Chapter
11
KENT V" FLANNERY
Culture History v. Cultural Process
Kent V. Flannery
10J102
Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard Uni-versity-has written a monumental synthesis
~f
New World prehistory
(19660).
There
IS
nothing like
it.
Recently we have badseveral edited volumes on the ew Worldwith contributions
by
regional specialists,but this book is written cover to cover
by
one man. Thus the inevitable lack of first-
~and familiarity
with
certain areas is par-
tlall~ offset
by
the advantage
of
having oneconsistent approach and writing stylethroughout. Although aimed at the student,the book's costly format almost prices
it
out of the student range. I
t
is
a centerpiecefor the coffee table of the archaeologicalfraternity, at least until an inexpensive pa-perb~ck edition can
be
produced.
. Willey's
archaeological career is
reflected
III
monographs and articles on every majorl~nd mass of the New World, from the re-£on of the Woodland culture in
the U.S.
ortheast
to the Maya area, the shellmounds of Panama and the coastal borderof th~ Andean civilization.
He
is
a perennial
favorite
who for a variety of reasons hasnev~r come under attack. One reason is hisavo~~ance of anyone polarized theoretical
position,
the other is
his
adaptability
in
theface of continual change. While other mem-bers of the establishment have clenched theirfists and gritted their teeth when their for-ffi:rly useful theories dropped from favor,Willey has shown no such hostility' youngerarchaeologists sense be would rafuer jointhem than
lick
them. And he is always freeto join them
as
long
as
he maintains novested interest in an) comprehensive theorythat needs defending.This
book, well
organized from the pri-mary literature and from constant conversa-tions with
Willey's
COlleagues, is no excep-lion.
II
is unlikely to stir up controversyexcept where Willey commits himself toone of a series of possible theories proposedby others-for example, siding with Emil
W.
Haury
rather
than Charles C.
Di
Pesoon
the
interpretation of the
U.S.
Southwest,or with Henry
B.
Collins rather than Rich-ard
S.
Mac eish on the American Arctic.
It
is not
Willey's
aim to intrude his owntheories into the synthesis.
I
ndeed, he tellsus that he is "not demonstrating or cham-pioning anyone process, theory or kind of explanation as a key
(0
a comprehensiveunderstanding of what went on in prehistoricAmerica." Clearly Willey feels that it would
be
misleading to do more than present thestudent with the facts as most of his col-leagues agree on them in 1966. Hence "theintent of Lhis
book
is history-an introduc-tory culture history of pre-Columbian Amer-ica."This statement by Willey makes it ap-propriate to consider one of the current theo-retical debates in American archaeology:the question of whether archaeology shouldbe the study of culture history or the studyof cultural process. In view of this debateit is interesting LOnote that in practicallythe same paragraph Willey can brand hisbook "culture history" and yet argue thathe is "not championing anyone point of view."Perhaps
60
percent of all currently am-
bulatory
American archaeologists are con-cerned primarily with culture history; thisincludes most of the establishment and nota few of the younger generation. Another10 percent, both young and old, belong towhat might
be
called the "process school."Between these two extremes lies a substan-tial group of archaeologists who aim their
Culture History v. Cultural Process:A Debate in American Archaeology
A DOMIN ANT characteristic of Americanarc~aeology has been its long history of
re-action
to American ethnology. When eth-nology was little more than the collecting of spears, baskets and headdresses from theIndians, archaeology was little more thanrecovery. of arti~acts. Whcn
ethnologv
in-creased Its attention to community structure,archaeology responded with studies of set-tlement pattern-an approach in which Gor-don Willey was an innovator. Publicationof works by Julian
H.
Steward and otherson "cultur~ ecology" was answered by greatarchaeolo¥,lcal emphasis on "the ecologicalappro~ch. When the concept of culturalevolution ~merged triumphant after yearsof sup~resslOn. archaeology showed great in-teres~
10
.evolutionary sequences and in the
classification
of "stages" in
the h
. uman ca-reer. The lOteraction of these
two
d i . I"
. ISC1P
mes
has been
mcreasen
by the fact that in theU.S. both are housed in departments of anthropology; as Willey remarked some
10
years ago. "~~erican archaeology is an-thropology or It ISnothing."And now, in
1966,
Willey- Bowditch Pro-fessor of Mexican and Central
A .
mencanReview of
An Introduction to American Archae_ology,
vot.
1:
North and Middle America
b Gdo.nR: Willey (Prentice-Hall, Inc.). Repri~te~ fr~~
SCientificAmerican
vel 2t7 2
• . ,no.,
August 1967
~p.
