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Archaeology as Anthropology Revisited

William A. Longacre

Published online: 6 May 2010#

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract Anthropology was established in the USA during the middle of the

nineteenth century. From the beginning, archaeology was considered a part of the

discipline, a notion that continues to this day. However, over the course of the past

160 years, periodically, the place of archaeology within anthropology is questioned.

Often, this has a reflection in the growth or shrinking in membership of the

Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association. I explore these

trends and try to explain them in terms of the history of anthropology.

Keywords History of archaeology . History of anthropology .

Archaeologys place in anthropology

This paper was presented during the celebration of the 100th anniversary meeting

of the American Anthropological Association. It was presented as the distinguished

lecture to the Archaeology Division, an important unit of the AAA. Indeed, from the

beginning, archaeology was part of anthropology and played an important role in the

invention of the new field of ethnology or anthropology about 50 years before that

first American Anthropological Association meeting.

But with some regularity, questions arise as to the proper place of archaeology.

Usually, either the archaeologists wonder if they should remain as a proper part of

anthropology or the anthropologists determine that archaeology is really not a part of

their field of study. There is an almost cyclical ritual that we go through periodically

questioning archaeologys proper place in or out of the larger field (Gillespie and

Nichols 2003; Lyman 2007). Let us explore this phenomenon over time by lookingat the history of archaeology to see if we can find some understanding or even

direction in this ritualistic self-appraisal. To do that, we must go back to the

nineteenth century.

J Archaeol Method Theory (2010) 17:81100

DOI 10.1007/s10816-010-9080-1

W. A. Longacre (*)

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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John Wesley Powell was instrumental in furthering the growth of anthropology,

including archaeology. He was a leader in the founding of the AnthropologicalSociety in Washington, D.C. in 1879. That society launched its own journal, The

American Anthropologist in 1888, and from the beginning, it regularly included

articles on archaeology.

Nearly 40 years before the 100th anniversary meeting, Lewis R. Binford

published his seminal article in American Antiquity, Archaeology as Anthropology

(Binford 1962). To recognize his importance in my own development, I entitled my

doctoral dissertation Archaeology as Anthropology, A Case Study (Longacre 1963).

But is archaeology anthropology? Well, yes and no in a sense. In almost all countries

offering university training in anthropology, archaeology is not included. It is

embraced only in the USA and in those few countries historically close to the USA,

like Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines. Well, not all schools in Canada

imbed archaeology in anthropology, but most do. And for the Philippines, archaeologyas part of anthropology was imposed as part of our colonial experiment at the turn of

the twentieth century. A National Museum was created in about 1903 with a major

focus on ethnology, and a department of anthropology was established at the major

public university, The University of the Philippines, which included a four-field

approach. The National Taiwan University was established shortly after 1950, and the

anthropology department was founded by largely Harvard-trained scholars.

But for the rest of the world, archaeology is not a part of anthropology. At the

Society for American Archaeology meetings in spring 1991, Ian Hodder then from

the University of Cambridge suggested this strange American placement of

archaeology within anthropology was purely accidental and not necessary. In that

belief, he is, I submit, only half right. Why is it that most American archaeologists

feel quite comfortable with the notion that archaeology has a normal or natural place

within the larger discipline? There is a long history here to explore, and we will findthat the fuzzy, warm, comfy feeling most of us have about archaeology as

anthropology has not always been in place. In fact, in our recent history, the

Archaeology Division faced a crisis as hundreds of members cancelled their

memberships in the American Anthropological Association. They were convinced

that archaeology could no longer be a part of the new cultural anthropologywith

its almost anti-science emphasis that seemed to have taken over the association.

