Post-Processual Archaeology and After (original) (raw)
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Post-processual archaeology emerges as a critique of processual norms, lacking a unified methodology and often misunderstood in its aims. It encompasses various trends that challenge traditional views, emphasizing historical particularity and individual cultural contexts, while facing significant controversy within the archaeological community. The discipline is increasingly influenced by globalism, where local identities and material heritage must navigate a complex global landscape, suggesting a need for a flexible archaeologically reflexive practice to effectively engage with contemporary cultural dynamics.
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Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2021
Processual archaeology (also known as new or scientific archaeology) is a theoretical movement rooted in the 1960s–1970s (although some argue both for an earlier start and for its continued dominance). Processual archaeology represented a radical break from the then-dominant culture, the historical and antiquarian approaches to archaeology. Although the goals and methods of processual archaeology would evolve over time, its central tenets included the following: (1) Archaeology as a science: Archaeology was traditionally seen as a branch of history, focused on explication of the past, gathering data to set chronologies and to collect site-specific assemblages. The new archaeologists argued that archaeology should focus on explanation (as defined by logical positivism; see Philosophical Groundwork) as opposed to explication. Scientific explanations would demand that archaeologists focus on dynamic systems—an approach called “systems theory”—with the goal of understanding the complex ...
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In recent years the gap between archaeological theory and practice has been closing, but although there have been calls for ‘reflexivity’, there has been little critical examination of its meanings. Proposed reflexive methodologies still perpetuate many traditional hierarchies of power,and fail to consider the creative nature of excavation and post-excavation. Much archaeological work in Britain, Europe and North America also takes place within the commercial sphere, and post-processual ideas cannot advance archaeological practice unless they can be implemented in contract archaeology. This paper examines theoretical considerations of reflexivity, representation, subjectivity and sensual engagement to highlight their relevance to everyday archaeological practice, and their political potential to undermine existing hierarchies of power within commercial archaeology.
Relativism, objectivity and the politics of the past — the case of post processual archaeology
Archaeological Dialogues 4: 164–198 (1997), 1997
This is a paper jointly authored by members of University of Wales Lampeter's Archaeology Workshop in 1997. It deals with accusations of relativism directed at Post-processual archaeology. I think it is still one of the most succinct treatments of the issue - arguing that archaeology is always situated, and can never be solely of the past in itself.
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