Study Guide

Culture History and Cultural Ecology: The Development of Archaeological Theory

A. TECHNOLOGICAL STAGES

1. Thomsen and Worsaae

a) Three Ages

1) first suggested by Hesiod in 7th century BC

2) Antoine Yves Goguet (1716-1758)

a> "The Origin of Laws, Arts and Sciences and their Progress among the most Ancient Nations" (1738)

1> suggested three-age system, but it was not widely accepted

2> believed that primitive peoples of New World were good models for ancient societies

3) Christian Thomsen (1788-1865)

a> classified archaeological collections of Denmark into Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages in 1819

4) Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae (1821-1885)

a> called "the first professional archaeologist"

b> confirmed ordering through excavations

c> helped establish the three age system as fact between 1829 and 1843

B. EARLY SOCIAL EVOLUTION

1. Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913)

a) Prehistoric Times (1865)

1) coined words Paleolithic and Neolithic

b) "The Social and Religious Condition of the Lower Races of Man" (1869)

1) Notion that we could study stages of man's evolution by observing primitives of today

2) Initiated the comparative methed

a> dependent on notion of progressive development

2. E.B. Tylor

a) Primitive Culture (1871)

1) suggested levels of Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization

2) relatively ethnocentric view of progress

a> "Few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture: -- Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian"

3) interpreted "Savages" as arrested stages of development

4) worked out unilinear scheme for intepreting cultures

3. Lewis Henry Morgan - Ancient Society

a) lawyer in New York

b) published Ancient Society in 1877

c) "Mankind commenced their career at the bottom of the scale and worked their way up from savagery to civilization through the slow accumulation of experimental knowledge."

d) supported Herbert Spencer's notion of "psychic unity"

1) believed in "the unity of the origin of mankind, the similarity of human wants in the same stage of advancement, and the uniformity of the operations of the human mind in similar conditions to society."

e) outlined seven "ethnic periods" based on technology

1) Lower Savagery - emergence of man to discovery of fire

2) Middle Savagery - discovery of fire to discovery of bow and arrow

3) Upper Savagery - bow and arrow to pottery

4) Lower Barbarism - pottery to domestication of animals

5) Middle Barbarism - domestication of animals to smelting of iron ore

6) Upper Barbarism - discovery of iron to invention of phonetic alphabet

7) Civilization - from writing and alphabet on

f) thought of these periods as universal, but realized they were not contemporary

g) influenced Marx and Engels to formulate stages (feudalism, capitalism, communism)

4. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Frederich Engels

a) Marx

1) known for theoretical approach of "historical materialism"

a> saw economic developments as the prime mover in social evolution

1> "The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness."

b> transformations in a society's institutional structures are inevitably the result of alterations in basic economic foundations

2) Proclaimed "The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms in different epochs" (Communist Manifesto)

b) Friedrich Engels

1) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)

a> directly influenced by Morgan's work on the development of the family and notions of property

2) noted that Marx's "history" referred to post-state society, and not to prehistory

C. EARLY CULTURE HISTORY

1. Franz Boas

a) one of greatest figures in American anthropology

b) rejected cultural evolutionism

1) common concept at the time was that of "psychic unity" of uniform cultural stages

c) instead favored "historical particularism"

1) recognized individual cultures as products of historical developments

2. Diffusion

a) notion of diffusion was popular in archaeology at this time

1) Elliot Smith and W.J. Perry (wrote in 1920's and 1930's)

a> The Growth of Civilization (reissued in 1937)

b> believed that all civilization originated in Egypt

c> was once asked what was happening in the rest of the world while Egypt was laying the foundations of civilizations, and he replied "Nothing"

2) Gustav Kossina (wrote in early 1900's)

a> believed that everything started in Germany

b> sought to use archaeology to prove the greatness of the Germans

c> led Nazi leader Himmler to write: "Prehistory is the doctrine of the eminence of the Germans at the dawn of civilization"

3. Area synthesis

a) reconstruction of culture history

1) ordering of archaeological remains in a given area in a space-time framework

2) direct historical approach

a> Waldo R. Wedel

1> coined the term (1938) for an approach that was in fact very old

b) Gabriel de Mortillet

1) tablulated "epochs" of prehistory in in Formation de la Nation Francais (1897)

2) included Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, etc.

c) Max Uhle

1) pieced together Peruvian-area chronology in 1900

2) used horizon markers such as Tiahuanacoid and Inca

3) notion of cultural superimposition was also important

d) Manuel Gamio

1) student of Boas

2) first stratigraphic excavations in Mexico

e) A.V. Kidder

1) An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology (1924)

a> mapped nine areal subdivisions of the Southwest

b> treated the archaeology of each in chronological scheme of 1) Basket Maker, 2) Post-Basketmaker, 3) Pre-Pueblo, and 4) Pueblo