Maybe we can get a better picture of the current situation by looking backwards and

exploring our roots. The invention of anthropology about 150 years ago is a fascinating

story. The accidental inclusion of archaeology turns out not to be such an accident after

all but rather was a logical addition to dealing with the task at hand. There is not space to

present the details of the entire story, even if it is an exciting tale. But, perhaps, we

archaeologists can learn from the past after allespecially our own past.It all begins with a brilliant man, Lewis Henry Morgan, a lawyer living in upper

New York State, the father of American anthropology (Fig. 1). As one biographer

put it, he invented kinship. He also invented a new type of blast furnace for

transforming iron ore to metal. He completed the first modern ethnographic study of

an American Indian group, the Seneca, and published the first ethnographic

monograph, a two-volume account of Iroquois society and culture (1851).

The Iroquois work was an eye-opener for Attorney Morgan. He came to understand a

different form of reckoning kinship through the maternal line and residence rules that

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kept the female members of the group together. The Iroquois matrilineage lived in the

traditional long house, alerting Morgan to the intimate relationship that might exist

between forms of houses and forms of society. It also alerted him to the possibility of

other forms of kinship among the worlds peoples that would have to be explored.

The Iroquois monograph was published in 1851. For the next 20 years or so,

Morgan collected information about peoples all over the world. He did this by

sending out questionnaires to missionaries, military expeditions, explorers, state

department workersanyone he could call on to provide kinship terms and otherinformation about American Indian peoples as well as peoples all over the earth

Pacific Islanders, Africans, Asian peoples. He had data on hundreds of societies when he

invented a system of classification of forms of kinship and published it with all the

supporting data as Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family in 1870

at government expense (Morgan 1870).

Morgans kinship work was interrupted by his own continuing ethnographic work

among various American Indian groups. He spent time among the sedentary agricultural

peoples in the Missouri River valley, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. He was also busy

Fig. 1 Lewis Henry Morgan. Photo courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian

Institution

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making money as a lawyer. He was hired by a group of investors who built a railroad line

from the massive iron ore deposits in Michigans Upper Peninsula to the ore docks in

Marquette on Lake Superior. He came to love that part of the north central USA and spent

a great deal of time there. It was there where he invented the Morgan Blast Furnace as it is

still called (Figs. 2 and 3). As he became acquainted with the forests of the UP, he

became interested in the beaver that dammed the streams in the area.

Perhaps, as a respite from the American Civil War, he spent the summer of 1863

studying these very social animals and their amazing architecture. This led to TheAmerican Beaver and His Works, which he published in 1868 (Morgan 1868). The

Beaver work reminded him of the importance of architecture to the organization of

society for the accomplishment of essential tasks, in this case those of a very social

animal, the beaver. Perhaps, there are a few of you who did not know that the beaver

played an important role in the development of anthropological archaeology. And

maybe there are some of you who did not realize that his guides and helpers in the

beaver research were brothers from Marquette, Michigan, Homer Kidder and Alfred

Vincent Kidder, Sr. (Figs. 4 and 5).

Fig. 2 The ruins of the Morgan Blast Furnace near Ishpeming, Michigan (photos by J. Skibo)

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All of these experiences helped him crystallize a general explanatory theory to

account for the vast variety among humankind of forms of descent and social order, rules

for behavior, material culture, and customs of all sorts. He explained this enormous

diversity as the result of varying rates of human progress over the ages. Humankind, he

felt, had progressed through three major stages of development: Savagery, Barbarism,

and Civilization, with numerous substages often based on the development of items of

material culture such as the bow and arrow or pottery. These arguments, generally called

Classical Evolutionary Theory today, were presented to the world in his book, AncientSociety, published in 1877 (Morgan 1877).

Morgan continued to pursue his interests in the linkage between architecture and

social organization. He made a visit to the American Southwest and visited a number

of prehistoric pueblo sites. Although his principal contribution lay with the ordering

of all of humankind and explaining variation in culture, he wanted to explore the

processes of change responsible for the creation of different levels of development.

