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Archaeology without Gravity: Postmodernism and the PastAuthor(s): A. Bernard KnappSource: Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 127-158Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20177344 .Accessed: 15/09/2014 22:46

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Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol 3, No. 2, 1996

Archaeology Without Gravity: Postmodernism and the Past

A. Bernard Knapp1

Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the past and the present have become commonplace: anthropologists now situate cultures in their historical contexts, while historians pursue particularistic ends within politicoeconomic or ideational structures. Archaeologists have cast their nets even more widely, not only toward anthropology and history, but to fields ranging from molecular

biology to hermeneutics. Postmodernist approaches maintain that

archaeologists should be looking at the past from multiple perspectives and

listening to its multivocality. Archaeologists, in fact, not only develop different ways of understanding the past, but actually develop alternative pasts. This paper argues that multiple paths to alternative pasts enhance archaeological understanding and, at the same time, stimulate the development of archaeological theory. KEY WORDS: postmodernism; modernism; postprocessuaiism; social/interpretive archaeology.

INTRODUCTION

In a recent essay on the "Crisis in Hunter-Gatherer Studies/' Richard Lee (1992, p. 36) lashes out at the poststructuralist critique in anthropology. To exemplify the position of cool detachment and distancing considered to be the hallmark of the postmodern "condition" (Jameson, 1984; Harvey, 1990), Lee targets the advertising media and suggests that the consumers

of the world today may be excused for donning a shell of cynicism to ward off such postmodern assaults. Lamberg-Karlovsky (1989, p. 13), referring to postmodern anthropology, is even less charitable:

The proliferation of such twaddle is perhaps only comprehensible in the narcissistic

appreciation of self?a strong component of all that passes for "post-modern." One

department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Scotland G12 SQQ.

127

1072-539#96/060(H>127$09.5(W) ? 1996 Plenum Publishing Corporation


128 Knapp

can only hope that such inane, post-modernist, reflexive, critical, post-structuralist abcesses do not affect archaeology.

Turning to archaeology, Bintliff (1993, p.92) finds little to "salvage from the wreck of Post-modern archaeology." Peebles (1993, pp. 251, 253), in turn, delivers a scathing critique of certain tenets of postmodernism within

archaeology: The excess of reason came to archaeology in the form of logical empiricism; its

opposite, the deficiency of reason, came most recently with the tenets of

post-modernism. ... [This is] a world of sham and illusion, and this world is being

imported to archaeology, under the banner of a cognitive archaeology, sometimes as a post-structuralist archaeology, and sometimes as a post-processual archaeology.

Thomas and Tilley (1992, p. 106) maintain that postmodernism is the "most nebulous of terms" which refers to a "loss of faith in progress and western

rationality, a loss of confidence in the fixity of meaning..., [and] a reduc tion of identities to the status of alternative commodities." Postmodernism, then, is not an intellectual movement as much as "a set of actually existing circumstances" (Thomas and Tilley, 1992, p. 106). Another archaeological impression holds that postmodernism has consecrated rapid change and

instability in our material conditions: changing forms of production and attitudes to consumption now provide us with new goods to meet needs

we never knew we had (Gosden 1994, p.60). Given these essentially caustic opinions, it might be concluded that

most anthropologists and archaeologists today are highly skeptical of post structuralism and postmodernism. A broad survey of the current archae

ological and anthropological literature demonstrates otherwise, although one must wonder how many fieldworkers actually practice postmodern an

thropology or archaeology. Whereas consideration of anthropological and

sociological perspectives is never far distant in this study, the main concern is with archaeology. How has postmodernism, or the plurality of other "isms" that characterize social theory today, affected the field of archae

ology? Is the past "real"? How, and to what extent, is postmodernism re lated to postprocessualism? And how has the latter impacted upon an

archaeological view of the past? Of course, it is not only archaeology, anthropology, or history that

has been affected by the spread of postmodernism: other fields include architecture (where it all started), literary criticism, English, psychology, feminist and masculinist studies, and "science." One can comprehend eas

ily some postmodern trends or debates in architecture, the visual arts, and literature (e.g., Fokkema and Bertens, 1986; B?rgin, 1986; Soja, 1989).

But when one turns to mainstream social theory (e.g., Nicholson, 1990; Rosenau, 1992; Seidman and Wagner, 1992; Seidman, 1994), postmod ernism is regarded more as a threat to the integrity of the field, at the


Postmodernism and the Past 129

very least a problem that must be investigated. In order to deal with this

very unwieldy topic, and to examine its denial of and/or impact upon sev eral fields that seek to find some meaning in the past, I propose to cate

gorize these fields?archaeology, anthropology, history?collectively as social approaches to the study of the past, as human science. This should

dispel any charges of prejudice toward either the social sciences or the humanities. From an archaeological perspective, this division seems arti ficial if not counter-productive: the past is human and involves individual

histories; the past is social and involves ideological, technological, and en vironmental patterns and processes.

Postmodernists regard most approaches to the study of the past as creations of modern, first-world, Western societies: they are, in postmodern terms, oppressive to third-wqrld societies, irrelevant to the present, lacking in reality, and?in a word?exhausted. The more "critical" postmodernists (discussed below) question whether there is a real, knowable past, and deny any notion of evolutionary progress. They not only question objectivity, but also dispute the idea that reason is a valid means of explaining the past. Postmodernists, predictably, share a counterintuitive view of time, space, and history: cyclical, polychrome (not linear) time, and inconstant, immeas urable space are more germane to their viewpoint and, so, deserve more attention than the past as a means of comprehending the present. To a critical postmodernist, the study of the past is too subject-centered, logo centric, prejudiced, closed, and privileged to be of much concern. Knowl edge and meaning (at least "etic" meaning) are irrelevant?postmodernists are concerned chiefly with style, with surface rather than depth. The icons of yesterday have been discarded in favor of the seductive charms of any thing new (Gold, 1992, p. 239).

In this paper, I examine critically the postmodernist position vis-?-vis the study of the past. My aim is twofold: (1) to provide an overview of postmodernism as a contemporary cultural phenomenon and (2) to con sider its impact on human science generally and, more specifically, upon social approaches in archaeology. Another main concern is to examine the

relationship of postmodernism to postprocessualism in archaeology and the extent to which present-day archaeology may be termed postprocessual in its outlook (cf. Bintliff, 1991, 1993). Finally, I argue that a multiplicity of

paths to the past if not multiple pasts, wherever or whenever they may have been, must enhance archaeological understanding and stimulate our

attempts to develop archaeological theory. There is no ultimate explanation but, rather, an array of interpretive approaches that can provide a better

understanding of past environments, social processes, cognition, and human

agency.


130 Knapp

POSTMODERNISM: MOVEMENT OR "CONDITION"?

Postmodernism is not a cogent or unified philosophical, artistic, or po litical movement. Indeed, Walsh (1990, p. 278, 1992, p. 53) argues that it is not a movement at all but, rather, a "condition" stemming from the in

congruities of a post-World War planet, where information technology, the mass media, and the growth of geopolitics and multinational economies serve as triggers for social change. Jameson (1984) and Harvey (1990) paint equally bleak Neo-Marxist accounts and argue that the social experiences of the modernist, or "Fordist," era?characterised by tradition, centralized

authority, government or industrial interventionist planning, and the com

forting certainties of everyday community and politicoeconomic life?be came undermined and displaced by the incomprehensible, "post-Fordist," postmodern forces associated with decentralization, economic fragmenta tion, and cultural disillusionment (cf. the Marxist study Callinicos, 1989).

Labeling postmodernism as a "condition" scarcely conceals hostility (but cf. Lyotard, 1984) toward a phenomenon that has had a positive effect

on several intellectual fields and established itself as more than a passing fancy?something which therefore must be taken seriously. Postmodernism, in fact, goes beyond style and poses questions about one's orientation to, and one's place in, the contemporary world (Gitlin, 1989, p. 348).

