The Classificatory-Historical Period: Context and Function
The connections between ethnology and archaeology have always been strong in North America, but at times they have drifted apart
In many ways, after Boas and Historical Particularism and the decline of unilinear evolution, archaeology became atheoretical and historical
Part of the reason was that the word theory had become synonymous with speculation. Theory was virtually a pejorative. (In some ways it still is --see the use by creationists or the cult archaeology followers.)
Strong's work challenged this approach with an eloquent defense and demonstration of ethnology in his direct historical approach and the publication of his 1936 essay "Anthropological Theory and Archaeological Fact." He challenged archaeologists and ethnologists to collaborate.
The speed of acquisition of data was speeded up by the Depression. Many people put to work by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) who backed the excavation of archaeological sites throughout the US. Some work was poorly done, but much provided major sources of data. Also marked a major involvement of the federal government in archaeology.
Context and Function
Context: the full associational setting of any archaeological object, in or on the ground and its relationships to other objects and features
These contexts, when grouped into complexes or assemblages, may have cultural significance and may relate to natural environment
Function: the use of an object including the way in which it was made and its meanings
A bit different from the way function and meaning were defined earlier in class, but basically just lumping the two into function.
Both can be viewed synchronically (at a single point in time) or diachronically (through time or at different points in time).
First full attempt to do this was in F.C. Cole and Thorne Deuel 's Rediscovering Illinois in 1937
Worth mentioning is a major work in American Indian Ethnology, Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups by Julian Steward in 1938
Begins another parallel trend that eventually expands: cultural ecology
In one sense, this culminates in the 1948 publication of Walter Taylor's A Study of Archaeology, a work that lambasted archaeologists for not concerning themselves with context and function
He was apparently put up to it by Clyde Kluckhohn
It was the first critique of the discipline of archaeology
Outlined a programmatic approach, called conjunctive archaeology, for context and function, and an approach that was more scientific
Attacked Kidder and the Pecos approach
It was not well received: Kidder was a "god," but he also attacked many others such as Haury, Griffin, Roberts.
Praise for Wedel, and those like him
Extremely important: He stated that speculation in archaeology was not only justified but required; that archaeologists must be able to hypothesize. In other words, speculation is crucial to scientific archaeology, but it must be controlled speculation.
By 1940, these trends come together in a debate that still goes on, and is partly classification and partly context-function
Albert Spaulding/James Ford Debate
Spaulding championed measurements of artifacts, and that through these and statistics, artifact types (with context and function) could be discovered. Ford said that it didn't matter and championed the idea that the artifact types were imposed, a designed construct of the archaeologist.
Was there a mental template behind the artifact used to create the artifact? A bit like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Settlement Patterns
Steward's work with Gordon Willey in the Viru Valley of Peru
Settlement patterns are the way in which humans disposed themselves over the landscape in which they lived
Key elements of settlement studies, even today:
The matter of environment and interaction became crucial, and a tie was made to other anthropological studies, especially the work of Julian Steward
An important aside: the 1949 "invention" of radiocarbon dating gave chronological precision with absolute dates that had been virtually impossible anywhere outside the Southwest with its dendrochronology (tree ring) dates. Though important still, concerns with establishing chronology were minimized.
Cultural Ecology and Multilinear Evolution
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larry-zimmerman@uiowa.edu
University of Iowa Anthropology
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