Archaeology and Anthropology: Areas of Mutual Interest 9780904531633, 9781407335216

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Archaeology and Anthropology: Areas of Mutual lnterest edited by

Matthew Spriggs

BAR Supplementary Series I 9 1 977

British Archaeological Reports 122, Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7BP, England

GENERAL EDITORS A. C. C. Brodribb, M.A. · Mrs. Y. M. Hands

A. R. Hands, B.Sc., M.A., D.Phil. D. R. Walker, M.A.

B.A.R. Supplementary Series 19, 1977: Areas of Mutual Interest." © The Individual Authors, 1977.

'Archaeology and Anthropology:

The authors’ moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher. ISBN 9780904531633 paperback ISBN 9781407335216 e-book DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9780904531633 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This book is available at www.barpublishing.com

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF DR. DA VID C LARKE 1937 - 1976

CONTENTS Page

List of Contributors Preface and Acknowledgements Matthew Spriggs:

Introduction

I

-

Where the Hell are we?

3

(Or a Young Man's Quest) R. W. Chapman:

Burial Practices:

an area of mutual interest

Roy F. Ellen:

Ecological models in ethnography and the

19 35

archaeological analysis of settlement Roland Fletcher:

Alternatives and differences

49

L. M. Groube:

The Hazards of Anthropology

69

After Civilization:

91

Cohn Haseigrove:

Archaeology, Anthropology

and the study of Urbanism Ian Hodder:

A study in ethnoarchaeology in western Kenya

117

N. J. Rowlands and John Gledhill:

The relation between Archaeology and Anthropology

143

Comment Edmund Leach:

A View from the Bridge

161

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Matthew Spriggs, Research Student in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. Dr. R. W. Chapman, Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Reading. Dr. Roy F. Ellen, Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Kent. Dr. Roland Fletcher, Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Sydney, Australia. L. M. Groube, formerly a Research Fellow at Australian National University, now Dorset County Archaeologist. Cohn Haseigrove, Research Student in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. Dr. Ian Hodder, Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leeds. Dr. M. J. Rowlands, Lecturer in Anthropology at University College, London. John Gledhill, Research Assistant in the Department of Anthropology, University College, London. Sir Edmund Leach,

F. B. A.,

Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and Provost of King's College, Cambridge.

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGElNT5

This volume springs from a conference organized by the Cambridge University Archaeological and Anthropological Societies on "Archaeology and Anthropology

-

Areas of Mutual Interest", held in Cambridge in March 1976.

It would not be correct however to suppose that it represents in any way the proceedings of that conference.

Only the paper given there by Mike Rowlands

is produced here, but in an altered form, co-authored with John Gledhill. The other papers were given by Professor Jack Goody, Professor Cohn Renfrew, Dr. C. Humphreys, Mr. P. W. Gathercole, Dr. Glyn Isaac and Dr. James Woodburn, but they either did not wish or did not have time to transfer their views into print.

I would like to thank the above for speaking

at the conference and thank the committees of the C U. Archaeological and .

Anthropological Societies for helping to organise it, and King's College for allowing it to be held on the premises.

Pat Campbell, as conference secre-

tary, did much of the hard work. Iwould, of course, like to thank the people who did provide papers, and likewise all the people who put up with me during the time the volume was being edited

-

the lads and lassies of Mackenzie Road and Mill Road and

especially Chloe Munro, the lady extraordinaire. Cohn and Susanne Haseigrove and Shelly Davis-King deserve eternal gratitude for their help in the preparation of this volume. Finally I would like to thank Mrs. Stella Clarke for allowing us to dedicate this book to her husband's memory.

Any book discussing the relation between

archaeology and anthropology would be incomplete without reference to his work and he provided much direct encouragement in organizing the conference, and in the early stages of editing the book.

Most of the contributors were

either his students at undergraduate and graduate level, or personal friends and colleagues of his.

The dedication Ifeel therefore is an appropriate one.

Matthew Spriggs November 1976

I

WHERE THE HELL ARE WE? (Or a Young Man's Quest) Matthew Spriggs

ABSTRACT

An introduction in which the editor picks his way perilously among the new -isms and fails to reach firm ground. But wait All is not lost -

"Where have we got to? We are in Looking Glass Land where the signs may be familiar but all point in the wrong direction." (Edmund Leach, this volume, 169)

In this introduction Iwill not attempt to summarize the other papers in the volume abstracts are provided and the authors can stand up for themselves. Iwill, however, note a few threads, connecting various current -

writers, to do with ethnographic analogy and an interest in Structuralist and Marxist approaches. The latter topic of course brings in Childe whom Iwill attempt to defend from recent misinterpretations and fete for his foresight in recognizing many of the current 'areas of interest' we will be discussing here. Connections between various areas of interest relevant to both archaeologists and anthropologists have usually been implicit, marked only by parallel discussion isolated within each discipline, and with little interdisciplinary airing of views. Listening to archaeological debate about prehistoric economies, one often wonders if it is realized that philosophical discussion has raged for years among economic anthropologists on similar questions of how to analyse non-industrial economies. (See Dalton 1969; Firth 1967; Godelier 1972; Leclair and Schneider 1968; Polanyi et al. 1957.) A similar ignorance among anthropologists of the archaeological literature is also to be deplored. (Groube, this volume, 84). Most recently a sudden change has occurred and archaeological works are now full of quotations from Polanyi, while 'Ports of Trade' are 'discovered' whenever a spade is put into the ground near the sea or along the banks of any major river. Thus the alternative to simple ignorance would often seem to be naive acceptance of the theories of an anthropologist selected almost at random to represent something called the "anthropological viewpoint". As Haselgrove points 'out (this volume, 92 )on both sides one finds a naive belief in the coherence of the other's discipline. All is supposedly stable and functionally integrated among the economic anthropologists as among the Andaman Islanders. Perhaps the 3

answer is to read the reviews as well as the text?

Leach points out that,

"The social anthropologist will always be telling the archaeologist that his simple monocausal explanations are preposterously simplistic ... The archaeologist in turn can repeatedly bring the social anthropologist's speculations to a full stop by showing that it wasn't so. The short run interaction in each case is negative. Both sides can help curb the wilder speculative guesses of the other." (1973:771) But this is hardly a satisfying relationship, consisting as it does of thesisantithesis but no synthesis, and as Leach points out in this volume (p. 161) it is "difficult to get excited about learning what is not the case." The relationship needs to go beyond simple refutation to the testing of theories generated in either discipline using data from both. This is a higher unity at the level of shared problems. Several of the papers in this volume share an interest in the Structuralist and Marxist approaches which are currently enjoying some popularity in both the social sciences and the arts, 1 and which may yet converge under the eclectic banner of 'Structural-Marxism'. The renewed interest in Marxist theory among western social scientists started in France in the 1960s, partly inspired by the writings of the philosopher, Althusser (1969; 1974; and with Balibar 1970). Leach's prophecy (1973: 762) of a 'Structuralist archaeology' is perhaps coming true, partly through his own contribution to this volume which makes somewhat more explicit what he had in mind in his 'Concluding Address' at Sheffield and partly through the tendency of forecasts to be selffulfilling. Levi-Strauss as well is apparently showing more interest in material culture from a structuralist viewpoint (Jorion 1976), and this also may have some relevance to archaeology. It must be remembered that archaeological interest in the structuralist approach pre-dates the Sheffield conference. Clarke makes implicit use of structuralist concepts through Analytical Archaeology (1968), as he admitted in his reply to Hymes (Clarke 1971). The modular analysis of Glastonbury Lake Village (Clarke 1972:835) is a perfect illustration of the idea expounded by Leach in this volume (p. 168) that "The layout of buildings and settlements 'maps' both the anatomical organization of the human body and the social anatomy of the body politic."

Roland Fletcher's work (1975 and this volume)

analyses settlement layout using in part similar concepts and Deetz thought the structuralist approach worth discussing in his own introductory archaeological textbook (1967: Chapter VU). A criticism of structuralism, as of functionalism, has always been its inability to handle the time dimension (Haseigrove, this volume, pp. 102-103; Groube, this volume, 77-78 ). Levi-Strauss (1963: Chapter 1) has talked of the possibility of 'structural history' and stressed the role of archaeology in this: "Scorning the historical dimension on the pretext that we have insufficient means to evaluate it except approximately will result in our being satisfied with an impoverished sociology, in which phenomena are set loose, as it were from their foundations. Rules and institutions, 4

states and processes seem to float in a void in which one strains to spread a tenuous network of functional relations. One becomes wholly absorbed in this task and forgets the men in whose thought these relationships are established, one neglects their material culture, one no longer knows whence they came and what they are .

"

(1967: 23) He mentions history and archaeology only to ignore them in the rest of his work which, although not incompatible with a historical viewpoint (Gaboriau 1970), has failed to offer any theory of history itself. Leach has shown himself more a follower of Malinowski or RadcliffeBrown than Levi-Strauss in his contempt for 'conjectural history' (1973; this volume, 166-7). Although he makes very clear his attitude to Friedman, his attitude to the Structural -Ma rxist approach in general is difficult to gauge. Ialways find Professor Leach's statements tantalizingly incomplete. He makes general criticisms (i.e. of Friedman, Rowlands and Gledhill) but resists the temptation to make these specific. Thus he remains conspicuously enigmatic when one tries to fathom out what his concrete views actually are. His view of the city as an 'idea' seems similar to that of Daniel in The First Civilizations (1968), and it could be argued that his views on the modes of thought of Neanderthal mammoth hunters, like the empathetic, idealistic approach of Jacquetta Hawkes, Myres and Collingwood, may be assuming just what they should seek to prove. This is perhaps too harsh a view. It has been claimed by Friedman (1974) and by several of the contributors to this volume that the addition of Marxist theory to Structuralism will create a more comprehensive theory, allowing the explanation of sociocultural change, and that this could provide auseful framework for archaeologists, anthropologists and historians. In Defence of Childe Recently Firth has presented the "sceptical anthropologist's" reaction to the renewed interest in Marxist theory among European social scientists (1972). Graham Clark indirectly performs a similar function for archaeologists in the First Gordon Childe Memorial Lecture (1976) while attempting to lay Childe's ghost once and for all. While Firth shows some understanding of the continued interest in Marxist theory, Clark's paper restricts itself to unsubstantiated 'Cold-war' style generalization Childe's work is seen as -

'inhibited' by Marxism or "the antiquated folk-lore of Karl Marx" as he calls it (1976: 18). The reds are apparently still firmly wedged under the bed. In fact there is little evidence contained in Clark's article of any concrete understanding either of Childe or of the Marxist theories he was attempting to test archaeologically. The treatment by Clark of two passages taken from Childe's Valediction (1958a) illustrate this. The views expressed in the first passage are completely misrepresented by Clark's precis (1976:7) and the other passage is misquoted and therefore renders meaningless Childe's viewpoint. Clark writes (1976:3),

5

"In his 'Valediction' he had to admit that while Marxism had once seemed to make intelligible the development of each culture it 'completely failed to explain the differences between one culture and another and indeed obliterated or dismissed the differences observed." The original passage in Childe actually reads, "The MARRISTS' [my emphasis, M.S.] appeal to 'uniformities of social evolution' while it seemed to make intelligible the development of each individual culture to which they applied it, completely failed to explain the difference between one culture and another . .. ." Clark asserts (1976:18) of the second passage that he quotes that it is "pathetic" of Childe to "admit" that "Universal laws of social development are far fewer and far less reliable than Marxists before 1950 thought". However, Childe's original text (1958a:5) again has the 'MARRISTS' and not 'MARXISTS'. This could of course be interpreted as a simple misprint in Childe's paper, but Ithink not. Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr was aRussian linguist and archaeologist who died in 1934. From his study of various Caucasian languages he built up a theory of language as a class phenomenon rather than a national one. The socioeconomic organization of the speakers determined the language, which changed when the former did. Thus any language could be placed hierarchically on an evolutionary ladder, indicating the 'stage' of the society which spoke it.

1950 was the crucial year because it was then that Stalin

pointed out that language was obviously independent of economic organization because the same language was spoken in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Russia. Thompson (1965:110) writes of Marr' stheory, "As this was the official theory during the years of oppression in the 1930s the term 'Marrism' has come to be associated with the terrible events of that period," How far, then, can Childe's approach be considered MARRIST or Marxist? Daniel (1958:66) considered that Childe's, "Marxism/Marrism was ... a sentimental excursion into the use of new archaeological and historical models", adding (058:67), "he ventured sentimentally and seriously into Marxism and then ventured away again.

The comments which he wrote in the last

few years of his life (and which we have quoted) on Russian prehistory are devastating." Here Marxism/Marrism/Soviet prehistory are all lumped together as a single phenomenon.

We have already seen that Clark (1976) considers the

6

difference between Marxism and Marrism to be so unimportant as to enable the former to stand for the lalter. Childe's Retrospect (1958b) is invaluable in any discussion of the genesis of his thought and Ithink it is open to a different interpretation from Daniel's. The beginning of Childe's interest in "Marrism" seems quite well-dated by his visit to the U.S.S.R. in 1934. He recounts how he "learned how neatly even the Marrist perversion of Marxism [my emphasis, M.S.] explained without appeal to undocumented external factors the development of certain prehistoric cultures" (1958b:72). He states later how in 1946 he "came to appreciate better the value of even the perversion of Marxism, subsequently branded as Marrism. Its principles Iapplied in Scotland Before the Scots (1946b)" (1958b:73). However despite the fact that at the time he considered it auseful model, he noted that, "the internal development of Scottish Society in accordance with 'universal laws' simply could not explain the archaeological data from Scotland." (1958b:73) At least Childe himself drew a firm line between Marrism and Marxism. 1950 marked the turning point in his regard for what he freely recognized as aperversion of Marxism.

He did indeed reject Marrism and with it many

of the "explanations" offered by Soviet prehistorians, but this by no means implies a rejection of Marxism itself as Daniel and Clark have claimed. In the period 1950 to 1954 he was, "led to a sociological approach to epistemology and the discovery of Durkheim, and a deeper appreciation of his master Marx." (1958b: 73. My emphasis, M.S.) The rejection of the simplistic Marrist approach led to a new phase in his thought, "Now at last Irid myself of transcendental laws determining history and mechanical causes, whether economic or environmental, automatically shaping its course." (1958b:73) Part of this "deeper understanding" of Marx was a recognition of the importance of social relations of production (see Friedman 1974:446), and the problems of identifying them from archaeological residues. Childe never really came to grips with this problem although he clearly recognized it. Thus talking of 1934 he wrote, "Since means of production figure so conspicuously in the archaeological record I suppose most prehistorians are inclined to be so far Marxists as to wish to assign them a determining role among the behaviour patterns that have fossilized. They can do so even in the U.S.A. without invoking the 5th amendment, since it was to the 'mode of production' ('means' plus relations) that Marx attributed the dominating influence." (1958b:72)

7

In Piecing Together the Past (1956) he states that Marx, "argued quite convincingly that means of production and social relations of production are interdependent in the sense that a technology can only function within an appropriate economy or system for distributing the product and that relations in turn determine the ideological superstructure codes of morality and law, superstitions and religious beliefs, artistic expression and soon" (1956:56). -

His post-1950 reconsideration of Marx may well have given him a deeper understanding but he was never able to relate concepts like social relations of production to archaeological manifestations. Claiming that they could be inferred "albeit less certainly" (Childe 1946:249) than the means of production is simply not good enough. Any archaeologist wishing to initiate a Marxist approach will be presented with a similar problem which may indeed prove insurmountable can one establish social relations of production from archaeological data? -

From the above passages we can see that Childe, even if his work was inconclusive, was still very much interested in a Marxist approach until the end of his life. No longer the simplistic Marrism of the 30s and 40s but a much more individual approach which he had gained from his own reading of Marx and Durkheim. Clark also chides Childe for not taking an interest in the 'seminal works' of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown

-

"He failed to profit from the most sig-

nificant development of his day in this field." (1976:6), and was seen as only a 'bystander' to developments in anthropology. The genealogy of Clark's own ecological approach may well lead back to Radcliffe-Brown and his school but Ellen (this volume,p. 38 )has already pointed out the dead end which ecological studies in anthropology have reached, precisely because of their functionalist nature. A more generous view of Childe would see him as consciously rejecting the functionalist approach (at least in his later works), rather than being ignorant of it or simply unaware of its relevance to archaeology. Retrospect (1958b:72) he claims that in 1939 he was

In his

"interested in Malinowski's functionalism and tried to stick the archaeological bits together (in the new version of the Dawn) by reference to their possible role in a working organism." According to Clark, Childe was apparently only, "preoccupied with the ancient issue of diffusion versus evolution." (1976:6) The wheel has now come full circle and a mounting interest in 'social evolution' (by Marxists and some human ecologists etc.), and in diffusion processes (especially by urban anthropologists and geographers; also see

8

Rowlands and Gledhill this volume, was perhaps legitimate. that Childe remains,

p.

156) suggests that any such 'preoccupation'

It nay also help to explain why it is still true today

"the only archaeologist that many anthropologists in this country admit to having read." (Ibid: 144) Already in 1946 Childe was criticizing functionalists for ignoring the time dimension and typified their anthropology as remaining on the level of a 'descriptive technique" (1946:247). In his Valediction we find a clear rejection of functionalism as auseful theoretical approach. "No prehistorian can be content with describing, however functionally, his culture as a finished and static organism. It must not only function; it must change, and the observed changes must be described and explained.

In so doing it is all too easy to appeal to

external factors As far as possible, changes should be explained by internal development including thereunder adjustments to ...

documented changes in the non-human environment."

(1958a:5)

In the Retrospect he gives more details, "The archaeological data are interpreted as the fossilized remnants of behaviour patterns repeatedly illustrated in ethnography and written records. Together with the relevant features of the nonhuman environment they are presented as instances of more general known processes. So the specific events are explained as individual and perhaps unique manifestations of known universal factors... Admittedly laws of human behaviour are so far less highly probable than the laws of chemistry and physics that the term law is deceptive.

Yet they are or would be of the same kind.

(1958b:74)

Here Childe anticipates much current writing, for instance in this volume the papers by Rowlands and Gledhill, Fletcher, Haseigrove and Ellen.

What did he mean by 'laws of human behaviour'?

The aforementioned

papers may suggest answers within a structuralist or Marxist framework. But first we must consider the related question of the use of ethnographic analogies. Ethnographic Analogy and Comparative Sociology The crucial question of adequate criteria for comparison is shared alike by archaeologists invoking ethnographic analogies and by comparative sociologists (or ethnographers). This is another example of parallel but isolated discussion. Where archaeologists have become aware of the related field of comparative sociology they have usually quite uncritically adopted Murdock's approach (e.g. Binford 1972:208-243; Ember 1973) or the neo-evolutionist framework of Service (e.g. Renfrew 1973) without clearly appreciating the underlying assumptions used by these anthropologists (Marsh 1967:Chapters 2, 8).

9

The more one examines the criteria used by archaeologists in drawing analogies, the more hollow and meaningless they seem to be. One suspects that a lot of the fuzzy verbiage is disguising fairly basic theoretical lacunae. Ascher (1961 :319-20) quotes Clark and Willey's views. The former has said that the archaeologist should "restrict the field of analogy to societies at a common level of subsistence" and, "attach greater significance to analogies drawn from societies existing under ecological conditions which approximate those reconstructed for the prehistoric culture." Willey talks of "the same general level of technological development", and also stresses similar environment. Roughly the same criteria are used by many cultural materialists (Sahlins and Service 1960: Chapter 2) and their archaeological counterparts such as Binford. Ascher himself suggests three stages in the judgement of suitable criteria, "A first elimination can be made on the basis of economics, a second on the basis of the distances from the archaeological situation to the possible analogs as measured in terms of space time and form and a third elimination may be based on the closeness of fit of the relationships between forms in the archaeological situation with relationships between forms in the hypothesized analogous situation." (1961:323) Clarke put the general point thus, "Given the detailed economic and ecological background, the archaeologist cannot reconstruct the social subsystem pattern behind his material but it becomes increasingly possible for him to narrowly define the limited range of possible variety this pattern may have taken."

(1968:109-10)

Put thus, with the caveat that "goodness of fit is never enough" (Clarke 1972:40) this provides the most succinct view so far but it suffers from the lack of a clear definition of the term "economic". As for "level of subsistence", "distances from the archaeological record in space time and form" and "some general level of technological development", Ifind it extremely difficult to envisage exactly what these woolly phrases might mean. Discussion on the classification of various types of "economies" (if such things can be usefully isolated in non-industrial societies) has gone on for a long time in economic anthropology, as well as discussion on the relation between 'economic' and other 'subsystems'. As Isuggested at the beginning of this paper, a critical look by archaeologists at some of this work might be in order. Clarke (1972:40) has seen the debate over criteria as only a particular setting of the universal debate on the proper and improper use of models; but it is perhaps more than this, as one's choice of criteria necessitates a choice between different theoretical perspectives regarding the possibility of a discipline of comparative sociology or ethnography, however implicitly this may be done. 10

Marsh (1967: Chapter 2) lists several 'schools' in cross-cultural studies, and these can be paralleled in -archaeological circles. The first is the 19th century evolutionist approach where 'primitive' groups were seen as mere survivals of earlier 'stages' which could be linked to the archaeological evidence on the basis of technology. Much of Russian and Chinese archaeology shows that this attitude is still current. A more sophisticated version of the same ideas is that of the multilinear or neo-evolutionists (White, Steward, Sahlins, Service etc.) who see evolutionary stages as representing successive levels of socio-cultural integration (similarly the functionalist followers of Talcot Parsons see evolution as a process of increasing differentiation of structure and specialization of function). Their criteria for comparison usually reflect an underlying technological or environmental determinism. Renfrew's position is analogous in archaeology, and presumably Clark's 'common level of subsistence' implies the same. Murdock's approach aims at establishing world-wide generalizations about all societies from samples thought to be representative. It treats subject units (culture traits, elements or complexes) as variables and compares them in terms of the number of societies sharing various combinations of these. Murdock aims to produce quantified correlations and takes the relations between elements as something to be discovered rather than postulated in advance. Clarke refers to this method extensively in Analytical Archaeology (1968) and Binford and others have also used it. The major difficulty with the approach seems to be how the sociocultural pie should be carved up the economic categories seem especially dubious and the demerits of his kinship terminology have been recently summarized (Allen and Richardson 1971). -

Marsh (1967: Chapter 2, 8) points out the difficulties of this approach, and also of Radcliffe-Brown's rather similar method. Fletcher (this volume) devotes much of the first section of his paper to a consideration of ethnographic analogy. He points out, "The technical weaknesses of ethnographic analogy for reconstructing past social/political /religious patterns is that the analogy is often taken as an indication of past conditions, not merely as a proxy experience suggesting questions to ask. (p. 51) As an example of this he takes Renfrew's model (ultimately from Service) of 'Chiefdoms'. Later he refers indirectly to the Murdockian approach mentioned above, "If

...

one pursued the current wish to find what goes with what,

we could set up a research programme to identify a relationship (if any) between round "houses" and particular types of social organization. Even if one showed that every known case in the contemporary world displayed a simple correlation of structure with society, we would still be rio nearer to a description of past social order on that basis.

On theoretical grounds alone the

contemporary state could be a product of preferential selection through time: a process that we could only study in the archaeological record.

Also, a single exception would wreck the significance

11

of the correlation for reconstruction purposes since any one of the cases in the past would also not conform. A model would be required that is able to succinctly describe the structure/social connection in highly specific terms; defining the otherwise possible states that the model categorically excluded; and capable of potential but not actual refutation, at this time by the available data. (Ibid.: 52) This sounds a promising possibility but his conclusion is that we should in fact be asking different questions.

Maybe so, but his reason for this

("Since every past case is a potential refutation the study would still be limited to its field of competence i.e. contemporary data") seems unconvincing as it surely depends on how the "otherwise possible states" are defined. Lvi-Strauss (1967:21) sees one purpose of social anthropology as providing a "taxonomy whose purpose is to identify and classify types, to analyse their constituent parts and to establish correlations between them." Here he is talking of a deeper level than Murdock's approach. Rowlands and Gledhill seem to be talking about the same theory when referring to LeviStrauss' Elementary Structures of Kinship (1969), "Levi-Strauss demonstrated that a vast range of 'kinship systems' from different parts of the world could be reduced to a set of underlying exchange structures. In other words, he showed that systems playing a key role in a type of social formation, 'kinship' itself and related phenomena making up a 'total' exchange system could be understood in terms of invariant structural principles which could generate the variety of empirical cases produced under parameters specific to each 'real' society"

(This volume, 148)

They conclude that, "The contribution which anthropology is capable of making to archaeology must therefore lie at the level of more general questions about basic social types, dealing with structural modalities rather than empirical abstractions such models must act as formal, logical constructs that operate at a sufficiently generalized level that specific variants can be generated by a single underlying structure it is only in this way that interpretative frameworks might be established, and yet be modified to account for the variability of specific, historically distinct systems, whilst still retaining their ...

general explanatory power." (Ibid.: 148-149) So we are back at Childe and his 'laws of human behaviour'. Rowlands and Gledhill refer to papers in Friedman and Rowlands (1977) as illustrating this approach.

They then attempt to distinguish between the structuralist

approach which is a precondition for this type of analysis, and the Marxist one which is able to carry it out, 12

"The latter articulated at the level of social formations as whole dynamic systems, always generates not synchronic states but processes of directional change, a step which anthropology has yet to take." (Ibid.: 156) The earlier discussion on structuralism and history in this paper would seem to suggest similar conclusions. The whole idea could vulgarly be described as a 'dynamic ethnographic analogy'. The Murdockian and other similar approaches can only at best generate the 'synchronic states' that Rowlands and Gledhill describe, good for bedtime reading but full of dangers if used in archaeological analysis (see Groube, this volume).

Time will tell

if Structuralist or Marxist approaches prove to be generally useful alternatives to the present use of ethnographic analogy, and contribute to the development of more powerful forms of cross-cultural comparative studies. Whatever approach is finally taken, these do at least point out the need to compare processes rather than frozen-packaged societies suspended in an eternal "ethnographic present". The task of the archaeologist will however always be to mediate between the model and the archaeological residues, whatever happens. The problem of Childe's 'social relations of production' still looms large. The other papers in this volume do not relate so explicitly to these new -isms (although Ellen relates his approach to Structural-Marxism, and Groube deals with many of the same problems from a slightly different angle), but to other aspects of the relation between archaeology and anthropology. Ellen outlines the more dynamic and less environmentalist approaches developing in ecological anthropology and relates them to archaeological problems. Hodder's work on ethnic boundaries is of interest to archaeologists wishing to define prehistoric "tribes" or other entities from distribution maps, but is also of relevance to anthropological studies, especially those interested in questions of group boundary maintenance (see Barth 1969). His conelusion is optimistic, "Archaeologists and anthropologists have much to offer each other in any attempts to understand the use of material symbols to indicate conformity and identity, to understand how these symbols are used differently in different societies; and to comprehend the changing expression of group identities over the past millennia." (p.129) Chapman's specific interest in burial has proved its worth by stirring Leach into stating his particular areas of interest in relation to burial rites. Thus a dialogue has started based on positive ideas rather than the more usual polemic and rebuttal. There are many other aspects which are not covered here, as a survey of current journals will show. It is perhaps worth noting in particular the attempts to reconstruct prehistoric kinship patterns criticized by Allen and Richardson (1971) who provide a useful bibliography. One must add however that as well as their telling criticisms of archaeology, they point out that social/cultural anthropology is also experiencing difficulties in describing

13

kinship patterns.

Since then new variations on the old theme are provided by

Ember (1971 and 1973) and Lane and Sublett (1972). This hook makes no claim to resolve once and for all the question of the relationship of archaeology and anthropology, but its use is in trying to identify possible areas of interest and begin a dialogue especially necessary in Britain where until now there has often been only blank incomprehension on both sides when archaeologists and anthropologists have met together.

If the new -isms

suggested as possibly useful theoretical frameworks don't appeal to the reader, then I can only once again quote Childe, rJ confess that my whole account may prove to be erroneous; formulae may be inadequate; founded (1958b:74)

...

my

my interpretations are perhaps ill-

Yet I submit that the result was worth publishing."

Professor Leach's avowed aim in his paper is simply to try "to generate free associations of a symbolic, metaphorical kind, in the hope that an archaeologist might somewhere have an inspiration and say, 'Why yes, Ihad never thought of that; is a possibility."

that

(p. 170)

This was also the humble aim of this paper, and presumably all those in the volume, crying out in the wilderness whether to archaeologists or to anthropologists. warned,

But even if the reader heeds this plea, let him or her be

"No one ever got to a single truth without speaking nonsense fourteen times first." (Dostoyev sky)

November 26, 1976 FOOTNOTES 1.

The literature on Structuralism is vast.

Introductory and standard texts

include Robey (1972), Levi-Strauss (1963, 1966, 1967), Ehrmann (1970), Badcock (1975), and Leach (1970, 1976).

The Marxist approaches in an-

thropology are represented by Terray (1972), Godelier (1972), Friedman (1974), the papers in the volume edited by Bloch (1975), and the journal Critique of Anthropology.

Critical reviews of this approach and especially

of Bloch (1975) are found in Dresch (1975, 1976), Ennew (1976), and Berger (1976). Marvin Harris (1968) presents a highly idiosyncratic 'Marxist' approach, but gives a useful summary of different philosophical perspectives in Anthropology. 2.

Orme (1974) gives a good summary of the positions adopted towards ethnographic analogy by archaeologists and a useful bibliography is also given there. A standard text on Comparative Sociology is Marsh (1967), and there have been articles and discussions on Cross-Cultural Studies in recent issues of Current Anthropology.

14

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, W. L. and Richardson, J. B. ,' 1971 - The Reconstruction of Kinship from Archaeological Data, American Antiquity, 36:41-53. Aithusser, L., 1969.

For Marx, London.

Aithusser, L., 1974.

Elements d'Autocritique, Paris.

Althusser, L. and Balibar, E., 1970. Ascher, R., 1961. 17:317-325.

Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation, S.W. J. Anth.,

Badcock, C. R., 1975. London. Barth, F., 1969.

Reading Capital, London.

Levi-Strauss, Structuralism and Sociological Theory,

Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, London.

Berger, A. H., 1976.

Structural and Eclectic Revisions of Marxist Strategy:

A cultural materialist critique, Current Anthropology, 17(2):290-305. Binford, L., 1972.

Mortuary Practices:

Their Study and Potential, An

Archaeological Perspective, New York, pp. 208-243. Bloch, M., (ed.) 1975. Childe, V. G., 1946. 243-251.

Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, London. Archaeology and Anthropology, S.W. J. Anth., 2(3):

Childe, V. G., 1946b.

Scotland Before the Scots, London.

Childe, V. G., 1956.

Piecing together the Past, London.

Childe, V. G., 1958a.

Valediction, Bull. Inst. of Arch., 1:1- 8.

Childe, V. G., 1958b.

Retrospect, Antiquity XXX[I:69-74.

Clark, J. G. D., 1976.

Prehistory since Childe, Bull. Inst. Arch. 13:1-21.