Several strands of postmodernism are in vogue (Featherstone, 1988, p. 207), but for heuristic purposes it is useful to outline two general ori entations: the critical and the moderate [Rosenau (1992, p. 15) terms them skeptical and affirmative). Although it is misleading to lump together the

writings of Baudrillard, Derrida, and Kroker, critical postmodernism may best be associated with their work (e.g., Derrida, 1981; Baudrillard, 1983; Kroker and Cook, 1986). Moderate postmodernism, on the other hand, may be linked to the writings of a much wider range of scholars: Foucault, Soja, Barthes, Giddens, Rabinow, Clifford, and Marcus. It must be emphasized that this division is somewhat arbitrary: for example, the interconnections

between theorists such as Derrida and Foucault are far too substantial and informative to sever (Boyne 1990). Furthermore, it would be misleading and counterproductive if such an arbitrary division were to become reified in the archaeological literature, since the work of one group or the other

might be dismissed all too easily as arch-radical or ultraconservatrve. The critical postmodernists, said to be inspired by European philoso

phers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger (Rosenau, 1982, p.15; Thomas, 1993, p. 9; Gosden, 1994, p.108), represent the "dark side of postmod ernism:" despair, demise, genocide, environmental devastation, and death; the impossibility of "true" knowledge; the denial of representation; the end of the individual author. Baudrillard and Eco believe that the "simulacrum"



(a copy of a copy, lacking an original) is even better than the original. In hyperreality (Eco, 1987), only pure simulacra exist, because all origins are lost, or cannot be recovered, or never existed in the first place (Bruner, 1994, p. 407). Whereas moderate postmodernists also find modernity of any sort abhorrent, they share a more constructive view of the postmodern

world. The moderates tend to be "Anglo-Americans," who often promote

certain types of political action (struggle and resistance), or a variety of New Age social movements. They are not so dogmatic and ideological as their critical counterparts, yet assume a strong ethical stance, support is

sue-specific political coalitions, and believe in a hierarchical system of val ues (Rosenau, 1992, p.16).

Postmodern roots run deepest in continental Europe, especially France and Germany; its recent popularity among North American intellectuals has been compared to the popularity of p?aujolais Nouveau in the same

market (Morin, 1986, p. 82). Described as an intellectual reaction against modernism's anticulture and antinature biases (Friedman, 1992, p. 847), postmodernism incorporates a number of different, often conflicting, intel lectual orientations: French structuralism, nihilism, existentialism, anar

chism, hermeneutics, critical theory, and certain strands of Marxism.

Postmodernism, paradoxically but also perhaps predictably, shares elements in common with and at the same time quarrels with every other intellectual

movement (Rosenau, 1992, pp. 12-13). It is also positively inclined toward "libido liberation, creativity, lost values, and communion with nature"

(Friedman, 1992, p. 847). Modernism. To understand the challenges or the potential of postmod

ernism, it is useful first to understand its antithesis and precursor, mod ernism. Modernism really begins with the Renaissance and with the tradition of

"enlightenment rationalism." This period witnessed the begin nings of what we now call "science," which in its early form served as an alternative worldview to that held by the arbitrary authorities of the church and and the state (the latter in the form of monarchies). Both authorities legitimized their positions through theology. Eventually modern science came to make its own claims on the monopoly of rationalism and "objective truth," through the use of rigorous methodological procedures, and the

study of materials rather than metaphysics. Claims were made for "objec tive" facts about the world and, eventually, about the universe. Moreover,

during the modern period, what postmodernists call "metanarratives" began to emerge: these provided a global worldview based on a rigid objectivism and assumed the validity of their claims to the "truth." Examples are Marx's

Capital, Darwin's theory of evolution (Walsh, 1990, p. 278), or Thomsen's three-age system in archaeology (Daniel, 1981, pp. 55-64; Rodden, 1981).

Arts and sciences alike were dominated by "great men" (or women in the


132 Knapp

same guise): Ranke and Momigliano in history, Schliemann, Albright, Braidwood, Willey, Biegen, and Kenyon in archaeology, Tyior, Boaz, Kroe

ber, and Mead in anthropology, Landsberger, Goetze, and Jacobsen in Assyriology, and Kantor and Porada in ancient art history?to cite some of the most obvious examples. The Hermeneutic tradition, from Vico to

Gramsci, and the Annales "school" (Knapp, 1992), from Febvre and Bloch through Braudel to LeGoff and Duby, may have been less vulnerable to

postmodernist criticism, but they were still represented by the tradition of

"great men."

When the legitimacy of these great traditions?in both the arts and the sciences?was called into question, and as it became possible to doubt or even deny the possibility of truth and value, of developmentalism and human progress, the modernist tradition began to lose ground. Postmod ernists were very uneasy with, or openly hostile to, this enlightenment ra tionalism and the methodological suppositions of enlightenment science.

Postmodernism: A Definition? Postmodernism is a slippery topic to de fine (Gellner, 1992, pp. 22-23). One prominent archaeologist struggled to understand postmodernism as follows (Hodder, 1989a, p. 65):

It is thoroughly engrossing for an archaeologist, a student of cultural change, to be

living through the apparent "birth" of a new cultural style. Yet it is surprising how difficult it is to define and understand what is happening. The more I try to tie down post-modernism, the less coherent it seems. ...the growth of the style seems

bigger than any individual's attempt to characterize it. Ultimately it engulfs any attempt to fix it.

Postmodernism is perhaps easier to define in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is (Harvey, 1990, p. 43; Haraway, 1990, pp. 203-204). Friedman (1992, pp. 846-847, Fig. 1) describes it in terms of a polar relationship with

modernism. Perhaps if postmodernism cannot be defined to the satisfaction of positivists, we might at least examine its appeal, however restricted that

may be. Unlike what might be expected from an age of "enlightenment rationalism," the record of "modernity" in the late twentieth century is far from rational and enlightening. From the mainly unpleasant, highrise land

scapes of most urban centers [which propelled "postmodern geographies" (Soja 1989), one of the most effective postmodernist critiques], to the mili tary disasters and environmental debacles that typify the last 50 years, to the increasingly unbreachable gap between the poor and the rich, there is little consolation in the notion of progress, or faith in human reasoning to

provide a better future. Postmodernism flourishes in a ruptured past, a be

leaguered history that has severely eroded faith in the holy trinity of pa triarchy, science, and the state (Gitlin, 1989, p. 353).

Mass communication media?from radio to the cinema, and from TV to satellite communications, and e-mail?have broken through many cultural



and social boundaries, even if economic, ethnic, and ideological barriers still stand Industrialization, high technology, urbanization, life in the fast lane: all were idealized in a positivist, modernist world, and all are challenged and denied, many on moral or ethical grounds, by postmodernism. From

Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground to Devo and the Talking Heads, to INXS and the gangster-rap, machine-gun volley of Ice-T or Snoop Doggy

Dog, pop culture relishes in undennining authority, denying values, ques tioning reality. And this pop culture blends right into mainstream Anglo

American or west European culture, even into high culture. How is it that Western capitalism has so effectively invented, appropri

ated, and exploited postmodernism? Postmodernism's broad appeal results in part from its open-endedness and lack of specific definition, a blankness that condemns capitalism and commodification even as it endorses and per petuates it. This postmodern apprehension of the world highlights the in herent instability of meaning, and the capacity to invert or recycle symbols in different contexts, thus transfonning their point of reference (Daniels and

Cosgrove, 1988, pp. 7-8). For Jameson (1984, p. 79), the amorphous, free floating qualities of symbols and images are tantamount to the unrestrained circulation of commodities (Thomas, 1993, p. 8).