To do that would require very long-term study, as social institutions were slow to

change. Thus, architecture seemed a promising way to explore gradual change

Fig. 3 The ruins of the Morgan Blast Furnace near Ishpeming, Michigan (photos by J. Skibo)


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through archaeological research. He discussed these ideas in his final book, Houses

and House-Life of the American Aborigines, published in 1881 (Morgan 1881) just

after he died. The eminent cultural anthropologist, Paul Bohannan, wrote the

introduction to the reprint of this important book in 1965 in which he stated that

Morgan had raised key questions of continuing interest to anthropology: What does

domestic architecture show anthropologistseither ethnologists or archaeologists

about social organization and how does social organization combine with a system

of productive technology and an ecological adjustment to influence domestic andpublic architecture? Clearly, Morgan was suggesting that it might be possible to

study changing aspects of social organization through the examination of

architectural changes through time. Anthropological archaeology had received its

marching orders!

No one understood that better than John Wesley Powell (Fig. 6). Powell was a self-

taught naturalist, geologist, linguist, ethnologist, and more. He survived the Civil War

after part of his right arm was shot off at Shiloh with the rank of Major. For the rest of

his life, he was addressed as Major Powell. He had explored and mapped the Colorado

Fig. 4 A. V. Kidder, Sr in the north woods about 10 years after helping Morgan with his beaver study in

1863. Photo courtesy of the Marquette Historical Museum

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River and the Grand Canyon and studied American Indian customs and languages. He

collected word lists and artifacts from a number of western tribes. He eventually was

named Director of the US Geological Survey and as the first Director of the Bureau of

Ethnology, two posts he held until late in his life. The Bureau was created by act of

Congress in 1879 to collect basic information about American Indians, and Powell led

it for 20 years. Soon, the name was changed to the Bureau of American Ethnology,

emphasizing its focus on American Indians, past and present.

At that time, of course, there was no academic training available in anthropology.Powell had to recruit workers where he could find them. Unlike in the Geological

Survey, he was not averse to hiring females to staff the new Bureau. Erminnie Smith

studied the Iroquois, Alice Fletcher (never on the payroll) focused on the Sioux and

Omaha and went on to found the School for American Research in Santa Fe. Mathilda

Cox Stevenson became an expert on the Zuni. But most of the staff was male, including

such persons as William Henry Holmes, Cyrus Thomas, and J. Owen Dorsey. Others

such as Jesse Walter Fewkes, F. W. Hodge, the Mindeleff brothers, Cosmos and Victor,

and James Mooney were soon added to the growing staff.

Fig. 5 A. V. Kidder, Sr about 1890. Photo courtesy of the Michigan Technological University Archives,

Copper Country Historical Collection


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Major Powell was devoted to the arguments presented by Morgan in his

Ancient Society. It provided a system of classification for all the American

Indian groups that Powell had studied and was as sensible to him as the geologic

column visible in the walls of the Grand Canyon. Indeed, he provided a copy of

Morgans book to everyone he hired at the Bureau so they would know the guidingprinciples of the new science of ethnology. Donald Worster recently published a

biography of Powell in which he casts the mission of the Bureau, All worked

against the ticking clock of cultural loss, fearing that the Indians might soon forget

traditional ways and even forget their native language under the pressure of

invading whites (Worster 2001: 401).

Under pressure from Congress and the Secretary of the Smithsonian, the BAE

early turned its attention to American Indian prehistory. Identifying the builders of

the large earthen mounds in eastern North America was the aim of intensive

excavations by the entomologist, Cyrus Thomas. He was able to show that the

American Indians had built the mounds and not a lost race of people from across the

sea as some believed.

The possible link between architecture and social organization so intrigued MajorPowell that he decided to hire an architect to map prehistoric American Indian ruins

and the villages of living Indian peoples as well. The task was to undertake the

studies of houses and villages and the social order as part of the Bureaus research.

