CHAPTER FIVE

---

The CI of·· . .

assi lcatory-Hlstorical Period: The

Concern with Context and Function (1940-60)

Archaeology ... is always limited in the results ii can p d

I'd .' roauce

tIS oomed always to be the lesser part of anthropology, .

E. ADAMSON HOE BEL

A DEFINITION OF THE PERIOD

The somewhat depressm .

. ofa leading American fI!u~ta~on above, taken from the writings how anthropology as a whol 0 agISt of the time, is a fair statement of tory-Historical Period ·E.thn°le regarded archaeology in the Classifica-

, . 0 ogyand 'I

ered to be the places where th-· SOCia anthropology were consid-

located_ Archaeology was d f~ n:am bastions of theory and wisdom were

f th e 1I1.ltely p . h al

o e archaeologist to contrib enp er - Any attempt on the part

understanding was met With ute t~ the larger problems of cultural

of th talkin an astorushm t lik h . .

e g dog; it w en . e t at ill the classic case

th f asnotwhatth d '

e act that the dog could ' e og said that was so amazing but

. , . sayltatall.M . , .

margmal POSItion and second-das . ost ~chaeologIsts accepted their

a. few were restive. The I tt s status WIth becOming humility' only

al . - _ .. . a er were willin ., . . '

,;ays lmuted 11\ the result it g to adnut that" archaeology is

to ill' if S 1 can prod " b

qwre ethnology did . uce, ut they were also inclined

archaeolOgical study of th cult also have its limitations_ Might not an

a Ion dec tural su '

. g an otherwise unree d cceSSlOn of material objects over

lO1p tan or ed span f .

or ce that even the. 0 time reveal to us things of

di J . most 0tnni '

,,~sc ose to an ethnolOgist? Wh sc~ent ofliving informants could not

oomed always to be the 1 . y, Indeed, should archaeology be

tha potential as yet unrealiz:~S€Sr Parth ~f anthropology?" Perhaps it had

oughts in th· ' ucn, in an

d b e .tnmds of some a ha yevent, were the seditious

thage y a few sympathetic ethn, rCI ,~oIOgists, Who were also encour-

oughts and, a ogIsts to k .

. questions were t I.' as such questi ons, Th~S

o ead to a '-

. cntical reexamination of the

152

A DEFINITION OF THE PERIOD

153

aims and procedu of archaeolo and the instigation of some new

elimental trends that were to characterize t e after half 0 the Classifica tory-

ese Xl w ex erimental trends concerned context and functionallilJifute at process. ey 1 not replace the prevailing preeecupati of theOassificatory~Historical Period, which remained firmly set in chronological ordering. The dissatisfactions, stirrings, and experiments were portents of the future. The decades from 1940 to 1960, we think, are appropriately contained within the definitions of the Classificatory-Historical Period, but it was also a time of ferment and transition.

The new contextual-functional approaches are ~raered er

three headings in our discussions. The-first of thes-e'heaoin s or categories t :s..asits tnem the propositidii that artifacts are to be understood ~~ qWerlairelig;.{)f social and._culturaI11ehavior. Earlier attempts had been made to ascribe use or function to archaeological artifacts, but the difference in the 1940-60 period was in the dose attention paid to context in arriving at functional inferences.

A':secon contextual-functional approach is that of ~ffl~nt patterns. It was felt that the way humans had arranged themse yes upon the landscape, with relation to its natural features and with relation to other people, held important clues for archaeologists in their understanding of socioeconomic adaptations and sociopolitical organizations.

The third approach, relating to the other two, is that of the relationships between culture and natural environment. That is, it involved humans and their resource base, While sometimes referred to iura! e~in the 1940-60 period, it was generally something less than the

ecosystem approach of more recent years. _

In the search for context and function, these methodologtes were abetted and further stimulated by scientific aids from other disciplines. GeolOgical findings became steadily more important to archaeo~ogy; botany and biology were keys in furthering culturaJ..~a~alenvrro,nment studies and in tracing out the histories of domesti~atIOn; matenal analyses of all kinds, in chemistry, metallurgy/and phYSICS, allowed for greater insights into the processes of artifact manufacture as w~ll as for identifications of sources of raw commodities. AbOve all radrncarbo

ii' villed aosolute oates for arc aeolo ·sts ... ~a tliis ad im or-

ercussion . freeing them from the' oveTWhe]~g concern . means for obtainin it ana:atIowm them to

154

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (t940-60)

cas increased significantly, and the great majority of these investigations were directed to the goal of chronology-building. Old sequences were corrected or refined, and new ones were established in regions heretofore unexplored. The concepts of hOrizons and tradi lions were formulated and widely used. These were histOrical constructs concerned primarily with the occurrences of styles or technical features in space and time and in the establishment of diffusional or genetic connections between such

forms, At the same time, they attempted to reconstruct or elucidate the circumstances of these relationships and, in this way, linked strictly histOrical with functional objectiv.es.

e latter half of the Classificatory-Historical Period also saw the fonnulation of archaeolOgical syntheses that Went beyond the historical and functional and added to these the dimension of cultura:levolution' My Pl"OCes<. Such syntheses, with their cross-cuJtural or comparative

otientation, Were harbingers of the search lor pracess and explanation that became so important after 1960.

The first signs of dissatisfacJjon With the limited goals of chronological ordering in American archaeology appeared in the late 1930s. The earliest Was Williatn Duncan Strong's essay, • ~throPOIOgical Theory and ArchaeolOgical Fact," published in 1936.1 In it, he challenged archaeologists and ethnolOgists to work in COncert to understand cultural development and change. The year bciore, Strong had given eloquent testimony to the pertinence of ethnology in his direct-historical approach

to Nebras,," ""haeology. He adVocated that archaeologists look to ethnOlogy for theoretiCal leads as well as Strictly factual information.

Paul Martm also sought the theoretical collaboration of archaeoiogists and ethnOlOgists_in IUs summaries and conclusions to two South-

W"'tern archaeolOgiCal site reports in I 938 and 1939, he went beyond the sugg~st"'ns of Strong by Using Redfield's «lncept 01 folk culiure to expw,n vanation in the size, form, and contents of prelUsiotic Pueblo nuns,

Neither Strong's no, Martin's" di"atisfaCtions" were put forward aSd~uch. !lather than pointing Out the error of old ways, hey were In ]cati_.!_l~..Eew paths that might be explored. Instead it_was Jeft to the

ethnoloP1sts t 'tj. h . ---'

---:=-: cr 0 en CIZe t e archaeolOgists, One of those to do so was

~uhan B. S\"w~d,Who!earned With the archaeolOgist F. M. ~Wer in

nnr,ng Out an. article called "Function and COnfiguration in Archaeology. By that time, Steward had published a majo, ethnological mono~~)h on the native tribes of the North American Great Basin (Steward,

and had also carried out and published archaeolooical research in

' e same area (Steward 1937 ) Th 0', hand

, a , erefore, he was familiar at firs.!_~fW.U

ST DISSATISFACTIONS •

THE FIR

155

Ir------------------------~ ... -------------------------

156

CONTEXT AND FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR

157

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORrCAL

PERIOD (1940-60)

w~th him [Strong. 1936] that anthro 010 ,. ..

SCIence concerned with the relationsJ;, of ~l~~l ~~ ~.r~ad~ ~sftoncal through time and space,' one must insist in t 10 OglC, actors conceptual tools for detenninin this" . m ~e same breath that the

to ~ for~ed." ~See also SabIoH, T982a~elationship have very largeluet

In bnef, Middle American archaeolo - and .

ti::hoThi1e ~ operated without explicit feoretiCal~~:~:;~~a~o!~

. s meant that theory w ft . ..