Clarke, D., 1968.

Analytical Archaeology, London.

Clarke, D., 1971. 3:25.

Analytical Archaeology

Clarke, D. (ed.) 1972.

-

Epilogue, Norweg. Arch. Rev.

Models in Archaeology, London.

Dalton, G., 1969. Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology, Current Anthropology, 10:63-102. Daniel, G. E., 1958.

Editorial in Antiquity XXXTI:65-8.

Daniel, G. E., 1968.

The First Civilizations, London.

Deetz, J., 1967.

Invitation to Archaeology, New York.

15

Dresch, P., 1975. Review article, Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, J. Anth. Soc. Oxford, VI (3).. D re sch, P., 1976.

Economy and Ideology:

an obstacle to Materialist

Analysis, J. Anth. Soc. Oxford, VII (2):55-77. Ehrmann, J., (ed.) 1970. Ember, M., 1973.

Structuralism, New York.

An Archaeological Indicator of Matrilocal Versus

Patrilocal Residence, American Antiquity 38:177-182. Ember, M. and Ember, C. R., 1971.

The Conditions Favouring Matrilocal

Versus Patrilocal Residence, Amer. Anthropologist 73:571-594. Ennew, J., 1976.

The Bumper Book of Historical Materialism:

A review

article of Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology in Cambridge Anthropology 3(2):43-60. Firth, R., (ed.) 1967. Firth, R., 1972.

Themes in Economic Anthropology, London.

The 'Sceptical Anthropologist', Social Anthropology and

Marxist Views of Society, London. Fletcher, R., 1975. Space in Settlements: a mechanism in adaptation, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge. FrLedman, J., 1974. Marxism, Structuralism, and Vulgar Materialism, Man (n. s. 9(3):444-469. Friedman, J. and Rowlands, M., 1977. London.

The Evolution of Social Systems,

Gaboriau, 1970. Structuralism and History in Lane, M. (ed.) Structuralism: A Reader, London, 156-69. Godelier, M., 1972. Harris, M., 1968. Jorion, P., 1976.

Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, London. The Rise of Anthropological Theory, London.

Review article, Claude Levi-Strauss, La Voie des

Masques, Cambridge Anthropology 3(1). Lane, M., (ed.) 1970.

Structuralism:

Lane, R. A. and Sublett, A. J., 1972.

A Reader, London. Osteology of Social Organization:

Residence Pattern, American Antiquity 37:186-201. Leach, E. R., 1970. each, E. R., 1973.

Levi-Strauss, London. Concluding Address in Renfrew, A. C. (ed.)

The

Explanation of Culture Change, London, 761-71. Leach, E. R., 1976.

Culture and Communication, Cambridge.

Levi-Strauss, C., 1963.

Structural Anthropology, New York.

Levi-Strauss, C., 1966.

The Savage Mind, London.

Levi-Strauss, C., 1967.

The Scope of Anthropology, London.

Levi-Strauss, C., 1969.

The Elementary Structures of Kinship, London.

16

Marsh, R. M., 1967.

Comparative Sociology, New York.

Orme, B., 1974. 20th Century Prehistorians and the Idea of Ethnographic Parallels, Man (n. s.) 9(2):199-212. Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. M. and Pearson, H. W., (eds.) 1957. Market in the Early Empires, Glencoe. Renfrew, A. C., 1973. Robey, D., 1972.

Before Civilization, London.

Structuralism:

An Introduction, Oxford.

Sahlins, M. and Service, E. R., 1960. Terray, E., 1972.

Trade and

Evolution and Culture, New York.

Marxism and 'Primitive' Societies, New York.

Thompson, M. W., 1965.

Marxism and Culture, Antiquity, XL:108-116.

17

BURIAL PRACTICES:

AN AREA OF MUTUAL INTEREST

R. W. Chapman

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the study of burial practices, which Iargue are an area of important mutual interest for archaeologists and anthropologists. A discussion of recent work on the relationships between social organisation and burial practices is followed by a brief review of archaeological studies based upon these relationships. The problems raised by recent work on the communal megalithic tombs of the fourth and third millennia B.C. in western Europe are considered from the same perspective. A specific example, the copper age cemetery of Los Millares (Almeria, South-east Spain) is taken to illustrate the potential of social reconstruction based upon burial practices. It is concluded that the synchronic and diachronic study of human burials may yield much information to both archaeology and anthropology about changing social and cultural organisation.

INTRODUCTION In the conference programme it was boldly stated that the aim of the day's proceedings was to "stimulate interaction between the two disciplines and break down the parochial boundaries often set up between them by the way each has been taught in British Universities".

Although zealous and over-

optimistic in tone, this statement does emphasise a specific problem: outside Cambridge and London the common focus of interest of both archaeology and anthropology (i.e. the study of human behaviour) has been obscured by the lack of communication between the two disciplines in this country. Even within the university where the conference was held the degree of communication leaves much to be desired. Leach (1973) seems to dismiss archaeology as a speculative discipline whose practitioners are restricted to limited particularistic studies of no predictive value. What is most distressing and counter-productive about such a viewpoint is its total lack of understanding of developments in contemporary archaeology and its conduct of debate at a polemical rather than an analytical level. It is not my purpose here to enter into debate with those anthropologists who would share Leach's views. Instead Iargue that since both disciplines share a basic interest in human behaviour, although working from different data (i.e. the face-to-face relationships of anthropology as opposed to the

19

material culture of archaeology), then it follows that there should be many concepts and hypotheses of relevance to both. During the conference the papers by Renfrew, Woodburn and Humphreys all stressed the importance of the time-depth of archaeological studies. Providing that archaeologists continue to develop their methods of analysing the complex residues of past human behaviour, there seems little reason why the discipline should not make a contribution to the dynamic study of human cultural and social organisation. In the main part of this paper Iwish to review what Iconsider to be an area of mutual interest to both disciplines, namely the study of burial practices. The discussion is aimed at those British archaeologists and anthropologists who are little aware of work being carried out on this topic in either subject. First Ipresent a summary of recent work undertaken on the relationships between social organisation and burial practices. This is followed by some examples of archaeological studies based upon these relationships and a consideration of their effect on the analysis of the communal megalithic tombs of the fourth and third millennia B.C. in western Europe. THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF BURIAL PRACTICES

-

ASSUMPTIONS

Ucko (1969) has concerned himself with the examination of a number of common archaeological assumptions about burial practices through the evidence of ethnographic data. In the first part of his paper he is mainly warning the archaeologist against the uncritical acceptance of two main assumptions:

(i) that burial practices are necessarily synonymous with the existence of religious beliefs (e.g. grave goods being necessary for the journey to a putative alterworld) and (ii) that the richness or poverty of associated grave goods and the impressiveness of burial structures is necessarily correlated with rich or poor status/wealth. He produces ethnographic examples of societies in which the majority of offerings to the dead person are destroyed, removed or consumed in some way before the burial of the corpse (e.g. the LoDagaa and Lober of Ghana). Among the Yoruba he also notes that the offerings to dead cult priests are displayed at the funeral but are then taken away by fellow priests of the same cult association before burial: high status of the deceased.

the resulting burials thus do not indicate the

On the other hand, Ucko does produce several examples in which wealth and/or status are reflected in the contents of the tomb, its form and size and its location relative to the tombs of other segments of the population.

Indeed

the second part of the article is more optimistic in content and arrives at the following main conclusion: in the vast majority of cases known ethnographically, a culture or society is not characterised by one type of burial only, but on the contrary, one society will undertake several different forms of ...

burial and these forms will often be correlated with the status of the deceased." (Ucko 1969, 270) ...

20

Some of the characteristics which are used to distinguish individuals of different status ethnographically are location, body position/orientation, type of grave construction and the degree of elaboration of the particular burial rites. Binford (1971) has undertaken a deeper review of anthropological approaches to burial practices and how these have influenced archaeological interpretations. The three assumptions of which he is most critical are the following:

( i)

that variability in burial practices reflects variability in religious beliefs

(ii)

that the degree of similarity between burial practices in differel! l t areas directly reflects their cultural inter-relationships

and (iii)

that burial practices bear little relation to other aspects of human life such as economic practice and social organisation.

Criticism of the second assumption is also made by Ucko, who argues as follows: "...

the range of possibilities of different forms of burial is in any

case not very large, and it is especially small when considered from the point of view of what is visible in the archaeological record. Hence non-meaningful similarities between different societies are bound to be found wherever a number of societies practise several different disposal methods at the same time.

(Ucko 1969, 275)

The third assumption is examined by Binford from an ethnographic perspective and he again comes to a similar conclusion to lJck:

there is a consistent

body of evidence which supports the association of differences in burial practices with status and group affiliation differences (e.g. age, sex, relative social status, affiliation to particular social groupings, type of death). He then proceeds to hypothesise a correlation between the structural complexity of burial practices and social organisation within the same cultural system (i.e. increased differentiation of burial practices is associated with increased social complexity). This hypothesis is given a preliminary test on a sample of 40 non-state societies divided according to their forms of subsistence (e.g. hunter-gatherers, settled agriculturalists). While the results of this test offer some support to the hypothesis, Binford recognises their tentative nature, especially given the size and characteristics of the sample of societies involved. A central point of Binford's and Saxe's (1970) work concerns the composition of the burial ritual. During life an individual will possess a variable number of statuses (referred to by Saxe as "social identities") such as father, son, brother, priest, chief etc. By virtue of these statuses he will take part in social relationships with other individuals (e.g. father and son, chief and subject) which involve reciprocal rights and duties. The higher the social position of the individual, the larger the number of people entering into these relationships with him.

On the individual's death, a selection is made of the

21

statuses possessed by that individual during life, only some of them being reflected in the burial ritual (e.g. the status of "chief" will 'usually be more highly valued than that of "mother's mother's brother"). This selection of statuses or social identities is called the social persona. Also the social ranking of the dead individual should be reflected in the numbers of people concerned with the burial ritual, as has been succinctly argued by Tainter (1975, 2): higher social rank of a deceased individual will correspond to greater amounts of corporate involvement and activity disruption and hence should result in the expenditure of greater amounts of energy in the interment ritual. Energy expenditure should in turn be reflected in such features of burial as size and elaborateness of the interment facility, method of handling and disposal of the corpse, and the nature of the grave associations." Saxe's work (1970) overlaps a great deal with Binford's, in that his ethnographic udies are concerned with examining the interrelationship between social organisation and burial practices. To this end he proposes eight hypotheses to be tested against three particular societies (the Kapauku Papuans of west New Guinea, the Ashanti of west Africa and the Bontoc of Luzon in the Philippines). Saxes eighth hypothesis is particularly stimulating: 11 To the degree that corporate group rights to use and/or control crucial but restricted resources are attained and/or legitimised by means of lineal descent from the dead (i.e. lineal ties to the ancestors) such groups will maintain formal disposal areas for the exclusive

disposal of their dead."

(Saxe 1970, 119)

This is supported by the three societies examined by Saxe and I shall return to it later. The link between burial practices, descent and the ancestors has also been well made by Goody (1962). In his detailed analysis of the burial practices of the LoDagaa he stresses the relationship between the form of burial and the status of the deceased (e.g. grandparents buried in their own courtyards; "dangerous" individuals such as epidemic victims or unweaned hildren placed in mound graves;

full brothers buried in the cemeteries for

each patrilineage). He also illustrates the way in which burial customs are afocus for the transfer of the rights (e.g. over property, women) and duties (e.g. offices) of the deceased to surviving members of the community. The deceased is separated from the community and joins the ancestors of that particular lineage group. With regard to the ancestors it is important for archaeologists to note one of Goody's main conclusions: "It is perhaps true that in all societies in which descent and contiguity are of central importance in the' recruitment and organization of social groups, they are given some ritual embodiment, of which the worship of the ancestors and the Earth represent two possible modalities. This ritualization of social organization is of particular

22

importance in stateless societies:

supernatural sanctions reinforce

both the system of authority within the lineage and the jural sanctions operating between descent groups. The ancestral cult fulfils the first of these functions, the Earth cult the second." (Goody 1962, 412) Bloch's (1971) work on the Merina of Madagascar is interesting, as this is a society which practises communal burial in "megalithic" tombs. It is composed of a number of kinship groups called "demes", each with their own ancestral village ("tanindrazana") and tombs. The tombs are expensive to build (in terms of time, effort and money) and are intended as lasting monuments: "They are symbols of the association of their builders with the village where they are situated. They are in this way a denial of the fluidity of Merina society and indeed of all the societies of the living, and an assertion of an unchanging order where men are organised along clearcut lines. By making a tomb the solidity of which gives it a durability ...

which far exceeds everything else, the Merina affirms his allegiance to a particular social unit and an idealised way of life. (Bloch 1971, 114) Lastly we must take note of Flannery's (1972) work in the Near East. He suggests that early farming is here associated with marsh, seasonally flooded bottomlands etc., which he calls "highly localised resources". Settlements and burials lie on the higher ground adjacent to the cultivated river bottom in what he calls "the core area", which would have been more closely guarded than larger areas of "peripheral" territory, which would have been shared more amicably with neighbouring communities. He then notes the association of burials with this core area as an example of "an idealogy of descent which stresses maintenance of land ownership through many generations, with continued participation of deceased ancestors in the affairs of the descent group" (Flannery 1972, 28). THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF DEATH

-

SOME EXAMPLES

The archaeological evidence for burial practices may be analysed at both specific and contextual levels. For skeletal material the specific level of analysis involves us within the field of palaeodemography. Our concern here is with details of population structure such as age and sex distributions (Brothwell 1972; Swedlund (ed.) 1975). Lane and Sublett (1972) have analysed the degree of homogeneity of 33 non-metric cranial traits from 290 burials within five cemeteries on the Allegany Seneca reservation in southern New York state. The greater heterogeneity of traits in male rather than female crania between the cemeteries and the heterogeneity between male and female crania within each cemetery suggested the existence of male-based postmarital residence. This is based upon the assumption that "the maximal resident kin groups are the relevant social units between which genetic trait variations develop" (Lane and Sublett 1972, 187). The variation in metrical traits within a single cemetery has also been analysed by Spence (1974). Both

23

types of analysis are not without problems (e.g. the effect on metric values of such factors as age, environment and diet; the inability to distinguish, for example, patrilocal from avunculocal residence on the basis of the skeletal evidence). Specific analyses of grave goods have most recently centred upon those objects and/or raw materials of exotic origin, which it is argued would have been of more prestigious value than local objects. In America examples of this approach can be found in the volume edited by James Brown (1971). In Europe there has been less attention given to this kind of work, but Randsborg (1973) has analysed the early bronze age barrows of Denmark in terms of the distribution of grave goods of bronze and gold. Sources of these raw materials are unknown in that country. Lastly, specific Rnalysis of burial structures is concerned with the barrows, mounds, cists, pits etc., within which the skeletal material and grave goods are deposited, and such factors as the level of energy expenditure which they reflect (e.g. Fleming 1973). More important information is contained in the contextual level of analysis, where attempts are made to correlate variability in the separate spheres of skeletal evidence, grave goods and burial structures. An early example of this was King's (1969) analysis of the Medea Creek cemetery in the Santa Monica mountains in California. More recently there has been an instructive and stimulating example in Sue Shennan's (1975) analysis of the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Branc in S. W. Slovakia. Here the distribution of diagnostic artefact-types gave her the chronological control over the burials which is essential to analyses of social patterning. Among the computer and statistical analyses published by her are assessments of the degree of correlation of types of grave goods, interment details (e.g. orientation and position of burial) and age and/or sex categories. The results indicated, for example, the occurrence of "different age and sex groups having their own well defined modes of dress and ornamentation by which their status was socially recognised" (op.cit., 282) and clear evidence for non-egalitarian distribution of wealth. Perhaps the most important implications of this study, apart from social hypotheses of ascribed or achieved wealth associated with "rich" females, are that the differences of social status or persona expressed in burial practices are of an extremely complex nature certainly more so than the simple division -

into "rich" and "poor" burials would suggest. More speculative conclusions as to the existence of exogamy and polygyny. as well as patrilineal descent have yet to be tested in detail, as Shennan admits. Given the criticism which have been made of those archaeologists who have attempted the analysis of postmarital residence and descent patterns (see Allen and Richardson 1971), these speculations will appear highly contentious to some anthropologists. One archaeological problem which should be stressed here is that of the differential preservation of burial evidence. In many cases we do not posses adequate information on skeletal material from old excavations. In the case of cremations (Ellison 1975) the human remains may be completely incinerated and grave goods associated with the dead individual during cremation may be in a fragmentary and unrecognisable condition. For Bronze age cremations in southern Britain Ellison has summarised evidence for spatial clustering of urn burials (e.g. Pokesdown and Latch Farm sites), but only in the case 24

of Simons Ground in Dorset has modern excavation recovered information on relative and absolute chronology, spatial clustering of urns and the age/sex details of individual cremations all in association on the same site. Clearly the archaeologist must exercise caution in the conclusions which he draws from less well-controlled data on human burials.

COMMUNAL BURIAL

-

THE MEGALITHIC TOMBS OF WESTERN EUROPE

It is now time to question the relevance of the theoretical perspectives and practical examples outlined above for the study of the communal megalithic tombs of the fourth and third millennia B.C. in western Europe. Before the advent of radiocarbon dating, research into these tombs was conducted within the framework of an historical model: the main question which was asked of the data was "who were the megalith builders, where did they come from" (discussed in Daniel 1970, 267). The scale of investigation was pan-European and the methods of study were largely taxonomic and typological. Both methods were aimed at the definition of broad standard types (e.g. passage graves, gallery graves) and the multitude of local idiosyncracies of construction and burial rite were assumed to be irrelevant to the main problems given above. At the same time collective burial within megalithic tombs was thought of almost solely in terms of religious or belief systems: IT

...

collective burial in a chamber tomb is surely a complicated and

religious idea, and this religious idea is manifested not only in burial and funerary custom and architecture but in the delineation of a cult figure." (Daniel 1963, 78) ...

"It is not, Ithink, inapposite to consider these monuments in the same terms as one would the churches of Christendom or the mosques of Islam, had the religions to which these afford architectural witness wholly vanished from our knowledge. The collective chambered tombs of

...

western Europe are in their way monuments to a lost

faith, the adoption or propagation of which must have preceded the construction of the monuments themselves." (Piggott 1965, 60) Much was made of the grave goods and representations which supposedly reflected the existence of a "Mother Goddess". This concept led Almagro and Arribas to refer to "la religion dolmnica" and to compare the supposed spread of that faith from the eastern Mediterranean to Iberia and western Europe with the conquest of Mesoamerica by the Spanish Conquistadores (1963, 198; cf. Childe 1957, 281-2). Changes in our knowledge of the chronology of megalithic tombs and of the capabilities of their builders in the fields of technology and geometry have been widely disseminated (e.g. Renfrew 1973; Thom and Thom 1972). Less discussed has been the recognition that we are no longer dealing with a single problem: the communal tomb is now to be studied as an artefact which embodies social, religious, economic and technological behaviour within a

25

local cultural context.

It is only when the problems raised by the interaction

through time of these different aspects of human behaviour have been analysed at the local level that any meaningful comparative studies of tombs over a wider European area can be attempted (Chapman 1976, 135). At the local level there are preservational problems which must intervene in any use of megalithic tombs for analyses of social organisation.

As ex-

cavated they represent apalimpsest9f human activities, frequently ranging over several hundred years.

This has been cogently discussed by Ian Kinnes

(1975), who notes inter alia the occurrence of structural remodelling among British neolithic tombs.

Excavation has rarely been able to disentangle the

sequence of successive structural and depositional activities within such tombs (a notable exception in France is the Chaussee-Tirancourt tomb Masset 1972).

-

see

At its best such excavation can only hope to discern general

patterns rather than individual actions, especially in the deposition of burials. When it is also remembered that many tombs have been emptied and destroyed by human activities in both the prehistoric and historic periods (Daniel 1972), the potential for social reconstruction may seem hopelessly diminished. In spite of these caveats, Ithink that analyses of social organisation may still be possible.

During the course of my research into the south-east

Spanish copper age (Chapman 1975), Iattempted to test various reconstructions of social organisation in that area during the third millennium B C. .

The

cultural superiority of supposed "colonists" of east Mediterranean origin over the indigenous population has been a pervasive theme in these reconstructions. There are references to the existence of "townships" (Childe 1947, 267;

cf.

Bosch-Gimpera 1969, 60) and urban (Almagro and Arribas 1963, 45) or semiurban (Savory 1968, 146) settlements inhabited by them.

Martinez Santa-

Olalla (1946, 61) refers to a ruling, warlike aristocracy and Savory (.cit., 166) to "overlords" who exerted religious and military power over he indigenous population.

Tarradell (1969, 223-4) reconstructs a stratified social

organisation which was based upon a developed agricultural subsistence and metallurgy and which was behind the construction of impressive megalithic tombs in central and western Andalucia.

As for the social organisation of

the "colonists", Almagro and Arribas (1963, 45-6) claimed that there was no evidence from either the settlement or the cemetery at the type-site of Los Millares which supported the existence of anything more than an egalitarian social structure. Ido not propose to discuss the concept of east Mediterranean "colonists" in this article.

For those readers who are not familiar with this area and

period of prehistoric European archaeology, it is sufficient to note that there are good theoretical and chronological reasons for proposing the development of the south-east Spanish copper age independent of any exotic "colonial" influences (discussed in Chapman 1975).

Those settlements and tombs which

have been interpreted as the constructions of colonists are now better interpreted as parts of a local settlement hierarchy.

Here Iwish to focus atten-

tion upon the cemeery of tombs associated with the Los Millares settlement. It was hypothesised that differential burial within the cemetery, especially in terms of numbers of individuals actually buried in the tombs, the energy expenditure reflected in different tombs and the range and frequency of

26

"Prestige'? grave goods, would reflect the existence of social differences within the community.

In particular, evidence for the concentration of pres-

tige grave goods within particular tombs or areas of the cemetery might reflect the existence of a ranked society (Fried 1967, 109), in which there was differential access to wealth and status, in this case possibly according to the group affiliation of individuals. The Los Millares cemetery was nominally excavated by Louis Siret in 1892, published in 1943 (Leisner, G. and V. 1943) and partly re-excavated from 1953-7 (Almagro and Arribas 1963). There are at least eighty-five tombs existing at present, although there may have been another fifteen or so destroyed since the 1890s. The analyses of this cemetery which Ihave undertaken will be published in full elsewhere and only the main results will be presented here. Owing to the uneven nature of both excavation and publication (a factor of more than local occurrence), it was necessary to undertake a series of preliminary analyses: (a) The tabulation of the sample of tombs within the cemetery which can be identifiedon the ground and which could therefore be used in spatial studies. (b) An assessment of the reliability of the sample of grave goods excavated in 1892 and published in 1943. It was possible to compare the grave goods recovered from the same tombs in both the 1892 and 1953-7 excavations. Exact provenance details for grave goods from the original excavations are largely unknown. For the tombs for which direct comparison was possible, it was demonstrated that certain grave goods were consistently well-represented in the original excavations. These included copper tools, phalange and cylinder idols, types of non-local materials such as ivory, amber and ostrich egg shell and examples of rare types such as bone daggers and lunate shaped objects. Other grave goods were under-represented (e.g. undecorated pottery, baetyls, limestone and dentalium beads). The main point which emerges is that most of the grave goods which we might now interpret in terms of social status or prestige (see below) were recovered in the 1892 excavations. (c) An analysis of the relative chronology of the tombs within the cemetery. This resulted in the rejection of the Leisnerst division into two periods, although the evolutionary tomb typology was maintained. be published elsewhere.

Details of this analysis will

After these preliminary analyses had been undertaken it was possible to analyse those elements of tomb contents (burials, grave goods) and morphology (structural differences) which would have been relevant to social differentiation.

Details of the location of both skeletal material and grave

goods within tombs were funeven quality and rarely approached a productive level. As far as the burials were concerned, evidence for differential burial can be deduced from the numbers present, multiplied by a factor of two or three to allow for problems of preservation and identification, in relation to the numbers expected, given the settlement area, a life expectancy of 25 years and a site occupation of between one thousand and fifteen hundred years. Many individuals appear to have been excluded from interment in the communal tombs.

27

Further evidence for differential burial can be derived from the distribution and frequency of objects which would have been a material expression of the prestige or status held by particular individuals or groups within local society. These status symbols were all of an esoteric rather than a strictly utilitarian kind (cf. Stickel 1968 on the distinguishing characteristics of a non-egalitarian society).

These included ivory, ostrich egg shell, jet,

amber, callais, painted pottery, "symbolkeramik", beaker pottery and copper objects. With the possible exception of the decorated pottery, the analyses reported in (b) above suggested that the frequency of these objects from the original excavations was reliable. On the basis of the range and frequency of these grave goods within individual tombs, it was discovered that some nine tombs could be distinguished tentatively from the remaining ones. Not only were these tombs "richer" in their concentration of prestigious grave goods, but with one exception they are all located within the innermost part of the extensive cemetery, immediately outside the settlement wall. Tombs containing lesser amounts of these objects are distributed within this area, mostly around the main cluster of "prestige" tombs.

Within the inner part

of the cemetery a third general class of tombs, containing none of these objects, are distributed around the "prestige" tombs and among those with lesser frequencies of such material. The distribution of tombs in the outer part of the cemetery will have to be tested in the future when more of the tombs excavated in 1892 can be identified on the ground.

This will permit

comparison between tombs clustered by their grave goods and by their locations in burial areas within the cemetery (see Almagro and Arribas 1963, map). Are we, possibly, justified in associating the burial clusters, defined on the basis of their grave goods, with the existence of a number of lineages or clans, of which one was more highly ranked than the others (cf. King 1969)? Given the limitations of both the specific and contextual evidence for burial at Los Millares it is clearly unwise to draw too detailed conclusions from these analyses. However, differential burial was practised in the copper age and appears to support the hypothesis of some form of ranked social organisation. This is defined as "one in which positions of valued status are somehow limited so that not all those of sufficient talent to occupy such statuses actually achieve them" (Fried 1967, 109). Such societies have larger population densities, residential communities and more formalised kinship networks (e.g. emergence of descent groups) than egalitarian societies. They also show redistributive networks and a system of leadership that brings prestige and authority, but not coercive power, to particular individuals. Division of labour may still be by age and sex only and there may be no major craft specialisation. Many of these characteristics are susceptible to archaeological test in both local settlements and cemeteries.

Future fieldwork should be aimed at the more

detailed reconstruction of settlement patterns through time and on the application of contemporary standards of excavation to settlements. In this way it should be possible to arrive at estimates of changing local and regional population densities and reconstructions of the emergence of settlement hierarchies. Within settlements, spatial patterning of features and artefacts may help the archaeologist test for the existence of craft specialisation and modular social groupings (cf. Clarke 1972). Work on associated cemeteries, including their planning and analysis (as outlined above for Los Millares) should also add to our picture of social change. 28

The emergence of descent groups, noted above by Fried, would support the correlation between "crucial but restricted resources attained and/ ...

or legitimised by means of linear descent from the dead" and the maintenance of "formal disposal areas" hypothesised by Saxe (see above). The Los Millares cemetery, as is the one at El Barranquete (Almagro Gorbea 1973), is well defined and associated with a settlement and critical but restricted water resources. It has been argued elsewhere (Chapman 1975) that water resources would have been one of the main variables affecting human settlement in the and south-east of Spain in prehistory. However, there are also site locations in this area which are noted for their favourable water and soil resources which do not possess formal cemetery areas. In the case of Mojcar sites and tombs in the lower Aguas valley (Arribas 1955-6), this absence of a formal cemetery can be at least partly attributed to the local topography and land usage. Within the core area of the Cuartillas settlement, for example, the only locations which are complementary to the cultivable land are a series of small calcareous outcrops. There is no extensive, relatively level area in which a formal cemetery of tombs could be located, as at Los Millares.

Consequently tombs were built individually or in twos

on these outcrops. Clearly Saxe's hypothesis requires further archaeological testing so that the various factors influencing cemetery formation may be better understood. CONCLUSIONS Within the confines of a short conference paper it is impossible to present more than a general survey of the study of burial practices. It is a field of growing interest and potential in archaeology, but it has more than a parochial relevance. At a synchronic level of analysis Isuggest that much can be learned, in both prehistoric and contemporary small-scale societies, from the complex interrelationships between burial, social organisation, economy, technology and environment.

Areas of study of mutual interest here include the effect of

local subsistence (e.g. available and required soil and water sources, given local population densities) and topography upon the formation of well-defined cemeteries and the relationship between exchange patterns, settlement hierarchies and burial. For example, even allowing for the requirements of population and social Organisation (e.g. particular mortality patterns, the burial of different segments of society within distinct burial areas/cemeteries see Saxe (1970) on the Ashanti an d th e Kapau ku Papuans), it is a reasonable hypothesis that the area of land required for settlement and subsistence within a site exploitation territory (Jarman 1972) may affect the location, clustering and d•nsity of burials. As has already been discussed above, in the case of large communal tombs, topography must also be an important variable. In this context it must also he remembered that the symbolic function of such tombs may be as important as their use for the disposal of dead bodies, and their visibility may have been valued by their builders. One might also expect that a combination of characterisation studies on artefacts and contemporary observation would enable us to comprehend better the relationship between raw materials and/or artefacts, social ranking, burial practices and the position of individual sites within a settlement hierarchy.

29

-

Diachronic studies are chiefly the realm of the archaeologist, who can observe changes in burial practices in local areas over thousands of years. Given the frequency of burials within archaeological contexts, especially compared with the numerically inferior and often insufficiently well excavated settlements, it is important that their full potential is realised. Of particular interest are such factors as the changes in practice from the egalitarian societies (e.g. existence of social divisions according to age and sex) of hunter-fisher-gatherers revealed in the European Mesolithic (e.g. Vedbeak: Albrethsen and Petersen 1.975), to the more ranked agricultural societies with their communal tombs in the Neolithic and the emergence of social stratification expressed in increasingly differentiated individual burial in the Bronze Age. Local analyses, with the cemetery (defined in terms of spatial clustering) as the basic unit of observation, are the natural starting point (Shennan 1975, 287), with subsequent inter-areal comparative studies. From an anthropological perspective, it seems important to pursue the time-depth offered by developing archaeological methods and research. In his paper to this conference Cohn Renfrew mentioned the illogicality of pre contact observations on small-scale societies. The experiences of anthropologists in Maori studies should be a salutary reminder of the danger of neglecting cultural and social developments before European contact. Archaeological research designed to trace the emergence of complex rank systems in the Hawaiian Islands through, inter alia, the changes in burial practices in the last two millennia (Tainter 1973; of the potential of this approach.

Cordy 1974, 95), is a good example

For an archaeologist the synchronic analyses of social organisation and burial offer a source of both theoretical and practical stimulus. Above all, his or her work should aim at the definition and analysis of variability in burial practices as a reflection of social and cultural organisation changing through time. This involves neither the blind acceptance of anthropological concepts nor the failure to tailor our analyses according to the data at our disposal, as certain archaeologists and anthropologists may both fear and find derisory. Communication and the recognition of mutual compatibility are the keys to a productive relationship between archaeology and anthropology in this country.

