I know, I know, I said I was respecting the corpse of the long-dead
flogged horse, but I've been troubled by the assertion that Ian Hodder's
post-processualism is overtly anthropological in tone, and is somehow
set against the principle that "archaeology is archaeology". A few
examples of why this is not necessarily the case may be useful to a
wider understanding of the very different traditions of British
archaeology....

Not that I worship unquestioningly at the altar of Hodder, but this may
still prove of interest.

The following quotes are from chapter 9, "Conclusion - Archaeology as
Archaeology", of _Reading the Past_, Cambridge University Press, 2nd
edition (1991)


pg. 182: "... the aim [of post-processualism] is to establish
archaeology as a discipline able to contribute an independent voice to
both intellectual and public debates".


pg. 188: "Perhaps archaeology can contribute its own data to the general
debates, using its own methods and theories to do so, as an independent
discipline.  I now wish to examine the proposal, again different from
traditional and processual archaeology, that archaeology is neither
history nor anthropology, but just archaeology"


pg. 189: "The claim that 'archaeology is archaeology is archaeology' was
forcefully made by David Clarke.  His _Analytical Archaeology_ (1968) is
the most significant attempt to develop a peculiarly archaeological
methdology based on archaeological objects and their associations and
affinities in archaeological contexts".


pg. 191: "How much archaeologists can interpret depends on the richness
of their data networks and on their knowledge and abilities, yet there
is a clear potential for independent archaeological contribution".


And finally......

pg. 192: "In these various ways, archaeology can be seen as an
independent discipline groping towards independent method and theory,
but necessarily linked to and contributing to general social theory".


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alasdair Brooks
Department of Archaeology
University of York
King's Manor
York
YO1 7EP
England, UK
phone: 01904 433931
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The Buffalo tastes the same on both sides of the border"
Sitting Bull