~s~ptions about such things as a:~~~ :~~ty]t a~d une~~ed. diffusion, monogenesis or 01' ' e mec arucs of

language and cultur p ygenesis, and the relationships of race

I e went untested althouzh h '

as co~in. Kluckhohn felt that' Mi~ ~'-! e~ w~passed along

~y archaeolo~gy d two choi . ddle Amencan archaeolo~,

, OIces m con tual di ,

would be historical in th f f c~p trection. One of these

/" e sense 0 ollowing t d . .

events in their flarticuI~Th ~u an recreating unique

omparative-namely, a c~nSi~;~h:~~lt~rnat1ve wo~d be scientific, or xamining trends and unifo iti 0 the data with an eye toward

rmi es m cultural d I

He contended that Middle Am . eve opment and process.

up to this choice He saw most f t~nC~archaeolOgists had never faced

being essentially' involved in hi ~ . e~c ol~s in the field to that time as Kidder as having had interest ~onc particulars. He cited Vaillant and his opinion, neither of then: ha~~~g:d on the scientifi~, although, in research or expositions of wed through WIth systematic

conceptual mean KI kh

erence for the scientific co Whil s. uc ohn voiced a pref-

argument that the two ap urse. h e he admitted that there was an phases of planned researc~r~acI es might be looked upon as sequent

ted for historical purp , e eaned toward the belief that data col-

oses would seld b .

urposes. om e serviceable for scientific

on or in the ground and its positional relationships to other objects and features. With these data, archaeologists order their materials, relating them to asyemblages or complexes, which ostensibly have cultural significance,and they may also relate these materials to natural envrro~ental s~gs. Our definition of _function is of the broadest sort We mean both use and function, as these termS have been dHmedtly cultural anthropologists (Linton, 1936). This subsumes the way artifacts and features were made and used by a vanished people and the meanings that they

once had for these people.

Context and function may be viewed either synchronically or

diachronically. Both views are necessary. However, in the latter part of the Classificatory-Historical Period, the emphasiS was on the synchron!.S view. In part, this was a reaction against the strong diachronic emphasis

on pottery sequence chronides that still dominated archaeology; in part, it was a lu.s:tance-t&-v-iew €-Ultur~_develo men! in_an evoluth;mary

anne It was er 1960, w en t e goal of cultural process came

an important one in American archaeology and evolutionary thinking had reemerged, that there was a shift to a diachronic consideration of

context and function

bviously, t e unctional implications of archaeological artifacts are

as old as antiquarian interests. The recognition of a human-made stone object as an axe carries with it connotations of behavior, and we have

mentioned functional classifications of this sort in the ClaSSificatory_Dv scrip~ve :eriod. It is .difficult, th~refore, to pinpoint in tim.' .e ~ fir~t usage for this kind of functional analYSIS; however, we feel that It IS fall' to say

that such efforts did not begin to be programmatic and emphasized in American archaeology until the late 1930s. The monograph on easte North American archaeology, Rediscovering Illin.ois, by F. C Cole and Thome Deuel, published in 1937, was one of the earliest full-dress attempts." In this work, the authors followed the procedure of listing all the discovered archaeological traits on any site component (a single occupation site or a level within a multiple occupation site) under functional categories, such as Architecture and House Life, Agriculture and Food-Getting, or Military and Hunting Complex. Traits were so classified. depending on their form, appearance, and the contexts in which they were found. The innovation seems a slight one, but it had the advantage of keeping the investigators thinking in terms of these activities rather than simply in terms of the objects themselves. It also began to forge an implicit link between ethnographic behaviors and ancient ones.

Cole and Deuel offered no rationale for this kind of presentation, simply taking it for granted that artifacts imply behavior, but Martin, to whom we have already referred as one of those first to question conventional archaeological procedures, did provide such a rationale in, his 1938

CONTEXT AND FUNCTION:

ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (1940-60)

monograph. Martin began by observing that culture cannot be considered as the physical objects (artifacts) themselves, nor can it be the generalized resemblances existing among sets of such objects (types). Instead, he felt it referred to patterns of social behavior, which were based on a body of meanings held by a society and transmitted by tradition. Assuming this, he then goes on to ask if typological variation in artifacts can be assumed to indicate a corresponding variation in culture. His reply, based on observations from ethnological instances, is positive. In his words: "This conviction is obviously based on the proposition that ina primitive society, for every variation in style of artifacts there is, within limits, a corresponding variation in the meanings which they have to their makers. U the proposition is true, it further follows that, subject to the same limits, the degree of variation in artifacts through time is indicative of a corresponding degree of variation in that part of the culture to which they pertain" (Martin, Lloyd, and Spoehr, 1938; see also Martin, 1974).

Irving Rouse, writing at about the same time as Martin, had a similar co~c.eption of ~ulture and the artifact. His 1939 monograph, Prehistory in Haiti, A Study tn Method (cited in Chapter Four) had been one of the first attempts to devise a typology that would be sensitive to functional as well as chronological factors. In it, Rouse states: "Culture cannot be inherent in the artifacts. It must be something in the relationships between the artifact and the aborigines who made and used them. It is a pattern of significance which the artifacts have, not the artifacts themselves."s However, Rouse seemed to differ with Martin, and with some ?ther arc~aeol~gists, in that he saw artifacts as reflecting the behavior involved In then manufacture but not the behavior involved in their use. His view of the artifact - as of 1939 - was as more or less an isolate, with an emphasis on the form and material rather than on the context of its

associations. .

It w~s,John W. Bennett who realized the functionalist implications ~f Martin s and Rouse's writings. In 1943, he published an article,

Recent ?'i:elop~ents in the Functional Interpretation of Archaeological Data, 111 which he reviewed some of the same writings we have discussed here and formally proposed the concept and term junctional archaenlogy. ~ addition he referred to archaeological uses of the concept of acculturaium, by T. M. N. Lewis and Madeline Kneberg in Tennessee (1941) and by Dorothy L. Keur (1941) in the southwestern United States. He also mentioned Waldo R. Wedel's work in cultural and environ~ental interacti~n ~tudies in the Great Plains (Wedel, 1941), seeing the Importance of this line of research and its obvious functional dimension. A year later, Bennett himself, published on this same general theme in a paper, "The Interaction of Culture and Environment in the Smaller

159

AND FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR CONTEXT

• • 1/ 44b) in which he employed both archae-

SOClehes, (J. W. Benne~, 19 . al'd t t make a case forenvirorunental

ological and modem sOClologIc a a 0

pressures on cultural forms.. d i the use of the social antbropo-

Bennett was also much mtereste lau the function and use of certain

f Z·· sculttoexp am . d

10mcal concept 0 are 19WU hr gh t the southeastern Unite .

0- til t f und t ou OU .

copper and shell an ac so. . 1 1 These artifacts, from their

Pr C IU1l'lblan mne- eve. d

States on a Late e- 0 h . t ts in which they were foun ,

d From t e con ex .

nature and appearance an . 1 raphernalia quite probably the.

'1 .. eted as ntua pa. ' d

weremostreadt ymterpr 1 t 'denti'cal pieces were foun

d r That amos 1 . .

symbols of status an powe. h Etowah Georgia, and Spiro,

. . di t t from each ot er as' d

ill SItes as 15 an ..t different regional cultures, an

Oklahoma, in sites of otherwlse qUl e . I sites had suggested to

. nd or ceremOnta '. . h

almost always in large mou H Id 7 that they were dealing WIt

A. J. Waring, Jr. and Prest~n 0 edr. t rreo-ional and intercultural

. f a wldesprea ,m e o' . "

the material rernaIDS 0 . d th Waring-Holder analystS eID-

cult. As Bennett (1943, p. 213) S;1 , . ~ gical concepts of religious orbraces ethnological data, gener sO~lO? /I It demonstrated that both

h functional cntena. ) d

ganization, and ot er .. d in obviously important graves an

microcontext (paraphemall~ f?un ara hemalia or objects in comparable macrocontext (presence of si.rni1ar p P th Southeast) could be used

. it throughout e ty

site contexts in major 81. es . £un t' al interpretations. Twen

. hi hl 1001ca1 Cion d

together to arrive at g Y 0- h been satisfied to stop here an

1 . t would not ave .. t t

years later, archaeo ogis s thi interpretation to devlSe es s

would have attempted to go on from . ~icant step forward.

for it· but in the early 19405, it was a st b t this tim e was Ralph Lin-

" . al d of a ou . .

Another macro~ontextu .stu ~otsll (1944). This was an ~mcha1I

ton's "North Amencan Cooking . 'ththe data in quesbOn from

1 Penence WI . h .

article but one based on ong ex . f view In brief, his t esis

1 'cal pomts 0 . . .

both archaeological and etMo ogt d ointed-bottomed pot with a

was that the Woodland elongated an 1 p. ari1y adapted to the slow

. uri as a vesse pnm . 1

roughened extenor s a~e w . nal relationships were WIth peop es

boiling of meats and that ItS funcbO . This was supported by

. s that of huntmg. d W·

whose primary subSistence wa l' I observations an er-

. by archaeo og:tca ti

ethnological observanons, . and b the complementary nega ve

ences about subsistence prachces, . llv . ulturists made and used

here baslCa Y agnc . . f

evidence that peoples wow . . ample of a combInation 0

Th tudy IS a nice ex . .

quite different pottery. e s d ale contextual settmg as a

. d broa -sc

formal artifactual propertIes an

means fOT functional elucidation. tualstudy,"MiddleAmeri-

Bennett also wrote a kind of.macrocohntextern United States" (1944a).

ul f the Sout eas . 1 diff

can Influences on C tures 0 h d in more convennona u-

This was a topiC that had been ;pproac.alle by trait comparisons. Ben-

. h thors essenti y

sionist ways by ot er au , .