On the one hand, postmodernism may be regarded as an intellectual

luxury for a generation of Americans, Europeans, and Australians who en

joyed political liberty and freedom from want and who could afford to focus on the individual instead of the collective. On the other hand, postmod ernism is a product born out of desperation, particularly to a generation of scholars who, upon graduating with higher degrees in the late 1970s 1980s, confronted a dwindling job market, loss of credibility, and unem

ployment. Economic privation, in this case, promoted nostalgia as well as resentment (Habermas, 1986, p. 150; Stauth and Turner, 1988; Rosenau, 1992, p. 11). With its focus on the marginal, the decentered, and the pow erless, perhaps it is the very content of postmodernism that explains its

mixed attraction within academic disciplines. And yet, postmodernists have used their involvement in this highly vocal and very trendy intellectual

movement to further their own careers. This sort of "conceptual position

ing" through denunciation of older traditions is common throughout aca demia (see, e.g., Price and Lewis, 1993, p. 2).

There is a contradiction here between power and powerlessness. As an example, take the case of gender, for two decades a central tenet of feminist theory (e.g., di Leonardo, 1991). Whereas postmodernists substi tute for Enlightenment tradition, or "reason," the study of the contingent, the historically specific, and the culturally constructed, feminists maintain that gender, and whatever practices may constitute gender, are one of the

most crucial contexts in which to situate the "universal" subject of reason


134 Knapp

[Benhabib, 1994 (1992), p. 77]. However, concerns with the ethnocentrism and racial bias implicit in gender theory, what Bordo (1990) terms "gender skepticism," has propelled some feminists into a theoretical alliance with

poststructuralism (Alcoff, 1988). That alliance has promoted an authori tarianism which seeks to dictate "politically correct" ways in which to theo rize identity, history, and culture (Bordo, 1990, pp. 136-142). The "self-exploding" quality of post-structuralist theory, which forces people to undermine the political ground on which they stand, can lead to "flushing] the Archimedean point away with the sewage of discourse" (Gitlin, 1989,

p. 357). Moreover, the postmodern insistence on a plurality of interpreta tions, as weU as the indeterminacy of cultural meaning, has led to criticism of the

"gender template" for its mainly binary structuring of reality (Bordo, 1990, pp. 142-145). In its place have arisen narrative ideals that celebrate a supposedly feminine ability to accept change, fluidity, and otherness as features of reality. Such deconstructionist narratives often fall short of as

suming responsibility or of taking a stance that may be critiqued or dis cussed recursively [for feminist narratives in archaeology, see, e.g., Tringham (1991, p. 124) and Spector (1991, pp. 397-401)]. If postmod ernism is to support the politics of social change, this question of agency

must be answered (Gutterman, 1994, pp. 223-224). Postmodern feminism [e.g., Flax 1987, 1990; Lovibond, 1989; Nichol

son, 1990; Benhabib, 1994 (1992)], in other words, has in some cases en couraged the shift of basic feminist concerns like gender to questions of

adequate theory (Christian, 1988). Several feminist writers (e.g., Harding, Di Stefano, and Bordo; cited by Nicholson, 1990) have urged caution in the wholesale embrace of a postmodern feminism (also Fraser and Nichol son, 1990, p. 35). Because of the complex relationship between male and female, gender cannot be regarded as a pure, binary construct: rather it

must be examined in the context of lives shaped by a multiplicity of influ ences. Grimshaw (1986, pp. 84-85) argues that gender "inflects" one's ex perience of race, class, and historical coherency; in fact, gender also deconstructs those experiences. The inflections that modify experience are

endless, and the trajectories of individual interest do not always lead where one imagines: Could the multifaceted "deployment" of feminist gender skepticism now be operating in the service of reproducing "hegemonic mas culinist" structures of power and knowledge (Bordo, 1990, pp. 150-151; Carrigan et al 1985)? The idea that knowledge and "truth" are contingent, or multiple, may actually disempower feminists, by alienating them from their own reality and by shoring up dominant, androcentric viewpoints just

when their legitimacy is being challenged effectively (Hodder, 1991c, p. 9; Mascia-Lees et al, 1989). The postmodern critique of liberal humanism, in other words, itself risks an "emasculating "liberal" even-handedness"



(Bender, 1993, p. 258) and has been undercut by its tendencies to insist on the "correct" d?stabilisation of general categories like class, race, and

gender. In so doing, postmodernism has promoted a fragmentation of the feminist critique.

For those of us who want to understand the world systematically in order to change it, postmodernist theories at their best give little guidance.... At their worst,

postmodernist theories merely recapitulate the effects of Enlightenment theories?theories that deny marginalized people the right to participate in defining the terms of interaction with people in the mainstream. (Hartsock, 1987, pp. 190-191)

NIHILISM AND RELATIVISM/PLURALISM

Whatever rationale one provides for postmodernism, the nihilism and relativism propounded by its critical adherents at best present severe prob lems for the human sciences, at worst undermine their very raison d'etre.

The nihilistic strain of postmodernism emphasizes the uncertainty of the human condition and maintains that much knowledge is essentially a con tradiction. Instead of truth, there are only regimes of truth and power (Fou cault, 1980), and knowledge itself is shaped solely by the cultural constructions of the observer (Lee, 1992, p. 35). If there is no difference between sense and nonsense, between truth and error, then all beliefs are

equal, and this paves the way for nihilism as well as relativism (Vattimo, 1988; Schiffer, 1988, pp. 467-468; Trigger, 1989a, 1991, pp. 68-69; Rosenau, 1992), or "interpretationism" (Harding, 1990, p. 102, n. 5).

Anthropology has always been sensitive to the formation of ethnic

identities, even as it strives to maintain "an objective distance from its eth nographic reality" (Friedman, 1992, p. 847). Since the time of Boas in the early 20th century, a major tenet of anthropology holds that it is the study of differences; if the postmodernist position merits consideration (e.g., Burr, 1990), this tenet is no longer tenable. Wolf (1994, pp. 10-11) suggests that postmodernist thought has transformed the "existentialist other" into a subject so incomprehensible that comparative understandings of sociocul tural encounters have been declared inadmissible evidence. Postmodernists

believe that ideal of objectivity pursued by social scientists during the co lonial era was no more than a tool of domination and oppression (also

Said, 1978,1985) and that "subjectivist relativism" provides a way of freeing ourselves from them.

In archaeology, and by extension the study of the past, nihilism sur faces at several points, most disconcertingly in the notion that we cannot

know the past (i.e., some "truth" about the past) or that the past is only useful inasmuch as it can be made relevant to an activist political present.


136 Knapp

The ultimate outcome would be to disempower archaeology as a viable source of knowledge about the past (Trigger, 1991, p. 69).

The past resists our constructions, its empirical materiality has to be respected. At the same time it is necessary to realise that there is no firm bedrock or foundation to which we can anchor our statements about the past, no criteria of validity to come to terms with a materialist position in which it is realised that any (serious) archaeological practice involves minimally a triple dialectical relation: between the

materiality of the past, the materiality of the present, and the materiality of the

process of constructing discourses, writing texts. (Tilley, 1990, p. 136)

Today, such "radical" poststructuralist statements about the past have become more moderate, and we might state instead that archaeology com

prises many different practices, types of evidence, and aspects of theory: no definitive statement applies to all of them. We can "know" more about some things than others where there is a hierarchy of knowledge (Trigger, 1989b, pp. 391-396). It may be a commonplace in the mid-1990s to say that we can never know the "real" past (or truth) unerringly: even so, it remains a common goal, one that stimulates archaeological research, and

motivates the legitimate study of the past. Our understanding of the past, not its explanation, may become increasingly comprehensive, but it will never be complete (Trigger, 1991, p. 73; Johnsen and Olsen, 1992, pp. 420 422). As is the case with cosmology or quantum mechanics, one may obtain an "answer"?an approximation that fills ones needs, but never "the" an swer. Moreland (1990, p. 259) emphasizes that even if we cannot acquire objective knowledge of the past, at least we can gain some understanding about the

"polyphonic" past. Postmodernists prefer relativism to objectivity and, in any case, regard

the former as inescapable: "signifiers" (words or texts) "trigger off an infinite number of meanings to any number of people and the meanings experienced by each person are going to be unique" (Walsh, 1990, p. 280). Critical post

modernists maintain that language transforms truth and theory alike into

linguistic conventions. Since, therefore, it is impossible to say anything with

confidence, everything is worthy of attention and a pluralism of more or less equal viewpoints exists (Rosenau, 1992, p. 22). Good or bad criteria do not exist, and all interpretations therefore become equally valid.