119-2~.
By petmission of the author and Scien~
titleAmerican,
Inc. <:opyright
©
1967
by ScientificAmencan, Inc. All rights reserved.
fire freely at both history and process. Andalthough Willey himself belongs to thisgroup, his
Introduction
to
American Archae-ology
also constitutes a massive restatementof the accomplishments of the culture-history school.Most culture historians use a theoreticalframework that has been described as "nor-mative" (the term was coined by an ethnolo-gist and recently
restressed
by an archaeolo-gist). That is. they treat culture as a bodyof shared ideas, values and beliefs-the"norms" of a human group. Members of agiven culture are committed to these normsin different degrees-the norm is really atthe middle of a bell-shaped curve of opin-ions on how to behave. Prehistoric artifactsare viewed as products of these shared ideas.and they too have a "range of variation"that takes the form of a bell-shaped curve.In the normative framework cultureschange as the shared ideas. values and be-liefs change. Change may be temporal (asthe ideas alter with time) or geographic (asone moves away from the center of a par-ticular culture area. commitment to certainnorms lessens and commitment to othersincreases). Hence culture historians havealways been concerned with constructing
"rime-space
grids"-great charts whose
col-
umns show variation through the centuries.Some have focused an incredible amount of attention on refining and detailing thesegrids; others have been concerned with dis-covering "the Indian behind the artifact" ~reconstructing the "shared idea" or "mentaltemplate" that served as a model for themaker of the tool.While recognizing the usefulness of thisframework for classification, the processschool argues that it is unsuitable for ex-plaining culture-change situations. Membersof the process school view human behavioras a point of overlap (or "articulation")between a vast number of systems, each of which encompasses both cultural and non-cultural phenomena-soften much more of thelatter. An Indian group, for example, may
THE THEORETICAL BASE
Culture History v. CullufBI Process
Kent V. Flannery
104105
participate in a system in which maize is
grown on a river floodplain that is slowly
being eroded, causing the zone of the best
farmland to move upstream. Simultaneouslyit may participate in a system involving awild rabbit population whose density flue-
tuates in a
In-year
cycle because of preda-tors or disease. It may also participate in
a system of exchange with an Indian groupoccupying a different kind of area, from
which
it
receives subsistence products atcertain predetermined times of the year; andso on.
All
these systems compete for the
time and energy of the individual Indian; themaintenance of his way of life depends onan equilibrium among
systems. Culturechange comes about through minor varia-tions in one or more systems, which grow,displace or reinforce others and reachequilibrium on a different plane.The strategy of the process school is~herefore to isolate each system and studyIt as a sepa~ate variable. The ultimate goal,of course, IS reconstruction of the entirepattern of articulation, along with all re-lated systems, but such complex analysishas so far proved beyond the powers of theprocess theorists. Thus far their efforts havenot produced grand syntheses such as
Wil-
ley'S.but only.small-scale descriptions of the
detailed workings
of a single system. Bythe~e methods, however, they hope to ex-~laIn,. rathe~ than merely describe, varia-
nons
10
prehistoric human behavior.
S ?
far the most influential (and contro-
versial)
member of the process school habeen Lew.is
R.
Binford of the University o~Ne."' MeXICOat Albuquerque, and it is inter-
estmg
to note that Binford's name is con-fin.edt~ a single footnote on the last page of Willey s text. It is Binford's contention thatculture historians are at times stopped shortof "an explanatory level of analysis" bthe norm~tive framework in which they co~struct their classifications. Efforts to reco _
struct
~he "shared ideas" behind artifa:tpopulatIOns cannot go beyond what
B"
f
d
II " I
III
orca s pa eopsychology" -they cannot copewith systemic change. And where Willeysays that "archaeology frequently treatsmore effectively of man in his relationshipsto his natural environment
lhan
of otheraspects of culture," Binford would protestthat most culture historians have dealt poorlywith these very relationships; their model of "norms," which are "inside"
culture,
andenvironment, which is "outside."
makes
itimpossible to deal with
the
countless sys-tems in which
man
participates, none of which actually reflect a dichotomy
between
culture and nature. The concept of cultureas a "superorganic" phenomenon, helpfulfor some analytical purposes, is of little
util-
ity to the process school.As a convenient example of the differ-ence in the two approaches, let
us
examinethree different ways in which American
ar-
chaeologists have treated what they call"diffusion"-the geographic spread of
cul-
tural elements.