This article has attempted, through the study of burial practices,

to support this viewpoint. If it be accepted, then analytical rather than polemical debate between British archaeologists and anthropologists forms the basis of a more productive study of human behaviour.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Iwould like to thank Lynne Brydon, Shelly Davis-King and Sue Shennan for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

30

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279-88. Spence, M. W., 1974.

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33

262-80.

ECOLOGICAL MODELS IN ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SETTLEMENT

Roy F. Ellen

ABSTRACT

Recent work on the archaeological analysis of settlement patterns has stressed the relevance of approaches drawn from a wide range of intellectual fields, but models or analytical frameworks which provide a truly integrated picture still remain elusive. This paper reviews some ecological contributions to the understanding of non-urban settlement relevant to both ethnographic and archaeological data, and explores the value of a generative model for the interpretation of particular patterns. INTRODUCTION Recent work in the archaeological analysis of settlement patterns has stressed the relevance of approaches drawn from a wide range of intellectual fields (Ucko, Tringham and Dimbleby 1972:ix). The net effect has been a convergence of multidisciplinary techniques and some well-intentioned programmatic statements rather than the formulation of a viable integrated approach to any one problem. If one of the hallmarks of a truly anthropological perspective is that it is integrative, and this is a different thing from 'holistic', then the attempts of some recent writers to emphasize the importance of such an analysis of material culture are welcome (Ucko 1970:27-8). However, it is insufficient to claim that by assembling material from different sources concerning numerous relevant factors an analysis is integrated rather than simply empirically comprehensive. Helpful models or analytical framework (ways of ordering data rather than necessarily ways of explaining it) must be capable of incorporating diverse data in a single analysis. In this paper I review some approaches and techniques for the analysis of non-urban settlement patterns relevant to both ethnographic and archaeological data. They also contribute towards resolving the analytical problem of integration. Ishall mainly be concerned with a general ecological approach, but in the knowledge that variants of this are already part of the repertoire of the 'new archaeology' (Clarke 1968, 1972).

Developing from this Iassess

the value of a generative model for the interpretation of particular patterns of settlement. The ideas discussed have arisen in connexion with a study of settlement and environmental relations among the Nuaulu, a group of sedentary swidden cultivators, hunters and food-collectors of Seram, eastern

35

Indonesia (Ellen 1973). * The bibliographic material cited is illustrative rather than comprehensive.

MICRO-ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIO-ENERGE'nc DATA At an empirical level research on the subsistence economies of smallscale societies, using systems models for explanatory and descriptive purposes and drawing on data and methods from ecological, bio-energetic (trophic) and nutritional studies, has furnished new and detailed information for the analysis of production. The ecological model has related standard information in new ways, utilizing new categories, illustrating the existence of new problems and relationships. Matters which have traditionally received relatively little attention have become subject to intense analysis. Examples of this are the socio-ecological consequences of different technologies, subsistence techniques and other means by which human communities modify their environment; the effects of patterns of weed growth, long-term vegetational successions, the relations of soil conditions to cultivation practices, and the detailed analysis of particular plots and cropping patterns. An ecological approach has also led to increased accuracy and quantitative sophistication in fieldwork techniques. While not yet dependable, carrying-capacity computations have become standard practice; subsistence effort is measured in terms of the energy expended for different activities and localities; yield and consumption are specified by weight or calorifically, with reference to specific food species, geographical source, social group and type of resource. The differential importance of particular resources, localities, groups and time periods are assessed through the calculation of unit-cost or yield ratios, while input-output indices provide some indication of overall efficiency for any one category based on such criteria (Lee 1969, Neitschmann 1972, 1973, Rappaport 1968, 1971). Such work, as well as supplying more reliable information concerning resource use, has sometimes provided unexpected results. Thus, while by orthodox ethnographic practice the Nuaulu might be classified as basically swidden horticulturalists, most of the energy consumed as regular food is derived from the local environment without cultivating it. The figure is forty percent of an estimated daily adult intake of about 3, 095 Cals., and is largely due to the importance of the appropriation of sago from naturally propagated Metroxylon palms.

Additionally, the non-domesticated sector

provides 64 percent of the protein fraction, through the hunting of a small number of key animal species. The consumption ratio is broadly reflected in the pattern of energy expenditure, and the figures help to explain both

*

Fieldwork on Seram was undertaken for 18 months between 1969 and 1971 and for two months each in 1973 and 1975. Research was supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the LondonCornell Project for East and Southeast Asia, the Central Research Fund of the University of London and the Hayter Travel Award Scheme under the auspices of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences in Jakarta. like to thank Mike Rowlands and Ian Glover for their comments. 36

Iwould

the pattern of cultivation (characterized by an absence of sophisticated techniques) and the structure Of the social relations of land use (Ellen 1974). It is almost certain that the role of hunting and the collecting of wild vegetable foods in societies nominally regarded as cultivators has been substantially underestimated (Ellen 1975:3-4a, 1975a:137) and much more careful analysis is required of the part which it plays, particularly since it may have important implications for an understanding of the ecological and economic organization of tropical swidden and some permenent plot horticulture. Furthermore, careful and detailed measurements have indicated that appropriation of nondomesticated resources varies in its intensity over time and space, such that the threshold between exploited and non-exploited parts of the environment is most usefully represented as a varying point along a spatial continuum, broadly expressed as a supply and demand function for a variety of nondomesticated resources; varying seasonally, annually and in terms of longer cycles (Ellen 1975a:table 1). In the Nuaulu case the spatial pattern of exploitation can be seen in terms of an inner area dominated by the appropriation of domesticated resources and an outer area where man-environment interaction is more diffuse and which is dominated by hunting and gathering activities. This picture is ecologically rational inasmuch as domestication is definitionally the concentration of usable food energy and materials through deliberate human manipulation of a natural ecosystem.

By contrast, hunting

activities require an extensive area as animal species are generally secondary or tertiary producers requiring high ratios of plant matter to animal mass. In view of this the ratio between domesticated and non-domesticated areas is higher for Nuaulu settlements compared with more horticulturally dependent swidden communities or cash-croppers. THE ECOSYSTEM MODEL Most studies involving techniques and data of the kind described have usually been tackled within an explicitly ecological framework, either as general descriptions of single human ecosystems (Clarke 1971), or as more specifically problem-oriented (Rappaport 1968).

In all of them sociological

problems and processes are phrased in ecological terms: human communities are seen as niche-occupying populations, as units in energy exchanges with other populations and species, while food-gathering practices are defined in terms of their ecological locus and implications as elements in a manmodified ecosystem. The approach has been as much concerned with the analysis of the relations between different communities in these terms as it has been with the single community in its environment (Barth 1956, Rappaport 1968). Despite certain theoretical and descriptive advances, earlier attempts to understand the man-environment relations of small-scale subsistence societies were generally accompanied by inadequate field techniques, based largely on secondary sources and phrased in broad environmentalist, possibilist or cultural materialist terms (Vayda and Rappaport 1968, Anderson 1973). The causal simplicity of such models made them genuinely anthropological in their appeal equally to archaeology and ethnology. (Harris (M) 1969:675-87). Over the past few decades changes have taken place in the formulation of the

37

problematic. The development of a more sophisticated biology of systems has had repercussions on behavioural science. An ecology of human communities has developed in which social behaviour represents a set of variables among others (Vayda and Rappaport 1968:492-7). There has been a rejection of much early work where environment and culture were treated as gross and static categories, to be typed and correlated, and instead there has tended to be an emphasis on the fine interaction of behavioural and material variables in an attempt to sort out the network of significant relations between them in different ecosystems. The result has been a series of useful studies relating bioenergetics to social process (Nietschmann 1973, Rappaport 1968, Waddell 1972), studies adopting an ecosystem approach (Geertz 1963) and considerable general and theoretical discussion (Vayda and Rappaport 1968, Harris 1969). This has enabled, among other things, much more analytically productive typologies and a more sophisticated study of man-modified ecosystems. This is not to say that there have not been studies which methodologically and technically are weak, and at a theoretical level much of the work has been associated with simplistic equilibrium models (Vayda and McCay 1975: 4 and passim). Much of this has been specifically geared to the discovery and description of the regulatory functions of social institutions in maintaining ecological homeostasis (Rappaport 1968). This new ecological functionalism has recently been subject to some severe criticisms (Friedman 1974), with particular attention centering on the concepts of adaptation, homeostasis and negative feedback (Vayda and McCay 1975:12-13, Ellen 1975:2). It has been argued that while in the broad sense it is obvious that all societies must maintain their adaptiveness to survive and that all traits are adaptive in so much as they are attributed with functions (Friedman 1974:458), in the narrow and strictly Darwinian sense the notion of evolutionary adaptiveness of social structures is wrong-headed, since only individuals can be said to adapt as biological organisms, though they may use social structures to this end (e.g. Burnham 1973, Ruyle 1973:211). Moreover, in relation to the question of adaptive homeostasis, it has become clear that production levels are often socially determined well within the limits of environmental adaptiveness and attempts to delineate mechanisms have seldom indicated the empirical relations that might be involved (Friedman 1974:460). While system-maintaining devices are demonstrably present in many man-environment systems an overriding passion for them has led to the virtual neglect of fundamental but potentially system-destroying contradictions between material and social pressures, as between forces and relations of production (Friedman 1974: 446, 448:

but note also Rappaport 1974, Vayda and McCay 1975:5).

GENERATIVE ANALYSIS AND THE PROBLEM OF DECISION-MAKING A basic difficulty of a systems approach where the most important variable is human behaviour is the necessity to recognize both things and their images (Langton 1973:132), images which are part of the mechanism determining human action (Rappaport 1969:186). Writ large this relationship between the cognitive and actual worlds, the rationality of individuals and the rationality of systems (Godelier 1972:10-13), is among the most important in philosophical anthropology (Ellen 1975:14-15). What is important

38

from the point of view of understanding man-environment relations is not so much the abstract conception of the perceived, as the operational relationship between it and the interpretative environment (Rappaport 1971a:247-8). The difficulties of empirical research in this area are immense, but one possibility is the adoption of a generative approach, enabling observed patterns at any one point in time to be seen as end-states of the cumulative interaction of socio-ecological processes and decision-making sequences, of both determinants and constraints. The end-states may be represented by spatial structures such as patterns of settlement (Ellen 1973), or other analytically-

defined social structures (social formations, modes of production, means of subsistence, economies). Thus if a settlement pattern is seen as an artefact of a human-dominated ecosystem, the observed pattern can be explained in terms of the processes which generate it and how these are influenced by both culturally-ordered information and non-cultural matter and energy. This may be illustrated with reference to the analysis of village plans and the dispersion of garden plots in simple horticultural communities of the humid tropics. Examined generatively, the dispersal of households can be seen as simply so many ways of resolving the conflict between pressures to minimize distances be residence and resources and between separate house hold s (F ra ke 1962, Ellen 1973:64-7). Some measure of the environmental and social pressures involved is found in the degree of divergence between village and 'central point' through the use of access paths to gardens as 'links' in a network (Brookfield 1968:427). Given that the location and size of individual settlements is a complex function of such things, individual sites themselves affect the total pattern of settlement, the land available for appropriation and the form this takes. In any analysis of the location and structure of villages it is necessary to understand the various environmental, ideological and organizational pressures which combine to determine them. Thus the Nuaulu are forced to make a compromise between adhering rigidly to a prescribed ideological formula and arranging the village-plan according to changing inter-personal relationships and the demands of physical location. There is an inherent conflict between the symmetry imposed by ideological factors (Douglas 1972) and the asymmetric demands of others. In the same way as it is possible to adopt a generative approach to an analysis of village layout, so for the entire domesticated component of the environment. Within the Nuaulu exploitative area particular localities are chosen for intense utilization in terms of a recognized series of the most desirable socio-ecological priorities.

One way of approaching this is to de-

termine the successive and different reasons why land is not cultivated by any one individual. Some land will be rejected for fairly specific environmental reasons: poor drainage, limiting surface conditions, such as rocky, sandy or eroded terrains;

topography;

soil conditions;

limiting vegetation

(e.g. some grassland associations); exposure to sun, wind and precipitation; and previous use of land. In the Nuaulu case all of these are of some importance, depending on locality. Even in terms of such preliminary environmental considerations certain socio-cultural factors are closely involved, principally in terms of local

39

classification of such phenomena. It is the role of indigenous decisionmaking behaviour, the rationale of resource evaluation and available categories of choice, that a generative form of interpretation forces the analyst to consider. Thus Nuaulu land may be classified as unavailable for cultivation on account of: 1.

religious taboos (cemeteries and other sacred ground);

2.

uncultivated land in which an individual has no rights;

3.

uncultivated land in which an individual has rights, but of a different kind (such as in the village area); and

4.

land already under cultivation.

However, rarely would knowledge of these categories of unusable land be sufficient to generate the observable pattern since preferences are also exhibited according to: 1.

conflict of individual interests,

2.

anticipated labour requirements (energy input), and

3.

time considerations, both in terms of such long-term problems as length of fallow and simply in relation to man-hour expenditure.

With respect to the two final categories here the question of travel and accessibility of resources becomes critical. The quality of communications, affected by the environmental factors of topography, vegetation and weather, together with the available technological repertoire, directly influence the relations between villagers and their land. It is clearly advantageous for the Nuaulu to limit the time and energy devoted to travel to a minimum. This can be done in three ways: 1.

by reduction of village-garden distance,

2.

by reduction of the distance between individual gardens, and

3.

by reduction of the total time and energy resources accorded to garden activities.

The degree to which these can be achieved depends on the local balance of factors consonant or contrary to them. Although the classes of factors (topography, soil, ritual) are only analytical constructs used here to arrange the ethnographic data, it is possible to list the factors involved in site-selection in terms of interpretative schemes which integrate them in such a way as to generate the observable dispersal pattern of gardens. Factors can be grouped rather generally on the basis of whether in functional terms they are integrative or disintegrative: in terms of clustering or dispersal of gardens, the presence or absence of garden-complexes (a group of gardens centered around a garden hut), minimization or maximization of garden-village distance, ease or difficulty in the clearance of land, the close proximity of accessible land or the presence of intervening inaccessible land, and so on. 40

If the relative significance of each factor can be assessed from the assembled data it is possible to make certain statements as to the mechanism of interaction of the various generative elements.

Then, but only after the

various factors have been grouped according to their general tendencies, more specific decision-making pathways can be isolated which generate specific features of the pattern of settlement. Figure 1 illustrates this as a model of successive dichotomies for some important processes resulting in the clustering of cultivated land around the village. THE EMPHASIS ON PROCESS The generative approach puts the accent on process, a concept as inherent to biological ecosystem models as it is problematic for the equilibriumists. It has enabled the specification of different kinds of successions given particular horticultural practices, of value in the analysis of a single pattern of settlement or in comparing different ecologically defined communities. The synchronic distribution of land types can be seen as representing different successional stages within a single community, a series of variable changes over time in its horticultural status, often recognized indigenously as changes through a series of distinct locally-defined phases (cf. Clarke 1966:347). Depending on the phase there are varying implications for the future succession and development of land around it, affecting vegetational cover, the nature and intensity of appropriation in the vicinity and the patterning of such specific artefacts of settlement as fences (or their functional equivalents), the communications network, households and similar structures. The processual emphasis provides a description of local ecology in terms of the complex interplay of biological and social cycles and successions: annual horticultural cycles, the development cycle of domestic groups, of settlement groups, kin group fission and fusion, the swidden cycle and other fallowing patterns, exchange, ritual and other structurally-determined production cycles, and nonreversible ecological successions (Ellen 1973, cf. Conklin 1968:109-10, Sorenson 1972). The kind of insights to be gained by studying micro-changes and processes of this type are illustrated in the case of the transformation from undifferentiated to differentiated cultivation plots, a process which is characteristic of much agricultural change in subsistence economies (cf. Waddell 1972, Ellen 1975:11), resulting in a breaking out of the swidden cycle and cumulative and self-amplifying change in the structure of the domesticated part of the environment, largely achieved through the reduction of the diversity index of plant species. In some respects this represents a more significant change then that from reliance on non-domesticated resources to swiddening, if indeed one accepts this as a probable evolutionary change in tropical patterns of subsistence (Harris 1973:399-400). With the shift to plots dominated by a single species, which may in some cases occupy the same space for periods from 15 to 70 years without fallow, the structure and functional dynamics change considerably, resulting in a reduction in the overlap of cropping periods, greater demands on land by the same population and possible changes in overall pattern of settlement through expansion.

41

RECONSTRUCTING PATTERNS OF PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT The matters discussed in the preceding sections are of relevance to the archaeological analysis of settlement, in terms of providing new kinds of data, clarifying the notion of settlement pattern and opening up different theoretical perspectives. The kind of data referred to in section 2and the ecological approach in general focus on the structure and energy cost of 'food gathering' and the reproduction of social structures and species. In this way they have gone some way to endorse the importance of production in the analysis of economic systems (Ellen 1975:7). At an empirical level the area of shared interest between ethnography and archaeology is considerable: the investigation of the effect of technological innovations on pre-existing methods of appropriation, the impact of new means of altering environmental relations, the detailed ethnobiological analysis of field sites, cropping patterns and domestic units, site-catchment analysis, tentative attempts to compute carrying capacities from population estimates, information on land areas utilized and means of production, and critical ratios for yields and consumption comparing the efficiency of different locations and techniques (Higgs 1972, 1975). At a more analytical level ecological approaches have extended and clarified notions of economic surplus.

Bio-energetic approaches allow for

the quantitative expression of such important theoretical concepts so that total energy costs and allocations can be traced over time. Ecological data has been used to generate testable hypotheses of archaeological interest (Wilkinson 1972), such as that which states that as technology becomes more complex the energy cost of food-gathering rises (Lawton 1973). Despite such exhilarating possibilities work of the kind described poses a series of practical difficulties of research, both at the level of investigation and interpretation (Ellen 1975:7-9). Ethnographic analysis must eschew the uncritical use of energetic and other quantitative data. Measurement of energy flow is seldom entirely accurate, and what is perhaps of most significance are relative inputs and outputs rather than absolute figures.

Also to

be avoided by archaeologists and ethnographers is biological naivete faced with models and techniques drawn from disciplines in which the researcher is not personally competent. When the necessary detailed biological data to support hypotheses is absent for a particular fieldwork location, attempts to reconstruct must be undertaken with the requisite caution. Faced with fragmentary archaeological evidence the problems are of an even greater magnitude (Ellen 1976:231, c.f. Shawcross 1972). Both ecosystem models and generative techniques clearly indicate that a settlement pattern is not simply a physical entity unrelated to dynamic social and ecological processes. It can only be understood in terms of the social, environmental and productive forces which determine it. A settlement pattern is not merely a question of ground-plans and Cartesian geography but of the organic relationship between critical variables (Harris 1972). This is a view apparently adopted as the analytical starting point by Chang, Rouse, Willey and others, a position which in these cases appears to be derived in part from the work of Steward (Tringham 1972: Xx-xxxi). 42

It is odd then

(N

(Y)

Minimum number

LC)

(0

Itt

b

that for the most part the ethnographic analysis of settlement, particularly within the context of British social anthropology, has either been neglected or highly simplistic. It has been understood a priori, attributed with impossible rigidity and seen as an unrelated thing in itself (Brown and Brookfield 1967: 119). Although some studies have emphasized the centrality of settlementpattern to ethnographic explanation (Leach 1961, Brookfield and Brown 1963, Waddell 1972), they have generally neglected to place the settlement pattern in its overall ecological context and consider adequately how the pattern becomes what it is. It is only by the discovery and description of the processes which generate form that explanations can ultimately be found (Barth 1966). Although care must be taken so as not to isolate individual patterns of settlement from the ecosystem of which they are an integrated part, it is clear that they form a sector of the system dominated by the requirements of particular human populations. Analysis is therefore a two-stage process. Firstly it involves a detailed description of the settlement pattern as it exists at a given point in time and defined in the ecological terms outlined. Secondly it involves the tracing of the various available determinants which might adequately generate the observed pattern. It is only then that it can be claimed that there exists a sufficient description, and perhaps also an explanation, of this particular social form. Further, the specific focus this involves avoids the encyclopaedic itinerary of some more general accounts of prehistoric environments, where the effort put into obtaining quantitatively impressive results occasionally seems not warranted by their ultimate marginal relevance. In this way the bathwater can be maintained at such a level so as not to drown the baby. The analytical frameworks suggested here allow for a comprehensive consideration of relevant factors, including some hitherto neglected, as integrated generative elements of any given pattern.

The practical and methodolo-

gical problems should not be underestimated, but the models stand as heuristic devices as much as prescriptions for empirical analysis. For example, an energetic approach demonstrates the often crucial importance of hunting and collecting in ostensibly sedentary cultivating communities;

the utility of the

analytical distinction between domesticated and non-domesticated resources; that areas actually subject to appropriation far exceed the settlement pattern demarcated by the presence of field boundaries; of settlement are fluctuating and not constant;

that the actual parameters

and the fact that energy ex-

penditure is not always proportional to energy intake in various components of the environment. Similarly, the generative approach emphasizes that in explaining patterns of settlement it is necessary to account for the possible influence of indigenous perceptions (in an operational rather than cerebral sense); that the integration of factors is often subtle and at a micro-ethnographic level and that the ecological variation within a given exploitative area may be considerable, determining the breadth of choice available in the selection of particular localities for residence or appropriation. In drawing attention to the significance of local categories and decision-making in understanding patterns of prehistoric settlement, Iam not suggesting that we are in a position to make certain definitive statements about ernie systems of classification or order priorities in decision-making processes, or that the

43

fact that we cannot must make the enterprise of reconstruction impossible. Either conclusion would be a capitulation to a crude mentalism.

What I

would maintain, however, is that through parallels with their role in generating extant patterns of settlement it is possible to allow for their significance to be taken into account in explanations of settlement patterns for which only archaeological evidence is available. All this suggests that perhaps more emphasis should be placed on processes (such as site selection) and socioecological cycles in archaeological interpretation. From a negative point of view, they also suggest that the concept of analytical levels of settlement, such as that devised by Trigger (Tringham I972:xxlv), tends to distort the importance of factors which operate at different levels or irrespective of level, and fails in integrating the elements of settlement in order to provide a total view. Otherwise we are in danger of ending up with an archaeological example of what C. Wright Mills (1959:50-75) called 'abstracted empiricism'. In general, the ecological approach to the interpretation of prehistoric communities has severe limitations placed on it by the nature and amount of relevant accessible data, but this by no means diminishes the value of the model.

Quite simply, a broader approach to the analysis of settlement pat-

terns, embodied in the models and techniques discussed, can assist archaeologists where previously traditional approaches have proved restricting. For instance, the absence of the normal material evidence of settlement for many tropical cultivators and temperate and tropical food-collectors (Glover 1972:157-64) appears to emphasize the limits of possible knowledge.

A more

integrated and comprehensive approach based on models of the kind discussed might lead to more analytically productive statements based, for example, on estimates of energy needs for such communities and how reconstructed palaeo-environments are related to this. Indeed, the work of Richard Lee on the reconstruction of the prehistoric habitats of hunter-gatherers has already set a precedent in this direction (1963, 1969, 1972). With the analysis of cultures for which the evidence of settlement patterns is good the prospects are, of course, much brighter.

In still other cases it may prove possible to

reproduce more closely the sort of analytical procedures which Ihave illustrated in the Nuaulu examples. Harris (1969, 1972) and others have recognized the value of an overall ecological approach to the analysis of palaeotechnic agricultural systems. For particularly well-documented sites predictions might actually be made concerning the nature and direction of energy flow within the ecosystem; some computations might also be possible as to the amount of energy flowing in given directions. On the other hand, attempts to introduce bioenergetic arguments without empirical evidence are unlikely to be particularly productive (Ellen 1976:231). In the same way, a generative approach to analysis might be equally valuable, involving a systematic assessment of factors affecting settlement shape as elements in generative processes related to decision-making and socio-ecologically determined priorities. Other specific methods can be incorporated into an ecological and generative framework: Von Thtinen models, (Smith 1972) central place theory and the rest of the technical apparatus of modern economic geography. It is important to emphasize the difference between a distinctively generative approach of the kind described and more traditional and well-established uses of ethnographic parallels in the analysis of prehistoric settlement

44

patterns (tJcko 1969).

In the latter predictions about social structure are

made on the evidence of settlement layout in conjunction with selected ethnographic analogies (Tringham 1972:xxiii). In the generative approach explanation of a settlement form is seen as necessitating certain deductive assumptions as to the presence of particular social practices. In this inversion of established practise (Hill 1972:62), only assumptions which generate a given pattern can be made. Consequently, this discussion should not be seen as the advocacy of particularistic ethnographic analogies to aid induction so much as models which appear to be equally applicable to archaeological and contemporary ethnographic evidence. Such ideas and the data they produce can have aprofound influence on speculation regarding the evolution of social behaviour, by seeing it in terms of the progressive modification of human ecosystems, and in certain cases they have already altered entrenched assumptions about the structure of subsistence economies and patterns of settlement. Ecosystem and generative perspectives have given rise to new ideas for analysis, revealed previously hidden relationships and relevant information. Whatever their shortcomings and the grand delusions and naive optimism -

of Binfordianism notwithstanding both emphasize the integration of particular ecological and behavioural variables rather than hopelessly seeking those elusive broad correlations between social organization and environment. -

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48

ALTERNATIVES AND DIFFERENCES Roland Fletcher

ABSTRACT The first section asks how components of both sets of data/analyses from archaeology and anthropology may be relevant and appropriate to the study of problems in human behaviour, independent of the particular time/space orientations of the respective disciplines. The second section develops this theme in studying the relationship between population and area within settlements. INTRODUCTION This paper is intended as an outline discussion of the relationship between studies of the past of man, particularly those labelled Archaeology/Prehistory, and studies of contemporary information on the behaviour of human beings. My purpose is to argue that past and contemporary data on human behaviour can be approached on a rather different basis to the current practices of some sectors of anthropology.

This is not to claim that much current practice is

invalid and unnecessary but to propose that other approaches are also possible and worthwhile and form a coherent research procedure. Some particular attitudes are in basic conflict with the suggested approach, but I see no sense in the need to prove everyone else wrong (or in basic agreement with one's proposals) in the course of presenting a new case. This may have relevance in the social organisation of the disciplines concerned but Ithink it is possible, in an initial discussion, to distinguish between the logical requirements of a conceptual case and the functional demands of academic policy. To argue that other questions can be asked and answered does not specify that archaeologists should cease excavating and analysing the physical materials of human behaviour nor that social anthropologists should give up participant observation and the various formal /functional approaches that they use. The theme of this paper is that instead of archaeologist/prehistorians and social anthropologist /sociologists either trying to find relevance in each other's data and methods, or at the other extreme concluding that neither can usefully contribute to the other, we can alternatively pursue questions that require answers from both past and contemporary data as two different but complementary sources of information on human behaviour. This proposed policy does not include and is not sympathetic to the idea of archaeological data being used to create pseudo-history, as a chronological "background"

49

for studies whose emphasis is on contemporary situations;

nor the use of an

ethnographic orientation to give "flesh and blood" to the "bones" of an archaeological site. The policy outlined below depends on asking different, complementary questions each requiring answers from specific sources of data. THEORETICAL BASIS Much of our treatment of data on the past behaviour of man attempts to transform that data into the categories and classifications which we use when referring to contemporary situations. We behave as if we recognise a responsibility to repair the data on the past of Man. Our problem is, that in the process of developing this responsibility a substantial logical disjunction has developed in the treatment of archaeologically derived data. At first inspection no disjunction is apparent.

We recognise a need to

identify the technologies used to produce tools; then the uses to which the equipment was put; the nature and food value of the animals and plants used by a community; and so on to the reconstruction of the social/political/religious organisation of the human daily life in the sites we excavate. Though this may ultimately represent a coherent continuum of intent, at present it is neither a continuum of technical practice nor a logical continuum of investigation. The technical disjunction results from the use of two different kinds of analogy in our attempts to repair past data. Technologies of production or use can be approached by way of models devised in the natural sciences. Analogy to contemporary situations and practice is not the defining condition in our descriptions. A tool found in an archaeological site may look like a piece of equipment used by a community at the present time, but that use does not predefine the possible or even probable use of the earlier tool. Diagnosis of use depends on the physical characteristics of the tool, on the use wear and effects it displays, and on the identification of any materials driven into its surface or stuck on that surface.

All that the ethnographic example does is

perhaps to reduce the range of experiments needed to identify the use. These characteristics apply both to the mechanical processes of tool production/use and the diagnosis of economic patterns. But they can also apply to other studies whose data are directly available in the archaeological record, as a basis for disciplines concerned with the material data of human behaviour. By contrast, the use of ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the social/ political/religious aspects of human behaviour depends on analogy by association, i.e on repeated juxtaposition and coincidences of various aspects of •

community life as observed in contemporary contexts.

These stated associa-

tions and the explanations appended to them do not appear as adequate models of human behaviour with predictive capacity beyond the identified associations. They would, of course, have to be testable in the present, where both the material and the social/political/religious aspects of daily life are directly available. It appears however that little has actually been done in this field, though assumptions are thick on the ground. In 1970 Hill 1 noted that despite he immense amount of work done on the pueblos there was very little organised information on the topic of materthi/sociRl connections. For residential structures there is merely a substantial supply of general and weakly predictive 50

comments ranging from "large residential structures are associated with high social rank" to the fatuous associations that Flannery 2 has criticised with justifiable harshness.

Other studies by social anthropologists, such as

Fortes and Goody in their work on the domestic developmental cycle, show how, in particular societies, structures can be seen as a complement to social organisation. But the primary concern of suc h st u di es i s th e function of residential space as a reinforcer or derivative of social position and order. Structures are viewed as an incidental, not a complementary/independent variable. The former may be a valid viewpoint when ones primary concern is social organisation but is plainly not absolute. "Action archaeology" 4 as it is unfortunately labelled, points out the lack since it is an attempt to find regularities that other studies of contemporary data have not pursued. But there are very few models, whether mechanical or probabilistic that have a credibility, as premises of research, equal to the quality of the natural science models. If, as Leach 5 points out, a good social anthropologist can think of six alternatives to an n1ogue explanation devised by an archaeologist, the models of material/social connections so far developed are apparently of a rather low conceptual grade. The technical weakness of ethnographic analogy for reconstructing past social/political/religious patterns is that the analogy is often taken as an indicator of past conditions, not merely as a proxy experience suggesting questions to ask. Referring to a "chiefdom" in the past, without direct documentary statements to that effect, is an attempt to describe a past situation as if the writer was an ethnographer living at that time. It is a statement that the material data we have in a past situation, looks like the material data associated with the social systems we now refer to as "chiefdoms". But we need reports on the tests in the present which show that other social orders cannot have produced such material patterns.

