I am reviewing for my comprehensive exam tomorrow, and I re-discovered
this passage:

"... One regrettable by-product of this mechanistic outlook in the New
World is a desire to over-rationalize archaeology in an unnecessary
attempt to justify it, and to disguise the obvious (and, one may suspect
at times, the trite) under a cover of pseudo-technical verbiage.  Thus,
Walter Taylor (1948: 117):  "The empirical form of an archaeological
manifestation will be taken to mean the sum and arrangement of its
component chemico-physical parts taken together with its empirical
affinities; in other words that aspect of the phenomenon, whose
expression can be observed directly and which, therefore, can be
utilized as empirical data by the archaeologist" or "[historiography] is
projected contemporary thought about past actuality, integrated and
synthesized into contexts in terms of cultural man and sequential time"
(1948: 34-5).  Do the phrases like "processual interpretation" or
"cultural-historical integration" used and defined by Willey and
Phillips (1958: part 1) contribute materially to our understanding of
prehistory, and if indeed they do, why cannot simple English be used?
What great unsung truths may lurk coyly behind such titles and
"Archaeological Systematics and the Study of Cultural Process" (Binford
1965).  This approach leads to disintegration:  one reason for the
number of self-styled philosophers may be the lack of any truly great
philosopher, but in the writer's opinion one major cause is the
publish-or-perish attitude which begets the principle that it is better
to write chaff than to write nothing at all."  etc.

Iain Walker 1967 "Historic Archaeology: Methods and Principles"
_Historical Archaeology_, 1(1):26.


So.... does this mean that
1. we don't learn from our ancestors? (apologies to those of Iain's
generation)
2. we shouldn't be so hard on the post-modernists?
3. we should be as hard on the modernists?
4. we should all take a lesson from Margaret Mead?
5. there really is nothing new to argue about.

hmm, just thinking.
Tim