Relativism in postmodernism raises the question of authority: Whose

interpretation of some past social world is correct? What sort of "security" or

"independence" of evidence is required to substantiate interpretive claims (Wylie, 1992a, pp. 276-281)? How closely are archaeological notions of "truth" linked to the archaeologist's contemporary politics (Fotiadis, 1994)? As Shanks and Hodder (1994) point out, the main point of concern about relativism and pluralism is centered on absolutes: "truth" and objec



tivity do not exist inherently as abstract principles in the past but, rather, have to be demonstrated and "crafted."

The four main tenets of a "relativist epistemology" (Laudan, 1990 as outlined by Trigger, 1991, pp. 65-66)?subjectivity, underestimation of the ory through the use of data, a holistic approach, science as a social activ

ity?serve to deconstruct the positivist approach that has long characterized

Anglo-American archaeology. Given the polysemous nature of human cul ture and the diversity of material culture, a theoretical and methodological pluralism is clearly warranted. In the field of (cultural) anthropology, criti cal postmodernists have welcomed relativism because it incorporates their own belief that cultural traditions are unique, synchronie, and analytically unable to encompass the meaning and discourse of other cultural traditions

(Tyler, 1984, p. 328; Marcus and Fisher, 1986, p. 32). Whereas historians have often embraced a moderate form of relativism (e.g., Collingwood, 1946; Carr, 1961), Trigger (1989a, pp. 778, 791) warns that the social sci ences must avoid "the current trap of extreme relativism." In archaeology, the application of critical theory as a way of linking the material past, self

reflexively, to the present first led to the call for experimental site reports, excavation as theater, and other "alternative forms of archaeological dis course" (Potter, 1991; Tilley, 1989; Hodder, 1989b). R. Watson (1990, pp. 678-679) castigated much of this "dogmatic relativism" as contradictory or, at best, inconsistent. However one regards these earlier stances in post processualism, there is a growing acceptance among archaeologists that hu

man behavior has produced an archaeological record far too variable and

complex to be explained by Neo-evolutionism and/or ecological determi nism (Trigger, 1991, p. 66; Wylie, 1992a, 1993).

Moderate postmodernists seem uncomfortable with both relativism and objectivity and, occasionally, make contradictory compromises. Femi nists, for example, support postmodernism^ criticism of modern social sci ence and its denial of a privileged male status; at the same time they must denounce postmodernism because it gives equal authority to the oppressor and the oppressed, to perpetrators and victims alike. A relativist form of

postmodernism, in other words, is inconsistent with a commitment to chal

lenge an objective reality (Harding, 1990, pp. 88, 102, n. 6; Rosenau, 1992, p. 115). While the mainly male, white, and Western postmodernists are proclaiming the death of anthropology and the social sciences generally, the voices of women, people of color, and aborigines struggle to constitute themselves as subjects of history, and makers of their own history (Lee, 1992, p. 36).

On the one hand, then, "polyvocality" may be regarded as highly rele vant for developing contemporary social theory or as deeply significant for those utilizing "signifiers" to push semiotic theory in anthropology and ar


138 Knapp

chaeology. On the other hand, polyvocality must be understood not just as a concept that can demonstrate how restricted our archaeological imagi nation can be, but also as a reality that may threaten the identity and self determination of people who are the victims of unequal access to power or resources (Hodder, 1991c, p. 9; Murray, 1993, pp. 504-505). In a mul tivocal world, where everything is subjective and every voice must be heard, of necessity some people will be empowered, while others will be margi nalized (Bender, 1993, p. 258).

The postmodernist notion that there is no truth, and that everything is a construction, is in fact the ultimate contradiction. Moreland (1990, p.

260) points out that even those historical constructions that make no claims to the truth (concerning their particular vision of the past) in fact create narratives that can be read as reconstruction (and thus a particular version of the

"truth"). By asserting the view that "there is no truth," postmod ernists assume a position of privilege and at the same time affirm the pos sibility of truth?their own truth. Some postmodernists try to circumvent this dilemma by maintaining that the views they express are strictly their

own and, therefore, not superior to other views. But even this relativist

position assumes truth, by stating that it is no more true than other posi tions (Rosenau, 1992, p. 90). Silence may offer the only logical escape from such a contradiction (Gellner, 1992, p. 37).

POSTMODERNISM AND THE PAST

Postmodernists have concerned themselves with the unique instead of the general, with "intertextual relations" instead of causality; with the un

repeatable instead of the recurring. From a postmodernist perspective, then, human science becomes more humble and subjective as truth gives

way to uncertainty, and synthesis to difference (Rosenau, 1992, p. 8). In certain respects, the postmodernist position is based in hermeneutics, and the debate between positivism and hermeneutics is already an old one in social theory (e.g., Popper vs. Adorno). More usefully from the perspective of studying the past, postmodernists have rejected the traditional, rigid boundaries between academic disciplines, notably between the natural and social sciences, the humanities, art and literature. However, on the archae

ological side, the extreme versions of postprocessualism rampant in the late 1980s often sought to sever interdisciplinary links rather than construct or

develop them. Prima facie, the moderate trajectory of postmodernism seems favorably

inclined to the study of the past and, concomitantly, to the interpretation of archaeological data. Such postmodernists question the superiority of the



present as a source of real knowledge, and reject any preference for the complex, intellectual lifestyle of the modern urban center over the more

simple, practical, peasant routines of the countryside (Rosenau, 1992, p. 6). Traces of ?lite culture, material or documentary, have too long been used to construct discourses applied to society as a whole, rather than?as would be more appropriate?to other, alternative voices or meanings within

society (Barrett, 1988, pp. 9-12). Postmodernists regard the traditional, the sacred, and the irrational as worthy of serious scholarly attention, as they do studies related to custom, myth, intuition, chronology, magic, and mys ticism.

At the same time, postmodernists reveal a measure of contempt for conventional history. Any attempt to know and represent the past is re

garded with suspicion, and the critical postmodernists collapse history into an instantaneous moment between yesterday and tomorrow. Critical post

modernists promote a depthless, synchronie history, a personal rhetoric which maintains that we can only catch hazy glimpses of a past that has never really existed (Walsh, 1990, p. 281). Time and space are regarded as uncontrollable and unpredictable, and in the end there remains only "pas tiche," a free-floating hodge-podge of views and ideas, including elements of opposites [such as old and new (Rosenau, 1992, pp. 21-22)], that denies logic and symmetry and, instead, sanctions contradiction and confusion. In terms of modern society, culture is seen to have reached its pinnacle: all that can be done is to copy and/or remix previous styles and call them

something new. Postmodernists are especially critical of "humanist" history, i.e., the view that humans can direct the course of events, and that human

agents represent society's individual and collective experiences (Rosenau, 1992, p. 63). Postmodernists, like poststructuralists, make an issue of de centering individuals or of discounting human beings as subjects of inten tionality (Patterson, 1989, p. 559); in Trigger's (1991, p. 68) estimation, "such approaches treat people as prisoners of their own culture."