,

160

, THE CLASSIFlCATORY-HISTORICAl PERIOD (1940-60)

nett's. approach was also comparative but he tried to narr th

of tati " .' ow e range

, expec ations In diffused traits by considering the functi al i I'

~ons of the trait, the context from which it was derived °dnth lillp lcamto which it uld h . b ' ,an e context catio . h co "ave een introduced and accepted. The last qualifi-

n was t e key. He hypothesized that certain Mesoamerican feature

;:~~~:ve been re,adily accepted into the lower-threshold cultures o~

no matt ahstem Uruted ~tates, whereas others would have been reiected

er ow many times th ul J

Bennett's attempt was I ey w~ ,d have been made available,

been followed up by t:s:ar~e~:t:~ °Mne; unfo~ately, it has not connectio In esoamencan-Southeastern

ns.

Two macrocontextual and functional stud' .,

archaeology in the 1940s. In one of th -: .les appe~ed in Peruvian Archaeology" Wendell C Be ese, Interpretations of Andean

. ,',. nnett (1945) p d ' .

nons about traditi'on.a1' ose some mteresting ques-

perststences of artif tu I d '

their probable linkages'th diff ~c a an t~chnical traits and Again this idea WI. erent kinds of sociopolitical orders,

,. was never carried furth . th

or others. The other article II A F . er, ei er by the original author

in Peruvian Archaeology': b Gun~tional An~lySIS of "Horizon Styles' stimulated by John W. Benne~'s ~ ,on R. ':"Illey (1948), was ~ec~ly the sociopolitical or religio har tin~s .. WIlley endeavored to Identify Incaic stylistic horizons b;s c ~c~enstics of Chavin, Tiahuanaco, and artifacts, settlements and exanun11 mg the cultural contexts (nature of

, ' overa. patterns f d istrib "

zons. The horizon concept hall 0 IS ution) of.these hori-

, as we s show I t b·

cal device; however it Was al . a er, was asically a histori-

point of view.' so possible to look at it from a functional

G By 1948, functional concerns w '

ement in American archaeolo ~e thus a rrunor but noticeable

Ithough not much to p gyh' This foreknowledge did something,

, repare t e way f W I

(JJf Archaeoloull (1948) Thi . or a ter W. . Taylor's A Study

I~ OJ .. IS was thest m 1..,' .

!.Can archaeology and it ernbodi d onograp.Luc..c . ti ue oLAmeri-

ogy for the fut~ that ie a programmatic outline of archaeol-

, was contextual and fun .

working on these ideas f . hi d ' ' ctional, Taylor had been

930 or s octoral diss rt .

sand early 1940s S' gnifi . ertation as early as the late

here Kluckhohn 'h I eantly, he wrote his dissertation at Harvard , w 0 Was then 'tin hi

erican archaeology infl ~ g IS own critique of Middle

h . . r uenced his thinkin T

eSIS In 1943 and revised it for blicari g, aylor submitted the

Taylor began by notin the ::Ue cati~n ~e~ World War II. archaeology that Kluckhohn h d . ambIguIty In the aims of American as to whether historical or sci a :;:es(sed - namely, the indecisiveness pursued. He defined histo leh~ c, anthropological) goals are to be

th ry or IstoIIograph ," .

rary ,ought about past actuality" u . . , . yas projected contempo-

texts in terms of cultural man a' mtegrate~ an~ synthesized into connd sequential time" (Taylor, 1948, pp.

CONTEXT AND FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR

34-35). In contrast, cultural anthropology "is the comparative study of the statics and dynamics of culture, its formal, functional, and developmental aspects" (Taylor, 1948, p. 39). According to Taylor, archaeology became historiography when it went beyond antiquarianism (the securing of isolated and unrelated artifacts and data of the past) and mere chronicle (the arrangement of these objects and data in chronological sequences) to integrate the data of the past into a cultural context. Such a context refers to all the affinities among the data as these may be expressed in spatial associations or in quantitative or qualitative values. After such a reconstruction of context, the archaeologist may then go on to comparative studies about the nature and workings of culture in the formal, functional, and developmental aspects mentioned previously.

Taylor thus saw historiography and cultural anthropology as two sequent phases of a research procedure, in contradistinction to Kluckholm, who had advocated one approach or the other, Taylor also saw the reconstruction of cultural context as a part of historiography or the historical operation. A functional interpretation of this reconstruction (or model) would then be the anthropological study, which would follow. Although other archaeological writers of the time are not clear or explicit on this point, there seems to have been a general tendency (as one can judge from the statements of Strong, Steward, Martin, and others) to lump together everything that went beyond typology and bare sequence or chronicle into the newer functional archaeology. Thus, such functional archaeology embraced the reconstruction of contexts, inferences as to use and function, and attempts to say something about process. These are obviously interrelated but, nevertheless, analytically separable concerns. As we have said, the decades of 1940-60 saw the focus of attention on the first two objectives, and Taylor's monograph

had this emphasis.

Taylor devoted much of the book to a fine-grained critique of the

writings of the prominent archaeologists of the dassificatory-Historical Period. Kidder, who had been a leader in the stratigraphic revolution and was the foremost Americanist of the time, was especially singled out for attack as representative of the conventional archaeology. According to Taylor (1948, p. 67), "When Kidder writes theory he often talks historiography and anthropology, When he directs field work and publishes reports he talks comparative chronicle." In his more detailed argument, Taylor held that no picture of past life had been reconstructed from any of Kidder's excavations, nor did he use his data to analyze or discuss functional matters. His nearest approach to either had been in his studies of the pottery from the Pecos. New Mexico, ruin, but even here the main objective was that of identifying cultural influences from other regions of the Southwest rather than looking at the significance of

162

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD

(1940-60)

CONTEXT AND FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR

his terms as th~ c~awm{1"J;?By . e meant the drawing together, or the cdIl'UIlCtiOn, of all ossible lines of ' - a s~' e archaeological prg£lem, To chronicle and intersite relationships would be addea dose contextual intrasite study, with attention given to both the artifacts and features in themselves and to their relationships with all other artifacts and features. Such relationships would be sought not only in spatial or physical associational dimensions but in possible functional and systematic ties. For example, an archaeologist in a pottery study might look at the changing relationships between the numbers of jars to those of bowls. A drop in the numbers and percentages of large jars might indicate a decline in the need for water storage and thus, in turn, prompt the investigator to turn to other types of evidence to see if there had been a climatic change with possible increases of precipitation. Or, if warfare is suggested by fortified sites, the archaeologist should be alert to the possibilities of increases in the numbers of projectile points or other artifacts suitable for weapons. Nor should the archaeologist ignore cultural patterns for which no apparent functional correlates can be found. Taylor cites, as an example, the complete lack of symmetry in Coahuila Cave basketry designs, and he contrasts this with the concept of regularized decorative wlwles, which dominates the designs of the San Juan basketry several hundred miles to the north of Coahuila. These decorative differences cannot be explained by either the basketry materials or the weaving techniques, which are the same in both regions. It is a fundamental difference in cultural patterning not readily understood. What does it relate to functionally? Maybe we will never find out, but it is the kind of datum to be borne in mind by the investigator.

Speculation, Taylor stoutly maintained, was not only justified in archaeology but required. It was the very life of the discipline, for, if archaeology was to investigate the nonmaterial aspects of culture through its material ones, it must have recourse to hypotheses (Taylor,

1948, p. 157):

~he pottery in the total culture of the Pecos site, Taylor notes that Kidder

IS aware of such possibilities and that he rai .

relationshi s be .' e raises questions about the

b h P tween pottery decorative motifs and other Puebloan art

ut t at he had done nothin t f 11 h

(1948 P 48)' "If h. b goo ow up t ese questions. He concludes

na~ and : sue . pro lems had been attacked with regard to the

have been ,:~err;~tion~ of pottery within Pecos itself, Kidder would h d h omg stonography, at least of the ceramic complex If he

a t en proceeded to compare his findin s with " . . .

other sites or areas with the intent of abstra g tin h similar ~dings from the two sets of [ceramic] d t h c g t e regulanties between anthropology As the tt a a, e would have been 'doing' cultural

. rna er now stands h h d .