Powell hired a young architect, Victor Mindeleff, along with his younger brother,

Cosmos as his assistant (Longacre 1999) (Figs. 7 and 8). Together, they began a long

career of mapping sites and settlements in New Mexico and Arizona. At that time,

Victor was 21 and Cosmos was only 19. Their first season of fieldwork began in

1881. Over many years, they mapped numerous settlements and prehistoric ruins

Fig. 6 J. W. Powell, Director of the B.A.E., Photo courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives,

Smithsonian Institution

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and produced numerous scale models of Pueblo Indian villages for the US National

Museum and for world fairs and other major expositions (Fig. 9). But their most

important contributions are in their published work.

A Study of Pueblo Architecture in Tusayan and Cibola by Victor Mindeleff was

published in 1891 (Mindeleff 1891), just 10 years after he began working for the

Bureau. It has numerous maps, photos, and drawings and remains an invaluable

source of architectural and social data on the Hopi and Zuni and on prehistoric

pueblos in the Southwest. It was Cosmos Mindeleff who produced an important

paper, Localization of Tusayan Clans in 1900 (Mindeleff 1900), providingaccurate maps of each Hopi village with the clan distributions in each of the houses

noted on the maps. These contributions of House Life information from the late

nineteenth century have provided important baseline data for all the studies of Hopi

architecture and society that have followed.

Other Bureau researchers were also exploring aspects of house life and social

order, both in the past and in the present. Jesse Walter Fewkes (Fig. 10) worked for

some years among the Hopi, and Frank Hamilton Cushing (Fig. 11) spent years

among the Zuni doing extensive ethnographic and archaeological studies. Fewkes

Fig. 7 Victor Mindeleff, photo courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian

Institution


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became interested in Hopi migration tales and wondered if he could evaluate their

accuracy through archaeology (1893). He defined archaeology as the extension of

ethnology into the past and coined a new word for the archaeological lexicon when

he referred to himself as an ethnoarchaeologist.

It should be clear from this overview that the inclusion of archaeology within

anthropology was logical and not accidental. It was accidental only in the sense that

colonial invaders were usurping the American Indian pasts; Indian peoples were not

studying their own pasts, as they knew them already. For the outsiders to do thateffectively from their point of view, it seemed they must explore cultural, biological,

and linguistic variation among the living American Indian peoples and also study

their pasts through archaeology to present a cogent and complete picture.

But the stage was set for major changea new drummer was sounding a different

beat and that was beginning to have an impact on the directions of American

anthropology. The major players of the era of Classical Evolution were beginning to

disappear. Morgan died in 1881, Cushing in 1900, and Major Powell in 1902. Fewkes

became involved in the new National Park movement and was instrumental in having

Fig. 8 Cosmos Mindeleff, authors collection

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Mesa Verde proclaimed the first and only National Park devoted to the American Indian

past. He later became director of the Bureau and got mired in administrative matters and

left his active involvement in fieldwork and writing early in the new century.

The new drum major was, of course, Franz Boas, who emigrated from Germany to

this country in 1887 at the age of 29. He was trained as a physicist in Germany, seeped in

the logical positivism of nineteenth century Europe. His doctoral dissertation focused on

explaining differences in the color of seawater, and he undertook extensive fieldwork in

the waters off Alaska and Western Canada in the northwest of North America. He came

into contact with various American Indian and Eskimo groups in the region and becamefascinated with their lifeways and languages. He decided that the new field of

anthropology was more to his liking and switched from physics to anthropology when

he arrived in this country. It took only about 15 years for Boas and his students to

transform anthropology into a new form. After he reached the USA, he contacted Major

Powell. He held a series of jobs in museums around the country but never held a post for

any length of time. In 1895, Powell offered him the job of editor of the Bureau s

publications, but Boas refused. He had accepted a permanent job with the American

Museum in New York. Later, he helped to found the Department of Anthropology at

Columbia University, where he trained many students in his new approach to studying

the worlds peoples, both past and present.