1> first two periods became Basketmaker II and III

2> latter became Pueblo I - IV

2) The Pottery of Pecos (1931)

a> set out research scheme which is still used today

4. Description, classification, and culture change

a) General Pitt-Rivers

1) had professionally been interested in evolutionary history of the musket

2) came to conclusion that all material culture could be seen as objects to be arranged in typological sequences that developed in an evolutionary way

a> traced lineal developments of weapons

3) began to collect and excavate on private estate of 29,000 acres in England ca. 1880-1900

a> did research on large private collection of artifacts

b) V. Gordon Childe

1) Biography

a> born in Australia, trained in Classics and World History

b> followed Leftist politics

c> trained at Oxford

d> returned to England and became Assistant Librarian at the Royal Archaeological Institute in London

e> became familiar with publications and collections

f> publications

1> date from 1915 - 1950

2> The Dawn of European Civilization (1925)

a: introduced notion of archaeological culture with examples

3> The Danube in Prehistory (1929)

a: saw diffusion of people and ideas from Near East into eastern Mediterranean

1: saw barbarian Europe irradiated by Near East but itself creating something new and European out of its Oriental ancestry

g> appointed to chair at the University of Edinburgh

h> Marxist who interpreted progress as gradual accumulation of control over material production

1> opposed "Great Man" approach, racial determinism, and psychic unity

2> also downplayed the role of environment and geography

3> forces of production were considered to be the most important means of social change

4> saw social change in terms of "revolutions"

2) most important contribution was the notion that technological change and social change were linked with one another

a> viewed the development of cultures as "homotaxial"

1> cultures at similar levels of development manifested similar economic, political, and social institutions

2> revived Morgan's notion of stages

a: coined the terms "Neolithic Revolution" and "Urban Revolution"

1: Neolithic -- change from "state of nature" to food producers -- was considered the most important

b> incorporated ideas of Marx, Durkheim, and Malinowski to explain processes of prehistoric culture within an anthropological framework

3) presented what became a popular view in What Happened in History (1942)

a> agriculture had been developed in the Fertile Crescent

1> Neolithic Revolution happened in Egypt and Mesopotamia

a: result of climatic change

b: marked by rapid population growth

b> the two centers developed city life and literacy

1> irrigation allowed for accumulation of surplus, which allowed leisure time and the development of arts and sciences

2> control of surplus was origin of political power

c> these literate centers gave rise to civilization of Greece and Rome, as well as Indus Valley and China

d> all new ideas and inventions were diffused outward from the Near Eastern center of civilization

4) felt that the New World was outside of the mainstream of history

5. Neo-evolutionary approaches

a) Julian Steward

1) wrote during the 1940' and 1950's

2) responsible for introducing modern concepts of multilinea evolution and cultural ecology

3) interested in defining regularities or laws in a scheme of cultural development through:

a> typology of cultures, patterns, and institutions

1> those features which allow classification are basic or constant

b> establishment of causal interrelationships

c> formulation of scientific statements of cause and effect based on independent recurrence of interrelationships of cultural phenomena

4) reintroduced stage concept of cultural development

a> stages were generalized abstract conceptions of culture change, rather than universal stages

b> led to application of evolutionary concepts in archaeology which were almost universally accepted by the 1960 and continue to this day

5) multilinear evolution

a> searches for parallels of limited occurrence rather than universals

b> "postulates that genuine parallels of form and function develop in historically independent sequences or cultural traditions"

c> "explains these parallels by the independent operation of identical causality in each case"

d> methodology is scientific and generalizing rather than historical and particularizing

e> seeks to define laws and regularities in culture change and the emergence of sociopolitical complexity

6) cultural ecology

a> hypothesized that particular aspects of the environment would influence the core elements of a culture

1> key notion was that environment could determine cultural adaptation

b) Leslie White

1) wrote in 1940's and 1950's

2) defined cultural evolution and man's increasing control of animal, steam, and nuclear energy

3) interpreted cultures as systems, and noted that changes in any one part of the sytem would affect others

a> closed vs. open systems

4) saw history as a process which consisted of regularized interactions between human cultures and natural environments

a> de-emphasized importance of individuals

1> example of Akhenaten

5) the task of anthropologists (including archaeologists) is to explain general repeatable cultural processes through time

a> purpose was not to be particularistic -- singling out individuals or historical events

1> anti-Boasian approach

b> goal towards understanding of culture in a general, scientific sense

6. Modern culture history

a) Willey & Phillips

1) American scheme formulated in 1958

a> Lithic, Archaic, Formative, Classic, and Postclassic

b) dating methods

1) dendrochronology the only absolute method available, and only in the Southwest

a> introduced in 1929 by A.E. Douglass, and astronomer

2) radiocarbon dating was not introduced until 1949 by Willard Libby. It revolutionized archaeology.

a> dendrochronology has now had a major affect on C-14 dating

D. THE "NEW" ARCHAEOLOGY

1. concentration on understanding cultural processes

a) Lewis Binford

b) argues against simple culture history

1) archaeology as anthropology

c) one of most important "processes" is culture change and evolution

d) influence of cultural ecology

e) culture as a system

1) Kent Flannery

2. regional approaches

a) if processes are to be understood, the unit of investigation should be the region rather than the site

3. hypothetico-deductive approach

a) induction

b) deduction

c) Occam's razor

4. emphasis on computers and quantitative techniques

a) statistically-valid sampling