Kidd 'M' ., e as one neither."

er s aya studies, and the pro f h .

in the Maya field were al . tt kgr~ ate Carnegie Institution

out or even be c;ncem dSO ~ h a~ ed, especially for their failures to seek implications For ins t e Wiaftt t e data of settlern.ent patterns and their

. ance, er thirty f

plained, there was still no al inf ~ears 0 research, Taylor corn-

re ormation inf d ,.

degree to which the La I d M or orme opiruon on the

phenomena; there were ':~I a~: centers we~e or were not urban Maya dwellings; little or nothin Y was arc~eolo81cal d~ta on ordinary habits. Pottery as in the So .th g available on ancient Maya food

, u west had be I '

struction of chronicle or b s en emp oyed m the recon-

and function. are sequence, not in the reconstruction of use

In Taylor's opinion, most of th h .

United States or anywhere in thee arc a~olo81sts then practicing in the

Kidder. Thisincludedsuchmenas~encas 9w_ere as much at fault as and Roberts 11 in the Southwest d ompson in i1aya studies, Hau~10 theeastem United States t ,an W. S. Webb and J. B, Griffinl in

, - 0 name only a f f h

with, ew 0 t ose Taylor took issue

As might be expected Ta lor's '

functional attempts from' th y 1940Pralses were reserved for those few

~edeLJ, W, Bennett, Lewis a.:d Kne~e~at we. have reviewe~~ Martin, noted that some archaeol . t ' . gf. Wanng and Holder. He also

10gIS s, mcludmg Kidd

statements that revealed b .. th '. . leT, wrote occasional

and fun j , 0 an interest mad' . ht ,

... ~ ctional archaeology b t h n_ InSlg t intocontextual

1inh~ u t at these "

s. ght and often brought out in lournal . wntings were usually quite

sional ones.as though th thJ . s other than the standard profes-

. _ e au Ors were 'ldl

SIOns into popularization Thi . nu y ashamed of such excur-

'tha ' ' Sf we think w . b '

t time, such forays away fr ' as an apt 0 servation, for at

. om recogniz ed d

Were considered unsound ~_.J I-. . an approved procedures

dir . I <U lU-tl'~4,rchaealo' h

ection was_~~E.ect. . .gt§t_w 0 went too far in ~is

In, concluding, Taylor was at ains

be an improved approach for Ameri tolay out what he considered to can archaeology, one designated in

With the proper and sensible proviso that conclusions are based on "the facts at hand" and are subject to revision in the light of fuller and better data, it is a premise of the conjunctive approach that interpretations are both justified and required, when once the empirical grounds have been made explicit. Why has revision been such a bugbear to archaeologists? Other disciplines are constantly reworking their hypotheses and formulating new ones upon which to proceed with further research, When these are found to demand modification and change they are altered. Why should archaeology assume the pretentious burden of infallibility?

163

TOTALS ....... --r~~ __ ---, 92l!

98l! I!--.-a-- .......... .----i 136 L,-----___.---i 604

1041

~l,1,,l_L~_'-------~350

_JJJJJL-_L--------i 1014 LLL-----------i 568 L--------------=:=J 556

=====t=~~t========3 253

115

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l.06ARnttUIQ 'SC:"l,.t 0 10"

164

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (1940-60)

FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR CONTEXT AND

Not surprisingly, Taylor's monograph was not happily received by the archaeological establishment. Some members of that group were inclined to shrug it off angrily as nonsense; others, who had chafed under the narrow restrictions of conventional archaeology, may have had secret resentment at not having had Taylor's couragei still others, including some of those most pointedly attacked, felt that they had ~n reprimanded for failing to do what they had not set out to do. That is, Taylor's goals were recognized as admirable but believed to be beyond the U data strength" of American archaeology at that time. Spatial-temporal and taxonomic systematics had to be carried farther before contextual and functional archaeology could have any real chance of success. Or so ran one argument,15

In spite of the immediate negative reaction from a large part of the archaeological profession, Taylor's words were not forgotten. A decade and a half later, some of them were echoed in the New Archaeology of the Explanatory Period. More immediately, they helped keep alive t~e interest in context and function for some archaeolOgists in the 1950s.1

As one looks back on all of this some forty years later, the debate does not seem surprising. American archaeologists had been striving, since the end of the nineteenth century, to get the house of prehistory _ as represented by the monuments and artifacts of antiquity _ into some kind of typological., spatial, and temporal order .. They had devoted their careers to this job-and it was still continuing. Taylor's critique seemed unwarranted, and there Was initial resentment; but, after this anger had died down, there was a.qlli~e of many of his ideas.

One important aspect of the concern with context and function that drew attention after 1950 was in artifact typology. Between 1914 and 1940, artifact typology (and especially pottery typology) was geared almost wholly to problems of chronology. Ford and others referred to typologies in terms of their "usefulness" in this regard (Ford, 1938i see also Krieger, 1944). U types were not" useful" in effecting chronological separations in the material, they were considered essentially worthless, as subjects of little more than sterile exercises in description. Such a view was, of course, in keeping with the narrowly limited definition of archaeology as being concerned with chronological ordering and little else. From this position, it was logical to conceive of the type as being something imposed on the data by the classifier. However, if one wished to broaden the goals of archaeology to include function and context as well as chronology, then the artifact had other things to tell us. With this outlook, the imposed type, which was merely a concept of the archaeolOgist, would be of little service. Instead, the archaeologisr should be looking for the types, or mental templates, that were once carried in the minds of the original makers and users of the artifacts. As we have seen,

ared in the late 1930s, with Martin's

this approach to typology appe. . f t cultural behavior and

. . th tifactas a registration 0. pas _ . ,

insistence on ear. I' hi I ching of the coniunciioe

' imil prenuses Tayor In IS aun

Rouse s s ar . f his b ok to typology and classification

h d voted a chapter os 0 .

approac, e d that for the proper recreaand took a comparable position. H:I:e~~~~Ould 'make every effort to tion of cultural context, the typ gI . t d in the vanished

tur the types as these once exis e

discover or r~cap e . f a debate on typology were drawn

culture. In this wa~, the lines 0 . act e as something imposedt between those predisposed to s~ the artif thintyp to be discovered within \

on the data and those who saw It as some g

the data. . d th type as an imposed or designed

In this debate, Ford chru:nPlOne S e ldi g led the attack on behalf

construct of the ar~haeo~ogtst; Ad CTh~~~n:aversy started with Ford's of those who saw It as discovere. t f Some Prehistoric Design Depublication in 1952 of"Measur~~n S"~t concerned Lower Mississippi velopments in the Southeaster:n ta eds. between these and similar

. d compansons rawn ,

Valley ceramics an h t Texas Relative chronologies

rth t Fl rida and nort eas. d

styles in no wes . o. d and for the most part were base on

existed in all the re~ons ~volv~ th ntages of types per level cornindividual site stratigraphies WI pe~e h frequencies were compared puted in unimodal freque~cy curves., uc B his term and concept of from site to site and regton to region. y

."
~
~
1ii
~
u
c
.;
.c
LEVEL ~
I
2
3
4
5
..
1
e
9
10
II
12
13-16 TCHULA PERIOD
1 i
E ~ ~
c e
." iii ; ., Q,
~ ~ ;- E
~ .. '" .\! ..
'il Q. Q g iii
!: e " a: D
w Ji .! :? .!
c ~
r e u c . .
• c .. .. d
~ E ...
CD .2 E :S ;;
! ! s: f. j ;:!;
.. .. ~
-' -a BAYTOWN PERIOD

A percentage frequency chart from a Lower Mississippi Valley archaeological. excavation, in which pottery types are graphed by level. The graphs approximate unimodal curves, This is a typical clwrt follawing J. A. Ford's procedures. (From Ford, Phillips, and Haag, 1955)

MISSISSIPPI PERIOD

165

166

The chart on the facing page is a stylized presentation ofunimoda! ell roes represeniino pottery type frequencies, wi th illustrations oj vessels oj each type. This particular chart attempts fa correlate ceramic sequences from northeast Texas, Lou isiana, and Florida. (Franz Ford, 1952)

, THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (1940-60)