Not long after he reached America, he wrote a scathing review of an exhibit that

Otis Mason had created at the US National Museum. Mason wanted to show howpeopl e had progressed from Savagery through Barbarism by showing the

development of, for example, weaponry from simple stone tools to complex forms

such as the composite bow and arrow. Boas suggested it would be better if

individual cultures were the subject of museum displays without the artificial

organization imposed by Classical Evolutionary Theory (Buettner-Janusch 1957).

Boas also introduced the tenets of logical positivism to American anthropology.

These included the notions that science is completely unbiased that scientists collect

facts and that when enough facts have been collected, they will speak for

Fig. 9 The Mindeleff Brothers working on models of Pueblos in the Smithsonian Institution, photo

courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives


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themselves. For Boas and his students, what was needed was an objective way to

describe cultures in order to provide an unbiased means to collect cultural facts. The

culture trait and element became the means toward that end, and the aim was to

produce culture history without speculation.

The culture trait and element were translated in archaeology to include the pottery

type, architectural forms, and types of artifacts from all kinds of materials. There was

no room for speculation about nondirectly observable phenomena such as social

organization, and earlier attempts were dismissed as useless conjecture. Boasian

historical particularism as it came to be called, with its emphasis on reconstructing

culture history through a focus on culture traits, resulted in defining prehistoric

cultures and placing them in time and space. Lacking was concern for the social andbehavioral aspects that interested people in the previous era; abandoned as well was

ethnoarchaeology. Cultural anthropology was to provide appropriate and relevant

data for archaeological interpretation.

Boas was trained in physics and had a respect for the natural laws of the universe

that governed natural phenomena. But he was convinced there could be no natural

laws governing human development or behavior as people, and their cultures were

too complex. Major Powells interest in what he called, the science of man, was

abandoned. Quickly, new departments of anthropology were founded and staffed by

Fig. 10 J. W. Fewkes, photo courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

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many of Boas own students. Kroeber was sent to Berkeley. Other departments were

begun at Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Chicago to mention only a few. Quickly,anthropologists trained in this new positivist approach became the dominant force in

the field. Archaeology continued to have a place in the new anthropology, but its

way of doing research greatly changed.

Defining prehistoric cultures on the basis of culture traits and elements

objectively and determining their spatial distribution and their temporal duration

became the overriding concern of anthropological archaeology. These were exciting

times for the field. For the first time, there were academic departments providing

training for wannabe anthropologists. New approaches were being tried out such as

the direct historical approach, working back from the ethnologically known present

to the past. New approaches to dating were imported from Europe, including

sequence dating, an invention of Sir Flinders Petrie working in Egypt, a technique

that today we label seriation. Also, another Brit was a visiting professor at Harvard,Professor Riesman, and he explained how one could work out a stylistic sequence of

change using pieces of broken pottery recovered in stratified deposits. He had

pioneered the technique in deeply stratified sites in Egypt and showed how the

sequences he identified could be used to infer relative ages for sites based on surface

collections. Sitting in his classes, paying rapt attention to him was Alfred Vincint

Kidder, Jr., whose father we met earlier helping Lewis Henry Morgan study beavers

in Northern Michigan. The son had been born in Marquette in 1895 (Fig. 12) and

moved with his family to Cambridge around the turn of the century. He enrolled at

Harvard, thinking he would become a medical doctor but, like all of you sensible

readers, ended up in anthropological archaeology.

He, along with Krobers student, Nels Nelson, and Boas student, Mario Gambio,

introduced stratification as a principal in excavating prehistoric sites and the

recovery of artifacts in sequence to provide the means for relative dating. It was theera of the timespace revolution and the beginning of a logical positivist archaeology

within anthropology. Kidder published the first regional synthesis in 1924 (Kidder

1924), a masterful cultural historical framework of timespace systematics for its

time (Fig. 13).

