprising that it becomes difficult to be
unambiguous in assigning meaning to material
symbols.
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Material culture versus language
Fourthly, once produced, a material symbol often
has considerable durability, unlike the spoken
word.
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Tilley, 1989 Interpreting material culture

• Saussure differance

• langue parole

• signifier signified

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material culture and structure
(a) Material culture is a framing and
communicative medium involved in social practice.
(b) Although material culture may be produced by
individuals, it is always a social production.
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Problem
If we are simply making stories up about the
past, some of which are 'good' stories, and some
of which are 'bad' stories, how do we know the
difference?
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Origins of Resource Production

• Primary (indigenous) origins

• Secondary origins

world-wide since 8,000 BC
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Resource Production

• systematic interference with resource supply

• increase in energy expenditure

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Models
Materialist
Environment
Demographic
Ecological
Social
Competition
Social Scale
Ideational
Symbolism
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Materialist Models
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Materialist Models
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Social Models
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Ideational Model
domus agrios
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Origins of Resource Production in Europe
Early Cultivation 6500 - 5500 BC
Horticulture 5500 - 3000 BC
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Hodder 1990 The Domestication of Europe
Chap 2 The Domestication of Society
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My aim is to conduct a long-term contextual
analysis of the European Neolithic.
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By 'contextual', I mean an analysis which
attempts to 'read' or interpret the evidence
primarily in terms of its internal relations
rather than in terms of outside knowledge.
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In particular an emphasis is placed on internal
symbolic relations rather than on externally
derived concepts of rationality.
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Lepenski Vir
Danube River - Iron Gates
mesolithic
neolithic
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Lepenski Vir
The site is wonderfully evocative and atmospheric.
the overall impression at Lepenski Vir I and II
is order
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Lepenski Vir
The village in its various levels appears
'planned', with equivalent houses oriented in the
same way on a horseshoe-shaped shelf overlooking
the Danube.
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Lepenski Vir
Srejovic contrasts the overall order and control
in the village with the wild untamed landscape
outside.
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Lepenski Vir
At the village level, therefore, we see social
control, social order, in relation to the wild.
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How was this wider social control achieved?
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I will suggest that the major struggles within
all houses at Lepenski Vir concern the control of
death and the control of the wild
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and I will argue that it was this internal
discipline which provided the logic for the wider
social control.
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Lepenski Vir
Each house is trapezoidal in plan, with the
hearth at the eastern end, towards the Danube.
Around the hearth are often found settings of
stones placed in a V shape.
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Lepenski Vir
In one case the stone setting is replaced by a
human jaw. Whether or not all the V stone
settings should be read as representing jaws and
death, there is at least some association of the
hearth with death.
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Lepenski Vir
By and behind the hearth are found burials
beneath the floors, 'altars', stone 'head' and
other sculptures The antlers of stags are
placed along the body in all burials.
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Also towards the narrower and darker back part of
the house are found stone boulders sculpted in a
variety of ways from simple or complex abstract
designs to human heads bearing a certain
resemblance to fish.
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oppositions
back west dark death wild
male front east light life domestic
female
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death is also directly associated with the
front, light end of the house.
Indeed, the evidence, limited as it is, seems
almost to rejoice in its own ambiguity.
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I have argued that a concept of 'home' - the
domus - was used as a metaphor for the
domestication of society and the creation of
larger social units in the early Holocene in the
Near East.
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In this chapter I have increasingly found myself
indulging in a highly imaginative reconstruction.