Furthermore, we need descrip-

tions of tests on past data which could show that "chiefdom" as a description of that past can be subject to refutation even within the terms of the Lakatos derivative of Popper's premise of refutability. 6 Labels such as "chiefdom" do not appear as the product of testing on the basis of options suggested by the proxy experience of ethnographers. Instead, they seem to be an attempt to create a feeling of familiarity and rapport with data that have no easy resemblance to our contemporary world. The logical disjunction is that the mechanisms of interaction between material/social variables that we try to identify, are coincident with the topic being studied; namely the way in which communities in the past were organised to operate as integrated systems succeeding or failing in their attempts to cope with circumstances. Community life does directly involve material features and that interaction is a problem of social studies which we need to tackle. For example: scale of structure is a component of social ranking in some societies: material goods are used as indices for other aspects of community organisation in some societies;

and at abasic level, proxemic

behaviour and the arrangement of personal space are topics of social concern in contemporary societies. Three ambiguities are involved.

There is a tendency to see material order

in a community as a dependent variable;

51

merely a reflection of other aspects

of community life. This involves the premise that material order such as tool type and house form, will change as and when other factors demand. Stated in this form the proposal almost seems self-evident. Tools cannot refuse to change, they are produced by people. But the situation is not that simple. Simply in terms of material function a supply of tools or a mass of residential structures possess an inertia that affects community options. One of the problems of contemporary urban and economic life is how to cope with the vast areas of old and in some cases redundant and decrepit structures whether residential or industrial. Changing or removing them demands energy expenditure by a society, affecting other options that the group might pursue. Therefore, on material functional grounds alone the material order of a settlement affects other aspects cl community life. There is some degree of coherent interaction but the material frame of the community can also act as a potentially deleterious, independent variable. Its use as a neutral referent for social order is unsatisfactory. A further complication is the apparent occurrence of internal design order in the material patterns of a settlement. Such formal regularities in tool design, pot shape or settlement structure should restrict the possible choices that the community will be willing to make. The mere presence of that order argues that arbitrary formal alterations are unlikely to be made while a community can act as its own decision maker. We are aware that human groups do not necessarily alter their life styles to cope adequately with circumstances. They are capable of refusing new options whether economic or artistic and can be in error in their rejections. Variables other than conscious "sensible" thought and the demands of circumstances are plainly involved. The functional need for formal order (e.g. rent coherent classifications for aiding reference to aspects of reality) appear to be one of those variables. It involves the treatment of material data as formal order directly expressed in the behaviour of the community. The second ambiguity follows from the above.

Freeman 8 pointed out that

reconstructing the past according to the present is fallacious if we want to find out whether or not the past resembled the present. Only if we presume no change in group organisation, i.e a non-evolutionary/non-adaptation stand•

point, can association analogy be validly used. But this approach does not circumvent the dilemma of assuming the state that we wish to investigate: i.e. what was the past like? The difficulty lies in deciding how one is going to describe the past. If, for example, one pursued the current wish to find what goes with what, we could set up a research programme to identify a relationship (if any) between round "houses" and particular types of social organisation. Even if one showed that every known case in the contemporary world displayed a simple correlation of structure with society, we would still be no nearer to a description of past social order on that basis. On theoretical grounds alone the contemporary state could be a product of preferential selection through time: a process that we could only study in the archaeological record. Also, a single exception would wreck the significance of the correlation for reconstruction purposes since any one of the cases in the past could also not conform. A model would be required that is able to succinctly describe the structure/social connection in highly specific terms; defining the otherwise possible states that the model categorically excludes; and capable of potential but not actual refutation, at this time, by the available

52

data. Since every past case is a potential refutation the study would still be limited to its field of competence, i e. contemporary data. The suspicion .

arises that we are simply asking the wrong questions of past data in which documentary or direct verbal evidence of social patterns is not available. If, of course, other questions can be asked of material data, then versions of those questions can be asked of such data throughout the range of known hominid existence.Sa Only if material data is seen as secondary and "poor" does this seem absurd. The critical issue is that data are neither good nor bad: it is questions that are appropriate or inappropriate. The third ambiguity therefore arises. In analysing the behaviour of a contemporary society, an anthropologist takes into account both the actuality of motor behaviour and the statements of opinion made by actors or observers. In the archaeological record the data are a correlate of actual behaviour. But there is no direct ideal/actual connection. Levi-Strauss 9 has noted that a cross cousin marriage system might only involve the communities' stated kind of marriage on about 20% of the marital occasions. This may be enough to define the group socially but is it sufficient to give the community a distinct material pattern? Since the classifications and categories of contemporary studies are based on both the ideal and actual sources of data there can be no direct and necessary link between those labels and the order recognisable in material data. Instead of one unknown, the supposed social system, there are at least two if not more. Reconstruction has to cope with the absence of stated opinion and the complications that arise from an unknown connection between that unknown and the actual behavioural product. As Deetz 1° noted, it does not necessarily follow that because we can deal with present day communities using particular classifications and categories, that those labels will inevitably be appropriate to the treatment and organisation of long term data. The assumption behind a belief in the appropriate quality of contemporary labels appears to be that present moments represent a complete data supply that degenerates as it persists through time. But this is fallacious. While there is no dispute that some specific elements of data are eliminated or ruined, the process is not simply one of cumulative damage. As is well shown by Isaac's ii work, the past is the only source of data on long term, time trends. From a long term view a present moment is an incomplete and possibly irrelevant component of a study concerned with trends through time. There can be no assumption that all moments directly affect the developing future. Such a precondition to any further work would paralyse research since it would require the collection of all facts: an impossible task. The assumption is simply not required for research to proceed. And there is a strong theoretical and practical basis for presuming that the assumption is a poor description of reality. The premise that community behaviour is more than a sum of the behaviour and attitudes of the component members seems to adequately describe human groups.

Furthermore, the nature of

social cause and effect operates differently at different scales of space and time. Individuals at any one instant in time are capable of offering new options to their communities, but communities, by actions ranging over varying periods of time, can either accept or reject those options. Environments, in the long term, select for or against a community. Environments do not predefine choices, only the outcome of community pursued decisions. 53

Nor do communities absolutely predefine the choices of individuals, only the consequences to the individual of pursuing a particular choice. Regularities could be studied at any of these levels. The issue of personal psychology and group influences is not a prerequisite to studying long term, viable economic patterns. Conversely, the latter study does not make studies of personal psychology or community behaviour redundant. The labels we need to use depend not on some absolute of basic facts but on the degree to which they are appropriate to the problems we wish to study and the data we want to use. If we recognise that other labels can be applied to material data over long time ranges it also follows that other ways of treating contemporary material data may be worthwhile. CONCLUSIONS There is no clear basis for a claim that creating correspondence between data from the past and present requires past data to be transformed into a semblance of the categories we use to treat data in the present. We might usefully try to move away from the "material as referent" viewpoint toward a more systemic pattern. Material patterns can be recognised as giving functional aid but also as possessors of a functional inertia that makes them an independent and potentially critical variable in the workings of a community. There is an additional need to emphasise that if there is a formal order in the design of material entities then that order (however it connects to individual attitude, regularities in social behaviour, etc.) will also act as a constraint on possibilities of stability and change in design patterns, and therefore on a group's capacity to adjust to circumstances. So called "action archaeology" could be altered into a much needed major research procedure to study the interrelationship between material order and other aspects of contemporary community organisation. This does not as yet exist as a coherent field of research even though numerous isolated studies have already been done. There is for instance a vast amount of data available in architectural studies but it needs to be approached from a different viewpoint in a different conceptual structure. The critical difference of approach involves an assessment of mechanisms of adaptation that covers both the adaptive and maladaptive response of communities to their circumstances. In the process the relationship between the material and the "soft" parts of a community needs to be moved away from the "x with y" descriptive explanation toward models that clearly state the scale of causation to which they refer; that have a more inclusive capacity; and which specify new problems and can be subject to the possibility of refutation by the data they purport to describe. The context for the above approaches is that data from the past and the present, and the concepts used to deal with the various parts of that continuum, be regarded as different but complementary. Translating this into administrative and disciplinary labels the initial implication is that archaeology/prehistory and social anthropology/sociology can relevantly pursue portions of their respective past and present sources in their own ways. There need be no requirement that the work of either group be directly appropriate and relevant

54

to the other. methods.

Obviously each group has its own necessary purposes and

But it also follows that those exclusive purposes are not sufficient

as a treatment of human behaviour. Other approaches are possible and required, that are concerned with problems demanding investigation both of short and long term processes as part of an integrated theoretical format. Rather than being inter-disciplinary we can pursue a pan-disciplinary approach. Instead of asking how the data and analyses of archaeology/prehistory and social anthropology/sociology may be relevant to one another we can ask how components of both sets of data/analyses may be relevant and appropriate to the study of problems in human behaviour, independent of the particular time/ space orientations of the respective disciplines. The possibility can be illustrated by an outline of work on one of the material/social relationships that has considerable consequence in contemporary life and has also been one of the topics pursued in reconstructions of past data. This is the relationship between population and area within settlements. Contemporary concern revolves around the consequences of residential densities in the viable operation of communities. The interest for studies of past settlements has centred on the reconstruction of population estimates from areas, as a basis for opinions on social organisation and issues of economic viability. The study of contemporary communities has suffered from a lack of perception on long term processes. The study of past settlements has suffered from a failure to recognise structural order as an issue in its own right rather than as an indirect referent for population and social organisation.

55

POPULATION AND SETTLEMENT AREA: A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION

DATA FROM CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS Issues The relationship between residential density and the viability of human communities is an issue of substantial concern at present, especially in the context of urban life.

Discussion of the issue has been pursued vigorously

since the 1960s by a variety of approaches. Calhoun's 12 classic study of the "environmental sink" effect in populations of laboratory rats illustrates a basis on which analogy has been made between human and other animal populations on a laboratory basis.

Freedman's

13

studies of human response'

to controlled density conditions are the laboratory equivalent in purely human studies. By contrast there are field studies, whether of other species as illustrated by Wynne-Edward's work,

14

with desired analogies;

or the work

by Galle, Grove and McPherson 15 on the relationship between residential densities and other social variables in Chicago. studies is given by Esser. 16

A useful horizon in these

The critical outcome of a decade's work has been summarised by Freedman. He emphasises that no simple density/social pathology correlation has been found either in laboratory or field studies of human beings.

A high incidence

of marital failure, suicide, juvenile delinquency, etc. is not directly correlated with actual high density conditions.

The derivative implications of

Freedman's work are that high density living can have both positive and negative effects;

and that frequency of interactions rather than density itself

is the relevant variable.

The corollary of the laboratory studies is however

that adverse effects would result from a high frequency of interaction with unknown persons, in contexts where the purpose of interaction is ambiguous and no end to the situation could be readily perceived by the actors. 17

The

current difficulty is that while many researchers seem to suspect or even presume that high density living does have deleterious effects, by way of an excessive frequency of interaction, the data so far obtained are far from an unambiguous interpretation.

A clue to dealing with this dilemma lies in

Freedman's recognition that the practices he suggests for positive, high density living depend on a substantial capital expenditure.

This is needed

to supply the spaces that can limit noise, define the frequency and number of people you are likely to meet, and so on.

Some indications of cost in

another sense comes from studies of human response to noise stress. People can cope with intense noise.

They are able to adapt, but the process

of adapting has its long term price in personal effectiveness once the noise has been mitigated. 18

56

Crucial to the discussion is therefore the development of an idea of different kinds of "cost", extending over various ranges of time and scale of activity. The approaches so far used have tended to concentrate on short term situations, using models of day to day interaction. Approach Given that societies appear to choose where they allocate their use of resources, within the constraints of group behaviour, there is a consequence that one factor like high density living (or even high frequency of interaction) will not display any simple correlation to positive or negative social conditions at any one instant in time. Plainly, large amounts of capital may be allocated to high density living areas, but bad living conditions of any kind could also be neglected while capital is taken up by some other purpose. Within this frame, individual and small group responses may have the characteristics identified by Freedman. However, generalising to the operations of large population aggregates covering large areas should not be done. A linear cause-effect cannot be assumed to exist between local activities and the general functioning of a community. If there is a general behavioural limit to residential densities, or, more precisely, to tolerable frequency of interaction, that limit should be displayed in the population/area relationship in many different types of settlement. The important point to note is that the community will not necessarily show signs of disruption or social pathologies because it is existing at the hypothesised "density" limit. Viability would depend on the community's capacity to cope with its possible internal trouble and/or the way the community tries to utilise its resources to transform residential contexts. However, if there is such a ceiling, communities might be unlikely to persist above it. A consequence of such a "ceiling" should be that community life beyond it becomes very expensive, either in social terms or in direct energy cost. Investigation of a limit to frequency of interaction can be easily taken up as a pilot research project. Though frequency of interaction itself is very difficult to measure, and would be expensive to obtain and limited to contemporary communities, population and density data are easily obtained and can be found in historical documentary sources as well.

There is no

need to claim that residential density is the causal factor in a limit on human behaviour, but only that the values can be used as an index for such a limitation. Procedure To investigate an issue as general as a limit to tolerable frequency of interaction the influence of the specific characteristics of each settlement or economic basis to a community needs to be controlled. This can be done in two ways. First, by asking whether any consistent density limit is apparent in a wide variety of different social/economic systems. A pattern common to them all would need to be considered as an overall characteristic of human communities. The specific way that characteristic will be played out in each community would depend on the particular social, economic organisation involved.

Secondly, to minimise the effects of particular

57

technologies we can ask the question about population/density at a general level.

The approach used is to take a ground area description and associate

it with the general population within the settlement or parts of a settlement. This eliminates the possibility that any particular technological practice could circumvent or negate the proposed behavioural limit. For example, if a behaviour ceiling can be identified for population/ground area in urban settlements, that restriction could not be circumvented by a proposal to alter the population/"floor" area relationship by erecting multi.-storey structures. If the whole urban area were covered by such structures, the density/ground area relationship would not be reduced. That density limit would be exceeded even though the amount of floor space per person could have increased. The latter is only a component of the general population/space relationship in the settlement. Multi-storey buildings might cope with the particulars of floor space demands and local area conditions but cannot be taken as sufficient to deal with general space requirements. By using single instants from the long term population/density trends of many different communities, the effect of aberrant cases can be controlled. Communities that are declining or breaking up are to be expected. But severe difficulties or demise will cover a relatively brief portion of a settlement's time span. Therefore, over any given range of time there will be a greater probability of sampling workable rather than failing communities; unless, of course, the entire ecosystem concerned is in difficulties. A sample of many single instants should indicate the overall working characteristics of settlements, though the pattern should also show up some exceptions. Data Residential densities within settlements can be described in a variety of ways; ranging from personal space in rooms; through roofed living space; to local area densities within settlements and on to general population densities for entire settlement areas. Three descriptions have been chosen as illustrations because of the difficulties inherent in comparing different kinds of settlement. The basic problem is the relative classification of space in the camps of mobile hunter/ gatherers compared to the settlements of sedentary hunter/gatherers, or agricultural and industrial communities. A single camp containing, for example, three windbreaks, could be seen as the equivalent of a suburban "house" or of the general area of a large settlement. This ambiguity may be a significant component in the study of settlement mechanics. In the camp of a group of mobile hunter/gatherers the elements of personal and public space are almost indistinguishable. In contrast there is often a substantial distinction between these types of space in larger, sedentary settlements. The data on mobile hunter/gatherer groups has therefore been related to three, alternative, density descriptions. 1)

densities in the local areas of a large settlement, e.g. in the administrative subdivisions of a city.

2)

densities in the central areas of large settlements, e.g. the overall density in the central part of an urban area where the densities exceed the average for the whole settlement. 58

3)

densities for the general area of a settlement, i.e. within the broad limits of a settlement, however defined.

Results (Figure 1) 1)

In specific areas of a settlement, technology may be able to create tolerable residential conditions at densities equal to those in mobile hunter/gatherer's camps.

2)

The upper limit to the high central residential densities that can be carried by a community declines as the total population in the settlement increases. The trend for industrial and agricultural settlements, when extrapolated lies somewhat above the general densities for sedentary hunter/gatherer and Amazonian agricultural communities. Mobile hunter/gatherers tolerate whole camp area densities in excess of urban, central area densities. This trend supports the argument that frequency of interaction is a crucial variable. At high densities, as population size increases the minimum amount of space needed per person in central urban areas increases, as if community life is aided by greater overall distance between people.

3)

The above trend is even more marked for general settlement densities. As population aggregates increase there is a general tendency for increased amounts of space to be required per person for the settlements with the highest overall densities.

Consequences The Hong Kong 19 local area densities indicate that although technical virtuosity may be a solution to housing some parts of an urban population, it cannot be applied to an entire town or city unless the general population/ density is also kept on or near the density ceiling. Limiting conditions need to be considered at each level in the hierarchy of density/area relationships. Both the central area and general area densities suggest complications in the expansion of a community. Population growth will involve an increasingly rapid growth in the cost of viable transport and communications, while consuming more land at a progressively faster rate. At high densities, as populations increase, more space is apparently needed per person, compared to the density state for smaller populations. The features which fill that space could be different in each settlement or settlement type. The density ceiling specifies that some aspects associated with high density living act as a constraint on human communities. Whether or not social pathologies occur at any one time, particular population/density combinations appear to be parameters to community growth. Statements about the correlates and consequences of residential density or high frequency of interaction, at any one brief period in time, are inadequate descriptions of the condition of a community. It is not sufficient to state that high density living can be workable. For a large community to persist, capital expenditure will have to be made, 20 whether to constrain pathological behaviour or to create the spatial/social conditions necessary for viable daily life. community has to be able to find that capital.

59

The

The Boserup model 21 of

population as a resource, to produce the capital to aid the persistence of a community is inextricably tangled 'vith the need to organise the space that can maintain a viable pattern of behaviour for an increasing population. One critical variable would be the community's capacity and willingness to transform its spatial order. One of the necessary concerns in settlement dynamics would appear to be the way in which space is organised by communities, as a component of group behaviour. We need not presume that spatial organisation depends on economic requirements. A community can expend greater effort than its economic base will stand. Any community could opt for a spatial pattern whose economic cost would lead to loss of viability at the current population size. But, the spatial alteration could alternatively act as an aid to social coherence, providing time for new economic options to develop. The issue is the way in which the demands for formal order, as an aid to behavioural coherence, might aid or hinder spatial change. Determinism, either by individual rationality or by the influence of circumstances on community behaviour, is a confusion of causal scales. Conclusion: or what to do with contemporary material/social data on behaviour in settlements. 1)

A long term viewpoint on the material aspects of community life can be usefully applied to contemporary data. Answers to questions about the present can be approached without having to pass through the specifics that we tend to see as important in daily life. Therefore, when working on long term material data there need be no obligation to obtain the grain of detail occurring in present moments before research can continue.

2)

A density/population statement indicates a ceiling to operable human communities. But the density values are only an index for the effects of a range of factors.

3)

Among those factors the role of spatial organisation as an independent variable might be usefully assessed.

In contemporary contexts this would involve: i) ii) iii)

the relationship between proxemic behaviour and the arrangement of structural space. 22 the relationship between these and social organisation. 23 the use of historical sources on the development of a variety of settlements to assess whether or not their density changes conform to the density ceiling.24

60

DATA FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS Issues Spatial data, particularly within archaeological sites, have been taken as referents for the population and the social organisation which once existed in that spatial frame. As Ihave already outlined, there is a connection but it does not seem to fit the "direct derivative product" model that seems to be behind many reconstructions of past situations. Residential area has, for instance, been used in a variety of ways as an index of the population in a settlement. But as investigation of area/population in a settlement. But as investigation of area/population has proceeded we have become aware that a convenient 1.1 association does not occur in contemporary data, except at the level of "larger settlements tending to contain more people." Alternative arrangement of people in space applies even for roofed living space, as Casselbury 25 points out in his criticism of Narroll's 26 population/ area correlation. Between area and population there intervenes the behaviour of the community, as if it uses its own particular model of space to locate objects and beings in the settlement. One aspect of this is the occurrence of apparently preferred, interpersonal spacings (proxemic behaviour). A community's proxemic pattern is a statement of the amounts of space that seem to be accepted as necessary for the participating members of the community. But this "message" is only a small part of a community's tendency to organise space. If we wish to identify population sizes for past communities a necessary basis ought to be information on the dimensional organisation of space that is contained in the structures and locational pattern of the settlement. Even on this basis, however, the concern with population estimates runs into difficulties. There is no such entity as the population which can be described by some universally appropriate index, such as total number of people. A settlement contains people but that aggregate has many possible population descriptions ranging from total number;

to numbers by age class;

to statements such as the number of equal consumption units in the community. Designating the 2 year old child as a consumption unit, adults would be described by differing multiples of this value. Searching for a population estimate is not enough. We should define why we want an estimate so that other researchers may assess whether or not we have used an appropriate level of accuracy. Accuracies for correlation to social organisation need not be the same as those required in a general discussion of viable and over-exploiting population loads on a given supply of resources. The unsatisfactory nature of seeking specific population estimates, as if one is referring to actual numbers of people, follows from the current treatment of area/population data. The assumption that an idea of population size can be obtained by borrowing from later information on a settlement, or by reconstruction from densities in now existing local communities, presumes that population density is a neutral statement indicating nothing more about the community than the quantity of people it contains.

But a density statement is not neutral,

since density figures act as an index for a behavioural limit to viable community life. The density figures for the late phases of a settlement's existence might be terminal precisely because the community has tried to live at the density

61

ceiling and could not cope. Extrapolating back in time would be absurd: a part of the more general, tacit assumption that the present should be used as a basis for describing the past. Logical criticism of that assumption has already been given. But this issue is not a minor, logical quibble. A reason for trying to comprehend the past of man is to gauge such issues as the relative persistence of different cultural options. Estimates of past behaviour are not just interesting, they are of consequence in the decisions we may make about fundamentals of human behaviour.

However we define those fun-

damentals, the arguments would involve the pattern of behaviour through time. Misapprehension about past conditions then takes on a more serious aspect. Freedman 27 quotes, as evidence for the acceptable qualities of high density living, that hunter/gatherers in France in the period 40-10,000 B.C. were living at high residential densities in their caves.

But this population density

data will have been obtained by extrapolation from present day societies, or by extension from population estimates based on food supply. The first presumes what it seeks to find out; the second involves the problem of converting consumption units into a "persons per head" figure and the difficulty of deciding what area the people were using. Ido not wish to argue that Late Glacial hunter/gatherers were not living at high residential densities: Isuspect that they were. But there is no acceptable, logical basis for reconstructing that situation by association analogy and then using the result as a claim for stability, cultural continuity or whatever. Population figures may be worth obtaining but this is no way to get them, or to use them. Consequences The problems posed above suggest that studies of population structure and social organisation based on settlement form, need some reassessment. As suggested in the discussion of contemporary data the spatial order apparently used by a community would be one of the crucial variables in that group's capacity to transform its settlement through time. That capacity would be involved in adjustments to circumstances, including population size and frequency of interaction.

We need to find out whether or not material, spatial

order operates as an independent variable; and then, if it is such a variable, to find out how it works. We might usefully consider studying this issue where its long term aspects can be checked, in the past material data on human behaviour. Whether we regard reconstruction of population and social organisation as our concern and seek to apply contemporary labels to the past; or we use the past to answer questions about human behaviour, the material order of past settlements becomes a research issue in its own right. Material data need not be seen as a proxy referent for the "soft" parts of community life. The former needs information on community response to space, the latter considers the response to be an issue in itself. If this is the case for settlement structure then it should also follow for other material aspects. But, can we devise worthwhile questions requiring answers from the past?

62

Conclusions:

or what to do with archaeological settlement sites:

As with contemporary data we can define a number of questions which could appropriately be asked of data from the past of man. 1)

A recognition that material spatial order is of consequence in the workings of human communities and could be assessed as an independent variable, can inform our approach to data from the past.

It offers

material data the quality of possessing relevance as information in its own right rather than as a neutral referent for other variables. 28 2)

We need to find out what range of spatial order human groups have used. Past communities may have used spatial patterns that are no longer operable. Their demise and their functioning would provide a useful mirror to hold to present day behaviour.

3)

In sites with long time spans the rate and manner of change in spatial organisation could be related to the character of the spatial order apparently used by a community. 29 The role of differing degrees of tolerated variation in aiding or restricting change would be one of the topics of concern.

4)

The archaeological record allows us to assess the relative viability of the different types of dimensional spatial order. Particular types of order may have become progressively more common through time if circumstances preferentially select for particular ways of organising space.

An associated topic would be an attempt to assess whether any particular spatial characteristics are associated with the terminal phases of a settlement. PAST AND CONTEMPORARY DATA:

Conclusions

Ihave tried to outline in this paper some reasons for recognising data from the past and present of man as complementary: a continuum of information over which a continuum of differing questions can be pursued. There is no obligation to reconstruct the past as a version of the present, nor need we use the classification and concepts which we now associated with our contemporary short time-range view. The questions asked of past data can be validly different. They need not resemble our personalised, verbally based approach

to living human communities.

Material patterns of human behaviour

can be studied across the entire range of the species existence up to the instant of any present moment. The quality of the data lies in the cumulation of temporal order. Many other aspects of human behaviour are directly available only in a tightly constrained period close to our present time. But in that period lies the observable data on our densely entangled acts as living beings. The two sources are complementary and the relationship between the disciplines that study those sources can be reciprocal: a working, mutual respect could follow.

63

REFERENCES

1.

Hill, J.N., 1970. Southwest:

Prehistoric social organisation in the American

theory and method, p. 28.

In Longacre W. A. (ed.) 1970.

Reconstructing Prehistoric Pueblo Societies, Albuquerque. 2.

Flannery, K., 1973. (ed.) 1973.

3.

In Redman C. L.

Research and Theory in Current Archeology, New York.

Goody, J. R. (ed.) 1958. Groups.

4.

Archeology with a Capital S.

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Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 1, Cambridge.

Kleindeinst, M. R. and Watson P. J., 1966.

Action Archaeology:

the archaeology inventory of a living community.

Anthropology

Tomorrow, Vol. V, pp. 75-78. 5.

Leach, E. R., 1973. (ed.) 1973.

6.

Concluding Address p. 767.

In Renfrew, C.

The Explanation of Culture Change, London.

Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A., (eds.) 1970.

Criticism and the Growth

of Knowledge, Cambridge. 7.

Fletcher, R. J., 1976.

Space in Settlements.

Unpublished Ph.D.

thesis, University of Cambridge. 8.

Freeman, L. G., 1968.

A theoretical framework for interpreting

archaeological

p. 267.

1968. 8a.

material,

In Lee, R. B. and de Yore, I. (eds.

Man the Hunter, Chicago.

See M. Schiffer, 1976.

Behavioral Archeology, New York.

offers a viewpoint and a methodology for pursuing this issue.

Schiffer Though

his basis is different, Schiffer and I seem to have approached similar conclusions. 9.

Levi-Strauss, C., 1968.

The concept of primitiveness p. 350.

In

Lee and de yore (eds.) 1968. 10.

Deetz, J., 1970. in Anthropology.

Archaeology as social science. In Current Directions Bulletin of the American Anthropological Association,

3 (32), pp. 115-125. 11.

Isaac, G. L., 1972.

Chronology and the tempo of cultural change

during the Pleistocene. 1972. 12.

In Bishop W. M., and Miller J. A. (eds.)

The Calibration of Hominoid Evolution, Edinburgh.

Calhoun, J. B. 1962.

Population density and social pathology.

Scientific American, Vol. 220, pp. 139-148. 13.

Freedman, J. L., 1975.

Crowding and Behaviour, San Francisco.

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Wynne-Edwards, V. C., 1962. Social Behaviour, Edinburgh. 64

Animal Dispersion in Relation to

15.

Galle, 0. R., Grove, W. R. and McPherson, J. M. 1972. Population density and pathology: Science, Vol. 176, pp. 23-30.

16.

Esser, A., (ed.)1971.

what are the relations for Man?

Behaviour and Environment:

the use of space

by animals and men, New York. 17.

Freedman, J. L., 1975.

p. 76.

18.

Glass, D. C. and Singer, J. E., 1972.

19.

Chan, H. K., 1970.

Urban Stress, New York.

The Provision of Public Housing in Hong Kong.

Unpublished thesis, Sydney University. 20.

In 1972 it was estimated that re-housing 1.8 million over ten years would cost HK3000 million at 1972 rates.

"with very heavy additional

expenditures for all the facilities to ensure a pleasant and healthy environment". Hong Kong. 21. 22.

Hong Kong, 1973:

A Review of 1972,

pp.

98-99,

Boserup, E., 1965.

The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, London.

Sommer, R., 1969.

Personal Space, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Fletcher, R. J., 1976.

Chapter 4.

23.

Hall, E. T., 1966.

The Hidden Dimension, London.

24.

Fletcher, R. J., 1976.

25.

Casselbury, S. E., 1974. Further refinement of formulae for determining population from floor area. World Archaeology, Vol. 6,

Chapter 5.

pp. 117-122. 26.

Naroll, R., 1962.

Floor area and settlement population.

American

Antiquity, Vol. 27, pp. 587-589. 27.

Freedman, J. L., 1975.

28.

Fletcher, R. J., In Press. Space in settlements: a mechanism of adaptation. In Clarke, D. L., (ed.) Spatial Archaeology. Fletcher, R. J., In Press.

p.

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a discussion of In Gay, J. (ed.)

Publication of papers presented at the conference on Universals of Human Thought 29.

Cambridge, 1975.

Fletcher, R. J., 1976.

Chapter 9.

65

FIGURE I Density descriptions:

upper density limits

Key (Dates A.D.) a)

Mobile hunter/gatherer camps MeoofS.E. Asia 1960s. Kung of S. Africa 1960s.

b)

c)

2

General area densities Sedentary hunter/gatherer settlements 1800-1970

3

Amazon agricultural settlements 1950-70

4

India agricultural settlements 1961

5

World-wide urban settlements' 850-1850

6

World-wide urban settlements 2 1930-1940s

7

America urban settlements 1940

8

Central area densities World-wide urban areas 1960s

d)

9

Local area densities Hong Kong, urban subdivisions 1960s

10

Notes 1.

Lanchow (1870) and Tientsin (1865) had general area densities as high as the central area 1974.

2.

bnsity limit.

See:

Chandler, T. and Fox, G.,

3000 Years of Urban Growth, New York.

Shanghai had a general area density approaching the central area density limit.

See:

Fooks, E., 1946.

X-Raying the City, Melbourne.

-

Co

-

Cl.

(10 0 (0

-

U)

C'.

If

I

-4.

cri

0 —J

ACKNOWLEDGE MENTS

My thanks go to David Clarke for discussion and argument. Ishall miss his critical, enthusiastic interest. This paper is an attempt to develop on the viewpoint he offered in Clarke, 1972).

Models and Paradigms in Archaeology (ed. D. L.

The interrogative abilities of the staff and students of the Department of Anthropology, Sydney University have been much appreciated. Whatever this study may lack is my responsibility.