Archaeologists grappled with typologynot just of artifacts but of prehistoric

cultures. Some typologies were put forward in the Southwestern region that had an

evolutionary cast to them. In their schemes, Gladwin and Gladwin (1934) and

Colton and Hargrave (1937) had cultures and even pottery types evolving. Gladwins

roots, stems, and branches reminded us of trees, whereas Coltons pottery types

seemed able to cohabit and produce viable offspring. Other archaeologists felt these

approaches were backsliding into the evolutionary abyss and reacted with a scheme

that was lacking in such bias, a totally objective approach. They offered us theMidwestern Taxonomic Method or the McKern system with its objective

nomenclature (McKern 1939). Thus, colorful terms like stems and branches were

to be replaced with objective words like focus and aspect.

The 1920s and 1930s were exciting times for archaeology. Gaps in time and space

were being filled in. Dendrochronology provided a wondrous new way to date

prehistory if you were fortunate enough to work in the right part of the world. By the

mid-1930s, there were enough archaeologists to found a national organization, the

Society for American Archaeology. But the distant thumping of new drums began to be


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noticed, and great discomfort gradually set in. For the first time, archaeologists began to

question their place within the comfortable nexus of anthropology. What was going on?

By the late 1920s, Boasian anthropology was being challenged by a series of

developments in anthropological theory both from within and from overseas. The

first of these was the rise of structural functionalism with the publication in 1924 of a

seminal piece on the role of mothers brother in South Africa by A. R. Radcliffe-

Brown (1924). By the 1930s, graduate students were becoming excited about the

explanatory power of this new approach to the study of kinship. Radcliffe-Brown

joined the faculty at Chicago and directly challenged the field. At about the same

time, a new direction was being proposed that focused on ecological adjustment asan explanatory tool in understanding cultural history.

In the mid-1930s, Julian Steward submitted an article presenting an ecological

argument about the nature of prehistoric Western Pueblo social organization to the

American Anthropologist. Despite changes in the field, the journal was still firmly in

the hands of the Boasian group, and they promptly rejected it as speculative.

Unfazed, Steward published the article in a European journal, Anthropos, in 1937

(Steward 1937), and it became a classic addition to the anthropological literature. He

attempted to explain the proposed shift from a patrilineal and patrilocal organization

Fig. 11 F. H. Cushing, photo courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

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to one typified by matrilineal descent and matrilocality based on the Puebloan shift

from hunting and foraging to agriculture.

Structural functionalism, ecological approaches, and even neoclassical evolution-

ary theory put forth by Leslie White at the University of Michigan were being

debated. As a result, archaeology became increasingly out-of-step with general

anthropology, leading to increased tension within the field. As a solution to the

growing lack of communication, some departments of anthropology considered

splitting archaeology off into its own academic home.The students, especially the graduate students, got caught in the middle.

Archaeology students would go to classes in social anthropology and learn all

about the dynamics of the segmentary lineage organization among the Nuer. They

could see no utility for their own interests as cultural historians. Social anthropology

students would go to their archaeology classes and be forced to memorize the

sequence of pottery types in a region.

In the years just before World War II, Clyde Kluckhohn began teaching a seminar

at Harvard University on the problems with contemporary archaeology and what

Fig. 12 A. V. Kidder, Jr. about age 5 in Marquette, MI. Photo courtesy of the Marquette Historical

Museum


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might be done about it. He was a reformed archaeologist, having started his career

in archaeology at the University of New Mexico. He turned his attention to the

Navajo and joined the ranks of cultural anthropology. But he kept up with

archaeology and remained interested in the field. He published a scathing review of

American archaeology in 1940 (Kluckhohn 1940), asserting that it had become

atheoretical and totally out-of-step with general anthropology. But this seems to have

had little impact on the immediate archaeological arena.

