Interpretation in archaeology relates to the explanations given for the things that are found and analyzed.
Theory is an essential part of any scientific discipline that attempts to explain cause and affect relationships.
A theory in science is a generally accepted explanation of how things work.
Some theoretical views can be grouped into schools of thought.
Schools of Thought
Christopher Hawkes proposed a "ladder of inference" to describe the objectives of archaeology and what can be known.
Hawkes argued that technology was at the bottom of the ladder and the foundation of what is knowable about the past.
Technology determines everything that derives from it.
Hawkes believed that some things were simply unknowable and that archaeologists should concentrate on what can be learned.
Today, most archaeologists believe that most things in the past are knowable in one way or another.
The limitations on knowledge proposed by Hawkes are gradually being overcome by new methods and new ideas.
What seems more important today is how what is known should be explained.
Wilfred Sellars distinguished between manifest and scientific views.
In the manifest view, interpretation and explanation are done according to how we understand the motivations of people today.
The personal is ignored in the scientific view in favor of the natural and physical forces that drive the dynamics of physical systems.
Explanations of past human behavior in archaeology have oscillated between functional and structural views.
Functionalists see the social world as objectively real and observable with the right instruments and methods.
This positivist view of social science assumes that the investigator's values will not bias observations and interpretations.
Functionalists examine the components of society to determine the purpose those parts play in maintaining the whole, how social institutions satisfy the needs of society and its members.
Structuralists argue that human thought processes are the same in all cultures, that the organization of the human mind provides a commonality for all societies.
Many structuralists understand the organization of the human mind in terms of binary oppositions.
They believe that the institutions of society cannot be explained by themselves.
Rather they are parts of a meaningful whole that is determined by the structure of the human mind.
Structuralism assumes the universality of human thought processes to explain the "deep structure" or underlying meaning of cultural phenomena.
Processual Archaeology
Processual, or "new", archaeology emerged in the 1960s.
The movement was a reaction to the descriptive and staid nature of the culture history perspective that had dominated archaeology in the first half of the 20th Century.
The leaders were Lewis Binford and David Clarke.
Processual archaeology wanted to know not just what, but why.
New archaeologists wanted to explain, not just describe, cultural change over time in a scientific manner.
They argued that facts must be interpreted in light of theories.
There were several hallmarks of processual archaeology.
Emphasis was placed on cultural evolution, a systems approach to the past, objective and scientific methods, the search for cultural process and generalizations, and the importance of the environment to cultural systems.
Processual approaches to the past focused not on the artifact per se, but on the components of cultural systems such as subsistence, settlement, technology, social organization, population, and environment.
Processual archaeologists promoted systems theory as an approach to explaining past human societies.
Systems theory is intended to explain the interaction of different variables within an organism or organization.
Archaeologists began to view the archaeological record by examining past behavior in terms of its elemental system components.
The new archaeology redefined culture as a system.
Culture became another natural system that could be explained in mathematical terms.
Mechanisms like positive and negative feedback were assumed to operate in any kind of system.
Processual archaeology has produced many important studies and greatly expanded the questions that archaeologists ask of the past.
Significant contributions include a focus on behavior, rather than artifacts and the use of more scientific methods.
Example: A Crossroads Of Barrows
Copper first appeared north of the Alps in Europe around 4000 B.C.
Bronze objects began to appear in graves and cemeteries of farming settlements in the north after 2000 B.C.
Bronze Age barrows dot the landscape of southern Scandinavia.
They were built for the wealthier members of society and placed near where the living had died.
Most barrows in Denmark are located in areas of productive farmland.
The amount of bronze and gold in these burials provides some indication of the wealth of the deceased individuals.
There are pronounced differences in buried wealth between the sexes and between individuals.
The distribution of thousands of such barrows in Denmark offers information on the use of the landscape and the organization of early Bronze Age society.
The lines of barrows lie along routes of movement and communication in the area.
The major intersections must have been at the residences of the wealthy.
An elite segment of the population must have controlled most of the resources as well as the trade.
Archaeological Thinking: Barrows in Denmark
A study of the distribution, alignment, and contents of Bronze Age barrows in southwestern Denmark was undertaken.
The study followed a processual approach to the past.
The study explicitly evaluated the ideas that the barrows were placed along routes of communication and that more important individuals where these routes of communication intersected.