68

THE HAZARDS OF ANTHROPOLOGY L. M. Groube

ABSTRACT The route to a richer archaeology must not be through either the data or theory of anthropology but via the archaeology of ethnography-rich regions. The long standing suspicion of the validity or chronologically and culturally remote ethnographic analogies is usually well justified: the importance of archaeologists' work in areas where analogy is not necessary and ethnographic data is a directly accessible relic of the (recent) prehistoric past has been largely ignored. The character and quality of field evidence, the problems, methods and solutions offered, do have great significance to British archaeology.

It is not surprising that the publication in 1958 of Willey and Phillip's Method and Theory in American Archaeology was only dimly appreciated by European archaeologists. To have understood its import they would have required familiarity with such giants as McKern, Kreiger, Rouse and many other pioneers who had laboured, with considerable success, to order the incredibly rich archaeology of the North American continent

...

an archae-

ology bereft of the convenient chronological markers available to the European archaeologist. They would have required also more than a passing familiarity with the catholic philosophy of American anthropology. The writings of Boas, Kroeber, Kluckhohn, Benedict or Lowie were unlikely bedtime reading for British archaeologists. Thus Willey's and Phillips's challenge that American archaeology was anthropology or nothing (Willey and Phillips 1958:2), sounded to British ears like another jingoistic slogan from across the Atlantic. Only Gordon Childe would have accepted that "an ultimate purpose" of archaeology was "the discovery of regularities that are in a sense spaceless and timeless" (thid. :2), but even Childe would not have assumed "the responsibility of finding, in the seemingly endless flow of cultural and social events, forms and systems of forms that are not only comparable to each other, but also comparable to, or at least compatible with, the forms and systems of forms of cultural and social anthropology" (id. :3). These were foreign passions in an unfamiliar language. Few could have recognised in the noise of these proclamations of faith to an unknown god, a serious challenge to their own discipline. It was the noise and suppressed energy of American archaeology which was more alarming than its apparent aberrance: there was probably a 69

patronising belief that given time and patience American archaeologists would rejoin the familiar historical mould of European archaeology. Two contemporary attempts to silence the babble, Christopher Hawkes's bemused View from the Old World (1954) and Childe's scrapbook of personal views, Piecing Together the Past (1956), merely emphasised the intellectual impotence of European archaeology which had grown from success to success with little time to pause and examine its philosophical credentials. The situation, unfortunately, has changed little after another two decades of debate. Most British archaeologists would tend to agree with Ritchie (1971:92) that "archaeology seems to have entered a phase influenced to a potentially unhealthy extent by anthropology"; many must have welcomed the anthropologist, Leach's, acerbic view that to the archaeologist "social organisation, as the anthropologist understands that term must forever remain a mystery" (Leach 1973:767). This view is in marked contrast to the ebullient faith of Binford (1972:95) that "data relevant to most, if not all, the components of past sociocultural systems are preserved in the archaeological record" Only Renfrew (1973:248-253) seems willing, cautiously, to ascribe to a similar faith: most established British archaeologists remain as ignorant of, and antipathetic towards, anthropology as in 1953. This paper is an attempt to re-examine the importance of anthropology to archaeologists by contrasting not only the different allegiances of archaeologists on either side of the Atlantic, but also by exploring the intellectual credentials of anthropology itself. My conclusions, at variance with the pessimism of Ritchie and wary of the excesses of the Binford enthusiasm, can be stated at the outset: the route to a richer archaeology must not be through either the data or theory of anthropology but via the archaeology of ethnography-rich regions. The long-standing suspicion of the validity of chronologically and culturally remote ethnographic analogies is usually well justified:

the importance of archaeologists' work in areas where analogy is

not necessary and ethnographic data is a directly accessible relic of the (recent) prehistoric past, has been largely ignored. The character and quality of field evidence, the problems, methods and solutions offered, do have great significance to British archaeology. 1.

The Archaeology of Recently Converted Savages

The ease and speed with which archaeology in Britain and Europe joined the establishment of academic respectability left neither the incentive nor the time for self-examination.

The archaeology in North America, in contrast,

had to fight for academic respectability, the source perhaps of the more bellicose posture of many Americanists, who had to prove that the prehistory of the minority American Indian population was as relevant and intellectually demanding as their own (white) European past. The persistent conflict between the ethnically respectable European archaeology (including, of course, classical archaeology) and the archaeology of recently converted savages can only be truly appreciated outside Europe, where the ever-present ethnic bias is more subtly disguised. My own experience in New Zealand of failing to convince well-educated urbane New Zealanders that the history of their country extended beyond the 70

pathetically recent date of 1840 has left me with a permanent appreciation of the danger of ethnic bias in archaeology.

A more recent and simpler colonial

situation than that of North America, it gave rise to the same ambivalences of allegiance to the past. To most New Zealanders of my generation, as to most pre-war Americans, the pre-European past of their country was best ignored or conveniently obscured, like their brutal colonial histories, behind a smokescreen of popular mythology. The simple substitution of 'preEuropean' for 'pre-historic' in the preceding sentence in indicative of the conflict: when does the pre-European period end in Europe? It is not surprising, therefore, that it was not until recently with the weakening of European ties, that the prehistory of the Maori gained local respectability. In contrast, the study of mythology, reaching alarming rigidity in New Zealand, achieved undeserved respectability, largely satisying the un-New Zealand curiosity of the handful of 'cranks' who showed interest in the history of the non-European inhabitants. Under the patronising eyes of the colonial regimes a sugar-coated mythology was promulgated through the schools and history books.

Ironically, today, it is the Maori, thoroughly

committed to a mythological version of their own history, despite well-attested doubts about the authenticity of some sources (Simmons 1969), who frown upon the activities of the increasingly vocal and rapidly growing totally pakeha archaeological community. Americanists, fortunately, did not have to struggle against such an allembracing substitute history: no single mythological scheme, no matter how adeptly conceived, could have encompassed the complexities of the North American situation. They did, however, suffer (as has the whole world) from one of the most effective mythological transformations of history, that contained in complex 'cowboy and Indian' mythology. The denigration of nineteenth century American history to the status of boys' adventure stories, with the Indian fulfilling the classical evil role, is an embarrassment to all educated Americans;

its persistence into and continued promotion throughout most of

this century is a striking example of the impotence of history in the face of common (and convenient) mis-beliefs. It is also a measure of the social and ethnic prejudices which had to be overcome for American archaeology to achieve its present status, and of the frustrating ambivalence of a situation where the ethnically unrespectable can simultaneously be the makers of fine stone tools. Pre-European archaeology in North America, therefore, could not shelter beneath the cosy nationalistic (or tribal) respectability accorded the discipline in Europe. Growing national confidence and the between wars 'isolationism' did not so much increase interest in the pre-colonial past as cut American archaeology off from many technical developments (particularly in excavation techniques) in the Old World. White America firmly identified its past with Europe and the Near East as is apparent from the collections in the rich American museums (Taylor 1948). Only with the revival of inter-tribal warfare in Europe in 1939, which effectively separated the Old and New Worlds, is there a significant intensification in archaeological activity in the Americas. Many of the foundation studies of modern American archaeology come from this energetic period

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when the majority of European archaeologists were caught up in the dyn'mic process of destruction and replacement upon which any archaeological record is ultimately founded. When American archaeology emerged from the Second World War it was not a fledgling study but a mature hardened discipline, growing with and sheltered by the respectability of American anthropology and which had acquired during its incubation many of its passions, much of its language and a great deal of its strength from American anthropology.

The association

was not simply one of convenience; the presence of the increasingly curious (and successful) archaeological infant insured that American anthropology did not adopt the consciously ahistorical stance of European (particularly British) social anthropology. The significance of time and cultural change in determining the shape of society was never entirely abandoned by American anthropologists. In Europe, where anthropology had little or no intellectual associa• tion with archaeology, anthropology deteriorated into a descriptive, effete, synchronic study, so theoretically weakened as to be ready victim for the recent onslaught of Marxist historicism. Thus, the clarion call of Taylor's (1948) A Study for Archaeology which advertised the emergence of modern American archaeology (or at least the vocalisation of dissent against what had preceded it), was a remarkable upset in the intellectual allegiance of archaeology. The emergent American discipline, although sharing many technical features with Old World archaeology and many identical or congruent aims, was nevertheless a new discipline, with much enlarged horizons and with a coherence and internal logic contrasting markedly with European archaeology. It had acquired also, during its difficult struggle to gain respectability, the praiseworthy habit of pausing to examine its own credentials. Unfortunately, because its main concern was for the archaeology of recently-converted savages, remote from the experience of most European archaeologists, it was accorded little more than a passing glance.

Only in the work of Clark (1952, 1954) and Childe (1951,

1956, etc.) can an influence be detected although this may be only an example of convergent evolution. 2.

The Archaeology of Anciently Converted 'Barbarians'

The struggles of American archaeology to gain recognition had few parallels in Europe. Classical archaeology, of course, had instant respectability as indeed a long history and its extension to include the non-classical civilizations was a natural development. Roman and post-Roman archaeology, with its strong cultural, religious and linguistic affinities with modern Europe, became rapidly 'nationalised' by the various European tribes. Were it not for the philologists' demonstration that the pre-Roman inhabitants of Europe were the putative (white-skinned) ancesters of the various Indo-European language communities of modern Europe, prehistoric studies might have suffered from the same ethnic prejudice encountered by Americanists. Nationalistic identification with the 'barbarians' of Europe made it difficult for archaeologists to appreciate the relevance to their own discipline of the recently converted 'savages' of North America or Oceania. The substitution of a white skin, the imprecision of the much older documentation

72

and ethnic bias enabled Europeans to view their own anciently converted barbarians with an equanimity seldom accorded the savages of their own colonial histories. The convenient Morgan/Engels savagery-barbarism distinction avoided any direct equation between the immediate pre-Roman past and the recent prehistory of much of the rest of the world. This delicate denial of such an equation is clearly evident in the selective employment of ethnographic analogies. Even during the nineteenth century when archaeological data, particularly the three-age model, were frequently employed by the evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists seemed less reluctant to recognise the "existing races as bona fide representatives of the races of antiquity" (Pitt-Rivers 1906:53), the more chronologically remote the archaeology was from the barbarians of the immediately pre-Roman past the more frequently was ethnographic analogy invoked. The culturally, geographically and historically remote Tasmanians, Australians, Patagonians and Bushmen were often (and still are) employed to illuminate the dimness of the Palaeolithic, but there seems to be, from the paucity of references, more resistance to seeking obvious pastoral analogies from the more recent Bantu. Only in the centuries immediately following the discovery of the New World (and before the archaeological 'class' structure of savagery, barbarism and civilization had emerged) were the savages of North America seriously proposed as models of the pre-Roman populations of England and Europe (Orme 1973:487-88). This was in the dim pre-archaeology days when the past was shrouded in mists and mythology. The prevailing beliefs in the 'noble savage' gave a moral respectability to such analogies. Unfortunately the birth of archaeology coincided with the transformation of the 'noble' into the 'ignoble' in the nineteenth century, when the expansion of European political and commercial interests came into collision with native interests and less attractive traits such as cannibalism, infanticide or head-hunting were widely publicised. Anthropology and archaeology were the offspring of this less tolerant, Eurocentric period. So far none of the more unpleasant aspects of ethnographic reality have surfaced in British archaeology: even a mildly thorough use of ethnographic analogy should have placed 'cannibalism', 'head-hunting' and 'infanticide' into the vocabulary of British archaeology. Harding's (1972: 68-70) review of Iron Age burial practices for example, is almost comical in its avoidance of such obvious interpretations, although ritual killing of adulterers and murderers, of which there are few ethnographic parallels, is suggested. The selectivity in the use of ethnographic analogy by European archaeologists suggests that we are witnessing not merely legitimate doubts about the validity of the method but a subtle 'screening' of the interpretation of the preRoman past. The absurdity of the European ethnic bias is no more apparent than in the temporary elevation of Piltdown man to an importance greater than the crown jewels (Howells 1959), or in the still prevailing passion of the French to recognise the spiritual birth of mankind in the Dordogne.

Ironically there were

probably many Americans (indifferent to their own country's savage past) in the long queues to file past Putdown man.

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With the recognition (by an Australian) that the prehistory of Europe was derived from the inventions and developments in the foreign lands of the Middle East, prehistoric and historic archaeology moved closer together and the character of European archaeology, as it is generally taught in the universities, emerged. Today in an atmosphere of detente between the rival European tribes a new nationalistic urgency seems to be about; a sort of prehistoric EEC, complete with astronomers, mathematicians and 'innovators' would seem to be about to emerge. One feature clearly distinguishes the American and European traditions of archaeology and that is the failure of the latter (with the exception of Childe) to articulate its aims and aspirations. With the writings of this lone intellectual assessor of the European tradition, it is clear that many of the apparent differences are terminological rather than actual. Many of the arguments of Piecing Together the Past (1956), although more muted, are not so very different from those contained in Willey and Phillips' book. Childe's advocation that "the archaeologist's quarry is valued only as a clue to something else the activity and mentality of their makers and users" (Childe 1956:4) -

is close to the 'conjunctive' approach of Taylor (1948).

The fundamental

unity of purpose hinted at here is more apparent from the deeds than the words of European archaeologists, although many others (e.g. Taligren 1937) anticipated Childe's views which are clearly in the mainstream of European archaeological (and historical) thinking. Indeed Iwould suspect that the practice (although not the proclamation) of the conjunctive approach has always been, until recently, superior on this side of the Atlantic. Carr conform closely to Taylor's plea for

The excavations at Star

"drawing together the completest picture of past human life in terms of its human and geographic environment" (Taylor 1948:95) Many European excavations, long before Star Carr, had employed abroad ecological strategy. The empirical tradition of European archaeology, although ill-adapted to philosophy and wary of theories, was quick to appreciate the new freedom accorded it by the invention of C' 4 dating. Excavations to secure sequences or confirm chronologies established from artefacts were rapidly outmoded. The broadening aspirations of historical archaeologists, particularly the Medievalists, had an impact upon the archaeology of other periods where the same techniques and often the same personnel were employed. Indeed W. W. Taylor and many American archaeologists who followed could be accused of creating a false bogey-man out of "history" which had long ceased to be the dry, event-ridden procession of dates remembered by bored school children. The historical tradition to which European archaeologists consciously claimed allegiance was already 'conjunctive' in Taylor's sense; explanation rather than documentation was a dominant objective.

In seeking explanation the historians net was drawn widely to incorporate

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geographical, demographic, economic and sociological data. Like archaeology and anthropology, history had been influenced by evolutionary theorists, economic determinists and even Freudian ideas. Although with a different empirical base, European history was closer to Taylor's conjunctive approach than it has been given credit for by many critics of archaeology. Generally, however, only Medieval archaeology has exploited the broader horizons of historical method and explanation; the caution of a long empirical tradition has tended to delay excursions into speculation or theorising in periods where historical documentation was weak. Nevertheless the richness of the historical tradition of Europe offers much of the flexibility, resourcefulness and catholicity of the American anthropological tradition.

Unfortunately too few

archaeologists have accepted the breadth of the historical approach; the habit of data-winning has not been replaced by problem-seeking and explanation (apart from, of course, excavation); too few archaeologists in the hot pursuit after facts have glanced over their shoulder and noted the growing midden of unresolved problems abandoned in the fury of the hunt. The strongly empirical tradition of European archaeology, although essential in the initial stages of fact-winning, has left many archaeologists ill-equipped even to recognise problems beyond the mere assemblage of facts. It is this weakness among the more conservative European archaeologists which leads to such absurdities as C. C. Taylor's recent denial that any true pattern of settlement can be established for pre-Saxon England (Taylor 1972). It accounts, too, for the latent hostility towards the introduction of new techniques, which also raise a fresh crop of problems. Thus, although C14 dating was readily absorbed into the empirical tradition, the mention of statistics to the average British archaeologist produces obvious signs of distress. The powerful tools of trend, probability and correlation have not challenged the archaeologists' trowel. 3.

The Anthropology of Recently Converted Savages

With the eclipse of evolutionary anthropology, archaeological evidence, central to the evolutionists' schemes, ceased to have relevance for the new 'synchronic' studies of anthropologists like Boas and Malinowski.

In reaction

to the excesses of nineteenth century evolutionary anthropology, a new, more empirical anthropology, firmly founded on in-depth field work, but with an intellectual ancestry through the French sociologist Durkheim back to Comte and the Age of Enlightenment, gained rapid ascendancy in the first two decades of the twentieth century. This healthy revolution was not without casualties: all forms of historicism became suspect. Boas and his pupils, although neither strictly anti- eolutionary nor anti-historical, rejected historical theory, universal schemes and most forms of deterministic history. The developments in Britain which gave rise to the influential 'structural-functional' school were consciously ahistorical; they did not deny the existence of time or the importance of change they simply chose to ignore it. This extraordinary feat, ...

anticipated by Durkheim and his followers, was not quite the classical baby with the bathwater syndrome: the baby (of history) was not so much thrown out with the bathwater (of evolutionism) as never again bathed. When, t o persist with this clichó, the gr i me ofyears of neglect was scraped off during

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the last two decades it was found to be a bouncing Marxist infant, with a remarkable family resemblance to ith evolutionary lineage. Malinowski's views on history are typical of the 'stand-offt ambivalence of the powerful between-wars 'structural-functionalist' school: "While reconstruction of the past is interesting historically and theoretically, practically it contains no hints, since there can be no return to what has been destroyed, what has been forgotten.. .. (Malinowski 1945:33). Most archaeologists will shudder at this denial of 'hints', although in fairness to Malinowski, the reconstructions to which he took particular aversion were those of past institutions and evolutionary 'phases' invoked by evolutionists to explain apparent 'survivals' in extant societies. Radcliffe-Brown, growing more tolerant towards history over the years, specifically identifies the source of his aversion to history: "Anthropologists, thinking of their study as a kind of historical study fall back on conjecture and imagination and invent 'pseudo-historical' and 'pseudo-causal' explanations ... such speculations are not merely useless but are worse than useless. This does not in any way imply the rejection of historical explanation but quite the contrary." (Radcliffe-Brown 1952:3). Their anti-historical stance, then, was largely directed at conjectural 'history' yet their championing of synchronic studies of society and their frequent disavowal of the practical advantage of historical data resulted in a serious blindspot in the interpretation of their synchronic evidence. The existence of such ablindspot had been recognised by Durkheim (Radcliffe-Brown's acknowledged intellectual ancestor): "History is not only the natural framework of human life, man is a product of history. If one takes him out of history, if one tries to conceive of him outside time, fixed, immobile, one distorts him. This immobile man is not man". (Durkheim 1920:89). This belief, indeed, was crucial to his concept of 'social reality': "In order to know how it (social reality) is, it is necessary to know how it has come to be, that is to have followed in history the manner in which it has been progressively formed ... in order to understand the present it is necessary to go outside it." (quoted in Bellah 1959:461). This important statement reversed the law of uniformitarianism: one of the keys to the present is the past. The facile rejoinder to this 'slogan which crops up with tiresome regularity' by Piddington, one of Malinowski's most faithful followers, that "what really matters is not what actually happened in the past but what people believe to have happened". 76

(Piddington 1957:798),

has proved to be a charter for disaster in certain ethnographic contexts (see (4) below). In any case the fihal phrase should have read 'what anthropologists believe people believe to have happened'. Levi-Strauss, the brilliant heir to the Durkheimiañ tradition, reaffirms Durkheim 's stance towards the significance of history: "Scorning the historical dimension on the pretext that we have insufficient means to evaluate it, except approximately, will result in us being satisfied with an impoverished sociology, in which phenomena are set loose, as it were, from their foundations". (Levi-Strauss 1967:23). Despite this powerful statement Levi-Strauss admits: "I do not practise history but Iam determined that its rights should be reserved". (ibid. :25). The hollowness of this claim can be seen from Firth's similar but more pragmatic recognition that the anthropologist "has bartered time span for (the privilege of) being able to rub shoulders with reality" (Firth 1951:83). Along, probably with many of the new Marxist anthropologists, Isuspect that this 'barter' may have lost one of the more important instruments of interpretation available to anthropologists, culture change. After all, the 'rubshoulder reality' we all enjoy in our own societies does not give any special advantage in understanding their complexities; ever, is a distinct asset.

a knowledge of history, how-

With the convergent development in America and France (and through Levi-Strauss to British social anthropology) of the linguistic analogy of society as a system of communication relationships, the dilemma of modern synchronic structuralism is most readily exposed. The persuasiveness of comparing the descriptive linguist is obvious: language can describe the structure without resort tems, language like society is an organic

structuralists' role with that of the studies are synchronic, the linguist to knowledge of the preceding sysfunctioning whole and the arbitrary,

but socially accepted, codes of the language can quite legitimately be equated with the accepted codes of relationship of the anthropologist. The adoption, indeed, of the modern methods of descriptive linguistics, the isolation of 'meaning units' by distinctive feature contrast (emic analysis) from the noise' of irrelevant variation, offered powerful new techniques in ethnography. The recognition of structural, analytical and methodological parallels between synchronic structural linguistics and synchronic structural anthropology does not mean that social systems can be equated with language systems. Many structural principles (and thus operational strategies), as in many of the social sciences, are comparable, but it would be a brave (and foolish) anthropologist or archaeologist who attempted to equate language change with culture change.

It is significant that descriptive or structural linguistics has an

77

equally healthy sister discipline, comparative or historical linguistics and it is the absence of such 'science of culture change' in anthropology which is its great weakness. Language as a system of arbitrary signs (the code) and arbitrary rules governing the signs (the syntax) must by definition of its very arbitrariness, change stochastically (randomly). It is this very fact of the randomness of lexical attrition and substitution which gives precision to modern comparative linguistics; there is even the nagging (but consciously underplayed) omnipresence of a constant-rate coefficient for lexical change. The ominous regularity with which linguists have been able to anticipate radio-carbon dates in Oceania, their success in predicting ancient relationships and implied migrations, is a source of constant chagrin to Pacific archaeologists. Although the precision and resolution of linguistic differentiation over time falls off rapidly with increasing time-depth (as could be predicted by the stochastic model of lexical change), there is no doubt that within the limits of 3-4000 years B?, comparative linguistics offers a powerful new tool for examining the past. Grammatical change, however, is not yet understood, and possibly because of its complexity, will never be reduced to the simple statistical models of lexical change.

Nevertheless, because of the arbitrariness of the

systems of rules, grammatical change must inevitably prove also to be a stochastic process, but the probability urn will almost certainly have a quite different and more diffuse shape. Being essentially random, language change cannot be characterised by evolutionary models; only a handful of (European) linguists persists with pejorative concepts like 'archaic' or 'advanced' languages; concepts like increasing adaptability, efficiency or even 'survival of the fittest' (how can one system of arbitrary signs and arbitrary rules governing those signs be judged for fitness?) have no place in diachronic linguistics. The randomness of linguistic change is its greatest predictive asset;

it

separates it sharply from cultural change, which although it may have minor stochastic processes (e.g. the change of decorative style on otherwise identical pottery), is moderated (and sometimes, perhaps, even initiated) by powerful ecological, demographic, even ethological or psychological determinants; concepts like increasing efficiency, political accommodation and of course evolution are valid interpretative devices in cultural change, but they can play no role in linguistic change. The point at issue is not identical with the confusion Badcock has identified in Levi-Strauss's linguistic model between 'code' and 'message' but it is related (Badcock 1975:68-76). Imust agree with him while reserving judgement on the equation of 'message' with language change: «Levi -Strauss's structuralist approach is perfectly appropriate to the study of culture as Code, but for the analysis of culture as Message it is elsewhere that we must turn".

(Badcock 1975:72).

Significantly, Badcock identifies the 'more or less conventional Marxism' (p. 75) of another (non-linguistic) aspect of his structuralism as the theoretical underpinning of the analysis of culture as a Message. It is with the emergence of Marxist historicism into anthropological theory that we can leave the enthralling debates of anthropology. Like 78

Marvin Harris, Ibelieve that the "linguistic model, even more strongly than the model employed by the British structural-functionalists, is inherently incapable of making discoveries about the content of history and the nature of historical processes." (Harris 1968:603-4). Iam not convinced, however, that the re-emergence of evolutionary Marxist historicism does wholly satisfy the need for a new look at the dynamics of culture change. But some sort of evolutionary approach is required, for running like a golden thread through the confused vapour trails of anthropological debate are rapidly accelerating and hardening facts of culture change assembled by archaeologists over two centuries. That evolution plays a dominant role in many of the facts is too obvious for comment: archaeology's mild flirtation with Marxist philosophy (through Gordon Childe) has not yet resulted in betrothal; it might under the bludgeoning impact of the new Marxist anthropologists. For, ironically, to maul Willey and Phillip's famous adage, 'if archaeology is pre-Marxian (British) anthropology it would be nothing' for the time element has been so systematically exorcised from the synchronic discipline of anthropology as to appear entirely irrelevant. What is more frightening than this exorcism is the increasing possibility, as anthropologists turn to archaeological evidence to solve their dialectical debates, that we will one day read a book which claims that 'archaeology is Marxian dialectical materialism or it is nothing'. Archaeology has a poor record in resisting pressure from nationalists, political and ethnic manipulators (see Ford 1973:84-9). We are not immune from our own prejudices: we have an insipid ill-articulated theoretical framework, and are, therefore, very vulnerable to takeover. Although personally Ido not have any profound objection to Marxian historicism, and indeed admit its relevance for a vast area of anthropology and archaeology, it is only another 'just-so' deterministic evolutionary theory; it must be proven from the hard facts of archaeology before we adopt it (or are forced to adopt it). It is to the role of archaeology and archaeological evidence in examining the anthropologists' view of social reality that Iwould like to turn now. Although from the very nature of the data available to the two disciplines exact comparability is impossible, all anthropological 'social reality' and theory must at least be compatible with archaeological facts. In some important areas such as settlement pattern studies which can have direct structural implications (see Leach, this volume, p. 168), or gift exchange, which often has a surviving component, articulation of the two forms of evidence may be very close. But it is in the assizes of theories of culture change that archaeological evidence will be the principal witness. Thus, to return to Leach's mocking assault upon the optimism of some of the new archaeologists, we can read into the following paternalistic advice a warning of an impending threat to the integrity of archaeological evidence:

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"all the ingenuity in the world will not replace the evidence that is lost and gone forever, and you need to be on your guard against persuading yourselves that you have discovered more than is actually discoverable". (Leach 1973:768). Perhaps we should add 'or being persuaded by others to this advice. It is obvious, however, as this rapid review of developments in anthropology should have made clear, the sociological black-box with which Leach bludgeoned the optimism of archaeologists is not the only black-box with which he should be concerned here is a similar historical black-box for structural anthropologists.

It is only the archaeologist who is equipped to open that box

for within it, surprise, surprise, are the stone tools, postholes and other paraphernalia of archaeology. Leach would have been more accurate to the rigour of the structuralist approach if he had praised the puny efforts of the archaeologist which are, after all, a contribution to the anthropologist's real dilemma, so succinctly expressed by Durkheim, that the immobile man he studies 'is not man'. Leach's rhetorical question of the archaeologist "but are you really capable of studying people?" could have no finer rejoinder. Despite the confidence of Leach's thrusts at archaeology there are signs of disquiet: "close collaboration between the archaeologist and social anthropologist is not only possible but quite essential, if either side is to contribute anything to history". (ibid.:770). Almost casually, in the last few minutes of his address Leach acknowledged that the archaeologist has already been nibbling at the anthropologist's domain. Archaeology has shown that most of what the social anthropologist thought he knew about the life-style of the 18th century Maori is plainly wrong, yet the social anthropologists's evidence is almost equally disturbing for the archaeologist. (thid. :771). As it was my own work which initiated this re-examination of Maori society, Iwould like to use this example offered by Leach to restore the balance of what will hopefully prove to be a continuing dialogue between archaeologists and social anthropologists. 4.

The Ethnohistory and Archaeology of Recently Converted Savages

Ethnohistory is not only a theoretical bridge between history and anthropology, it is an actual record of that most important phenomenon, the (usually) traumatic change from pre-history to history. The evidence of ethnohistory is usually, apart from explorers' journal entries, thin and fragmentary often only a sketch or a map.

It can not have the cross-checking rigour of

history or the 'rub-shoulder' reality of anthropology, but within these limits it tends to record, if poorly, the very process of culture change which is of such concern to archaeologists.

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It was ethno-historical evidence which established that the anthropologists' reconstruction of Maori society was wrong, but it was archaeological evidence which suggested that the sadly neglected ethno-historical evidence from the turbulent years of culture contact in New Zealand should be re-examined. Seduced by the elegant reconstruction of Maori society by Firth (a pupil of Malinowski), the archaeologists of the 50s in New Zealand sought in vain to find the villages which Firth claimed were: 'patent to the eye of every observer'

(Firth 1929:91).

Here was a ready-made ethnographically authenticated settlement pattern, yet the sites themselves remained elusive.

At the beginning of the New

Zealand archaeological sequence, nearly 900 years prior to the period of Firth's reconstruction, sites such as Shag River, Waitaki River Mouth and several others qualified for the archaeologist's label 'village'. mediately prehistoric villages had vanished.

Yet the im-

Careful ethno-historical research

with primary rather than secondary sources, and avoiding all references later than 1840 (70 years after Cook's first voyage to New Zealand), identified a remarkable change in settlement pattern from tiny dispersed hamlets with a centrally placed but infrequently occupied foritification, to, by the time continuous European contact was established, large coastal villages.

The neces-

sity for trade with the European, a shift from scattered inland sites to larger coastal sites, increasing warfare induced by the gun and population decline

-

all the classic processes of the cataclysmic impact of European civilization wrought a revolution in observable Maori settlement patterns.

-

Complicating

this situation was the presence of thousands of earthwork forts (a description of one of which had been used by Firth as an example of a village), which archaeologists have shown to have an antiquity of at least 500 years prior to their first description by Captain Cook.

It would have been simple merely

to interpret these as the missing villages of the immediate prehistoric period as Firth indeed did, but unambiguous commentary of the British and French explorers on the coast recorded the desertion of these sites (which were hastily occupied because of the very presence of the stranger vessels) in all of the harbours where they stayed long enough for the initial panic ashore to subside.

Fine maps from the French expeditions to the North Island. the

compendious records of Cook himself, his officers and scientists like Banks, and the drawings of the official artists all confirm this absence of the large nucleated settlements of the anthropologists' reconstruction.

The forts of

course, were a crucial element in the settlement pattern which emerges, but it would be stretching the evidence to suggest that they were actually defended villages.

Excavations, indeed, have established that some were

more extensively occupied than others and in certain environments, particularly swamps, the term 'defended village Iis apt.

But these latter were

inland sites, inaccessible to the earliest explorers, and certainly not 'patent to the eye of every observer'. It takes little imagination to appreciate that the social and economic organisation centred around dispersed hamlets with a central fort pattern could be very different from the village-centred organisation delineated by Firth.

Such a pattern is not unfamiliar to archaeologists today (cf. the Maya),

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but was not anticipated in the early days of functional anthropology.