Moderate postmodernists, however, while agreeing that the more re

pressive qualities of time, space, and history need to be transformed, look for inspiration to various forms of "New History" (e.g., Burke, 1991)?ge nealogy, gender, microhistory, oral history, "history from below"?and give priority to local regional space. In other words, they seek to revitalize his

tory, perhaps to reconsider its epistemological assumptions rather than to annihilate it as their more radical counterparts might. These postmodernists regard "storytelling" (Terrell, 1990), what Geertz termed "thick descrip tion," to be as valuable as explanation; there is little room for exclusively event-oriented history on their agenda. Contradictions are acceptable, in asmuch as we may expect many different "stories" for any historical epoch or event (Scott, 1989), not least because each generation?if not each dif


140 Knapp

ferent school of thought?asks different questions about the past (Lowen thal, 1985).

The study of the human past is contingent on the existence and inter

pretation of evidence derived from previous human experience?experience that is natural, social, or artifactual, and evidence that is material, textual, lithic, or skeletal. If there are no facts to consider, or processes to unravel, and if all interpretations are equal, as critical postmodernists maintain, then it would be pointless to question the validity of different approaches to the

study of the past. However, the notion of eliminating history, or ignoring historical depth is not revolutionary: sociology, social anthropology, struc

turalism, and the "new archaeology" (especially where systems analysis was involved) have long maintained a similar viewpoint, which also precluded the study of ideology, cognition, and human agency.

Many of these exclusionary notions, or claims to the "truth" held by groups as disparate as postmodernists, social anthropologists, structuralists, antiquarians, or religious fundamentalists ought to be rejected outright. An thropologists increasingly accept the need to situate cultures in their historical context or to consider the "social life of things" (Appadurai, 1986), while historians today pursue short-term, particularistic goals within a social or idea tional framework. Archaeologists have been even more innovative: in the search for models to interpret the material remnants of the past, they have cast their nets not only toward anthropology and history, but to fields ranging from molecular biology to hermeneutics. Given this profusion of paths to the

study of the past, where does postmodernism fit in? Is postmodernism the "intellectual parent" of postprocessualism (Bintliff, 1993, p. 91)?

POSTMODERNISM AND POSTPROCESSUALISM

If it is acknowledged that certain similarities exist between the two

movements, does it necessarily follow that postprocessualism in archaeology is simply derivative of postmodernism? As is the case in postmodernism, there is no single, coherent postprocessual movement: Patterson (1989) de fined three "strains" of postprocessualism based, respectively, on the ideas of Hodder, Shanks and Tilley, and Leone. In the early 1990s, there was still as much variation, discourse, and disagreement within postprocessual archaeology as there was between it and processual archaeology (e.g., Hod der, 1991a, p. 37; Watson and Fotiadis, 1990, pp. 613-615). Watson (1991, p. 270) personified processualism as a vision of "soulless method" and post processualism as a vision of "methodless soul." Shanks and Hodder (1994) point out that the current, "(post)modern" debate between processualism and postprocessualism revolves around (1) the forms of knowledge appro



priate to a social science (their emphasis) (2) archaeological conceptions of society (structure and pattern vs individual intention and power), and (3) the ideologies and cultural politics of late 20th century archaeology.

As is the case with postmodernists, many contemporary archaeologists might be categorized as either critical or moderate, even if many of them would contest the categorization (Bintliff, 1993, p. 100). More to the point, Thomas and Tilley (1992) have reacted justifiably against the charge that postprocessualism can be equated simplistically and directly with postmod ernism. The fundamental distinction between what may be called, in par allel with the discussion above, critical and moderate postprocessualists is that the former would not consider themselves bound to the study of ar

chaeological data, whereas the latter do (see the exchanges in Shanks and Tilley, 1989). Ironically, as Hodder pointed out (1991a, p. 39), processual ists were interested chiefly in adaptive processes within ecoenvironmental

systems, while the more dynamic, social processes were relegated to a static, systemic role. In other words, postprocessualists have for the first time de

veloped an adequate account of "process," and considered the relational

process that links social structures to human agents or historical events. On the other hand, making assumptions explicit?which translates today

into the concepts of consciousness, critique, and deconstruct ion?was a core concept of processualism. Combined with the locational techniques and statistical analyses that helped to establish a "quantitative revolution" in spatial archaeology and the "new geography" alike, processualism held, and still deserves to hold, a prominent place in archaeology's theoretical

development. And yet, despite the explicit attention give to theory, the main contributions of processualism were largely methodological in nature

(Schiffer, 1988; Hodder, 1991b, p. 6). Furthermore, there was a fatal flaw in the processual edifice: it re

volved around the diminished, if not denied, role of human agency in all these generalizing, systemic, ecoenvironmental preoccupations [this short coming has recently been foregrounded by the "distinguished lecturers" in the American Anthropological Association's lecture series (Brumfiel, 1992;

Cowgill, 1993; but cf. Redman, 1991)]. Social (i.e., gender, class, faction), ideological, and cognitive factors placed a distant second, if they were ever considered. Processualists drew a distinction between evolutionary studies and history, favoring the former because, it was said, evolutionary gener alizations could account for most specific, historical situations (Trigger, 1991, p. 66). An antihistorical bias was evident, particularly to those work ing in Old World archaeology: textual (historical) evidence was distrusted and often discounted, because it was not material and mute (similarly,

Moreland, 1990, p. 256). Because such documentary evidence could have been subject to manipulation and misrepresentation by the ancient authors,


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processualists often surmised that material data alone provided more "ob

jective" evidence. This position, of course, presumed that new archaeolo gists had no biases whatsoever, based as they were in sound "Scientific," and thus

"objective," procedure. This position was perhaps revealed most directly in Earle and Preucel's (1987, p. 506) review of processual archae ology, where they stated that prehistory is the primary focus of archaeology and that a "contextual" approach (like that of Hodder) might lead archae ologists astray, toward fuller consideration of historical and ethnographic contexts (similarly Gamble, 1993, p. 39). Why were some processualists so blinkered to historical and ethnographic input? Why was historical archae

ology, primarily the domain of anthropological archaeologists like Stanley South, James Deetz, or Mark Leone, marginalized within mainstream

American archaeology? Why did processualists believe so strongly that ar

chaeology was primarily the study of prehistory? Data were paramount, numbers were privileged, and the cult of the

computer was restricted to a small but growing elite. In other words, proc essualism involved a clear power strategy. The sharp dividing line between those who studied lithics and skeletal evidence (the majority of American anthropological archaeologists) and those who worked with pottery, metals, and architecture was more than just material in nature. This breach also involved more than Giddens' (1982, p. 7) "double hermeneutic" in sociol

ogy (the social world; the world of social science) or Shanks and Tilley's (1992, pp. 107-108) "fourfold hermeneutic" in archaeology (past and pre sent; the "other;" contemporary society; contemporary archaeology): it is likely that at some deep level of materialism, "man the hunter" was felt to be a more suitable topic of study than woman the gatherer, or potter (similarly, Conkey and Williams, 1991, pp. 115-117; Gosden, 1994, p. 170). Such an observation is mitigated by the fact that virtually all archaeology from its inception to the 1960s was dominated by white, middle- and up per-class males.

The methodological and theoretical rift that separates processualism and postprocessualism once seemed insuperable (Renfrew, 1980; Dyson, 1982; Glock, 1985; Snodgrass, 1985; Schiffer, 1988), but a competent ar chaeological discussion engages both positions (Gamble, 1986), what Shanks and Hodder (1994) have recently termed a "fusion of horizons." The prehistorian must deal with the same type of hermeneutic issues as an archaeologist working in historical or protohistoric periods: one cannot assume that any given culture in space and time was more similar to our own culture than any other. But can processualism possibly span the hori zons of postprocessual archaeology, with its jarring and often inconsistent postmodernist irruptions?