I
t
was once common to
in-
terpret the spread or such elements by
ac-
t~al mi~rations of prehistoric peoples (aView, still common in ear Eastern archae-ology, that might
be
called
lhe
"Old Testa-ment effect"). The
culture
historians at-tacked this position with arguments that itwas not necessary for actual people to travel-just "ideas." In other words, the normsor one culture might
be
transmitted to an-other culture over long distances, causinga change in artifact styles, house types andso on.
A
whole terminology
was
worked outfor this situation by the culture historians:they described cultural
"traits"
that bad
a
"center of origin" from wbich they spreadoutward along "diffusion routes." Along theway they passed through "cultural filters"that screened out certain traits and let otherspass through; the mechanics of this processwere seen
as
the "acceptance" or "rejection"of new traits on the
part
of the groupthrough. whose filter they were diffusing. Atgreat distances from the center
of
originthe traits were present only
in
attenuatedform, haVing been squeezed through
so
manyfilters that they were almost limp.Since process theorists
do
not treat agiven tool (or
"trai
t")
as the end productof a given group's "ideas" about \\ hat atool should look like but rather as one com-ponent of a
system
Ihat also includes manynoncultural component,
thc:)
treat diffusionin different
willllo.
The process theorist is notultimately
concerned
\lolth "the Indian
be-
hind the artifact" but rather \\ irh the s)'Stembehind both
the
Indian and the artifact: whatother components
dot'S
the
system
have,what energy
source
keeps it going, whatmechanisms regulate it and
so
on? Oftenthe first step is an attempt to discover therole of the trail or implement by determiningwhat it is funcLiona.J1l associated with; someprocess theorists have run extensive linear-regression analyses or muhivariant factoranalyses in order to pick up clusters of ele-
merus
thai vary
with
each other in "nonran-dom"
ways.
When such
clustcrings
occur,the analyst postulates
a sysrem-aools
X,
Y,
and
Z
are variables dependent on one
an-
other, can tituting a functional tool kit thatvaries
ncnrandomly
with some aspect of theenvironment, such
as
fish, wild cereal grains,
white-tatted
deer and
so on.
By
definitionchange in one part
of
a system
produceschange in other parts; hence the processtheorists cannot view artifacts
X,
Y,
and
Z
as products of cultural norms, to be ac-cepted or rejected freely at way stationsalong diffusion routes. When such clementsspread, it is because the systems of whichthey are
a
part have spread -often at theexpense of other systems.Thu the archaeologist
James Deetz re-
cemly
presented evidence that the spread of a series of pottery designs on the GreatPlains reflected not
the
"acceptance" of newde5igns by neighboring groups but a
break-
down of the matrilocal residence pattern of a society where the women were potters.Designs subconsciously selected by thewomen (and passed on to their daughters)ceased to be restricted to
a
given villagewhen the matrilocal pattern collapsed andmarried daughters were no longer bound toreside in their mothers' villages. In this case,although each potter obviously did have a"mental template" in her mind when shemade the pot, this did not "explain" thechange. That spread of design could only beunderstood in terms of a system in whichdesigns, containers and certain female de-scent groups were nonrandomly related com-ponents. The members of the process school
maintain
that this is a more useful explana-tory framework, but even they realize thatit is only a temporary approach. They arebecoming increasingly aware that today's hu-man geographers have ways of studying dif-fusion that are far more sophisticated andquantitative than anything used by
contem-
poraryarchaeologists.One other example of the difference inapproach between the
culture
historian andthe process theorist is the way each treatsthe use of "ethnographic analogy" in ar-chaeological interpretation. The culture his-torian proposes to analyze and describe aprehistoric behavior pattern, then searchthe ethnographic literature for what seemsto be analogous behavior in a known ethnicgroup. If the analogy seems close enough,he may propose that the prehistoric behaviorserved the same purpose as its analogue andthen use ethnographic data to "put flesh onthe archaeological skeleton."The process theorist proposes a differentprocedure. Using the analogous ethnic group,he constructs
a
behavioral model to "pre-dict" the pattern of archaeological debris leftby such
a
group. This mod~1 is then testedagainst the actual archaeological traces of theprehistoric culture, with the result that
a
third body of data emerges, namely the dif-ferences between the observed and the ex-pected archaeological pattern. These differ-ences are in some ways analogous to the"residuals" left when the principal factorsin a factor analysis have been run, and theymay constitute unexpectedly critical data.When the archaeologist sets himself the task of explaining the differences between the ob-served archaeological pattern and the pattern
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