In addi-

tion to the 'village' other aspects of Classic Maori culture, as understood by anthropologists, seem to have had a short-lived appearance in the post-European period. The famous Maori meeting house was certainly smaller and less frequently found than we had been led to believe, if it was present at all in the prehistoric period. The larger chiefs' houses, which the earliest explorers certainly did record, probably became the communal meeting houses by the mid nineteenth century under the impact of introduced mission churches, European houses and the growing efforts of the Maori to establish their own identity as English colonisation advanced. The details of this dynamic shift in settlement focus are too complex to review in this paper, but familiarity with the cataclysmic changes in Maori society wrought by the arrival of the European, the introduction of the gun, familiar depopulation and the dynamics of adjustment during the collision of two very powerful cultures, weakens confidence in Firth's reconstruction, which is too dependent on uncritically culled late sources. Many aspects of the Maori he is describing in his monumental study are nineteenth century features, yet there are none of the other features of nineteenth century New Zealand; the burgeoning pakeha population, the trading stations, liquor stores, missions and missionaries, soldiers and settlers. These have been excised from the landscape; so also have the introduced white potato, the introduced pig, cereals, horses and the like. Firth's reconstruction is of a late nineteenth century organisation, projected back into the past, with all anachronisms removed. His functionalism, the false synchronic symmetry of his reconstruction and above all the overriding apparent economic happiness of a well-adjusted functioning whole society lulls one into a benign faith in the truth of anthropology. Only archaeologists who have struggled over the massive earthwork forts of New Zealand or noticed the care with which burial caves are hidden away, could have suspected that perhaps all was not well in the apparently well-adjusted society, for although Firth does incorporate warfare into his functional whole, the statistics of New Zealand fort-building, the mute evidence of hundreds of small communities in a vast land with only a small proportion of the forest cleared, involved in intensive internicine warfare, cannot be reconciled with his account. Even Vayda's (1960) ethnohistorical account of Maori warfare (which he wisely restricts to a nineteenth/late eighteenth century period) gives few additional clues. Misled by the same late sources, Vayda also has the landscape littered with villages and his knowledge of social organisation among the Maori was inherited from Firth. His economic deterministic case for the origin of Maori warfare cannot be sustained, Ibelieve, without some sort of mystical belief that at some point in time economic expansion shifted from the peaceful clearance of forest to the banditry of land-grabbing. Strangely, there is no evidence to suggest a land-shortage in New Zealand there were -

still vast tracts of uncleared forest suitable for cultivation when the Europeans arrived. Whatever the answers to the fascinating problem of the origin, maintenance and structural implications of Maori warfare, it is clear that anthropologists are ill-equipped to supply the answers: indeed they have abdicated responsibility for the problem by accepting the undocumented economic determinist case (see Harris 1968:366).

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Before looking briefly at other comparable cases where archaeological evidence fails to support the anthropologists , claims, there is one other more serious aspect of the New Zealand situation which requires examination. Although archaeologists had great difficulty locating the villages of the immediately pre-European Maori, and indeed their houses (we were tending to look for structures which were too large, misled by the nineteenth century ethnographic data), there was no difficulty in locating storage pits for the staple cultivated plant, the sweet potato (kumara).

Pits were visible as sur-

face features everywhere, and for every visible surface pit excavation revealed dozens more, filled in and rebuilt. This amazing plethora of pits, many filled with exciting debris of past activities, has kept New Zealand archaeologists happy for nearly two decades. Not only were the pits common and from their intercutting fine stratigraphie sequences could be developed, but they were in themselves beautifully constructed with sharp, well sculptured sides, exact post-hole alignments, sometimes with complex interconnecting tunnels, in a vast array of sizes, post-hole patterns and built in many different environments. The undisputed evidence of great care in the construction of these stores, surpassed only by the feats of fort building, misled archaeologists for a brief period to seek in them the missing houses. A vast kumara storage pit was claimed to be the first meeting house excavated in New Zealand (Duff 1961), pit-dwellers proliferated, and after anumber of increasingly acrimonious debates, archaeologists had to revert to the storage interpretation.

The fury of this archae-

ological storm was not felt elsewhere in the world, but was sufficiently exhausting for the local archaeologists to forget the underlying reason for being attracted by the dwelling hypothesis, which was that nowhere in the rich nineteenth century literature was there any indication of the scale of Maori storage activities. The earliest explorers did not see any of these stores and during the nineteenth century dietary changes induced by the introduction of the white potato and the pig may have led to their rapid demise. With this ethnographic silence it is not surprising that Firth failed to appreciate the enormous energy devoted to storage by the Maori. Yet being uncovered by the trowels of New Zealand archaeologists there is ample evidence of a sophisticated storage technology for a very tender plant on the periphery of its climatic tolerance. Whether this storage involved genuine surpluses or not, the potential storage capacity in any one year in the North Island of New Zealand must have been enormous for a primitive society; there was probably over-capacity to account for probable high storage and early frost losses. The high density of pits within fortifications, so that some indeed resembled fortified warehouses, cannot be coincidental: the plethora of pits and forts may be related phenomena. What is abundantly clear is that the authorised version of New Zealand Maori culture, formally assembled by Firth, does not adequately account for the number and scale of communal fort-building activities or the astonishing storage technology. There seems little doubt that we have been seriously midled by the anthropologist's rendering of Maori culture. A kwakyutl-like interpretation of the dissipation of surpluses through uneconomic fort-building (a sort of military pot-latch) springs instantly to mind, but the discrediting of Boas's original interpretation (by ethno-historical

83

evidence, and in much the same terms as the New Zealand problem) (Harris 1968:306-311) has satisfactorily removed this model. The reinterpretation of the classic pot-latch argument in the light of the ethno-historical evidence is yet another example of the fragility of the social anthropologist's synchronic strategy. Other examples abound, some exposed by ethno-historic research, others by archaeology. Perhaps the most amusing to those who were brought up on the Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Malinowski 1922) is the failure of Lauer (1970, 1971, 1974) to find the very characteristic Amphlett pottery at all points on the supposed route of the Kula Ring. Considering the central position the Kula Ring plays in anthropological literature, this negative evidence deserves a little more publicity. Perhaps Malinowski's choice of mythological voyagers in the title of his book is more apt than anyone thought. If there is indeed something wrong with current understanding of the route and scale of the Kula exchange cycle it is hardly likely to weaken the impact of Malinowski 's interpretation.

It does recall Piddington's remark:

"what really matters is not what actually happened in the past but what people believe to have happened" (above,

p.

76),

and the danger of a solely synchronic approach to the study of society.

It

seems hardly likely that the Trobrianders escaped the impact of the European presence in the Western Pacific and their response to it may have been as astonishing and unpredictable as in any other culture-contact situation. More disturbing is the apparent comparable weakness of the influential African Political Systems (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940) if Harris' critique is to be trusted. (Harris 1968:536-8.) Iquote from him as general summary of the cases cited above: "For something like three hundred and fifty years the 'Dark Continent' was utilised as a breeding ground for cheap and docile labour. It is estimated that forty million Africans were caught up in the slave trade in one way or another, although possibly only as few as fourteen million were still alive when they got to their destinations overseas. Advancing before this scourge were shock waves of wars, migrations, political upheavals and vast demographic changes. In such a context, restriction to an ethnographic present of the 1930s, in the name of empiricism has little to commend it." (Harris 1968:536). Ihave no doubt that these examples of failure to appreciate the significance of historical change on forming institutions, particularly the disruption of European interference can be multiplied many times over. The ahistorical anthropology which has prevailed during most of this century, does not appear to have survived the far from rigorous tests of ethno-history and archaeology.

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5.

Archaeology and Anthropology

The preceding section is not offered as a serious critique of social anthropology, but merely as a warning to archaeologists who select 'bits and pieces' from ethnographies to illuminate their limited data. Personally Iam profoundly sceptical that any ethnography is free from the taint of European influence and the often massive adjustments to population decline, introduced (capitalist) trade, missionaries and so on. To the structural anthropologist such considerations are quite irrelevant and to them much of the previous discussion will seem to be little more than a catalogue of trivia. The essential structural entity with which the synchronic anthropologist is concerned is the code of behaviour governing face-to-face relationships. All societies must have such codes (whether recently changed or not) and it is merely an amusing fact that perhaps they were different in the previous century, or invented the year before under guidance of the Methodist missionaries. Anthropologists, indeed, may find they have yet another analogue with linguistics and that the inner core of face-to-face relationships they expose is like the 'basic core' of the lexicon of comparative linguistics, relatively resistant to change. Thus while houses change, settlement patterns vary, steel tools displace stone, the inner core of the culture such as the kinship and exchange systems are affected more slowly. There is some evidence to support this idea indeed it is a logical extension of the anthropologist's insistence on the significance of such information. -

Yet even this convenient apology for the synchronic model has problems, for European contact was not merely the introduction of new gadgets or an alien capitalist system to replace the old;

it was often accompanied by disease,

increased warfare and depopulation. The structural dynamicsof a culture undergoing sustained depopulation would not theoretically be a legitimate anthropological (structural) study, yet the impact of depopulation must have shaken even the most conservative inner core of culture. Some of the peculiarities of the pot-latch are now partly attributed to the consequences of depopulation: "They were a society celebrating its own funeral" (Harris 1968:312), but even such obvious economic reactions would be less critical than the effect upon maintenance of the land-tenure system, and therefore upon lineage structure. How does a community simultaneously maintain the holdings of defunct communities killed off by chicken pox, and in their own stricken ranks plug up the maintenance of land rights, when every year there are fewer and fewer people to sustain the system? One solution might be in the bending of the lineage structure to allow flexibility; the peculiarities of the Maori lineage, the ambilateral hapu, might result from just such an accommodation.

If there is Leach (this volume,

p.

168) maintains, any correla-

tion between settlement pattern and social structure, the dramatic change in settlement patterns in the nineteenth century in New Zealand would imply that similar, far-reaching changes were occurring in the social structure. The adjustments, economic, social and psychological, to a change in population structure could be enormous; the economic accommodation required in Britain today to a population which is no longer expanding is a case in point. In a primitive society inheritance rules and marriage preference patterns and even the role of women, the very stuff of anthropology, could be expected

85

to come under considerable duress. Indeed in such a situation a 'survival of the fittest' (structure) model, might not be inappropriate. Other sacred cows of anthropology such as mythology and political systems can be shown to have undergone rapid adjustments to the changed and changing circumstances in post-contact periods. The amazing efflorescence of canoe stories in New Zealand after 1840 illustrates the scale of accommodation which can be achieved in a very brief period. There seems little doubt that genuine, purely local, middle North Island myths became rapidly 'exported' to and elaborated in other regions with quite astonishing speed. It was not so much the diffusion of a myth as the diffusion of a model of a myth, for the new stories came to the surface with fully assembled details involving quite different ancestors, canoes and incidents. The documentary weight of these accounts is quite staggering yet archaeologists cannot accept them as authentic history, despite the supposed recency of the 'Fleet'. The origin of this amazing mythological outpouring can be traced, as can so much in primitive societies, to land rights. In a period of increasing political and military pressure from the growing land-hungry European population, such canoe stories, complete with intact genealogical support, offered a firm and legally satisfactory basis for resolving conflicting landownership disputes. It is significant that many of these stories were first employed in the Maori Land Courts, a quasi-legal institution which could be cynically described as a device for rationalising and initiating land sales. Depopulation, the ferocious internicine warfare and mass internal migrations had left not only the land tenure system in tatters, but also hundreds of displaced people. The canoe stories gave structure to the confused situation and traditional coherence to the new status quo. The emerging political alliances which were to give rise to the 'King Movement' and direct confrontation with the English were intimately associated with the canoe mythology. How does the archaeologist react to anthropology when faced with this situation? Although such late changes are of little or no concern to anthropologists, they are crucial to archaeologists who might want to pad out their bare residuals with comparative data or seek insights into cultural operations? Unfortunately, many of the 'bits and pieces' of ethnography in which the archaeologist is interested are the very things most rapidly modified by contact, such as artefacts, buildings, settlement patterns, economy and even political systems. The 'inner' elements, which may be relatively intact such as kinship, are usually of little concern to archaeologists, most of whom are as bored by the algebra of kinship as anthropologists appear to be bored by the intricacies of technology. The archaeologist must decide whether he seeks enlightenment from postEuropean influenced culture of from genuine pre-historic cultures. For the former, standard ethnographies will suffice, for the latter only the often very amateur descriptions from the initial contact period in each region (such as explorers' journals) and the evidence of archaeologists can be fully tristed. Thus Iwould add to the many reservations about the validity of the use of ethnographic analogy this rider, that almost any analogy sought from ethnographies, particularly if they are modern, will come from an unstable or rapidly changing cultural milieu, possibly not the best analogue situation.

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In addition it will be almost impossible to detect the affected elements, as anthropologists by the very nature of their synchronic concentration, offer few clues. Only when sound ethno-histories are available (and there are very few) can the archaeologist proceed with caution. The perils of ignoring this warning are obvious: the uncritical culling of 'bits and pieces' only adds to our own ignoratce thE ignorLJc of a tur'u1ent ethno-history from some other part of the world. Obviously there will still be much ethnographic data of value to the archaeologist (if used with caution), particularly if he is merely curious about the variety and complexity of the human solutions to survival in analogous situations. Thus ethnographies are essential bedtime reading for the well-educated archaeologist, but they should not be used as encyclopedias of 'bits and pieces'. The demands made upon ethnographic data by archaeologists can vary so widely that it is impossible to generalise, but particularly in this country, it is essential for the archaeologist to wrench his model of how society works out of the Medieval model which he so commonly employs. Thus a quite innocent word like 'trade' means very different things in a Medieval as opposed to an ethnographic context. It is this sort of realisation that is clearly lacking in British, particularly prehistoric, archaeology. Even a passing familiarity with the effectiveness of labour mobilisation in pre-capitalist societies might weaken facile speculations about kingdoms on Salisbury Plain. But the archaeologist should be very wary of modern ethnographies if he is seeking insight into the genuinely prehistoric; a long time gap between initial exposure to Western culture and the anthropologist's field work is a sure sign of trouble. This conclusion, which runs counter to my own training in anthropology and my own strongly felt objections to the content, style and rigour of explanation in British archaeology, is nevertheless the only honest assessment. It is easy to jump on an anthropological bandwagon;

it might be more difficult

to get off, particularly if one becomes too involved in complex evolutionary theories. What is required is general anthropological education rather than specific anthropological scholarship. Appreciation of the enormous variety of solutions to the man-land-man problems should do much to enliven archaeological debate in this country. A valuable, although necessarily thin, introduction to the variety is provided by the accounts of the earliest explorers. Captain Cook's journals are a bible to every Pacific archaeologist. Indeed, they would be revealing to any scholar, for not only do they give eye-witness accounts of unscarred cultures, but they also demonstrate even more clearly the imprecision, selectivity and prejudice of the 'eye of the observer'. The 'bits and pieces' of interest to archaeologists are often unmentioned, whereas proof of cannibalism will excite an orgy of shipboard journal entries. Such accounts from the initial contact period, however thin, are prehistorically reliable, and would be the safest and probably the most interesting introduction to anthropology. Scholars of the Roman period particularly, might find the obvious eighteenth century limitations in vision of value in assessing Roman accounts of the barbarians of Europe. If we are amused by Cook's persistent desire to locate kings in Polynesia (a reflection of the eighteenth century European model of the correct way society should be organised) we might look with fresh eyes at Caesar's description of the Celts, particularly his 87

tri-partite class structure which is so close to the Roman view of how society should be organised. Even more dangerous, however, than incursions into ethnographic analogies are adventures (or flirtations?) with anthropological theory, or borrowing hypotheses or views on how things worked. As must be obvious, social anthropologists tend to be a fickle, quarrelsome lot: theories come and go, disputes rage on forever. It would be unfortunate if, as may have happened with Renfrew's adoption of the strongly evolutionary 'chiefdom' concept (1973: 228) the archaeologist is left holding the baby as anthropologists adopt yet another theoretical posture. Our explanatory and illustrative strength is not improved by adding to the fragile data of archaeological reconstruction the equally fragile interpretations of anthropologists. delusion.

This can only compound

The most rigorous, exciting and the safest approach to anthropology, however, seldom mentioned in the journals, is through the experiences of archaeologists working in ethnography-rich countries where prehistory ended but recently. This point is too obvious to labour, but surely it is more relevant if one is seeking inspiration, for instance, on settlement patterns to go to the archaeologists' accounts of tackling such a problem in the home territory of the ethnographic data. It might be a surprise to learn that, despite the volumes of ethnographies, their problems are very similar to those in this country, their solutions just as ambiguous and their explanations just as weak. But they often see an old problem with quite new eyes and employ a wider range of evidence (including comparative linguistics), while their closeness to ethnographic reality often gives them new insights. Although some of the fluff of American archaeology (the debates, the theories, the models and schemes) has at last brushed off onto British archaeology, the grass roots records of the thousands of excavation reports, research programmes and so on are, barely known, if at all. A careful study of the problems posed, methods adopted, successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses of the archaeology of ethnography-rich countries is probably the most promising route to an anthropological awareness by archaeologists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Badcock, C. R. (1975). London.

Levi-Strauss, Structuralism and Sociological Theory,

Bellah, Robert N. (1959). 'Durkheim and History', American Sociological Review XXIV (1959) 447-61. Binford, L. R. (1972).

An Archaeological Perspective, New York.

Childe, V. G. (1951).

Social Evolution, London.

Childe, V. G. (1956).

Piecing Together the Past, London.

Clark, J. G. D. (1952).

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the Economic Basis, Cambridge.

Clark, J. G. D. (1954). Duff, R. (1961).

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Marlborough', Records of the Canterbury Museum 7 (1961) 269-302. Durkheim, F. (1920). 'Introduction a la mor le', Revue Philosophique (1920) 89. Firth,

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Firth, R. (1951).

Elements of Social Organisation, London.

Ford, R. I. (1973).

'Archaeology Serving Humanity'.

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In (ed.) C. L. Redman New York, 83-93.

Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds.) (1940). Systems, London. Harding, D. W. (1972). Harris, M. (1968).

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The Iron Age in the Upper Thames Basin

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The Rise of Anthropological Theory, New York.

Hawkes, C. (1954).

'Archaeological Theory and Method:

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Old World', American Anthropologist 56 (2) (1954), 155-167. Howells, W. W. (1959). Lauer, P. K. (1970). 7 (3), 165-17.

Mankind in the Making, New York.

'Amphlett Islands' pottery trade and the kula', Mankind

Lauer, P. K. (1971). 'Changing patterns of pottery trade to the Trobriand Islands', World Archaeology 3, 197-209. Lauer, P. K. (1974).

Pottery Traditions in the D'Entrecasteaux Islands of

Papua, Occasional Papers in Anthropology, No. 3. Leach, E. (1973).

'Concluding Address'.

In (ed.) C. Renfrew, The Explana-

tion of Culture Change, London, 761-771. Levi-Strauss, C. (1967).

The Scope of Anthropology, London.

Malinowski, B. (1922).

Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London.

Malinowski, B. (1945).

The Dynamics of Culture Change, Yale.

Orme, B. (1973).

'Archaeology and Ethnography'.

In (ed.) C. Renfrew,

The Explanation of Culture Change, London, 481-492. Piddington, R. (1957). Edinburgh.

An Introduction to Social Anthropology, Vol. II,

Pitt-Rivers, A. L-F. (1906).

The Evolution of Culture and Other Essays,

(ed. J. L. Myres), Oxford. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1952). London. Ritchie, A. (1971).

Structure and Function in Primitive Society,

'Settlement Archaeology

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Methods and Problems'.

(eds.) Jesson, M. and Hill, D. The Iron Age and its Hill-Forts, Southampton, 91-95.

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Renfrew, C. (1973).

Before Civilization, London.

Simmons, D. R. (1969).

'A New 2ealand Myth, Kupe Toi and the 'Fleet'

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3 (1), 14-31.

'The Method of Prehistoric Archaeology', Antiquity 11,

152-61. Taylor, C. C. (1972).

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A Study of Archaeology, Memoir No. 69.

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Anthropologist 50, Part 2. Vayda, A. P. (1960).

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No. 2. Willey, G. R. and Phillips, P. (1958). Archaeology, Chicago.

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Method and Theory in American

AFTER CIVILIZATION: ARCHAEOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF URBANISM Cohn Haselgrove

ABSTRACT

Ideally a dialogue between disciplines should develop round their common interest in the elucidation of specific problems, such as the phenomenon of urbanism. Already, archaeologists and anthropologists engaged in urban studies have more in common than they perhaps appreciate. For anthropology, the inclusion of archaeological data would make a wider sample of urban systems available for comparative analysis, especially examples of pristine urban development, but before this becomes a reality, archaeology must develop more adequate procedures for the study of complex societies. Only by employing "transformations" appropriate to the temporal and spatial scale of the phenomenon studied, can theories of social change and development be tested in terms of variables observable in the archaeological record. The limitations for archaeological work of the various approaches to the study of urbanism identified by Wheatley are discussed and some suggestions offered as to where closer cooperation between archaeology and anthropology might provide new avenues for urban research.

Ultimately it may be that we should look to the

properties of the social formation as a whole for a better understanding of the phenomenon of urbanism. INTRODUCTION In the absence of a clear statement purporting to describe the specific difference between archaeology and anthropology, it is obvious that a meaningful discussion of the relationship between them becomes difficult if not impossible. Furthermore, although the disciplines are generally recognised as separate entities in Britain, this attitude is by no means universal.

It

has been claimed for instance that "American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing" (Willey and Phillips 1958:2), yet in Britain it would be unrealistic to pretend that anything like a majority of British archaeologists would welcome closer ties with anthropology. There are a number of reasons why at present there is no obvious basis for a dialogue between archaeology and anthropology as such, not least the continually changing content of both disciplines. Just as "geography always has been and always will be what those who call themselves geographers choose to do" (Harvey 1969:482), one might find support for the view that there is no such thing as archaeology, there are only archaeologists.

91

This adds an extra dimension to the problem, for whatever their beliefs regarding the ultimate nature of their own discipline, it is generally true that practitioners in any one field display a touching, but totally unjustified belief in the coherence of other disciplines, which hampers productive relations between them from the outset. At worst, such misconceptions can lead to one discipline seeking to force an unacceptable relationship upon the other, and even where interchange occurs spontaneously, it is likely to be between specific groups of workers. In either case the content of such relationships is largely predetermined. To make the most of this unsatisfactory situation, Ibelieve we should accept that the most profitable relationships between disciplines take the form of an inter-disciplinary approach directed to the resolution of specific problems. Archaeology and anthropology are both disciplines concerned with furthering knowledge of human existence and have many potential problems in common; indeed, the most important problems in the study of man must in any case transcend mere disciplinary boundaries (Mepham 1973). In other words, it is theproblems which we hold in common in any particular instance which should form the basis of any relationship between disciplines. The term inter-disciplinary has in turn given rise to a number of misconceptions. It should not be taken as implying that exclusive data sets exist for each discipline, but rather as an admission that no discipline can claim a monopoly on the study of particular human phenomena. In practice it is the possession of different perspectives on the relationships between phenomena which forms the basis of different social science disciplines (Gutkind 1974:188). The vigour of an inter-disciplinary approach lies in bringing together workers with different perspectives, training and even interests, to work on a related set of problems. It is the purpose of this paper to explore the potential contribution of archaeology to the study of the phenomenon of urbanism, as one of a number of disciplines, and to suggest that within this framework, closer cooperation with anthropology in some areas might serve to bring a new dimension to the problem.

However, before out-

lining some of the features common to the segments of the two disciplines which are concerned with the study of urban systems, it is necessary to make an interim statement of the conceptual difficulties posed by the very adoption of the terms urbanism and urbanisation. "The concept of 'city' is notoriously hard to define" wrote Childe (1950: 3),in what is almost an understatement. Whatever else urbanism may mean, it will be used here to denote the presence in a society of a form of human settlement, the urban system, the ultimate nature of which is the object of our inter-disciplinary investigation. As Wheatley (1972:601) observes, "in one or other of its inflections [urbanism] is customarily used to denote sets of qualities possessed by certain of the larger and more compact clusters of settlement features that at any point in time represents centroids of continuous population movement". Urbanism is thus commonly used to represent a state of affairs, whereas the term urbanisation is often simultaneously used to refer to certain types of process and to certain condition which are presumably the products of such processes (Smith 1972). For this analysis Iintend to restrict the term to processes resulting from the presence of the phenomenon of urbanism in any

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particular society. The matrix upon which urbanism operates is after all the total social formation and the outcome at most is no more than a transformed social formation. This enables us to oppose the processes of urbanisation to other sets of processes such as those of the development of urbanism. In­ deEd it is worth emphasising that failure to distinguish carefully between these prccesses has frequently led to the confusion of two overlapping, but distinct prcblems: how man effected urbanism and how urbanism affected man. Al­ tho·1gh it is clear that we can only hope to answer either question by producing a model of urban development that accounts for both, more often than not the exi3ting barriers between disciplines have preved to be an insuperable obstacle to progress. Thus, research on plant and animal domestication in prehistory exhibits a divergence of disciplinary perspectives not dissimilar to that apparent in the sphere of urban studies. The conceptual problem in the use of the term urbanism is thus simply that it bestows an objective existence upon the phenomenon the very nature of which is in doubt and is actually the obj ect of study. E ven the simple settle­ ment definition demands that we can distinguish urban settlements from other catee-oríes, whether rural or just non-urban settlements independent of their pos�tion in time or space. It is certainly gene rally agreed that both civiliza­ tion (hence the title of this paper) and the state are necessary concomitants of urbttn life, although the converse may not be true (Coe 1961, Trigger 1972), but ooth these constructs present their own problems of definition and are better avoided. They do, however, serve to suggest a possible line of enquiry to which I shall return below, after first attempting to delineate areas of mutual interest or difficulty in the study of urbanism by archaeologists and anthropolo­ gists. URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY In keeping with my comments on the nature of disciplines, I am using the terms urban archaeology and urban anthropology to refer to all work directed towards a deeper understanding of urban systems, including the explanation of their development or equally their decline. It should be stressed that this includes most, but not all, work carried out in a modern urban context. The recent excavation of a later second millennium B. C. settlement under the City of London undoubtedly took place under conditions comparable to those encountered on other urban sites, yet as long as the focus of interest remains a Bronze Age landscape and no attempt is made to link its presence with the development of London, I would not regard it as urban archaeology. The first obvious points of similarity emerges with the realisation that both disciplines are relative latecomers to urban studies. In the case of anth:ropologists, the reason is straightforward; the study of advanced literate societies was seen as the field of sociology, while social anthro:,ology mainly concentrated on 'primitive' or preliterate societies (Goody 1968). When sorne anthropologists wished to move away from tribal studies and follow the migrants into towns, they received little encouragement. Thus Malinowski advised Audrey Richards "not to meddle with these modern urban problems, but to stick to 'really scientific work' in an unspoilt tribe" (Gutkind 1974:51). Even now it is apparent that urban anthropologists tend to concentrate on non­ Western and pre-industrial towns in what may be a misguided attempt to 93

satisfy the "anthropological perspective", even if this entails abandoning the comparative studies which have been a foature of the discipline. Urban geography is a comparativcly young branch of that discipline (Carter 1972:1) for much the same reason that it marks a departure from the traditional pre­ occupations of the subject. However, when we turn to archaeology, the suggestion that urban studies are a novelty, may occasion sorne surprise. As early as the 1840s "the spade was being used to examine the tells of Mesopotamia" (Daniel 1968:56) at Dur-Sharrukin and Nimrud. No one can deny that the excitement generated by the discoveries at such sites as Lagash, Ur or Troy played a significant part in awakening interest in the urban past. Nevertheless the motives governing research were often dubious and in many cases remainecl so well into the twentieth century. Loftus frankly admitted "a nervous desire to find important large museum pieces" (Daniel 1958:59) and work often concentrated on urban-like sites because of their striking visibility as ruins and their yield of the elite material culture favoured by art historians and museums (Price 1974), not to mention the attraction that temples and palaces had for archaeologists with reputations to establish (Adaras 1966:29) and funds to raise for the next excavation. It was not until the work of Childe (e.g. Childe 1950) that work in south-west Asia was directed towards the explanation of the development of urbanism there, while else­ where work was hardly further advanced, particularly in the New World. Work in Europe was largely stimulated by the physical effects of the Second World War, but Biddle (1974) still prefers to see urban archaeology as a product of the sixties, in the sense that only now has the urban phenomenon become the focus of study, rather than any one period of a site's history, or any single aspect of its activity. Although it is Childe's (1950) paper on the Urban Revolution which is the most commonly quoted work on the nature of early urban development in the writings of other disciplines, he palpably mis­ understood the New World evidence, and it was not until the publication of The Evolution of Urban Society (Adams 1966) that a balanced account of the transformation appeared. When we turn to the methodological problems common to both disciplines in the study of urban systems, it is the sheer size of the unit of study which imposes itself from the outset. The traditional approach of both archaeology and anthropology involved the intensive investigation of a small w1it and, where necessary, the extrapolation of the results to describe a larger whole; from one trench in the ramparts, the cultural history of whole hillforts was inferred, while intensive community level studies provided the basis for accounts of whole societies. The anthropologist is unable to study a whoJe town except over a considerable period of time which would vitiate any attempt to give a synchronic account of its structure, or as part of a team. A series of decisions must be made concerning the rationale of selecting particular groups or zones for analysis. Archaeologists have recently realised that human activities are often variable in respect to their location in space and have increased the scale of their excavations to take account of this, but their response has still been totally inadequate to counter the complexity of urban deposits, which are by nature very extensive not only in area but also in depth. This latter is usually a function of long-continued occupation on one site (Heighway 1972:5). Two further factors are frequently of importance; 94

the extent of disturbance to below-ground deposits throughout a town's life through the digging of cellars; foundations, etc., and the difficulty tha tth e entire archaeological area can lie below a living community with its own overriding requirements of daily life (Heighway 1972), at least in the case where the site is under a modern town. Thus selectivity becomes a cardinal principle of urban archaeology (Biddle 1974). During the period 1961-1971 rather less than 2% of the total area within the defences at Winchester was excavated (Biddle 1973) in what has been by far the most ambitious urban research project ever carried out in Britain. It should be stressed that the town defences are merely a convenient topographical reference point and by no means an appropriate frame of reference at all periods in the town's development. Much more so than the anthropologist, the archaeologist must sample in time as well as in urban space. Spratling is not along in being "doubtful of the extent to which partial excavation of settlements (however planned and executed) can provide us with archaeologically representative samples" (Spratling 1973: 308), although Icannot accept the validity of the latter concept in any universal sense. Although archaeology is often characterised as a discipline concerned with the study of change, this has not always been a feature of its approach to urban settlements. It was not until 1964 that a series of plans were published to show the development of a Romano-British town, in this case St. Albans (Frere 1964). According to Gutkind (1974:183), the anthropologist has slowly discovered that he is not working in static societies, and while claiming to pay attention to social change, has more often been concerned with the modification of tradition. As part of the shift in emphasis that has occurred within the subject, it is the recognition of the towns and cities' role as pacesetters of social change that has given birth to the specialisation in urban anthropology, with particular attention being paid to urbanisation as a form of social change. The study of urbanisation in turn demands that urban anthropological research must take place within a very large social field of which the town is merely the focal point (Gutkind 1974:58).