Bintliff (1991, pp. 275-276), although decrying most postmodernist ap proaches to the past, once suggested that a postmodernist perspective could make three

"positive contributions" to archaeology: (1) postmodernism forces archaeologists to examine critically their

social, moral, and emotional involvement with the study of the

past in the present and, thus, to consider how the general public interacts with the past;

(2) postmodernism calls into question the validity of reading all archaeological publications as "fact sheets" and, instead, implies that such "fact-sheets" should be regarded as "expressions" of

specific culture-historic attitudes to the past; and

(3) postmodernism encourages multiple views of the past and promotes greater awareness of the experiences of women, nonelites, and ethnic minorities in the past.

Among those who have addressed directly the issue of archaeology and postmodernism are Patterson (1989), Hodder (1989a, 1990), Burr (1990), Tilley (1990), Yates (1990), Wfclsh (1990, 1992), Preucei (1991a),

Bintliff (1991, 1993), Kirk (1991), Thomas and Tilley (1992), Lee (1992), Davis (1992), Thomas (1993), Yoffee and Sherratt (1993a), and Shanks and Hodder (1994). Walsh and Hodder concern themselves more with the heri

tage "industry" and CRM than with the wider field of archaeology. Walsh's studies are comprehensive but critical in their assessment of postmod ernism's impact on archaeology; they are also confined almost exclusively to museums and the English Heritage. The studies by Burr, Yates, Tilley, and Kirk are essentially nihilistic and look forward to the demise of ar

chaeology as a closed discipline whose adherents seek only to dominate and limit social thought. Such views, typical of much postprocessual or post structuralist thought in the late 1980s-early 1990s, have undergone a re

markable transformation: most practitioners are now more guardedly optimistic, and more open to reconciliation with other approaches in ar

chaeology. "Radical" perspectives, for example, the stance that archaeology is relevant only inasmuch as it is capable of challenging the contemporary

political order, have been displaced by "mainstream" postprocessualism (e.g., Shanks and Hodder, 1994). In keeping with its middle-class roots, however, postprocessualism resonates most with issues related to gender and to native or aboriginal peoples (e.g., Engelstad, 1991; Wylie, 1992b; Smith, 1995); it has revealed rather less interest in class issues (e.g., various papers in Gathercole and Lowenthal, 1990; Leone and Potter, 1992).

Hodder (1990, p. 13) maintained that postmodernism is for the most part concerned with the present and concluded that its fascination with the

past really stems from the "foreign-ness" of the past (i.e., its concern with the

"other") and from the disconnected nature of the past. Archaeological


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data are fragmentary, and often have poor contextual associations, while

archaeological time is distant, unconnected to the present. Archaeological data tend to be of an everyday, nonelitist nature and, accordingly, provide access to the mundane, the neglected, or the deprived. As such, they are

susceptible to commodification. Indeed, the past can often be packaged and sold as a commodity: Viking coins at Yorvik, Cypriot pottery that replicates in detail the styles and techniques of Bronze and Iron Age potters, an ex hibition catalogue which instructs the buyer in the pedigree of an artifact

(Gill and Chippendale, 1993), or guides a consumer/collector in its purchase. The past, claims Hodder, is also put to use by various "subordinate groups," in order that they may situate themselves in relation to their heritage or

experience, and thus maintain an alternative identity: national and ethnic minorities, women; rural and local folk and their lineage.* At the same time, dominant groups and developers commercialize the past in the attempt to undermine claims to legitimacy (e.g., property ownership, access to mineral resources) made by subordinate groups (Hodder, 1990, p. 15).

The perception and condemnation of postmodernism by Bintliff

(1993), Lamberg-Karlovsky (1989), and Peebles (1991,1993) are constricted and unwarranted, particularly inasmuch as they see it in monolithic terms and thus regard the postmodern "agenda" as inimical to the interests of individuals and socially marginalized groups alike. More to the point is

Sherratt's charge (1993, p. 123) that a postcolonial guilt has often led to denunciations of the comparative method as inherently racist and coloni

alist, which in turn means that the "parochial tendencies of culture-histori cal archaeology" adopted by the postprocessualists preclude broader examination of the role and meaning of material culture. Yet this obser vation too must be tempered in part by realizing that certain trends in

postprocessual archaeology are actively committed to understanding the broader (comparative) structures in which local manifestations occur and to considering a full range of spatial and temporal scales (e.g., Hodder, 1987; Knapp, 1992).

Thomas and Tilley (1992, p. 107) insist that by its very nature there is no such thing as a postmodernist archaeology. They regard the barrage

of new theoretical stances in archaeology as a generalized extension and

opening up of the discipline to the current concerns of a social archaeology and the human sciences. This realignment of archaeology has enabled it to take on board a wide range of intellectual positions, many of which have little in common with postmodernism and to inculcate those positions into their own areas of expertise, e.g., into material culture theory, the study of

long-term socio-structural change, or the role of human agency in the past and in the recreation of the past (Thomas and Tilley, 1992, p. 107; as an example, see Dobres and Hoffman, 1994). The fact that archaeologists write



from within a given cultural and historical situation, lacking total knowledge of the world in general and the object(s) of their study in particular, does not mean that

"anything goes." Gosden (1994, p. 59) makes much the same point: "Post-structuralism and hermeneutics represent an ongoing attempt to move from an objective of the world towards the idea that all truth is contingent, being culturally and historically based." Thomas (1993, p. 5) rejects any simplistic notion of a postmodernist archaeology, and instead presents a position which, whilst seeking no truths or common language, nonetheless eschews "a retreat into solipsism or an unqualified relativism."

Following Bhaskar (1989), Shanks and Hodder (1994) now subscribe to an

"epistemic relativism," in which knowledge is constructed and firmly grounded in a particular time and culture; this is quite different from main

taining that all forms of knowledge are equally valid. Just because we can not present the full and indisputable "truth" about what really happened, it does not follow that total relativism is the only course open. "What it

means is that while we accept that different accounts of the past may be written by different people, they are [all] equally deserving of our scrutiny within a critical archaeology" (Thomas and Tilley, 1992, p. 108; original

italics). The real problem lies not with those who write from a particular viewpoint?be it political, Green, ethnic, sexist, masculinist, or feminist? since they make clear their points of view; the problem lies with those who believe they are writing objective, apolitical, ideology-free archaeology.

Among the more basic issues to emerge in postmodernism and post processualism alike are the centrality of the "text" (both as metaphorical

material product and as concrete historical document), and the changing nature of textual production and consumption. Trigger (1991, p. 70) warns that equating archaeological data and speech as "text" ignores the active and symbolic aspects of certain artifacts. As material culture, "texts" are said to represent enclosed symbolic systems that ordered and impacted on

people's daily lives even as, recursively, people created these symbolic sys tems. As documents, most "texts" that concern archaeologists were pro duced by ?lites and must be assessed in a way that permits them to be seen as possibly biased attempts to impose a specific worldview, to legiti

mize the relations of subordination and domination, and to reify the his

torically contingent (Moreland, 1990, pp. 256-257). Both archaeologists and historians, therefore, function as "readers" and as "second authors" (Dyson, 1993, p. 202) who write down new texts that re-create the past. The mean ing of any text may change as a result of the context and conditions of its reading?texts are not fixed but in a continuous process that structures, produces, and transforms their reading (Tilley, 1993, p. 12). In other words, the meaning of the text is not inherent in it, but in the way that people read or experience the text (Bruner, 1994, p. 407). Literacy and textuality


146 Knapp

(Goody, 1986) do not have the same social meanings and implications through time and throughout space. Archaeologists must deal recursively

with ethnohistoric documents and material data (Knapp, 1992), which gain meaning only in relationship to one another, not in isolation. Both are forms of discourse (Barrett, 1988) that constitute and transform social re lationships (Moreland, 1990, p. 257).