These interesting developments were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.Walter W. Taylor, one of Kluckhohns students, had been allowed to incorporate his

seminar paper into his doctoral dissertation to facilitate his completing his Ph.D. so

he could go off to war with degree in hand. Taylor survived the war and returned and

revised his dissertation for publication. In it, he reviewed what he felt was wrong

with archaeology at that time and presented his cure: the conjunctive approach.

Both the Society for American Archaeology and the American Anthropological

Association in 1948 published it as a book entitled, A Study of Archaeology. Finally,

American archaeologists began to pay attention to what I call the KluckhohnTaylor

Fig. 13 A. V. Kidder about age 60, photo courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and

Ethnology. Image no. 2004.1.123.1.29

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attack. At first, the reaction was angry and dismissive. Taylor had done the

unthinkable by naming names in a negative way. He attacked some of the mostsenior and respected members of the profession. There was a move to drum him out

of the Society for American Archaeology, and he was obviously blackballed by the

establishment.

But very quickly, things began to change. The movements to split archaeology

into separate units rapidly died away. Archaeologists got a second wind as they

discovered they could join mainstream anthropology and explore the past with new

eyes. Following discussions with Julian Steward, Gordon R. Willey designed a

whole new approach to understanding past behavior and organization that he carried

out in Vir Valley in Peru (Willey 1953). He called this new approach, settlement

pattern archaeology, and it soon became a major tool for the archaeologist. Things

turned around with great rapidity. In 1956, in a volume that Willey edited on

settlement patterns in the Americas (Willey 1956). Haury, the senior culturalhistorian of the prehistoric Southwest, made an astounding statement. He asserted

that, inference as to the non-material aspects of archaeological groups must be as

much a part of our reports as is the description of architecture and pottery. In 1950,

Martin and Rinaldo had published their attempt to reconstruct Mogollon social

organization.

The fabulous 1950s heralded major change in the direction of archaeology within

anthropology. Even ethnoarchaeology came back into fashion after 50 years of near

absence. After decades of elders telling the archaeological youth that before we can

address questions of past organization and behavior, we must work out the time

space dynamics, the culture history, the moment had arrived for trying the

impossible.

The rise of the New Archaeology was almost predictable following the

developments I have just described. There was structural functionalism, ecologicalconcern, and quantification along with Leslie Whiteian neo-classical evolutionism. It

was the era of Ceramic Sociology and even a rediscovery of Durkheim for the

archaeologist. There was no question about archaeologys place within anthropology.

Social anthropologists even began citing some of the studies of the 1960s as the

proper way to approach cultural historical questions of social change.

A major and important correction to the New Archaeology emerged in the 1970s

known as Behavioral Archaeology. These developments refined the accuracy of

archaeological inference and turned our attention to a wide variety of new concerns

about the formation of the archaeological record, artifact variability, and much more.

But archaeology remained in its anthropological nexus. New understandings about

the rise and fall of civilization, the beginnings of domestication, and even of pottery

making were developed. Ethnoarchaeology became an important source ofinformation that strengthened archaeological inference. So too did experimental

archaeology, and these two approaches continue to provide important insights into

the relationships between artifact variability and the behaviors and organizations of

the people responsible. But the approach of archaeology continued to be scientific, if

a bit more mellow in tone than the Boasian logical positivism of the past.

But that persistent percussion that we have experienced before returned with a

vengeance. This time, the drummer took a long time to reach archaeology. The first

flams and paradiddles came out of architectural analysis and quickly spread to


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various literary studies and especially literary criticism. Postmodernism was born

and ultimately reached the social sciences, including anthropology. For thepostmodernist, logical positivism was an anathema! They argued that no scientist

can possibly be unbiasedthat all who undertake research do so with a skein of

agenda, hidden or open. They dismissed the social anthropological work in east

Africa by Evans-Pritchard and others as colonialist and at best suspect and probably

worthless. They introduced the radical feminism of the era into cultural anthropology

and taught us new concepts such as agency. Poetics became a way of exploring the

insights of native peoples about their plights under the pressures of globalism and all

the evils that entails.