It is this point which marks the first major

departure between urban anthropology and out in the name of urban archaeology. So problems within a site-limited framework former discipline, but is unfortunately all

much of the work that is carried far, Ihave discussed common which would be totally alien to the too common a perspective in

archaeology, and it is now necessary to take a more holistic view of the phenomenon of urbanism. In no case can an urban settlement be considered apart from its total environment, both physical and social (c.f. Price 1974). Quite apart from the mere subsistence and resource requirements of most urban settlements and their functional role as central places providing "services" to a wider hinterland, it would be inconceivable to attempt to explain the development of particular urban centres without taking any external factors into consideration. To do so, would be to endow the phenomenon of urbanism with its own internal laws of development irrespective of time and space. There seems little danger of this happening in anthropology for it was the very "fact" of rural-urban migration that provided a powerful stimulus to the development of urban anthropology, and population nucleation is a process which by definition can only occur in a field wider than the point of concentration.

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In

contrast, archaeologists by their very specialization in urban archaeology have tended to set themselves apart from their "rural" colleagues. In some parts of the world, this has been an accidental development largely due to considerations external to the discipline, some of which have been mentioned above; major efforts are now being made by archaeologists working from a geographical standpoint to correct this imbalance, notably the Susiana and Warka surveys in south-west Asia (Johnson 1975; Adams and Nissen 1972). Elsewhere, and here Iwill take the example of Britain, the rural-urban dichotomy is more a product of the uncertain relationship that archaeology enjoys with history and its preoccupation with descriptive studies. Biddle is correct that "failure to understand the historical development of an urban community has direct repercussions on our knowledge of the systems of which it is a part" (Biddle 1974:97), but Iwould argue that it is only by explaining changes in terms of the whole system that we can hope to understand the development of particular urban communities. The reconstruction of urban morphology (e.g. Barley 1976) maybe a valid end for some, but can never on its own provide a sufficient means for explaining urban development; this requires an understanding of much broader trends of socio-economic process. A final point of similarity between archaeology and anthropology as regards their involvement in urban studies must surely be that both believe that they have something to contribute to furthering human understanding of the phenomenon of urbanism and the impact of its presence on human social formations. For both disciplines, it is clearly the sheer scale of urban systems that poses the greatest obstacle in the path of future research. A legitimate question must then be what kind of research is most needed and how can it best be carried out. It is clearly ill-advised for an archaeologist to attempt an answer to this problem on behalf of urban anthropologists, but it seems reasonable to point out that they enjoy a considerable flexibility of response in comparison to archaeologists. In particular, their research can be carried out at a number of different levels simultaneously, ranging from a study of the external pressures acting on a nation state to micro-analysis of particular entities within ongoing urban systems; not only is a comparative approach possible at all these levels, but the internal consistency of their findings at any one level can be evaluated with respect to processes operating at all the other levels. At present, the lack of any time depth within their own discipline is a major disadvantage, but can sometimes be surmounted by judicious use of historical data. A second disadvantage that they share with archaeologists relates to the background of the observer. "Urbanism as a way of life" (Wirth 1938) is the feature of our civilization, and while the appetite for increasing our knowledge of human nature is one of the few redeeming features of the twentieth century, our innate belief in the superiority and rationality of our own mode of existence has seriously affected our capacity for objective research into the nature of urbanism. As regards archaeology, it might be wondered whether we can usefully contribute at all. Clearly the very preservation of information relating to past urban societies in the archaeological record vastly increases the time and space sample available for study. Unless with Reissman (1964:16) one believes in the essentially different nature of medieval cities and modern

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industrial cities, any general theory of urbanism, given suitable parameters, should be able to account for the behaviour of past urban systems and could be made testable with respect to the archaeological record. There is, as Wheatley (1972:601) reminds us, no apriori reason to suppose that all the multifarious groupings of populations past and present designated as urban should necessarily be subsumable within a single logically coherent field, but archaeologists are well placed to examine his hypothesis that if structural regularities are ultimately elucidated, they will certainly be manifested in shared functions and in trends in systemic change rather than in form. Furthermore, archaeology would appear to be the only discipline in a position to examine the very beginnings of urbanism, although in practice we must be content to aim at explaining the development of urbanism in the regions of the so-called "pristine" states (Fried 1960:729) and the failure of the urban phenomenon to manifest itself elsewhere, rather than dissipate our resources in pursuit of a metaphysical goal. This is a perspective denied to the anthropological study of the development of urbanism, for the very idea of urbanism as a way of life is present not only in the mind of the observer but in the minds of the population under study, and is thus an uncontrollable variable in the process of human decision making. However, before attempting to formulate any framework for future archaeological research on urban systems, we must first consider the explanatory potential of a discipline whose capabilities were so memorably characterised by Grierson (1959:129); "it has been said that the spade cannot lie, but it owes this merit in part to the fact that it cannot speak". Secondly, Ishould like to assess the possibilities afforded by the employment in archaeology of a new research paradigm developed by workers in other fields and related to the structuralist paradigm currently in fashion amongst some social anthropologists (Leach 1973). EXPLANATION AND THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD There has been considerable discussion of the need for a general theory of archaeology (e.g. Clarke 1968), but there is very little sign of a consensus of opinion as to how this might be achieved. Although it has always been clear from the archaeological record that the rate at which human society has developed is anything but constant, and also that post-depositional processes whether natural or brought about by human activity can influence the quality of the samples recovered from the ground, archaeologists are only just beginning to acknowledge the degree to which the nature of the archaeological record imposes itself on our concepts (Clarke 1973). This is particularly true of the relationship between the time-scale of the phenomena under study and the kind of explanation we can advance for observed changes in human behaviour or material culture. The absolute length of the period, the errors inherent in chronological measurement, the duration of units we perceive, the abundance of the original and preserved time-space sample, and the range of artefact and attribute variability in the sample differ enormously from the Palaeolithic to historical times (Clarke 1973:14; c.f. LeviStrauss 1966:260). The intermediate period, from the close of the last glaciation until the advent of literacy in particular areas (provided that sufficient textual evidence has survived to the present) which Ithink we may call "later prehistory" independent of its actual spatial and temporal boundaries,

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shares characteristics of time-scale and error with the Palaeolithic but equally the quantity and complexity of information is comparable with fully historical periods. For Palaeolithic problems, it is clearly impossible to consider the role of individuals in promoting change, whereas in the historical period, events and individual deeds are often cited as explanations for changes in the archaeological record. "Later prehistory" suffers from a collision of those who view its study as abackward extension of history, and those who in reaction argue for the fundamental unity of prehistory. However, there is clearly a danger that archaeologists whose familiarity is primarily with the Palaeolithic may neglect the greater potential offered by later prehistoric data, and indeed lay stress on the wrong order of problems altogether; conversely, archaeologists with a background in history, apart from overemphasising any textual evidence that does exist, are generally uncritical in their treatment of prehistoric data. Thus, the influence of the idealist school of history, exemplified in The Idea of History (Collingwood 1956), is apparent in many studies of later prehistoric and Dark Age Britain (e.g. Allen 1944, Hawkes 1968, Myres 1969) and in fact has seriously retarded the development of prehistoric studies in Britain. The relationship between the two poles is unlikely to change drastically, as the relative value of the archaeological record as a source of information about man's development is so completely different at either end. Iwould suggest that the time has now come for the archaeologists concerned with developments during "later prehistory" to free themselves from some of the constraints imposed by this opposition.

Despite the current popularity of

regional studies, Ibelieve it is necessary to emphasise the dominance of temporal over spatial parameters in the formulation of archaeological research policy and furthermore, it is worth reminding ourselves that our discipline should not be concerned solely with solving problems generated by observed changes in the archaeological record, but more with answering broad questions of social evolution. Archaeological research procedures must be appropriate to the nature of developments taking place in time, independent of their occurrence in space. While Ithink ultimately the task central to "later prehistory" is to contribute to our explanation of man's development of large-scale complex societies, the more immediate purpose of this paper is to ask whether archaeology can help to further knowledge of urban systems in general. In any consideration of past urban systems, it must be admitted that adequate textual evidence may survive to illuminate particular aspects of their trajectory; however, archaeology is often our only source as regards the conditions surrounding urban genesis and subsequent decline, and moreover material remains often provide a more complete perspective for the study of basic socio-economic processes and their long-term significance for urbanism. (See p. 110 below.) one of the tragedies of the development of archa ology has been that once literacy has made its mark in any one area, subsequent "Dark Ages" have been treated predominantly as the preserve of history rather than archaeology.

In some cases, textual evidence has survived in-

dependent of the archaeological record as with Spanish accounts of the conquest of Mexico (Adams 1966:34) or written sources relating to English medieval towns, although these are rare before the thirteenth century and do not become detailed before the fifteenth or even sixteenth century (Biddle 1974). In

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other cases, it is only through archaeological investigation that textual evidence is recovered at all, as with inscriptions from Romano-British towns or many Early Dynastic texts from Mesopotamia. In the latter instance, the rich potential for interpretation provided by the cuneiform documents, has often led to possible distortions being overlooked (Adams 1966:32-3). The limited extent of excavation has meant that the texts tend to relate to brief intervals of time at scattered sites, and are difficult to generalise from; a second source of error is their preoccupation with the activities of the elite. The inherent danger of this situation is that archaeologists will tend to slip from one mode of explanation into another according to whether the dominant sources are archaeological or textual, rather than concentrating their attention on those aspects of the behaviour of urban systems in the long-term about which only the archaeological record can inform us. They should certainly also make critical use of the texts, but only where they can illuminate those processes which are the object of their study. Ihave stressed the time-dependent nature of archaeological research because Ibelieve that the rate of change of the phenomenon under review is the primary factor conditioning the explanatory potential of archaeology, while both the ability of archaeology to attract resources in competition with other disciplines and the way in which resources are distributed within the discipline must ultimately be determined by the relative importance of different segments of the archaeological record as a source of knowledge about human behaviour. Only when we have made our theoretical expectations explicit can we expect to devise an appropriate methodology. It is also however incumbent on any archaeologist to examine the space-time transformation which is used to link the material culture record with human behaviour patterns.

We seem to be moving towards agreement with Clarke's (1972)

belief that model building is inevitably the procedure used in archaeology, but there is no consensus of opinion as to what is meant by a 'model' or as to its function in scientific research and the precise nature of the logical relationship between theory and model (Harvey 1969:147). The use of models is an essential procedure whether one shares Binford's optimism (Binford 1972:95) or Hawkes' pessimism (Hawkes 1954) regarding the archaeological record as a source of information about past socio-cultural systems.

However, it is

of fundamental importance that archaeologists realise that quite apart from the testability of their models, their content is ultimately limited by the collective experience of the human mind. This is equally true whether the models we advance for testing are formulated from our observation of processes operating in the present or recorded in the past, or simulated by a computer. By testing for the archaeological record and observing its deviation from the material cultural correlates of our expected model, we may be able to uncover evidence of extinct behavioural patterns, but we cannot interpret or explain them. We can only attempt to account for these deviations by continuing to study human and non-human organisms in the hope of detecting behavioural patterns capable of generating material variation analogous to that observed in the archaeological record. Freeman (1968) is right to warn us against reliance on ethnography alone for knowledge of behaviour patterns, and to claim that animal behaviour may provide better analogies for the study of extinct hominids.

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A further limitation in the use of models is the assumption of homology between material patterns in time and space and the processes by which they were produced. Geographers have been able to demonstrate that the same distribution of entities in space can be derived from diametrically opposite processes (Harvey 1969:166) and similarly over-identified models are a very real danger in archaeology. In this light the use of the results of so called ethno-archaeological studies as an aid for interpreting the past can be seen as no more than a very sophisticated form of specific ethnographic analogy, substituting material culture patterning for single material objects (c.f. the criticisms by Rowlands and Gledhill, this volume, 146). Even if regularities are eventually deduced from a general comparative approach to ethno-archae-ology, we can only test the model at the level of material traces of processes preserved in the archaeological record and not at the level of process itself. Binford's belief (1972:72) that "the limits on our generalisations are set only by the analytical techniques available, not by our substantive knowledge of the present" seems in contrast with his position that "Archaeologists are dependent for building models upon the knowledge currently available on the range of variability in cultural systems (1972:60). The confusion may well ...

arise from the implication that analytical techniques are somehow independent of our experience and our concepts; both of course derive from the operations performed by human minds. Given this dilemma for archaeology, Ithink it might be profitable to make one further comparison with geography. For Harvey (1969:129), general theory in geography will explore the links between indigenous theories of spatial form and mainly derivative theories of temporal process. It was surely the lack of even indigenous theory in archaeology that led Clarke (1968) to argue that understanding material culture from a systemic perspective must precede the understanding of relationships between this and other behavioural systems (c.f. Plog 1975). He later modified his position (Clarke 1973:17) by admitting that part of archaeological theory may be reduced to social theory, but that first of all, archaeology requires its own theories of concepts, information and reasoning, together with other levels of theory relating to the interpretative process in archaeology, all of which would be specific to the discipline and characteristic of its independence as a discipline. The point is that like geography, to be of relevance as a social science, archaeology must develop its own general theory to provide the appropriate space, time, and sample transformations by means of which theories of evolution and change, mainly derived outside the discipline, can be tested for consistency against the archaeological record.

General theory cannot eliminate the

use of over-identified models, but would make it considerably less likely. However, until archaeologists accept their responsibility to develop such explicit theory it is inevitable that other disciplines will treat us with the contempt we sometimes deserve. SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURE The idea that natural and cultural phenomena possess the property of appearing as systems is sufficiently familiar in the Social Sciences to render extended discussion of its implications unnecessary. The concept of an urban

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system then rests on the simple proposition that urbanism exhibits sufficient regularities for us to uncover, systemic relations between its component structures and within them, and study how the whole changes over time. Just as individual features of urban life are only comprehensible in terms of the urban system as a whole, it must be remembered that systems themselves are often sub-systems of larger entities. Thus, we may ultimately only be able to explain urban systems in terms of the behaviour of the larger sociocultural systems to which they belong It is worth repeating Godelier's warning (1972:258-9) that the entities of a system can never in practice be entirely dissociated from the interactions between them, as neither can exist apart from the other, while our analysis must be free from a priori notions of causality between the various levels of a system. As far as archaeology is concerned, David Clarke's Analytical Archaeology (1968) remains the best known and most thorough exposition of systems theory in archaeology, while Plog (1975) has recently contributed a useful review of its potential application at various different levels. It has been observed that the systems approach has yet to yield much in the way of concrete results (Higgs and Jarman 1975), but this is hardly a criticism that demands that we should abandon the approach immediately; the fault may well lie in the systems modelling so far attempted by archaeologists. Higgs andJarman's further criticism, that the approach may lead to a preoccupation with short-term noise rather than with the long-term trends about which the archaeological record appears far more suited to inform us, does seem to be justified as long as archaeologists attempt to reconstruct past systems as if they were static phenomena. Admittedly, it is the very idea that socio-cultural systems existed in the past which leads to our expectation of patterning in the data, and to Binford's optimism concerning its significance (Binford 1972:95), but archaeologists are prone to forget that systems must be studied with respect to their trajectory through time. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that archaeologists are only now beoming aware of the time-depth represented by their distribution maps; that most British hiliforts appear to be Iron Age, is no guarantee that they were all occupied at the same time, a point which Hogg (1971) should have stressed in his investigation of their territories. However, potentially more serious is the failure of many archaeologists to recognise that the models of social systems, etc., that they employ are usually based solely on the synchronic analysis of various societies carried out in other disciplines; it is thus impossible to separate those properties of the system which change with time from its underlying principles. Furthermore, such abstract categories as economy, religion and politics, seen as so many sub-systems of a social system (Parsons and Smelser 1956) simply reflect the apparent form of the social relations of modern capitalist societies (Godelier 1972:xxvii), in which the economic sub-system is conceived as an autonomous entity. Archaeologists tend not to appreciate the dangers inherent in the a priori assumption that such distinctions are of universal applicability in time and space. Indeed, such a conception of the domain of the economic seems to be the basis of Higgs and Jarman's (1975) simultaneous dismissal of systems analysis in archaeology and assumption that the economy can be isolated as the object of study.

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We must now turn to the distinction between synchrony and diachrony, which is often seen as a justification for the separation of such disciplines as anthropology and sociology on the one hand and archaeology and history on the other. Such a division must inevitably limit useful interchange of ideas between disciplines which after all share a common commitment to explain the evolution of mankind. Leach's (1973) insistence that structuralism would catch on in archaeology must seem strange to those archaeologists who see in Levi-Strauss' work a rejection of historical perspective.

Indeed, if it was Leach's intention

to commend structuralism to archaeologists in the face of their stated concern with diachronic process, it becomes of critical importance to discuss the relevance of the temporal dimension for explanatory research. However, provided that a number of misconceptions surrounding the issue are removed, Ibelieve this debate can be resolved. First of all, archaeologists must consider what structuralism has to offer them, not merely in terms of the structuralist paradigm currently fashionable among some social anthropologists, including Leach himself, but rather as a mode of thought common to several disciplines. It would be unwise to expect too much of a variant of structuralism developed in a discipline whose sympathies have never been with diachronic analysis. Secondly, there is considerable confusion generated by the different meanings which the term history can be used to convey (c.f. Gaboriau 1970). This has tended to deflect attention from the real issue of contention, which relates not to any concept of history, but to the stance of different disciplines concerning the traditional opposition of diachronic to synchronic analysis as a path to the explanation of particular phenomena. Thus, what can appear as the wholesale rejection of history, is often really the characterisation of diachronic analysis as irrelevant to the understanding of those aspects of society studied by a particular discipline. For Levi-Strauss (1966:130), "It is to this theory of superstructures

...

that Ihope to make a

contribution. The development of the study of infrastructures proper is a task which must be left to history . . . .". In preserving the field of study central to his discipline, Levi-Strauss is actually prepared to concede a complementary role to diachroñic studies, and even on occasion, to amplify the latter point e.g. "The anthropologist respects history, but he does not accord it a special value. He conceives it as a study complementary to his own: one of them unfurls the range of human societies in time, the other in space" (1966:256). Moreover, Levi-Strauss does not deny the possibility of uncovering diachronic structures; " ... the idea of a structural history contains nothing that could shock historians" (1967:27). However, he clearly has no personal interest in developing this area, and more important, Iwould argue that in common with most structural anthropologists to date, he has a disciplinary interest in discouraging such a venture. Here, anthropology differs from linguistics, for in the latter discipline the problem of change had to be accommodated from an early stage (e.g. Badcock 1975:68-72), through the recognition of the place of diachronic structuring (Lane 1970:28). Thus, to test the validity of Leach's (1973) claim, archaeologists must clearly examine structuralism in action beyond the narrow confines of social anthropology and explore the possibilities it offers for their own study of society. As Ihope will become clearer below, two important methodological contributions are the structuralist concept of structure as something not directly observable, but existing beyond the level of empirical -reality (Lane 1970:14), and the notion of a system of

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transformations where all the observed variants are generated by a single underlying structure.

The latter is exemplified by Levi-Strauss' analysis of

kinship systems (1969), and equally applicable to the study of past societies. Moreover, to circumvent the inter-disciplinary impasse concerning diachronic versus synchronic study, archaeologists should look more closely at the work in other fields which has attempted to reconcile structuralist thought and diachronic perspective. Indeed, it may be that advances already achieved in anthropology, notably by Goclelier (1972) and Friedman (1974, 1975), offer

us the promise of an

alternative to the anthropological paradigm already fashionable in archaeology, and discussed by Clarke (1972) and the theoretical framework for a more adequate social archaeology. Friedman argues, is that

The solution to the traditional dichotomy,

unless we assume that history takes place outside the object of study and according to some meta.-social laws of its own, then the problem of diachrony and synchrony must dissolve in the understanding of the dynamic properties of social systems" (1974:445), and to predict how a system will behave over time, it is necessary to uncover the fundamental structural properties by which it reproduces itself and to establish the limits to the possible transformation of its structures, beyond which they break down. The problem with the assumption of many anthropologists and archaeologists that there are major stages of social development e.g. band or tribe or state, characterised by institutional forms whose properties are fixed with respect to time, is that evolution is reduced to something that takes place between stages (Friedman 1975:161). It is noteworthy that Levi-Strauss' treatment of mental structures (e.g. 1966) appears open to similar criticism.

Levi-Strauss seems in theoretical

agreement with other structuralists that man possesses an innate structuring capacity which is genetically transmitted and determined (Lane 1970:15). Yet in practice, despite clear pointers from physical evidence that the hominid brain has undergone drastic modification during the last few million years, he envisages this structuring capacity of the mind as a fixed property for the species Homo sapiens, thus reducing its development to something that occurs between stages in hominid evolution.

In evolutionary terms, the

discovery that chimpanzees seem to share a rudimentary truncated form of our own coding/decoding capacilities (Leach 1973) need not occasion much surprise.

As with language, an adequate treatment of the mind is surely

impossible without recourse to diachronic structure. For Friedman then, any particular social formation is no more than a cross-section of a larger diachronic system, and

...

synchronic models are deducible

from the properties of diachronic models, appearing as the various stages in a multilinear system of trajectories"

(1975:198).

The aim of our analysis must be to uncover the underlying logic of such systems, and through this, to explain the appearance and disappearance, under specific conditions of time and space, of the particular variants which we recognise as historical societies. In this view of the social formation, comparative studies can only be meaningful if carried out in terms of underlying structure, and the existence of superficial formal similarities, to which ar3ha0o1ogists tend to attach great importance, is disrcg'rrled, as Durkheim warned us to do a long time ago (e.g. 1915:94).

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Social archaeology must clearly start from the hypothesis that man's capacity to enter into social relations with other members of the species is crucial to his achievements, and that man's intentional activities and the expression of unintentional properties of systems of social relations together provide the necessary conditions for the transformation of human systems (Godelier 1972:viii). An alternative view would see social relations as of no special importance among the interactions characteristic of the ecosystem; social behaviour is treated as only one of a set of variables and sociological problems are phrased in ecological terms (e.g. Rappaport 1968).

The con-

ditions of change can then be sought in the operation of the ecosystem as a whole. A third but now discredited approach attempted to account for man's achievements largely on the basis of his capacity as a tool-maker (e.g. Oakley 1950). It is important to realise that in the archaeological study of hominid evolution, the social and ecological approaches need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed Isee the ecosystem approach as providing the basis of a paradigm for Pleistocene studies, whereas Ibelieve a social paradigm will be better able to attempt the explanation of later human developments. Even a recent controversial assessment (Wilson 1975) would not suggest that more than ten percent of human "social" behaviour is genetically determined, and the question we must try to answer is at what stage in hominid evolution does the importance of learnt social behaviour or culture justify making the social system the focus of our investigation. In my opinion, the utility of the ecosystem approach is inversely related to man's cultural ability to change his ecological niche, although we should clearly continue to study any social system within the context of the wider ecosystem in which all human behaviour takes place. However, the point at which human social relations become of paramount importance in a multi-linear development should not be an article of faith but rather a primary task for multi-disciplinary study. As far as the opposite viewpoint is concerned, Friedman (1974:460-6) has dealt convincingly with the limitations of a cultural ecology or "vulgar materialism" which sees technological adaptation to the environment as the cause of social structure and is thus unable to account for many actual social transformations.

Also, it is clear that many archaeologists who have opted for an

ecological approach have quite simply failed to appreciate its limitations. If, as Colinvaux (1973:244) observes, biologists are only now beginning to organise the teams necessary to analyse ecosystems in the present, and there is insufficient data as yet for a computer simulation of any ecosystem on earth "as large as say a small pond", what hope have we of analysing past ecosystems? We must make do with models which are a gross oversimplification of a complex reality for which the bulk of the evidence no longer exists (Higgs and Jarman 1975). Moreover, there is a tendency in our enthusiasm for systems theory to forget that the ecosystem is a conceptual device and has no biological identity (Colinvaux 197:569-71). We must therefore reject any notion of ecosystems as self-organising goal-directed systems and return to models of change compatible with the action of natural selection upon individual organisms (Ellen 1975:11). The next question that social archaeologists might ask is which among the relations characteristic of human societies are primarily responsible for the major transformations that have occurred in human history. Among the

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possible answers is Marx's hypothesis that the relations formed by men in order to carry out and in the process of carrying out the production of the material conditions of their existence "determine, in the last analysis, the relations of compatibility and incompatibility between all levels of social life" (Godelier 1972:ix). However, if taken in a narrow sense, this leads directly to the dead end of cultural materialism and the objection that within many "primitive" societies it is kinship relations that dominate social organisation. To overcome this, both Godelier (1972:xl-i) and Friedman (1974:445-9) believe that the hypothesis can be modified to explain the relationship between the determining structure and the dominant one by distinguishing the structure of an institution from its function in the material structure of social reproduction. Their model of social change introduces a further distinction, between -

intra-systemic and inter-systemic contradictions and also the crucial role of the latter for the understanding of the dynamics of any social formation. Finally, we encounter the idea that starting from a single set of productive relations, the interplay of internal variation, structural dominance and intersystemic contradiction can generate a multilinear evolution of the social formation (Friedman 1975:165). A promising application of the model is Friedman's explanation for the apparent oscillation between 'egalitarian' and ranked society exhibited by the Kachin of Upper Burma (Friedman 1975), although we must await the criticisms of other anthropologists. Although archaeologists may reject this model of social change as a whole, the implications of one final point deserve their serious consideration; that it is the emergence of constraints incompatible with the reproduction of social formations that determines that social change will occur. This is not to deny the importance of particular factors e.g. the widespread adoption of iron technology or the impact of external trade, in social transformations, but simply a warning that searching for simple causal factors, although superficially attractive, can only result in nebulous correlations which contribute nothing to our understanding of the mechanisms of social change. In fact, to take the case of external trade as a factor inducing social change, archaeologists have not yet overcome many of the difficulties inherent in the quantitative study of trade networks, let alone begun to develop the multi-variate models necessary to explain the effect it appears to have had on many past societies (Haselgrove 1976). For the time being, social archaeology must aim to provide the space, time, sample and artefact transformations necessary in "later prehistory" for a structural study of social formations in the archaeological record and for testing models of social change. This latter must take the form of a process where we continually introduce and attempt to refute models, which if validated might provide an explanation for past social developments superior to those that have been proposed so far. The ultimate source of the theories of social change used by archaeologists is unimportant, provided that they can generate testable models. If other disciplines, such as anthropology, refuse to concern themselves with social dynamics, archaeology must do this for itself if necessary by widening its field of analysis to include contemporry and historical societies.

It is a mistake to assume that because archaeo-

logists rely on material culture and the physical traces of hominid behaviour in their investigation of prehistoric societies, they are limited to these aspects 105

of the evidence for their study of other societies, or that as the discipline evolves it will always remain solely a study of the past. ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FOR THE STUDY OF URBANISM It is, Ithink, easiest to discuss the utility of current archaeological approaches in terms of Wheatley's (1972) comprehensive review of what he identifies as five distinct, though overlapping, approaches to the investigation of urbanism; this has the additional advantage that his paper was prepared for delivery to a mainly archaeological audience.

These approaches, with

a single exception, each seem to be dominated by the work of a single influential figure and may be listed as follows:(1)

Reliance on ideal-type constructs:

the folk-urban or rural-urban

dichotomies. Although similar dichotomous constructs have been proposed from time to time, the best known attempt is linked with Redfield (e.g. 1953). On the basis of the way in which they mediated change, Redfield and Singer (1954) distinguished cities of orthogenetic and heterogenetic transformation. (2)

The expediental approach based on the size of urban populations,

preferred by demographers and administrators.

However, there seems no

reason to suppose a direct relationship between population size and urbanism. (3)

The delineation of trait complexes, which follows Wirth's (1938) at-

tempt to associate "urbanism as a way of life" with external criteria of size, density, permanence and social heterogeneity. Wheatley sees the difficulty of Wirth's approach in his assumption that size and density of population necessarily generate differentiation in communities. (4) The ecological approach, first stimulated by Park's (1916) treatment of the city as a natural environment. This has come closer than any other approach to a theory of urban systems, and its achievements are summarized by Reissman (1964). (5) Conceptualization of urban settlements as centres of dominance. The idea of a hierarchy of settlement built up on the order of services provided by the sites is fundamentally linked with the classical Central Place Theory first elaborated by Christaller (1966). Although subsequently modified in a number of ways, this has provided the paradigm for a geographical approach to urbanism ever since it was first elaborated, despite its inadequacy for such a role. Clearly these approaches need not be mutually exclusive, but Wheatley (1972:621-2) draws attention to the four seemingly different conceptions of urbanism that they imply: a demographic model concerned with population aggregations in a limited area;

a normative model in which urbanism is seen

as a way of life; an interactional model stressing the development and structure of social, economic and political networks focused on the city;

and

finally an economic model which treats productive activities in a spatial context. The problem with all these models is that they are useless for general comparative studies.

One must either assume that the attributes of which

they are composed are constant in form, function and mode of articulation, independent of the location of particular societies in time and space, and

106

despite their derivation almost entirely from the study of modern industrial urbanism, or explicitly reject their applicability, other than to that field, as do Reissman (1964:16) and Berry (1967:106). When we turn to look for applications of the five approaches listed above, it is clear that the first two have made little impact as such in archaeology, although Coe Is (1961) distinction between organic (urban) and unilateral (nonurban) civilizations, is an important attempt to account for the presence or absence of urbanism among the early civilizations by utilizing an ideal-type construct, in this case Durkheim's (1949) theory of solidarity. In contrast, the trait-complex is very much the approach favoured by archaeologists, and best exemplified by Childe's (1950) listing of ten indices whose concurrent appearance in the archaeological record he took as signifying the Urban Revolution in south-west Asia. Such a procedure, which involves the a priori acceptance of some settlements as urban and the rejection of others, can do nothing to increase our understanding of urbanism.

Indeed it has lead to a

dangerous preoccupation with definitions, at the expense of attempting to isolate the processes responsible for the development and maintenance of past urban systems and thus achieve some measure of explanition for their presence in the archaeological record. Even the formulation of a polythetic definition of urbanism from the study of medieval towns (Heighway 1972:9) as an aid to the archaeological examination of their origin, will at best lead to stadial models of town development as a basis for further processual studies, and is more likely to degenerate into an argument as to the minimum number of criteria which settlements have to possess before qualifying for the accolade of "urbanism", which is pointless in view of the small samples usually available to archaeologists. That archaeologists should consider "the listing of criteria of urban status to be applied in considering the character of a given settlement" (Barley 1976:83) as a major topic for research, can only be taken as an indictment of the present isolation of British urban archaeology from world developments. The ecological approach to the study of urbanism, in whatever form it has been presented, can be criticised for its attempt to treat both urbanism and social organisation solely as responses to environmental pressures. Despite the weaknesses of this new determinism, there can be no doubt that the ecosystem approach has made a substantial contribution to urban research, with its emphasis on interaction and systemic change. One of the most impressive attempts in recent years to provide a processual view of urbanism as a framework for future archaeological and anthropological research is contained in a short paper by Barbara Price (1974). She argues that urbanism results from a combination of three subprocesses, occurring together; these are population growth, population nucleation and population differentiation, the latter resulting from social stratification and socio-economic specialization of production. In turn, she regards the presence of urban communities as inevitably modifying the total ecosystem which produced them. Her problem comes when she tries to account for the actual occurrence of these processes together in time and space. Nobody would dispute her diagnosis that certain characteristics of the total physical and social environment might be permissive or limiting or even forcing, but why? In practice, she is forced back on such assertions as "there seems to be an association of the evolution of urbanism with environments that are ecologically diverse" (1974:315), ...