CONTEXT AND FUNCTlON; ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR

measurement, Ford was referring to relatively gradual changes, accretions, and losses in pottery design motifs and elements and the correlation of these with relative time and with geographical space. That is, form (the designs), time, and space were the Variables, and observations on their covariance were called measurements. In his introduction to the monograph, Ford took exception to Taylor's insistence on the importance of the reconstructed context and a determination of function (Ford, 1952, p. 314): "If a dear and complete reconstruction of all possible details of man's unrecorded history in all parts of the world is the primary goal of modem archaeology, then We have merely refined the ancient curio and fact-collecting activities of our predecessors and still can only beg that our studies be tolerated for esthetic purposes." His feeling was that archaeology should march more rapidly from its concern with chronology to become a "science of culture" and "to provide basic data for a close examination of general principles, of causes, speed, inevitability and quantitative aspects of culture change over long periods of time" (Ford, 1952, p. 318). Such basic data, in his opinion, were offered in his 1952 article,

Spaulding's highly critical review (1953a) took issue with much of this. To him, the tone of the monograph, particularly the use of the word measurements, gave a specious scientific precision to the operation. Although in this work Ford had not pressed his opinion that types were imposed or created by the archaeolOgist-in effect, arbitrary units sliced out of the reality of the continuum of evolutionary change-there was just enough of this philosophy in it to provoke a highly negative reaction from Spaulding. The latter had a very different concept of the type, and this he set down in an article published in the same year as his review of Ford. In "Statistical Techniques for the Discovery of Artifact Types,,,17 Spaulding proposed that culture did not evolve as an even, constant flow; instead, it was characterized by "clusterings" or "irregularities,"

(by sud~e~ s~urts and rela~vely static periods. These clusterings, in I Spauldmg s VIew, could be discovered b),",statisti&alimalyses -analyses

v that would show just how various traits or trait modes had been truly jassociated.18 Such dusterings were discovered types, and, because of their reality, they would tell the archaeologist a great deal more about human behavior and culture change than those types that purported to be arbitrary segments sliced out of the continuum of a uniform cultural evolution,

The Ford-Spaulding debate was joined along these lines with several exchanges in the professional journals (Ford, 1954a, 1954b, 1954c; Spaulding, 1954a, 1954b, 1960). The debate centered on the nature of the type and of culture change. What was also being argued _ although this did not surface as such - was the basic purpose or purposes of the

GULF BREEZE

CARRA8ELLE

T'IoI[ SCA~E

~A

FULTON s sescr <NGRAVEO TYPES

II ~

FOf?T WALTON INCISED

...-8

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II'EEOEN IS

3:', PUNa -INC.

+-F

ORL<ANS PUfiC rA rED

+-G

PERCENTAGE'SCAL.E mA I"AEoU'ENI;' GA&~H'!i

h oses were those of chrono-

typology and the classification. If td~:~7sed or designed types were

logical ordering and no more, For bi Pt d to considerable empirical sufficient. Certainly, they had been su f Jec ~ wanting- But if, in addition testing in this regard and had not bee~ o~ objectives also included an to chronological control, the archaeo OglC

167

168

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL

PERIOD (1940-60)

CONTEXT AND FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVlOR •

appreciation ol cultural context and function . t uld h

Spaulding's statistically "discovered" ,1 wo appear t. at

, Beyond ~hese considerations lay the que;;ro~07:~c~~~e dapftyropriate.

:0 Al more SUIted to the elucidation of ultur h. mope was

/. u ~ ''''\I have pointed out w . t d t . c,. e cnange Or process. Born as we ~ ~.£j chronic! to r I an e 0 go swiftly from chronolugiea:l-ordering or

& L / ~ 0 process. In the final pages of his "M '

'! gives us th di till easurements ' article, he

~ e IS ate of these processual find'

0' We ti h mgs.

c ques on wether or not Ford has in an eff .

~ grips with process H h t ld ~ Y ecnve way, come to

") Q . as e 0 US anything be t th "

\ ples" or the "ca . a u e general princi-

h uses, speed mevitability d .

I :, culture change /I as th '. ,an quantitative aspects of

1- 1 , ese were listed in his intr d .

",('t told us something of general . . I 0 uctIon? He has perhaps

cultural forms' h pnnclp es. Cultural forms evolve from like

least in the po~~ryantypge tenFdsdtohProceed by gradual modifications-at

es or ad under '.

doubtful if we have c exammation. But it is highly

orne any closer to an d .

aspects of change. The concludin un erstanding of the other

a desCription of the fo al b gstatementto the monograph is, rather,

pottery. Except for pOS~bl 'diff~ se~able aspects of stylistic change in

lIe usional influ h ..

o cause. It is our opini th ences, we ave no inkling

h on at the archaeol . t ill be

t e study of process by a relimin o~s w. best placed for

function-and as folIo f P his ary conSIderation of context and

, ws rom thi b typ I

serve these ends The lea f hrc Y a 0 ogy that is best geared to

great to be nego;iated suP r07~ onological ordering to process is too be understood as prel1",,;~~~~ t y. The functiorungs of culture have to ments carry us ahead;La.J. Y 0 causal explanations. Again, these cornthe next chapter howe~e O~t ~tory, and we shall come back to them in

f ' r, 1 IS worth empha '. h

a orerunner of many of th srzmg t at Spaulding was

t be e concerns about cultural . bi .

o emphasized in the f II . vana ility that came

, The " 0 owmg decade.

"( V'" ma,ontyof Americanarchaeol .

, \l - , t.. )mmediately concerned with ogtsts, or at least those who were

'I;' sr ~'i:S SJ'auli~g in the Ford-Spauld' po:ery typology, tended ta. side with I r explicit in maintaining th t mg ebate. At least, most of the~ame

, y \,J NJ they could be discovere~ :P:t: ~e~e, indeed, cultural realities and that

'-1 (/J' proaches.19 As the 1950 y d ~shcal Or other proper analytical ap-

S uldi s move into the 1960 th .

pa mg debate receded d s, e ISSUes of the Ford-

was joined by those Who an ~ere repl:ced by a new argument, which classification (Wheat Gifl p~e erred a taxonomic" or "type-variety" and Smith, 1969) ver~us thor ,~d Wasley, 1958; Gifford, 1960; Sabloff approach (Rouse, 1939 l~:~.~o~avored an "analytical" or "modal" 1971). Both of these sCh I' t . ap, 1962; Wright, 1967; Dunnell, existed in the minds of the s c~nceived of types as models that once and,assuch bothkm' d fe rna ers and users of the obiects concerned

, so types w . d ) ,

problems in addition t thei hr ere SUIte to contextual and functional

o ell' c onolomcal '

0- purpose. The question now

became which approach was more effectively designed to study cui tural change. The debate continues and probably will continue for some time; but it is fair to say that a choice depends very largely on the kind of change and degree of change the archaeologist is attempting to delineate.

To leave typology and return to the wider aspects of the" artifact as behavior," we can observe continued interest in and concern with context and function throughout the 1950s. Some of this was expressed in writings that showed the archaeologist's increasing self-consciousness concerning the objectives, theories, and methods of his discipline.20 The book Method and Theory in American Archaeology by Gordon R. Willey and Philip Phillips is perhaps the best-known example of such writings. Originally issued as two journal articles in 1953 and 1955, it came out in final revised form in 1958 (Phillips and Willey, 1953; Winey and Phillips, 1955; Willey and Phillips, 1958). Its first part is devoted to methodological and procedural matters, incorporating the general trend of the thinking of the tirnes.21 The authors conceive of archaeological research on three operational levels: (1) observation (fieldwork), (2) description (culture-historical integration), and (3) explanation (processual interpretation). They define culture-historical integration as "almost everything the archaeologist does in the way of organizing his primary data: typology, taxonomy, formulation of archaeological units, investigation of their relationships in the contexts of function and natural environment, and determination of their internal dimensions and external relationships in space and time" (Willey and Phillips, 1958, p. 5). As defined thus, culture-historical integration very clearly includes both spatial-temporal ordering and context and function. Willey and Phillips then go on to say that, although archaeologists have sometimes used explanatory concepts, such as acculturation, diffusion, and stimulus diffusion, they have largely been concerned with specific and limited cul tural situa tions, with no attempt to draw generalizations. "So little wor~ ~ ~en don~ in American archaeology on the explanatory level that it 18 difficult to find a name for it. The term 'functional interpretation,' which has gained a certain amount of currency in American studies . . . is not entirely satisfactory ... [and] we have substituted here the bro~der 'pr~es~ual interpretation'" (Willey and Phillips, 1958, p. 5). Accordi~g to t~s VIew, historical integration (which subsumes context and functional interpre-

tation) should precede the search for process. .