At first, the impact on anthropological archaeology was not great. By the mid-

1980s, there seemed to be only a few, shrill voices from across the sea that were

beginning to march to that new drummer. They called their postmodernist

archaeology, Postprocessual, signaling that they were the new wave, the truereplacement for the combine of the New and Behavioral Archaeology that some had

labeled, processual. They were dismissive of the myths of a scientific approach

and argued that anyone could read and deconstruct the text of the past. They

introduced us to the works of important theorists such as Foucault.

As the postmodernist critique became more important for cultural anthropologists,

archaeology became more marginalized in many departments. Indeed, the American

Anthropologist became devoted to postmodern approaches and ceased most

publication of articles about archaeology. Instead, one was more likely to find

essays on poetics and even pages of poetry. In an episode of dj vu all over again,

archaeologists began to cancel their membership in the American Anthropological

Association as they could not enjoy the new directions in the journal. Membership in

the Archaeology Division plummeted, this even though many archaeologists were

adopting some parts of the postmodern critique without fanfare.One very positive impact was the engendering the past movement of recent

decades. A number of important contribution to the study of gender issues in the past

resulted (Conkey and Wylie 2007). There was broad acceptance and acclaim for these

additions to the archaeological literature, which are directly related to postmodernism.

But there was not broad acceptance of the sometimes rather shrill assertions of

Postprocessualism.

Unfortunately, a number of cultural anthropologists became radicalized and refused

to even discuss issues with anyone they identified as a logical positivist. In some

departments, archaeologists and biological anthropologists and even some linguists

became unwelcome and not even tolerated members. This situation has led to the

breakup of some of the premier departments in the country. Again, we reached that

familiar brink where archaeology might not fit any longer in anthropology. But, as in thepast, we seem to have moved back from the brink and face an anthropological future

once again.

Indeed, during the first decade of the new century, increasing numbers of

archaeologists began to make use of new and powerful ideas prevalent in cultural

anthropology. Perhaps, among the most important of these is the concept ofagency. It

soon became one of the most widely used theoretical notions and moved archaeology

closer to the comfortable folds of anthropology. A special two-issue publication of this

journal was produced to showcase a number of highly successful examples of the use of

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agency theory in archaeology (Dobres and Robb 2005). An earlier overview of the

potential of agency theory was also published in this journal (Dorman 2002).Today, we have a number of competing theories in archaeology that provide a wide

range of choice in doing archaeology. Unlike earlier times, as new theory is introduced,

it joins an ever-larger suite of conceptual approaches. Now, we have a number of them,

rather than the dominant two or three of recent times. They range from practice theory to

materiality and have been extensively reviewed by Skibo and Schiffer (2008:131).

There was a flowering of theory in archaeology during this first decade. Some of it

was new and others reflected new, more refined versions of earlier contributions. But

all of it, I argue, fits within the domain of anthropological interests.

Why then is there a falling away in membership by archaeologists in the

Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association? We should be

seeing just the opposite movement in membership. There is probably no simple

answer to this problem. It may be that members are reluctant to submit articles to themain journal in a self-fulfilling prophecy that archaeology will not be accepted for

publication. Or it may be that the new pricing structure makes membership too

expensive. I expect this to gradually change and a robust membership in the

Archaeology Division will return.

These are exciting times in the history of archaeology. Never have we had a

situation where there are such a number of powerful theories to stimulate our

research. I believe it is a future holding great excitement and promise and one that

will continue to support my thesis that archaeology is indeed anthropology, agreeing

with Willey and Philips that perhaps otherwise it is nothing.

Acknowledgements I thank Carol Gifford for her excellent editorial suggestions. I thank the officers of

the Archaeology Division, 1991: D. Nichols; W. Dolle; C. Costin, and current president, J. Levy for

encouragement along with J. Skibo and C. Cameron.

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