Example: The Collapse Of Maya Civilization
The fall of the Maya of Mesoamerica is a fascinating case.
This literate culture spanned the centuries between AD 300 and AD 900.
The Maya achieved many of the hallmarks of state-level society.
Their culture was characterized by monumental stone architecture, great pyramidal temples, and magnificent palaces and tombs.
They had a written hieroglyphic language used for recording numbers, dates, and important events.
The population of the Maya region at its height must have been in the hundreds of thousands.
Subsistence was based on agriculture; corn, beans, and squash would have been the primary staples.
Several pieces of evidence point to a rapid decline for the Maya.
The Maya erected many dated monuments during their heyday, but around AD 800 the number declines.
At the same time, royal dynasties disappear from view.
Many major centers were abandoned without evidence of violence or destruction.
The question of what happened to the Maya has intrigued scholars for decades.
There are many ideas about the Maya collapse and relatively few hard facts.
More realistic scenarios of the Maya collapse usually involve several factors.
Archaeological Thinking: The End of the Maya
The emphasis on cause and effect and multi-causal explanation is typical of the "new" archaeology.
The emphasis on external, natural causes for social change (climate, catastrophe, disease, overpopulation) reflects a processual approach with less attention to internal social and ideological aspects of the collapse.
The objective and quantitative tone of the arguments reflect a belief in a logical and deductive methodology applied to a problem for which a solution must exist.
There are several problems with such processual approaches to the explanation of societal collapse.
The emphasis on external factors removes human behavior and decision making from consideration.
Quantification is a useful goal, but many variables are almost impossible to measure.
Processual approaches often emphasize factors that are important in modern Western nations.
Post-Processual Archaeology
The post-processual school was a reaction to processual archaeology.
Postprocessual archaeology has also been described as "interpretative archaeologies," the plural term marking a diversity of approaches.
Post-processualists argue that archaeology can never have an objective view of the past.
Biases and perceptions determine what is seen in the archaeological record.
Post-processualists argue that interpretation must be about ideas, meaning, and symbols.
Post-processualists do not believe that scientific methods can deal with human behavior.
Example: The Rock Art Of Nämforsen, Sweden
Gustaf Hallström studied the Stone Age rock art of northern Scandinavia.
A major focus of his research was at the site of Nämforsen, Sweden.
Nämforsen, Sweden is one of the largest assemblages of rock art in the world.
This art dates from the late Mesolithic through the Bronze Age periods, 5000 B.C. to AD 500.
Figures are pecked or "carved" on smooth stone surfaces along the river.
There are approximately 2000 depictions of a variety of motifs.
Christopher Tilley took exception to Hallström's conclusion that there was no conclusion to be made about the rock art.
He then turned to extracting meaning from the art.
Tilley took into account various patterns that can be identified in the rock art.
He suggested that each of the motifs signifies a different hunter-gatherer group visiting the place.
Archaeological Thinking: Text on Stone
Tilley's study of the rock art of Nämforsen, Sweden, is a classic example of the post-processual approach.
Several elements of Tilley's study are discomforting.
Evolution and Archaeology
The two groups of archaeologists within the general school of evolutionary approaches agree on a few issues.
Both groups agree that "natural selection is the primary explanatory mechanism in scientific evolution."
Both groups take a largely biological perspective on human behavior and change.
Beyond this juncture, however, their views differ sharply.
The evolutionary archaeologists follow a rather strict Darwinian approach to explaining the human past.
The evolutionary ecologists are concerned specifically with humans as part of nature and the environment.
Selectionist Archaeology
The evolutionary archaeologists, or selectionists, believe that cultural change should be explained by natural selection and other Darwinian processes.
They believe that human behavior and decisions do not play a role in this process of change.
Selectionists claim that archaeologists can see "evolution in action".
There are, however, few tangible examples provided by selections.
Selectionists often see evolution operating in situations where there is permanent, unidirectional change in archaeological evidence.
They believe that artifacts are part of the human phenotype, and thus operate under biological controls.
Example: Horses and Snowmobiles
Horses became extinct in North and South America at the close of the Pleistocene, some 11,000 years ago.
The horse was reintroduced by the Spanish in the 16th century A.D.
The Pueblo Indians of the America Southwest used horses obtained from the Spanish.
These horses and riding skills gradually spread as the Plains Indians became the renowned mounted buffalo hunters of the American West.