Whereas such considerations provide both the necessity and the

methodology for bringing together materiality and intentionality, the re

lationship between archaeology and history is still fraught with difficulties, misunderstandings, and conflicting?often nationalistic?traditions (vari ous chapters in Hodder, 1991d; Klejn, 1993). Inasmuch as archaeology, like history, is concerned with the study of the past, both should draw

inspiration from the ongoing discourse between the humanities and the social sciences. Archaeology, in fact, represents the critical methodological and theoretical link between the historical and the prehistoric approaches to the study of the past (similarly Schiffer, 1992). Because historians are by training bound to documentary sources, they often regard archaeology simply as the handmaiden?the man-servant??of history. This viewpoint, archaeology as the means through which documentary data can be illu

minated or "proven," is not only naive and misinformed, but detrimental

to the practice of a holistic history. Archaeological data and primary docu

mentary sources are as often contrasting or contradictory as they are com

plementary. In the study of a past informed (or dominated) by textual evidence,

there must be a recursive dialogue between archaeological and documen

tary resources. Ancient textual evidence often deals with elite situations, whereas archaeological data stem from both extraordinary and mundane circumstances. Anyone who studies the past must not only make use of a diverse range of relevant material or documentary data, they must also be

prepared to evaluate those data within an appropriate and relevant inter

pretative framework. Even if the resulting interpretations are often contra

dictory, this does not mean that one interpretation or the other is

necessarily right or wrong; multiple interpretations of the past must be ex

pected. We cannot gain the ultimate "truth." When we ask different ques tions of the past, we must expect different answers.

However early, or "prehistoric," or "mute" the archaeological record

may be, people acted according to the social construction of their world

(Head, 1993, pp. 495-496). The "meanings" archaeologists place upon the material record must be regarded as public and social, rather than individ ual in nature (Shanks and Hodder, 1994). Furthermore, in terms of their theoretical perspectives, archaeologists are influenced by the contemporary sociocultural matrix as well as the material record of any given region, and



by the nature of their own intellectual and social commitments (Paddaya, 1990, p. 46). Archaeologists not only have to deal with worlds widely sepa rated in space and time, and to translate between this "other" world and their own present reality, they must also negotiate the variable social and cultural layers that have to be bridged. Past worlds have an otherness that

may be encountered more usefully if we recognize that our own assump tions about the past are grounded in current discourses (Hill, 1993, p. 71);

Trigger (1989a, pp. 784-785) regards this as relativism's most important role in archaeology.

This entire argument draws us toward a position which some writers have routinely castigated as relativism. In other words, the pasts which are created in the present appear devoid of any external, objective measure by which assessment can be made of their

"validity" or "truth." It as if no external reality, independent of

interpretation, is being allowed to intervene in the construction of this "relatrvistic"

knowledge. This kind of criticism is misplaced. First, we are dealing with selections of material data without which no archaeological practice would be possible. Certainly our view of those data is necessarily prejudiced and interpretive, ...but the data are not entirely malleable and different ways of seeing them will produce recognizable, objectified paths for future research.... Second, if history is created out of numerous and sometimes contradictory interpretive programmes of action, then there never existed a single and unambiguous reality. (Barrett, 1994a, pp. 170-171)

TOWARD SOCIAL AND INTERPRETIVE ARCHAEOLOGIES

While Binford (1962), Longacre (1970), Earle and Preucel (1987), and most recently Plog (1991) and Kingsnorth (1993) have

maintained that only processualists and /?rehistorians can do archae

ology, Wylie (1992b, c), Hodder (1991a, c), Preucel (1991a), Trigger (1991), and many others have sought to find a middle ground between

processualism and postprocessualism. Archaeology in the 1990s has moved far beyond processualism, and a narrow, systemic, and strictly "anthropological" ethnography of the past (Whitley, 1992, pp. 76-77).

The "postprocessual program" is not simply limited to "schools" that

follow the lead of Hodder, Shanks and Tilley, and Leone (Patterson, 1989). Archaeology?whether that of yesterday, today, or tomorrow? cannot be dichotomized simply into processual and postprocessual paradigms (Stevenson, 1989, pp. 305-306; Watson and Fotiadis, 1990;

Hodder 1991c, pp. 12-13; Wylie, 1992b, pp. 65-66; Zubrow, 1994, pp. 108-109): there are as many antiprocessualists as there are antipost

processualists, and many others who are either oblivious to or dis missive of the entire debate. There is, in any case, a serious attempt


148 Knapp

to move beyond polemics to explore areas of possible agreement amongst contemporary archaeologists, and to demonstrate that no

"grand synthsis [is going to] emerge Phoenix-like out of the ashes of existing programs" (Preucel, 1991b, p. 4). Processual and postprocessual approaches often appear blind to the conditions that spawned their differ

ing perspectives (Hodder, 1991c, p. 12; Zubrow, 1994, p. 109). Multiple paths and multiple perspectives are called for, and postprocessualism, like

moderate postmodernism, dictates that archaeologists must learn to live with the notion of mutually irreconcilable views about the past.

Yoffee and Sherratt (1993a, p. 8) recognize the positive elements of postprocessualism:

Postprocessual archaeologists have effectively emphasized that archaeology is an

interpretive science, that symbols, ideologies and structures of meaning are not

merely reflections of how humans cope with the vagaries of external environments. Furthermore, as post-processuaiists have stressed, archaeologists have special responsibilities, not only in recovering the past, but also in ensuring that the past is not maliciously used in the present.

Wylie (1993, p. 15) proclaims that the archaeological record has an "infinite capacity" to "surprise" and to shape or constrain our interpreta tions of the past. There is no real contradiction between the goals of an

interpretive archaeology (Hodder, 1991c; Shanks and Hodder, 1994) as they might be realized through the social-archaeological theory of Yoffee and Sherratt (1993b) or the cognitive-processual archaeology of Renfrew and Zubrow (1994). Sherratt (1993, p. 123) states that processualists need to confront instances of particularity and alternative interpretations, just as postprocessualists must take cognizance of the eco-environmental con straints that are common to past societies: "There is no necessary conflict between these objectives, and a recognition of this could help to overcome the cyclical social pressures to cast archaeology in one mould or another."

Hodder (1991c, p. 10) stresses that it is time to stop emphasizing theory and, instead, to start relating theory to data as part of the interpretive proc ess (similarly Trigger, 1991, pp. 69-70).

If the label "postprocessual" has become too loaded for universal ac

ceptance, even criticized as "obscure and difficult" by some of its leading figures (e.g., Hodder, 1991c, p. 9), it must also be pointed out that this term says nothing about the practice and procedures of postprocessualism (except as a reaction to processualism). Perhaps, then, it is time put these

polarizations aside and consider the main tenets of an interpretive archae

ology (Hodder, 1991c; Shanks and Hodder, 1994): (1) archaeologists are interpreters who must take responsibility in the

academy and in public for their actions and interpretations; (2) archaeology is social in nature;



(3) social practices have to do with meanings, and social interpretations are concerned more with understanding than with causal explanation;

(4) interpretation is a multivocal, "polysemous" activity that must be responsive not only to the data but also to various constituents in the present and to disciplinary practice.

We must, therefore, expect a plurality of archaeological interpretations, even as we seek out common ground for different archaeologies (e.g.,

Moreland, 1990, pp. 258-261; Hodder, 1991a; Wylie, 1992a, pp. 274-282; TUley, 1993, pp. 3-5, 23).