In the 1950s, however, the distinction between contextual-functional

and processual interpretations was not always clearly ~de nor ~d:rstood. Although in the 1958 quotation c~ted ~bove, Wl~l~y and P~llips did separate the two, their earlier 1953 article did not (PhillIps and Willey, 1953; see also Willey, 1953a). In another article published in the same year,

169

170

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL

PERIOD (1940-60)

CONTEXT AND FUNCTION: ARTIFACTS AS BEHAVIOR

WiUey addressed himself quite directly to the matte f '

temptin t d r 0 process ill at-

P tt g 0, un . erstand culture contact phenomena. This article "A

a em of DiffUSIOn-Acculturation" (Will '

approach in analyzin the circum ey, 1953d)~ used a comparative

plantationofforeignc~lo' , h stan~es surroundmg the apparent imanalysis, Willey thou ht ~:ss~: e t~~tory of another culture, From this and-effect relationshig s: (1) a e ~ snnil~ sequence of events or causeby-side' (2) anintervalPofd ,P nod of different cultures existing side-

, onunance by the for' . der: '

fusion or synthesis of the tw . I ,el~rnva er; and (3) afinal

invading culture (ele 0 cu.~es, m which certain traits of the This same theme. ments OfdPolitico-religiOUS symbolism) p. ersisted.

was expan ed and .. fin d '

Archaeological Oassification of Cul re ern. a 1955 seminar "An

the auspices of the SocI'ety f A. = Contact Sltuati. ions" held under or mencan Arch I (La

The principal result of the seminar w ' a~o o~ thrap, 1956).

that described different ty f as, as the title implies, a classification pes 0 contact betwee tw di ,

One category of these (which include . ,~ 0 istmct cultures.

model of the earlier am' I desi d WIlley s cultural colonization"

c e) was eSIgnated 'f '.

trait-unit intrusion, The seminar ou ~s Sl e-u~lt intrusion; the other,

cause, either in the sp iii' gr P avoided claims of explanation or

ec c examples ch ill

types of culture conta t or i . osen to 1 ustrate their several

c or in co mp arati V liz '

~ossibility of cause-and-effect enerali ~ gener~ ahon; however, the

in the whole seminar ventur gd' hzations berngdrawn was implicit

e an In t e final t .

culture contact situation f sen ence of their report: "In

, s, we can, or example I k f f '

mg the results of contact d ditf ,00 or actors influenc-

un er erentcirc t .

of the fact that we can observe the bef um~ ances, taking advantage

perspective" (Lathrap, 1956, p, 26). ore, durmg, and after with equal

Another seminar in the same 19· ."

preach to the Study of C ltural 55 senes, An Archaeolozical Ap-

. u a Stability II (R H o~

more ambitious in its c ideraf ,., Thompson, 1956) was

onsi eration of p d

on culture contacts In thi . recess an cause than the one

. IS seminar e h '

change or lack of chan e hr. "mp aSIS was on in situ culture

.define and c1assiq; .typ~s t f Oulgh time; and the participants sought to

, . o. cu ture chanze I ., ,

tradition sesment« Criteri f .' ge by concervmg of these as

• 0 .. •·• nena 0 the def iti .

COnfIgurations of the . uu IOns were in the diachronic

segments rather than th ' .

tents. For example, confi ations err particular culture con-

changing cultural co. tin' ~ were seen as direct (essentially un-

, , n Ulty) or elaborati (. ,

tradition through trait ddition) ng mcreasmg complexity of the

a I on- among oth

steps leading to such a classification' er ~es. ~though the

contexts andfuncti'on J' t in th mvolved a consIderation of cultural

'. ' us as m t etyped fin' ,

SItUatIOns of the other s ' th e mons of the culture contact

. emrnar, t e ill . ,

frammg of hypotheses about 1 f am rnterest was centered on the

shaping of the traditi . causa actors or processes involved in the

. on segments. These fact 'I

enVIronment, demo graph cliff ' ors me uded such things as

y, usion from other cultural traditions, and

the cultural heritage of the tradition under consideration. The causal reasoning of the seminar was inferred from what was generally known in anthropology and cultural history at large (for example, large or increasing populations would tend to result in "elaborating" tradition segments).

This interest in process within the framework of culture stability-instability examination was one of the main themes of a regional archaeological monograph by Robert Wauchope, who had been one of the members of the cultural stability seminar. The monograph, to a very large extent, is a site excavation and survey descriptive presentation on northern Georgia (Wauchope, 1966); however, it includes a twenty-page section on cultural process. Although not published until 1966, the monograph was in preparation in the late 1950s and reflects the thinking of the period.23 At the same time, Wauchope was going well ahead of most of his contemporaries of the late 1950s in attempting to quantify culture change (largely in pottery types) on a 1:100 scale and in appraising such things as "technical versuS esthetic change" and "peasant versus urban change." In commenting on technical versus esthetic change, he noted that the Georgia data do not support an often-stated anthropological assumption that technology changes more readily than art, For the peasant versus urban model, insofar as it could be applied to the Georgia data, he felt these data tended to substantiate greater and more rapid rates of ceramic change at the urban or urban-like pole. He comments, from this Georgia viewpoint, on broad developmental trends in cultural growth that have been suggested by other archaeologists and anthropologists.f'' Some of these trends, regularities, or laws find possible confirmation in the Georgia data; others do not. Throughout, the tone is cautious, the mood clearly experimental, How far can archaeological data and methods go toward checking anthropological assumptions concerning cultural development (these mostly drawn from evolutionary theory), and how far can. they pioneer in these directions on their own? These are the questions asked, but, on the whole, no answers are given.

Other archaeologists who were thinking and writing along these lines in the1950sincludeJ. B. Griffin, L.S. Cressman,andJ, B.Caldwell,25 Like Wauchope, Willey and Phillips, and the seminar participants, they all saw the approach to process to lie in cross-cultural comparisons, and in this they all tended to move from the specific to the ever-widening

generalization.

Al though the decades 1940 to 1960 had been characterized by an

increasing realization of the importance of context and function, there was a tendency on the part of the archaeologists writing at that time to slight these aspects of prehistory when they transferred their attention

171

172

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (1940-60)

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

to trends, regularities, and laws. There was, perhaps, a too-re~dy search for universals, however much this was accompanied by cautious backtracking, and too little attention to an examination of the actual me~han~ ics of process, as these might be observ,ed in contextual-fun~tlOn~1 settings. Wauchope and Caldwell (the latter in his Trend and Tradl~on !.n the Prehistory of the Eastern United States, 1958) were perhaps better in this regard than the others, and, to some extent, their work foreshadows the archaeological Views of process that were to appear in the 1960s.

Up to this point, we have talked of context and function under the rubric of the artifact as behavior, construing this in the broadest sort of way. There are, however, two significant contextual-functional approaches from the late Classificatory-HistOrical Period that also helped to focus attention on process and that deserve some separate comment here. These are the settlement pattern and the culture and environment approaches.

5 E:

R

"

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS

Prior to the 1940s, archaeologists paid little attention to settlement patterns in the Americas, They prepared site maps and sometimes were concerned about site locations with reference to terrain features, but there had been no studies that emphasized the disposition of ruins over sizable regions or the arrangement of features within a site. In 1946, however, Steward encouraged Willey to make settlement survei; and analysis his part of the combined Viru Valley (Peru) investigations. 6 The Vitti Valley fieldwork went forward during most of 1946, and, in 1953, Willey brought out his PrehistOric Settlement Patterns in the Vim Valll the first monograph-length treatment of regional settlement patterns.

Detailed maps were prepared of all sections of the valley; aeri~l photographs were used extensively in mapping; on-the-ground investigations checked mapping; and observations were made on building and architectural features. The dating of sites was worked out through excavations by other members of the Vim Valley party, plus J. A. Ford's analyses of surface sherd collections. The Viru Valley had been Originally chosen because it Was moderately well known archaeologically and lay in the Peruvian North Coastal zone, for which a preliminary ceramic sequence was already aVailable. The Viru Valley diggings and surveys corrected and refined this sequence, and Willey's settlement study would have been impossible Without it; however, the central objective of the settlement investigation was context and function. How did the different communities of the VirU Valley interrelate and function on the successive time-planes, or culture periods, of the Virti Valley sequence?