Ann Ramenofsky argued that the adoption of the horse is best understood in terms of an evolutionary perspective.
In the selectionist view, horses became more common because they increased the adaptive fitness of the Plains Indians who used them.
Ramenofsky also argued that the same mechanism operated among the Cree Indians when the snowmobile was introduced in the later 20th century.
Snowshoe hunting was practiced until the arrival of the snowmobile.
There are several questionable aspects to such the selectionist perspective.
Selectionist views remove human choice or decision from any role in cultural change.
One might also question whether a preference for "snowmobile use" is automatically passed on to one's offspring.
Archaeological Thinking: Pots as Tools
Vessels used for cooking during the Woodland period in Eastern North America were studied.
Changes in wall thickness between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago were measured.
Thickness decreased substantially over time.
Changes were arguably brought about due to a greater reliance on starchy seeds.
There are several problems with the conclusions.
The change in wall thickness is not gradual as selectionists would argue.
Small seeded plants were domesticated in the Eastern U.S. long before this sudden change in the wall thickness of pottery is observed.
Evolutionary Ecology
Evolutionary ecology focuses on the dynamic relationship between human society and its environment.
A key assumption is that natural selection designed organisms to adapt to local conditions in fitness-enhancing or optimizing ways.
One of the major tenets of this group involves a concept known as optimal foraging theory.
This theory argues that the most efficient foraging strategies produce the greatest return in energy relative to time and effort expended.
Optimal foraging theorists assume that humans make rational decisions based on economic efficiency.
Example: The Emeryville Shellmound, California
The Emeryville site is located on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay.
The location witnessed repeated occupation by hunter-gatherers for almost 2000 years.
Occupation was from 600 B.C. to A.D. 1300.
The site was an enormous shell midden.
The animals bones from the site were counted.
Each of the three largest species declined over time.
Archaeological Thinking: Optimal Species
The ecological perspective appears to have a narrow view.
All changes are attributed to the relationship among numbers of people, technology, and the bounty of nature.
There is no consideration for human thought, flexibility, or organization.
Gender Archaeology
Issues of gender in archaeology burst onto the scene in 1984.
Initially, emphasis in gender studies was on finding women in the archaeological record.
More recent investigations have addressed questions about the role of gender in the organization and development of society.
Feminist archaeology is the belief that gender roles are culturally constructed rather than biologically determined.
Feminist archaeology has pursued concerns regarding the examination of gender roles and inequality in the profession of archaeology, biases and assumptions made about ancient societies, and male-dominated construction of knowledge.
There is today a substantial interest in gender in the past.
Gender studies have introduced important new perspectives in archaeology.
The effects of sex and gender on society are important dimensions of variation in the archaeological record.
Example: Aztec Women and State Economy
Elizabeth Brumfiel has focused on women in the economy of Aztec Mexico.
She examined artifacts used for weaving and cooking from specific kinds of pottery.
Brumfiel argued that women were responsible for weaving.
Brumfiel studied the role of women in the production of cloth before and after the Aztec conquered the region at three different sites.
After the Aztec empire took control in an area, textile production as a whole intensified.
Production was less important at sites with high levels of agricultural productivity.
Archaeological Thinking: Gender and Government in Ancient Mexico
Brumfiel's research is a successful combination of processual and post-processual perspectives.
In a post-processual vein, Brumfiel's study shows how a gender approach can provide new insights into past state-level societies.
From a processual perspective, Brumfiel used various kinds of objective data to reach her conclusions.
New Directions
We are at the beginning of the century of biology.
Biochemistry and genetic engineering can unravel the fundamental chemistry of life.
Arguments that human behavior and social change can be explained by our genes are bound to gain ground in the short-term.
Complexity theory and the analysis of self-organizing systems are frameworks for studying stability and change.
Systems that are large and complex but not governed by hierarchical rules are said to be self-organizing.
Study focuses on the connections, interactions, and feedback loops among the parts of the system.
The study of complex cultural systems will likely result in a growing emphasis on individuals and households.
Cognitive archaeology involves the investigation of the development of human thought.
Cognitive archaeology covers many aspects of human thinking, including prehistoric art and symbol, systems of weights and measures, planning and scheduling, and the structure and maintenance of social relationships.
Cognitive perspectives also focus on the individual in society and the nature of human thought in structuring behavior and material culture.
