Dear Jake,
I hope to clear up some ideas about anthropological theory and
archaeological applications. These are some very general ideas concerning
Structuralism, Structural-functionalism, functionalism, and structures.
Structuralism deals with structures of the mind and was defined and
defended by Levi-Strauss. Structural-functionalism deals with social
structures (social institutions like marriage, religion, family, etc.) and
was championed by Radcliffe-Brown. It is a branch of functionalism because
it attempts to explain social structures by determining how they satisfy
human needs. Malinowski, another functionalist, listed seven universal
human needs. Both saw culture as functioning to serve human needs, like
safety, reproduction, relaxation, comfort, etc. Malinowski was not
interested in change or change over time. That is one of the reasons that
functionalism is unpopular with architectural historians. It is synchronic
as opposed to diachronic. None of these theories have anything to do
inherently with the structures we as archaeologists dig. I hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Seth Mallios
University of Virginia
APVA Jamestown Rediscovery
At 11:15 AM 11/4/98 -0500, you wrote:
> Histarchers:
>
> Is one objective of historical archaeology to determine the
> function of a structure located by that archaeology?
> Architectural theorists have generally discarded the idea of
> structural function as a meaningful enquiry, because a) it frequently
> is unknown, and b) the function frequently changed through time (how
> you could know the second if the first is true is not explained, nor
> is it stated why such changes are not part of the enquiry of
> architectural historians). But the rejection of functionalism by
> architectural historians puts me in a bad spot when I try to talk
> about why I'm examining a building in such close detail. Anybody want
> to help me out?
>
> Jake.
>
>
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