Archaeological goals cannot be met by empirical means alone. The division of knowledge into "facts" and "theories" is a spurious and mis

leading undertaking. Facts do not simply exist in a vacuum, waiting for the astute archaeologist to come along and reveal them, observe them, add them all up, and produce "truth" or "reality." Facts are important or unimportant only in relation to some general (or specific) theory (similarly Barrett, 1994a, pp. 168-169). And archaeological evidence is at least partially defined by our own assumptions about what is or is not relevant: it is thus partly constituted by theory, whether implicit or

explicit. Even if we shift emphasis from studying the patterning of things to structuring social practice (Barrett, 1988, p. 11), what we observe as archaeologists are static materials that exist in the present: it is impos sible to know or even to consider what sort of phenomena gave rise to their existence, distribution, or structuring in the absence of theory. This is an archaeological knowledge that implicates an understanding of past social processes. I am not making an argument for lack of rigor in data collection and analysis: the field techniques and analytical methods de

veloped in archaeology are fundamental to the study of the past. But

theory requires as much effort and rigor as do the empirical aspects of

investigation. To consider basic human motivations such as the exercise of power or

the role of gender in social relations is a pursuit far too important to be limited to a single discipline?or even a pair of disciplines (e.g., Cherry, 1987; Gero and Conkey, 1991; Saitta, 1992, pp. 894-895; Sherrat, 1993, p. 123). It is contradictory to call for an archaeology based partially on the level of individual decision-making and, at the same time, to play down

historical methodology or the archaeology of historical periods (complex societies), as some new archaeologists did. The historical aspects of archae ological theory must be recognized and emphasized if cognition, ideology, and mentalit??Lt., human agency?are to be accorded their proper role in the study of the past This is the single most important factor that post

processualism has raised in the debates that dominate the field of archae


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ology in the late 20th century. The second most important factor, already foreshadowed by processualism, is the recognition of the active role played by material culture in past social practice and social change. The former, namely, the role of the human agent in society, is consistently downplayed or denied by most strains of postmodernism, whereas the latter?material culture, and the changing nature of material relationships?forms an im

portant tenet of "moderate" postmodernism. Unlike other human sciences, archaeology is seldom able to probe

the nature of specific events, individual histories, or immediate circum stances. Rather it must set out the parameters and outline the circum stances in which human action takes place in the world. To do so, the notion of past meaning in social theory within archaeology must be seen as only one level of (pre)history, stemming from and interacting with other, slower-moving, behavioural, economic, or ecoenvironmental levels beneath (Gosden, 1992, p. 808). Moreover, past "meanings" of material goods were never fixed in the objects themselves but, rather, were "read" into them from other experiences and expectations, and acted upon: so cial life is therefore played out against material conditions which are themselves revised or reworked according to an individual's interpreta tion of some material reality (Barrett, 1994a, p. 170). As archaeologists,

we must give primacy to material data, but "mindless empiricism" (Lee, 1992, p. 41) will not suffice: we must have a theoretical context as well.

To do this, archaeology cannot simply borrow theory or metaphor from

postmodernism or any other intellectual movement or discipline: it must continue to develop its own (Schiffer, 1976; Binford, 1977; Clarke, 1978;

Hodder, 1991e; Yoffee and Sherratt, 1993b). This is the real way forward in the study of the past.

WHICH WAY(S) TO THE PAST?

Post-processualism, ...while acknowledging the difficulties posed by interpretation, opens up the past. It stresses that it is human beings who reproduce and transform structures through daily practice. It asserts that we should not ignore the aspects of elite material culture which have been the bread and butter of archaeological, art historical, and historical research, but suggests that by putting them in the context of all material culture we can begin to better understand relations of subordination and domination.... Lastly, it offers us the chance to write a more democratic history and one which gives voice to those who so far have been denied

history. (Moreland, 1990, p. 261)

Archaeology, history, and anthropology appear as increasingly arbitrary positions of the necessary elements of comprehensive understanding. Far from being an

activity of marginal theoretical relevance, therefore, archaeology is arguably central



to a future configuration of disciplines capable of transcending the limitations of their cultural origins. (Sherratt, 1993, pp. 123-124)

...Approaches derived from post-structuralism and phenomenology actually have a

greater general applicability than those operated by processual archaeology. Simply by ceasing to attempt to fix the past in a cage of inflexible concepts, one allows it a greater historicity. (Thomas, 1993, p. 23)

It is simply no good to talk about studying the past; we need to specify what

processes/practices/forces we wish to discuss and then explain how we are going to

proceed. (Barrett, 1994b)

If postmodernism has taught us anything important, it is that there are alternative ways of knowing, conceiving of, and writing about, the past (Thomas, 1990; Wylie, 1993, pp. 14-15). That some (re)constructions of the past are erroneous, or limited, or diff?rent, is only to acknowledge the

gaps in the archaeological record, our mishandling or misinterpretation of

archaeological data, or the impact of our own views?and our own preju dices?on what is significant amongst those data (Renfrew, 1994, p. 10).

Whatever bur approach to the study of the past may be, we cannot observe it directly: our evidence is incomplete, and our models?which seek to link the static (material or documentary) remains of the present to social prac tice in a dynamic past?are problematic, often contradictory, always sub

jective. There is no single truth, no one correct interpretation, no ultimate explanation. We not only develop alternative ways of understanding the

past, in fact we develop alternative pasts. Pluralist enthusiasm and critical intelligence, however, need not cancel

out one another. That such "polyvocalic" viewpoints are conflicting (Mur

ray, 1993, pp. 504-505), and historically situated, and thus not just "alter native," is apparent in anthropology, for example, in the Mead-Freeman debate over the interpretation of Samoan culture; in ancient history, in BernaTs expos? of the "ancient," Victorian, and contemporary "models" used to understand?or ignore?the Egypto-Semitic impact on Greek his

tory and culture; in archaeology, in the striking contrast between Ian Hod der's contextual view of the European and Near Eastern Neolithic, and the prevailing processual views of James Mellaart, Donald Henry, Timothy

Champion, and others. The presentation of different archaeological pasts opens up the possibility of recognizing differences, and for situating the

present as a specific product of history (Hodder, 1990, p. 5). Preucel (1991b, p. 14) points out that "learning how to live with mutually irrecon cilable views about the past ... does not imply that there was no real past," but, rather, that there are multiple perspectives?based upon specific re search interests and procedure?that can be adopted to study the past in the present. At the same time, we must realize that one of the major theo retical tasks of archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians is to over


152 Knapp

come the contradictions?and artificially contrasting conceptions of their research?created by the changing social contexts of each individual disci

pline (Sherratt, 1993, p. 123). Even if we must be resigned to the postmodern condition, to post

modernist dilemmas, does it necessarily follow that everything is hyperre lative and that we can never know the past? As a discipline, archaeology is responding to the valid challenges raised by postmodernism. Through its culture-historical bias, archaeology can provide the diachronic perspective that has always limited structuralist approaches to the past (Sherratt, 1993,

p. 123). There is a decided shift away from simplistic evolutionary or eco logical paradigms (Yoffee, 1993) toward a more nuanced, sensitive, critical, and historically aware understanding of the past. Make no mistake, in this

regard archaeology leads the way. Even if there is no single explanation, at least there exists an array of interpretive approaches that provide a more

comprehensive understanding of the past. Because of the ferment and fer

tility of thought that have characterized archaeology over the past quarter century, no discipline is better poised to exploit such alternative ways of

examining the past.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Earlier versions of this study were presented at Macquarie University, Sydney (1993), the University of Pennsylvania (1993), U.C. Berkeley (1993), and the University of Sydney (1994). I am grateful to those who organized these seminars and, especially, to those who attended and responded, be cause they gave me some measure of how the archaeological community

would react to these issues. I also wish to thank Wendy Ashmore, Philip Duke, David Frankei and Jenny Webb, Sturt Manning, Lynn Meskeil, K. Paddaya, Ariel Salleh, Adam Smith, and some anonymous reviewers for comments on early drafts of this paper. Suggestions from Alison Wylie, and protracted discussions with Christopher Chippindale, helped me to re

organize the presentation substantially. The title and several ideas devel

oped in the paper resulted from discussions with Peter Grave (University of Sydney) about postmodernism, archaeology, and the movie Falling Down; I am grateful for his endless enthusiasm about the topic and for several references. Research for this study was conducted while the author held an Australian Research Fellowship (from the Australian Research Council, Commonwealth Government of Australia) in the School of History, Phi losophy and Politics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. I am most

grateful for that support.



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