Willey defined settlement patterns as "the way in which man disposed himself over the landscape on which he lived. It refers to dweIl-

d disposition of other

d to the nature an fl t the

ings, to their arrangement, an uni life. These settlements re ~

buildings pertaining to COmID I f~echnology on which the b~~~r~ natural environment, the le~e 0 f ocial interaction and contro w lC

operated, and various institutions ttlement patterns are, to a large exten.t, the culture maintained. Because se tural needs, they offer a ~trategtc directly shaped by widely ~eldal c'~erpretation of archaeological c~-

, . f the function ill W'Il Y revealed a certam

::u.~M'~I':;, 1~~3b, p. 1) In the ~t ::=:C;~r '~:idely held cul~'l

ambiguity between function an p ultural compansons; the stu y,

. f dy cross-e ,

needs" implies a basis or Te~, text and function. .

thou h, is essentially one of In situ ient monograph is substantive pres-

g f h Viru Valley settlemen . tal nature of the work,

Most 0 ted es the expenmen I .

entation, The author acl<n:;: dgto little more than a page. Arch~e~;~

but such comments are co e b cultural phases or perto ,

cal sites and features are p~~se~ted f ~ites further orders the present~ rather gross funcHon~l cla~si£i:~od~~ into those that showed expose tion. There are duelling sites,

VIRU VALLEY o I 2 ~

IrM.

E S

E

R

UA R P (

CAI'JRCT£I1A

Mop of the Vini Valley showing areas in cultivation in modem times, in contrast to those un der irrigation and rultit'atiol1 in prehistoric times. The plotting of canals and garden sections was one of the principal aspects of the Vim settlement pattern survey. (From Willey, 1953b)

173

174

Map presenting ideas about communi ty hierarchies and interactions during the HU4ncaco Period (Moc/re culture) in ths Vini Valley, Peru. (From Willey, 1953b)

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (1940-60)

SETTL EMENT PATTERNS

175

archit~tural found~tion arrangements and those that were simply refuse h~llocks; pyramid mounds, of apparent ceremonial or public function; pyramId-dwelling-construction complexes, or sites that seemed to combine public-c~remonial and dwelling functions, cemeteries; and fortifications. The penod presentation is followed by a chapter that considers the ~evelopment or evolution of the various functional classes of sites. That IS, dwelling-sites or politico-religious structures (such as pyramids) are traced through the some 1,500 years or more of the Pre-Columbian ~cup.ancy of the Viru Valley. A section on community patterns follows, ~ which the author attempts to show how different kinds of sites were mtegrated into overall patterns of living at the different time-periods. A ~hapter on settlements and SOCiety is the most boldly theoretical, with

mferences drawn from sett le ttl" .'

, " '. ' men 0 popu anon SIZes and to sociopoli-

heal orgaruzanon, howev h W'll

. ' , er, even , ere, I ey was exceedingly cautious

and did ~ot advance the numbers and kinds of hypotheses that he might have. A final chapter is a more conventional archaeolOgical one _ at least

for the early 1950s-whi h . ,

. c compares the Viru Valley settlement types

WIth those of other regie f P . f .

1. . d ns 0 eru, mso ar as this Was possible with the

mute data then at hand.

The reaction to the Viru V 11 k . .

mildl Th a ey wor was, in general, favorable, if

h Y s~. e completely nonpolemical tone aroused no hard feelings;

t e massrve substantive p. . t ti . .'

. . . resen a on Was eminently respectable, even if

a reader might be wary f th h

'. 0 e S ort theoretical forays It was not

unmedlately followed . Pal·' .

d 28.. up m . eru, though It was to be within a dec-

a e. Willey shifted his interests to the Maya area in the 1950s and in

1954 began a settlement-pattern investigation-combined with more standard archaeological operations-in the Belize Valley (Willey and others, 1965). Archaeologists of other New World areas showed an interest in the approach by participating in a symposium on the settlement-pattern theme in 1954, the results of which appeared in 1956 (Willey, 1956). Willey, who edited the volume, provided only a very brief introduction and failed thereby to give the book the theoretical setting and purpose that it needed. Some of the contributors limited themselves to rather cautious descriptions of sites and site distributions; others addressed themselves somewhat more to context and function; but two papers-one by William T. Sanders on central Mexico and another on the Lowland Amazon by Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans-went daringly beyond this to talk about process and cause.

Another joint effort, essentially on a settlement-pattern theme, was also published in 1956. This was the result of another of the 1955 Seminars in Archaeology and was entitled "Functional and Evolutionary Implications of Community Patterning" (Meggers, 1956). The seminar group established a series of community types, for both sedentary and nomadic peoples, and then enquired into the functional and evolutionary aspects of these types. The approach was broadly comparative, being both world-wide in scope and concerned with ethnographical as well as archaeological data. As the title implies, the results were seen as both functional and evolutionary, thus moving beyond function to process. This was clearly the most advanced (in the sense of being theoretically oriented) use so far made of settlement data.

Whereas the seminar report was framed in the rather broad evolutionary terms and reasoning that, whether acceptable or unaccepta?le, were familiar to anthropologists and archaeologists, another theoretical treatise on settlement patterns was more controversial. This was K. C. Chang's "Study of the Neolithic Social Grouping: ~xamples from the New World" (1958). The title is not altogether revea]~g, ~s Chan~ dr~w upon extensive Old World ethnographical information m establishing correlations between social-organizational and settlement types on a Neolithic level. He then took these correlations and applied them to archaeological settlement data in the New World-in Mesoamerica, Peru, and the North American Southwest. Chang concluded by suggesting" that it should be the archaeologists's first duty to delimit local social groups such as households, commllllities, and aggreg~tes, rathe~ th~ to identify archaeological regions and areas by time-sp~cmg~aten_al trat~, since cultural traits are me.aningless unless described in theIr. SOCIal context" (Chang, 1958, p. 324). This was a bold callfor th~ preemmence of the social dimension in archaeologi.cal study -a pushing forwar~ of the settlement-pattern approach as the first order of archaeological

176

CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT

THE CLASSIFICA TOR Y·HISTORICA L PERIOD (1940-60)

CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT

177

business. Some archaeologists demurred (Nicholson, 1958; Rouse, 1968, C~ang. 1968); and we are not inclined to follow Chang all the wayan this procedural argument (Willey, 1958b); still, it is all too clear in ~etro~pect that American archaeology was for a long time hampered by Its failure to come to grips with the social settings of the cultures that were being studied and to realize that an awareness of settlement patterns is a first step in this direction (Trigger, 1963, 1967, 1968a; Chang, 1958; Sears, 1961; Mayer-Oakes, 1961; Millon, 1967; Sanders, 1949, 1962; Naroll,1962).

. In retrospect, we are inclined to think that it is at this point in the hi~tory?f American archaeology that the subject shifted from its elitist orientation to one that can be best described as middle class (see Patterson, 1986, for a somewhat different view). Beyond this, we would now ~o so far as to say that settlement pattern study is almost a mandatory fITSt step in. any archa~?logical investigation concerned with the processes of SOCIal and political change in prehistoric societies.

priate prehistoric environmental context, which in turn would allow for functional interpretations.

Such concerns in environmental archaeology in America had a much earlier inception in European prehistory, and American archaeologists undoubtedly were influenced by these pioneer Old World studies. For instance, in Scandinavia, an interest in environmental reconstruction can be traced well back into the nineteenth century, and, in Great Britain, Sir Cyril Fox, 0, G. S. Crawford and Grahame Clark had long been working along these lines. The Europeans had been stimulated in all of this by German and British geographers, and we would also surmise that the lack of a strongly intrenched antienvironmentalist school of thought, as in America, allowed for earlier European considerations of the environmental factor_3o

With relation to the matter of the reconstruction of past environments for contextual-functional interpretations, June Helm has said that, by the end of the 1950s, "the ecologically contextual study had become an established model in American archaeology" (Helm, 1962, p. 361). Although not agreeing with her use of the word ecology in this particular context, we would agree that the functional emphases of the period did include, as would seem logical, considerations of environmental setting. Such considerations took the form of attempts to reconstruct environments and diets of ancient cultures and relied heavily on data and techniques from the natural sciences. The cultures involved in these studies were most often hunting and gathering ones, which tended to

I artif al . 31

eave meager actu remains. .

Typical of these important early attempts at envIronmental recon-

struction was the work of Waldo R. Wedel on the Great Plains of the United States. Wedel attempted to put native subsistence activities in the context of environment, especially the former climatic environments ~f the Plains (Wedel, 1941, 1953). Another example was the study by, ~mll W. Haury and his associates at Ventana Cave, Arizona. Ha~ ~hh~ed the knowledge and skills of geologists and other natural SCIentists rna major prehistoric environmental reconstruction (!laury and 0U:ers, 1950). A similar synthesis of archaeological, geolOgical, paleobotarucal, faunal, and pollen studies was carried out by ~~ed~nck Jo~on at the Boylston Street Fishweir site in Massachusetts. Still other mstan~es of archaeological-environmental studies of the period. are t~~ seen in the writings of ], D. Jennings, w. G. Haag, and G. I. Quimby. ~lso.worthy of special mention are a series of investigations on the Califorrua shellmounds pioneered by E. W. Gifford (191~ and later continued by R,F. Heizer, S. F. Cook, and other colleagues. They reconstr~ded the diet of the ancient shell-mound dwellers, and, with some ingeruous formulas

In the latter part of the Classificatory-Historical Period, an attempt was

also made to place archae I . I ul , .

, 0 ogica c tures in their appropriate natural

envIrOnmental settings Thi .

'. .. s was, in part, a reaction to the strong

antie~vIronmenta1ist tone of American anthropology which under

Boasian leadership h d ibe d .. "

to .' ,a proscn environment as a possible explana-

~ factor in the development of culture. This is not to say that environmsnr was compl til k

all .. e e y over 00 ed by archaeologists' it was usu-

y descnbed but thought f h . . .' .

I. '" 0 as avmg at best a permissrve or passive

ro e ill condihonmg c ltur Thi .

L Kr b ' " u e. s philosophy is especially clear in A.

. oe er s Cultural and N tural Ar . ."

(1939) 0 . a eas of Native North America

. . ccaslOnally sam ha 1 .

, "e arc eo ogists would regard environment

In a more achve or ca ti

a mai d h usa ve sense as a catastrophic agen. t. For instance,

Jar roug t an earth k . . .

bal. '. qua e, or even artificial envirorunental im-

ances were conceived of d. . .

th fall .' as estroymg a culture, as m the case of

alle of thOf ClaSSIC Maya .ci~ilization (Sabloff and Willey, 1967). But in int .. ese cases, a holistic view of culture and envirorunent in an

eracting, systemic relationship Was lacking Cultur d . n-

ment were re d d . e an envtro

which is the t!_ar e I as. two separate entities, The holistic approach,

archaeolo til eco ogical approach, was not to be a part of American

gy un .. a few years later.29 What did develo in the latter

~:;. o:!;I;I~ssifl~at?ry-HistOrical Period, and which wInt beyond the escn ph ve treatments of the environment that had been

current, was the attitude th t th .'. .

should. be tudi d . th a e enVironmental setting. of any culture

s reo as oroughl ib

. Y as POSSI le to reconstruct an appro-

based on weight and q titi f id

I tion esti uan es 0 rru den debris, arrived at site popu-

a on estimates, But, in all these studies as we hav id the 1

that of the d " . ' e sal, e goa was

esc~Pbve creation of an environmental context with little

ornoconcem wlth,enviro . . t .' .'

d I nmeru as a systemic causative factor in cultural

eveopment.

The conception of environm t d .

d h . en as a eterrrunative force in the rise

:Vir~=:nt~f cultures w:nt well beyond the contextual-functional interests in the r~~°ectins,truchfons and moved American archaeological

IT on 0 cultural evol ti Th

perspective must be consid u on.e environmentalist

Oassificatory-Hist . ciOnsP· 1 . ered as an important trend of the late

onca eriod Enviro tal d . .

tural evolution had be .... nmen etermirusm and. cul-

cal thinking at ab t then Jomt.ly submer. ged in American anthropologi.oou e turn of the century N· .

century we see th .' . . ow, tn the mid-twentieth

, .. em reemergtng togeth Th ... . hi

reemergence was in the stud er. e major focus on t s

World, those usuall f. d Y of the complex cultures of the New Peru. y re erre to as the "civilizations" of Mexico and

The principal figure in the e .

Julian H Steward We h alr· nVITorunental-evo]utionary trend was

cial anthropologi~t's inflave eady commented on this ethnologist-sowith reference to settI uences on American archaeology, particularly

ement-pattern resear h hi th

realms of what he was t all .. en, scontributions in e

were to be even greater.350B c . ;:;'ltural ecology and multilinear evolution to compare specific ultur ]aslC y, St~ward called for the archaeologist

. c a sequences ill if' .

ill order to look for de I spec IC environmental settings

particular aspects of thve op~ental regularities. He hypothesized that

e enVlronme t uld '

the core elements of a culture. Th n wo . influence what he c~ed

technological ones In th . ese core elements were essentially

ul . 0 er words diff t kind

wo d influence the t ..' eren s of environments

wouJ.d influence and ~oanurd.eti,of techhnological adaptations, which in turn

. 1 on ot er asp ts f u1

m many decades an Am . ec 0 c tare, Forthe first time

, encan anthr I .

ment could determin uI opo ogist was saying that environ-

AI h e c tural adaptation

tough Steward's overem hasi i t,

dev.elopment and hi 1 k P SIS on the role of the core in cultural

s ac of a holistic tru

and environment can be itici d 36 or . e ecological view of culture

en ClZe he h d '

ence on American ar hI" a a major and salutary influ-

C~~.a1ity and Law: A \;::{ ~~:ulth~ory, His 1949 article "Cultural Clvtlizations" was a bold tte: ~tion of the Development of Early

ti a empt to put hi . h .

ce .(Steward 1949a)' d his . s t eorehcal.ideas into prac-

Cha r , an . 1955 coUectio f

nge, was espeCially infh tial n 0 essays, Theory of Culture

ofthe S~~logist Karl Wittf:e~ 19J5teward, 19~5b), Following the lead role of llTIgation in th . g (. .~, he also stimulated research on the

hi "C' e rise of clvllization ISh

. s 1fcum~Carribean" h. oth . . n out American studies,

yp esis not only engendered lively debate

but produced constructive rebuttal (Steward, 1947, 1948a; Rouse, 1953b, 1956, 1964a; Sturtevant, 1960).

There were also other important figures in the environmental and evolutionary trend in the late Classificatory-Historical Period, Pedro Armillas, a Spaniard who emigrated to Mexico, brought a materialist point of view to bear on the problems of the rise of urban civilization in the Valley of Mexico, quite independently of Steward. He, too, was especially interested in the role of irrigation and helped to inculcate a similar interest in a number of Mesoamerican archaeologists, including W. T. Sanders,37 Angel Palerm and Eric Wolf, the latter a student of Steward's, also concentrated their efforts on investigating the correlations between differing Mesoamerican environments, agricultural techniques, and the development of civilization (Palerm, 1955; Wolf and Palerm, 1955; Wolf, 1957). A slightly modified version of Wittfogel's hydraulic hypothesis became a working premise for many of these workers and later helped give rise to a number of fascinating ecological studies in the 1960s.

While Steward's influence, direct and indirect, was strongly felt in the 1950s, that of another American ethnologist-social anthropologist Leslie A. White, was delayed until the 19605. Even though his Science of Culture WaS published in 1948, American archaeologists did not follow up his theories to any great extent until the following decade.38 One student of his, however, Betty J. Meggers, was an exception to this. She produced several important theoretical papers in the 19508, all of marked evolutionary orientation (Meggers. 1954, 1955, 1957). Her article "Environmental Limitation on the Development of Culture" argued for the deterministic nature of environmental influences, discussing and categorizing various types of environment which would be conducive, in varying degrees, to the rise of civilization or which would preclude this condition. This 1954 article was heavily criticized at the time it was written (W. R. Coe, 1957; Hirschberg and Hirschber& 1957; Altschuler, 1958), but, while it may have been in error in specific examples, it also offered some important insights (Sabloff, 1972; Ferdon, 1959). Moreover, much of her fieldwork, in collaboration with Clifford Evans, was designed to test evolutionary and environmentalist hypotheses (Meggers and Evans, 1957; Evans and Meggers, 1960).

To conclude, concern with the role of environment with regard to culture began to increase during the latter part of the Classificatory-H~storical Period. An understanding of ancient environments was a readily recognizable need, fully consistent with other contex~al-funct~onal ~mphases in American archaeological studies, Beyond this, a consideration of environments was seen as essential to an understanding of the development of culture by those few archaeologists who had begun to quest

178

THE CLASSIFICATORY-HISTORICAL PERIOD (1940-60)

CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT

179

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