107

or social stratification is "characteristic of all civilizations regardless of urbanism" (1974:312) or that urbarfism is "evidently highly adaptive" (1974: 311), a conclusion based on the enormous increase in its geographical range since 4000 B.C. .A sizeable rural population base and the diversity of the rural population are seen as prerequisites for the evolution of cities. However, there can be no quarrel with her conclusion that it is impossible to explain the structure or function of any single part of the immensely complex network that is urbanism without reference to the relationship of that part to the whole, and Iwould merely add that the social system offers an alternative framework within which to work. Similarly, the correlation between the existence of broad regional symbiotic patterns and the appearance of early urban settlements requires further investigation, but at a level sufficient either to expose it as a spurious relationship or to explain it in terms of the behaviour and interaction of on-the-ground variables. The fifth and final approach noted above can be seen in a number of attempts to apply the principles of Central Place Theory (CPT) to the study of prehistoric settlement patterns and is partly a function of the increasing popularity in recent years of a geographical or spatial paradigm within archaeology. Its attraction undoubtedly lies in providing a testable and even potentially quantifiable model against which to work for some of the more accessible aspects of the archaeological record. On the other hand, notice is not always taken of some of the limitations of the model and the stringent criticisms that have been made by geographers themselves. Berry (1967:106) would restrict application of the model to central place hierarchies in complex modern economies. Some of the initial conditions and assumptions of the model such as the existence of an isotropic surface with uniform distribution of population and resources, together with the postulates of economic maximization, are clearly difficult to justify in its archaeological application. Nor does CPT provide a model for settlement development as it stands. Finally, Christaller's model (1966) is no more than a historically relevant special case applicable to the feudal settlement pattern of southern Germany, and has been mistakenly transformed into a general theory (Vance 1970:5). However, the discovery that aspects of CPT appear to work in contexts where it should not (Clarke 1972:51) has led archaeologists to the optimis‚

tic but as yet unjustified conclusion that there may be more general principles of spatial organisation underlying CPT. Some success has been achieved using a modified set of locational assumptions, but as Johnson (1975) observes, relaxation of the assumptions of economic maximization renders prediction of the configuration of settlement distributions impossible. An insight into the danger of archaeologists attempting to infer social organisation from the arrangement of settlements in space is given by Rowlands and Gledhill (this volume, 153). Similar dangers may obtain on the rare occasions when archaeologists possess evidence for a complete settlement plan at one point in time and attempt to apply such techniques as network analysis, e.g. Hammond's (1972) suggestion that variation in the function of plazas at Lubaantun may be expected to correlate with variation in accessibility. Thus, although geographers have not gone far towards developing a comparative spatial approach to the study of urbanism, the increased awareness of space that their work has generated in archaeology is a vital contribution on its own.

108

On the basis of this highly selective review, it appears that none of the above approaches offers an entirely satisfactory framework for future urban research; however, of those discussed the ecological and geographical perspectives seem to have more to offer, and may yet yield major advances in understanding. The very existence of these five approaches demands that archaeology acknowledges the complexity of the urban phenomenon, while the immense task posed by the excavation of urban deposits, necessitates that we rationalise our strategies. Moreover, the technological revolution taking place within the discipline during the last few years has ruthlessly exposed the inadequacy of our previous attempts at explanation, and an archaeology that tries to go it alone without a pause for self-criticism, will add little or nothing to man's knowledge of man. We must either borrow an adequate theoretical framework from elsewhere, or better still formulate our own; in the meantime Ican only conclude with a tentative suggestion of how mutual cooperation between archaeology and anthropology at three separate levels might advance the study of urbanism. The first, or limitet service, role for archaeology, is exemplified by Caroline Humphreys (1976) use of archaeological evidence to refute specific hypotheses relating to the nature of Mongol cities and the mode of production of that society. Unfortunately the excavations in this case were not carried out to a sufficient standard to test the established hypothesis satisfactorily, while new problem-orientated excavation would be necessary to examine the validity of her own model. The archaeological examination of pre-colonial urban settlements in Africa to test models derived from ethno-historical accounts or from oral traditions, would be another example of cooperation at this level. Two points must however be made concerning this approach.

First of all,

anthropologists attempting to use information contained in the archaeological record must recognise that archaeological evidence is only as good as the t estability of the propositions advanced against it (c.f. Binford 1972:95). Most outsiders and many archaeologists share an unfortunate conviction that archaeological "facts" somehow exist, independent of our interpretation. It should be clear from the above discussion that this is suspect, and is to a arge extent a myth propagated by archaeologists in justification of their disipline. Anthropological hypotheses can only be tested against the archaeoogical record by specifying a set of test conditions and then collecting the ecessary data. This leads us on to the second point which concerns the spirit Iinter-disciplinary cooperation. Although archaeologists habitually expect omething for nothing in their treatment of the botanists and zoologists to whom ey send their samples, this is no guarantee of the willingness of archaeol ogists to perform a similar specialist role.

While there will doubtless be

nstances when particular archaeologists are prepared to cooperate in the esting of specific anthropological hypotheses, it will only by acknowledging rchaeology as an equal and complementary partner that anthropologists can xpect worthwhile results from the study of many past societies. It is the bsence of participation by arc haeo l og i sts i n the process of research design tthe level of the study of the phenomenon of urbanism itself, which serves to separate this approach from those that follow.

109

The second approach is again generally pessimistic as regards the value of the archaeological record. In view of the regularities exhibited by urban forms widely distributed in time and space, the aim of the analysis would be to investigate the proposition that urbanism may be considered as a system of transformations generated by a single underlying structure (which might relate to unintentional properties inherent in human social relations). To refute this suggestion would in itself give new direction to urban research. Analysis of urban systems should precede consideration of their origin, and Iwould thus envisage a division of labour substantially in favour of research on the available sample of urban systems in the present, together with those past systems for which sufficiently detailed records exist. This research would aim at the construction of models for the underlying logic of urbanism, from which, given suitable external parameters, it would be possible to generate the observed variation in time and space and account for the reproduction of urban systems. Once dynamic models were formulated, it 'vcould be possible to test them against the trajectories of past urban systems known only from the archaeological evidence. This would require anthropologists to provide the material and environmental parameters necessary for a testable model, and for archaeologists to develop the corresponding time-space-sample transformations. The common framework for analysis would be the social and physical environment within which urban forms are located. Given their limited resources and the difficulties of urban excavation, archaeologists would be advised to relegate the morphological study of urban settlements to the level of a secondary pursuit, and concentrate instead on gathering evidence within the region for long-term changes in environment, technology and subsistence, and for the production, distribution and consumption of material goods. The redundancy of many portable artefacts makes possible the reconstruction of exchange network dynamics (although most archaeologists treat them as static phenomena), even from the disconnected samples which as Clarke (1973) reminds us, comprise the bulk of our data. The systematic gathering of textual evidence where this is preserved archaeologically, would pay rich dividends provided that the biases inherent in such evidence can be controlled. This point is borne out by the wealth of information which has been yielded by the bcudy of the Linear B tablets from Crete and the Pelaponnese.

The

archaeological record can also provide us with information about the conditions preceeding the development of particular urban settlements, and draw attention to those regions which seem to have possessed the same initial possibilities, but failed to give birth to urbanism.

If we accept that the structural

analysis of modern urban systems will take a considerable time, then for the time being archaeology should work towards the elimination of variables which seem not to be relevant to past urban developments. The major disadvantage with such an approach must be its treatment of the social system as beyond archaeological investigation, even though the forms of social change subsumed by the term urbanisation, may prove to be a necessary concomitant to the successful reproduction of urban systems. Therefore, my final suggestion enrisages a relationship between archaeologists and anthropologists dictated by a common interest in the social formation as a dynamic system. In particular, the social archaeology outlined in the previous section would be well placed to examine Adam's (1966:12) hypothesis that "the transformation at the core of the Urban Revolution lay in the realm of 110

social organisation", and thereby make an independent contribution to the study of urbanism. Such an approach is clearly conditional on archaeologists developing a facility for testing models of social reproduction against their data.

It also presupposes that the combined forces of archaeology and anthro-

pology will prove capable of building models of the development of social systems which explain how social and environmental conditions at a certain point in time promoted the processes of population growth, nucleation and differentiation necessary for the appearance of urban settlements.

By

taking the dynamic social formation as the object of analysis, we may also study how, in turn, the emergence of urbanism nffects the dominant structure of social reproduction, and in some cases pushes the system beyond the limits compatible with its reproduction, and thus to the further social transformations we understand as urbanisation. If we accept with Gutkind (1974: 58) that towns and cities are the social change pacesetters, then it is clearly desirable that urban anthropology should develop models to explain the relationship between urbanism and the process of social reproduction, and it is only by developing similar models that archaeology can hope to study urbanisation at all. In other cases, it is reasonable to suggest that the independent transformation of urban society might lead to conditions incompatible with urbanism and thus to the breakdown of urban life. For instance, one might suggest that it was the collapse of Romano-British society due to its internal contradictions that led to the disappearance of urbanism in Britain during the fifth century A .D. Although this is hardly a novel idea, it is at least an alternative hypothesis, which would allow us to view the settlement of Germanic mercenaries merely as a symptom of this social transformation, rather than as a primary factor in the destruction of urban society. In conclusion, I shall do no more than express my own belief that of the three approaches outlined above, it is the last which offers the greatest promise for the future. The central role of the city in western civilization, coupled with an innate belief in the superiority of our own way of life, has for too long prejudiced our study of the nucleated settlements of societies separated from our own in space or time. Urban studies must evolve beyond their ethnocentric preoccupation with arbitrarily selected nodes of human settlement at the expense of the social matrix of which they are a part. Our aim must be the study of the social formation in its entirety as a dynamic system, for it is only through this, that we can hope to explain the development and function of particular settlements, whatever their apparent form. Indeed, in as much as urban studies should be an independent pursuit at all, it is because they offer us the hope of understanding the role of settlement nucleation in the transformation of social formations and the relevance of this process for social evolution as a whole.

August 1976.

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A STUDY IN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY IN WESTERN KENYA

Ian Hodder

ABSTRACT

The tribes in the Baringo district, western Kenya, are briefly described and the collection of data on their material culture discussed.

Four charac-

teristics of the material culture distributions are: (I) the existence of a clear boundary between the distributions of material culture traits of the Tugen and Njemps; (2) the little intertribal movement of cultural traits that is evidenced mainly occurs from the Njemps to the Tugen; (3) male- and female-associated cultural traits move across the Njemps-Tugen boundary with unequal ease; (4) there has been a recent change in the clarity of the boundary. These characteristics of the distributions are best explained in terms of feelings of group conformity and identity. are discussed.

Some implications of this finding for archaeologists

AIMS OF THE WORK Prehistorians have long been concerned with establishing 'cultures', and with the interpretation of distributions of material items. Similarity in terms of material culture is often assumed to reflect, in some general sense, patterns of interaction (Struever and Houart 1972). In addition, post-marital residence rules have recently been used to aid interpretation of spatial patterning (Deetz 1967, p. 94). But it is not at all clear that the assumptions and ideas used in interpretations of material culture similarity have been 'rigorously examined. One way in which more can be learnt about material culture distributions and how these do in fact relate to human behaviour is to examine ethnographic situations. THE BARINGO DISTRICT, WESTERN KENYA The area of study is shown in figure 1, the main tribes being the Tugen and Pokot (both in the Kalenjin cluster of tribes), and the Njemps (in the Maasai group) .1 The Kalenjin tribes have oral traditions of a common origin, although the Pokot may have been an early offshoot, and they all speak related languages. The three tribes (Tugen, Njemps, Pokot) have similar patterns of social organisation, characterised by a lack of centralised authority. There are

117

a number of local councils or groups of elders who have some localised authority, and men of local standing are accepted as 'chiefs' by the colonial and present Kenyan government.

These chiefs are not traditional and a man's

local influence is not greatly increased by holding this post. There are no meetings at which the whole tribe gathers at one time. Marriage is virilocal and polygamous, and ties of kinship spread over fairly wide areas a 10 or 15 miles radius or more is common. There are exogamous dispersed clans, and a system of age-sets means that members of the same age-set over wide -

areas can treat each other as social equals. The settlement pattern consists of huts and granaries in dispersed compounds. Nowadays there are no villages apart from the small shopping centres which have supplemented the local markets, and where one can buy outside items such as soap, blankets, aspirin, flour and matches. But at the beginning of this century the Njemps were clustered into a few large and tightly packed villages (Dundas 1910; Johnston 1902, p. 812) which no longer exist. The Thgen and Njemps compounds are fairly permanent. The most important aspect of the economy, in an area of degraded soils, is cattle, as well as goats and sheep. The Tugen and Njemps practise some amble farming (maize, millet, sorghum etc.), but the pastoral and cattle side of the economy is relatively more important amongst the Njemps and Pokot. In the remoter areas chosen for this study, there is very little evidence of European influence. 2 The nearest tarmac road is about 60 miles away, and there are few or no European items to be found in the huts. Although there have been many recent changes, dress remains non-European. The Baringo area remained relatively untouched by early colonial settlement and influence because of its and environment and rather less fertile soils (Middleton 1965, p. 344), and because the area was not on the main railway route (Mungeam 1966, p. 94). In doing my work, every effort was made to stay away from the areas showing the beginnings of western influence (such as the area around Kabarnet). The environment consists of low rolling hills which stretch between Lake Baringo and the high Thgen hills on which Kabarnet is situated to the west. There is a flat plain immediately round the southern and western fringes of the lake. A slight scatter of trees (mainly acacia) and shrubs covers the landscape. A few rivers have water all the year round, but the great majority are dry for much of the year. FIELD METHOD 187 hut compounds were visited and personal life histories were collected for 400 adults .3 This information included age, place of birth, where they had lived, date of marriage, languages spoken.

These data were collected

through interpreters. It should be stressed that some of this information may be imprecise, especially that regarding age. Although it was possible to obtain the age of individuals within a 20 to 30 year bracket, an attempt was also made to determine when the items of material culture studied had been made or bought. Dates were given, through the interpreter, by reference to age-sets, famines or other major events, but many may have been exaggerated. 118

However, it is hoped that, as long as one is only interested in approximate dating, this information may be of some general value. Indeed, the clear internal consistency in the patterning which results (Hodder 1977) goes quite a long way to corroborate the value of the dates. Other information was also collected on the material culture in the compounds. Details of self-adornment were recorded. Sketch plans were made of the compounds and insides of the huts. Measurements and details were recorded of pots, basketwork, wooden containers, stools, spears and shields etc. 4 For each item, information was also obtained on who made it or from where it was acquired. DISCUSSION OF THE DATA The items studied and their distributions in the Baringo district have been described fully elsewhere (Hodder 1977). In this article some characteristics of the distributions will be mentioned which lead one to question the sort of ideas and explanations which traditionally might be used by the archaeologist in his interpretation of cultural distributions. Initially, the distributions at the Tugen-Njemps boundary will be considered. The first point to note about distributions of artifacts in the boundary area, is that they frequently show a clear distinction between Tugen and Njemps.

In walking from a Tagen com-

pound to an Njemps compound in the border area, there is never any difficulty in deciding to which tribal group a compound should be assigned. Although the border area is on the flat plain which fringes the lake, the people in Tagen and Njemps households are dressed differently, the compounds have different plans and constructions, and there are different objects in the houses. Outsiders and the inhabitants themselves would be in complete agreement as to whether a particular household is Tagen or Njemps. The existence of a clear boundary between the distributions of some items used by the Tagen and Njemps is shown in figures 2 to 6. The tokei and kereb are cups and bowls of basketwork. The former do not occur in the Njemps sample studied, while the two kerebe found in Njemps compounds show slight differences in shape and design from the normal Tagen form. Both these types of objects are made by women.

The tube are wooden eating bowls made by the

men and these again are not found extending into Njemps compounds. Wooden honey pots, made by the men, are found amongst the Tagen, either with a flat (A) or peaked (B) leather lid. The one example found amongst the Njemps had been obtained by exchange with Tugen people. A distinctive type of stool made by Njemps craftsmen occurs in very few Tagen compounds (figure 5). A clear boundary is also evidenced in the ear decoration worn by women. Njemps women wear small beaded rings in the upper part of the ear, and long beaded leather straps hanging from the ear lobe. The beaded decoration on these straps is chosen from two main patterns (A and B).

Tagen women wear two main

types (C and D) of ear strap. Most of these types of ear decoration are confined either to the Tagen or Njemps (figure 6). But the B type spreads slightly from the Njemps into the Tagen area. Of interest regarding this latter type is that (a) one-way movement of traits from east to west is evidenced without any corresponding movement in the opposite direction. (b) All the cross-border moves of this B type of ear strap concern women over 40. The age of the people involved has a relevance for the type of patterning that is found. These are two characteristics of the distribution patterns which will be examined below.

119

Some examples of distributions which show a clear difference between Tugen and Njemps have been provided. The existence of a clear boundary is of interest because there is no l ac k of movement and interaction across the boundary.

For example, in the contact zone Tugen and Njemps men and

women frequently gather for the reciprocal exchange of maize beer and honey beer. Men and women are often met travelling in neighbouring tribes, visiting friends and relatives, or going to local markets. There are three important towns or villages in the border areas (Marigat, Kampi-ya-Samakj and Loruk). In these villages there is always a very good mixture of people from different tribes coming to buy, for example, pots and food, and to sell their own produce.

But, to a large extent, people come to the centres just to chat

and gossip. The contact situation between the Tugen and Njemps has existed since at least the beginning of this century (Matson 1972, pp. 18 and 43) and it will be shown below that intertribal copying of customs and styles may have been more frequent at an earlier period. Why do two acephalous groups of people, who have had contact and interaction over a long period of time, nowadays maintain clear identities in terms of material culture? One might suggest that the differences in material culture relate in some way to environmental or economic differences. Apart from very slight differences (for example, the Njemps have a greater emphasis on cattle and live on flatter land), the economies and environments of the two groups are closely similar. In any case, there is nowhere one could draw a sharp line between two different economies and environments, and even if one made an attempt, it would be difficult to justify drawing it in the same place as the tribal boundary, since the eastern Tugen have an identical environment to the Njemps. It might also be proposed that material differences between the Tugen and Njemps are maintained because language differences inhibit contact. As has been said, there is no evidence of inhibited contact. Those in the border area manage to communicate sufficiently well either by speaking Swahili which is known by a small percentage of the people, or by having learnt a little of each other's languages. It is not at all convincing to suggest that language differences are the cause of the material culture differences. A further interpretation that might be put forward is that marriage moves are less frequent across the boundary than within tribal areas. Figure 7 shows that this is certainly the case, and the preference for within-tribe marriages may have played a part in retaining styles and customs inside particular tribal groups. Yet this is not satisfactory as a complete explanation for the material culture differences, because the cross-border marriage movements which do occur are by women. However, it is not the female-associated objects, but the male-associated objects which show greatest movement and stylistic influence across the border (see below). It would therefore be rather illogical to use marriage moves as an explanation for the cross-border cultural similarities and differences. In addition, the few women who do move on marriage into another tribal area are able to copy and adopt new styles and customs very quickly and with great facility (Hodder 1977). Women frequently come into contact with traits and styles from another tribe, even though there are few marriage moves across the border. It does not seem likely that the lack of cross-border marriage moves prevents women from adopting outside traits with which they are in daily contact. 120

If explanations in terms of degrees of interaction, environmental and economic differences, language differences and marriage movements are unsatisfactory, one is forced to consider alternative mechanisms.

It is to be

suggested here that the main reason for the maintenance of a clear boundary in terms of material culture is that artifacts may be being used, consciously or subconsciously, to satisfy and express feelings of conformity with the society in which one lives. This possibility will be examined further after discussing its relevance to some other characteristics of the distributions. The second characteristic of the distributions to be mentioned here is that objects and traits seem to move more easily across the boundary area from east to west than in the opposite direction. This has already been seen in the distribution of items of female ear decoration (figure 6) and in a number of other distributions (Hodder 1977). The compound plan common amongst the Njemps is also found amongst the neighbouring Tugen, although there is no movement of compound plan traits in the opposite direction (figure 8). There is no evidence that this characteristic of the distributions is related to a bias in the direction of trade and contact. The bias in the direction of cross-border marriage movements is not a possible explanation since the few moves of this sort which were evidenced all involved movements of women from the west to the east (Tugen to Njemps) rather than the other way round. One is led back towards ideas similar to those used to explain the first characteristic of the distributions. There is some evidence of forces at work within Njemps society which have resulted in a greater tendency to conformity than in Tugen society. This difference will be further discussed below, but for the moment it seems possible that it is more difficult for the Njemps to adopt new and outside (in this case Tugen) traits, than it is for the Tugen to incorporate Njemps traits. In Tugen and Njemps society there are greater pressures on women to conform than on men. Spencer (1965) has vividly described the role of women amongst the neighbouring Samburu who show many similarities with the Njemps and from whom the Njemps are allegedly derived (Huntingford 1953, p. 15).. A rigid age-set system prevents men from marrying before their age-set matures, when many may be 30 years old.

Women marry at approximately

17 years old, when they must move away from friends and relatives and live with an unknown older man in a strange environment. From an early age a woman's subordinate position is impressed upon her (Spencer 1965, p. 213) and she must be resigned to her role. To be able to attract a good and wealthy husband she must have the qualities of an ideal wife. These qualities involve respect and submission to her husband. The depressed position of women lessens with increased age since an older woman with married sons has a certain independence and status (ibid., p. 224). But as a result of the generally inferior position of Samburu women, Spencer (1965, p. 231) found that "they were less inquisitive than the males They had never been en...

couraged to show much initiative of their own, and this was a quality which they simply had not developed" because of the strictness of their upbringing. Although pressures on Njemps and Tugen women to conform are less severe than amongst the Samburu, a similar situation occurs. At the age of 15 to 17 a women's marriage is arranged with an older man, 5 and an important

121

quality that a wife must show is submission to her husband.

The woman

amongst both the Tugen and Njemps is in a very real sense inferior and subservient. If a change is to be made it is the man who authorises it, so that women are discouraged from innovating and standing out as different from expected norms. The difference in the roles of men and women relates to a difference in the distribution patterns of artifacts associated with men and women. Figure 9 provides a clear example of this. The short cloth worn around the body is usually dyed red or pink amongst the Njemps, while it is usually fawn-coloured amongst the Tugen. In the border area, several instances were found in which cloths were being worn of the colour most common in the neighbouring tribe. Figure 9 shows that it is the men who exhibit greatest mixing in the colour of cloth they wear. The colour of cloth worn by women shows less movement across the border area. In general, male-associated traits (such as some stool types, spear types and ear ornaments) move more easily across the Tugen-Njemps border than female-associated traits. There is some evidence (J. Brown, pers comm.) that Pokot within-tribal variation in female personal ornaments is more marked than for the men. It might be suggested .

that this difference in the distribution pattern of male- and female-associated traits in the Baringo district occurs, to some extent, because men travel over greater distances, to trade or to graze their cattle, than women. But women also travel widely visiting friends and relatives, buying pots, or collecting water (they will often go 5miles or more for this). There is no lack of dayto-day contact between women and there is no clear evidence that men do move over greater distances than women. Thus, the most satisfactory explanation for the difference in the distributions of items associated with males and females lies in the difference in the pressures on men and women to conform, as has been described. 6 A final characteristic of the distributions in the Tugen-Njemps boundary area which is to be considered here is that there is evidence of greater movement of traits across the boundary at an earlier date. For example, there is some evidence of easier cross-border movement of pots before about 35 years ago (Hodder 1977).

The colour of cloth worn by older people and the B type of

ear decoration worn by older women also show evidence of greater cross-border copying of styles than in the case of younger individuals (figures 6 and 9). The same characteristic is seen very clearly in the distributions of people speaking the different languages (thid.). There is a clear boundary between compounds in which people under 35 can speak either Tugen or Njemps. But the distribution of people over 35 shows that there are many on either side of the border who speak each other's languages. Although this patterning may have been affected by the recently increased use of Swahili, it is suggested here that the language evidence reflects the same pattern as the material culture a pattern of a more diffuse boundary at an earlier period. -

This final characteristic of the Njemps-Tugen distributions may partly occur because, in societies of this type, there are often fewer pressures on older people to conform in terms of material culture. It has already been suggested that women become more independent with age. Yet early photo.graphs and accounts (Dundas 1910; Hennings 1951; Johnston 1902) provide

122

some evidence of greater inter-tribal copying of styles in the early part of this century. For example, both young and old men wore similar earrings over wide areas. If the material culture boundary is defined more clearly now than it was before about 35 years ago, there seem to be a number of factors which could have caused this change. (a) One possibility is that the amount of interaction and movement across the border has recently decreased. At the beginning of this century there was little European interest in the lowland Baringo district. Stricter colonial control came relatively late in this area, and resulted in the prohibition and decrease of raiding and warfare in search of more cattle (Middleton 1976, p. 380; Matson 1972, pp. 22 and 184). However, although raiding has decreased, there is little evidence that colonial control led to the sort of decrease in day-to-day contact between the Tugen and Njemps which might have caused the observed changes in material culture patterning. (b) It is possible that there has been a recent strengthening of conscious feelings of unity wider than the tribe. The term 'Kalenjin' has come into use since the 1940s to represent the various tribes (including Tugen) speaking a language closely related to Nandi, together with the Pokot. These tribes have a tradition of a common origin, but political developments may have encouraged feelings of Kalenjin unity. The difference between the Kalenjin as a whole and outside groups may relatively recently have become strongly felt, so that, at the border between the Tugen (Kalenjin) and Njemps (non-Kalenjin), differences have become more marked. Further examination of this hypothesis is necessary before its applicability can be asserted with assurance. In sum, a number of characteristics of the distributions are best explained by some reference to the idea that artifacts, styles and customs may be used as indicators of group identities and differences, and may be used to express conformity with the society in which one lives. So far, the structure of distributions at the Njemps-Tugen boundary has been discussed. Here, a clear break between Tugen and Njemps material culture is visible. The same is generally true of the Tugen and Pokot if considered at a generalised level. Indeed, the Pokot appear more different from the Tugen than do the Njemps, and this will be discussed below.

However,

at the border between the Tugen and Pokot, it is often difficult to assign a particular compound to one or other of the tribal groups. Tribal identities are less clearly expressed in the border area and there is nowhere one can draw a sharp line between Tugen and Pokot. (It should be noted, however, that only a short section of the Tugen-Pokot zone of contact has been studied, and the situation may prove to be different elsewhere.)

If this pattern is

representative of the entire Tugen-Pokot border zone, how can it be explained? One possibility is that there has been a relatively recent change in the position of this section of the Tugen-Pokot border area.

At the beginning of this

century the Pokot extended half-way down the western side of Lake Baringo (Dundas 1910, p. 56). The comparatively recent change in the position of the Tugen-Pokot border area may have had some influence in blurring the material culture distributions. But another factor may be relevant to the difference between the TugenPokot and Tugen-Njemps borders.

It has often been noted (Salamone 1975;

123

Barth 1969) that feelings of identity with a group may be expressed most strongly in reference to outside groups. The 'Kalenjin' grouping to which the Tugen and Pokot, but not the Njemps, belong is certainly an entity which nowadays the people themselves, and their neighbours, recognise. It might be expected that differences within this grouping (for example, between the Tugen and Pokot) are less rigorously demonstrated than between Kalenjin and non-Kalenjin (for example, between the Tugen and Njemps). Up to this point in the discussion, the differences between tribal groups have been examined at their boundaries. But it is also possible to examine variation in material culture within a tribal area. Only in the Tugen area was a large enough sample of compounds studied to allow within-tribal variation in the presence and absence of material items to be examined. The distributions of types of utilitarian objects and of items of adornment, as well as house plans, often show slight localised preferences within the Tugen area (fodder 1977). This localisation is not highly structured or organised into distinct sub-tribal zones (although wider studies may identify broad regions within tribal areas), and the available evidence suggests that it is not difficult to distinguish between gradual spatial change within an area of generally similar material culture and the boundaries between those areas. Although insufficient data are available from the tribes neighbouring the Tugen to allow within-tribal variation to be examined in detail, other workers in the Baringo area have noted local customs and traits within wider tribal preferences. Amongst the pastoral Turkana, details of male decoration vary from place to place. Similarly, the colours of female goatskin attire vary regionally, although the differences are not strictly adhered to (Gulliver and Gulliver 1953, pp. 58 and 72). Local differences in female adornment have also been noted among the Pokot (J. Brown, pers. comm.

.

See also

Dundas 1910, pp. 58-9), while the pastoral and agricultural Pokot show numerous differences in ornaments and utilitarian items. It has even been estimated (J. Brown, pers. Comm.) that the pastoral Pokot material resembles much more the Turkana (their neighbours to the northeast) than it does the agricultural Pokot. As well as considering the presence and absence of types, it is possible to assess the degree to which the shape and size of any one type of object vary over space. One can ask whether there is any correlation between the length, for example, of an object and the lengths of nearby objects of the same type. If nearby values of some variable are correlated there is said to be spatial autocorrelation. The spears in the Baringo district are of metal but with a wooden central handle section. Application of the Icoefficient of spatial autocorrelation (Cliff and Ord 1973) shows that the lengths of these wooden parts are correlated with the lengths on other spears within a 2 mile radius. This is significant under the null hypothesis of randomisation (ibid.). It is also possible to examine how the level of spatial autocorrelation diminishes over space.

Thus, one can ask whether the wooden handle lengths are cor-

related with the handle lengths in bands of 2-4, 4-6, 6-8 etc. miles around each spear. Each distance band is termed a spatial lag. In figure IOD it is clear that the level of positive spatial autocorrelation decreases after lag I (0-2 miles), and at lags 5 and 6there is significant evidence of negative

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spatial autocorrelation. Other measurements and ratios taken from the spears show similar patterns (figure 10), indicating clear regional differences in spear styles. Several variables (for example, height, length, width, height/width ratio, handle height) were also examined at different spatial lags for the tube, kerebe, tokei, honey pots, and 3-legged stools, in order to see whether there is any evidence of spatial autocorrelation. All these non-specialist objects are made almost entirely in the home, either by men (tube, honey-pots, stools) or by women (kerebë, tokei), and they are seldom exchanged between families. In contrast to the centrally manufactured spears, there is no evidence of spatial autocorrelation for these locally made items (figure 10), and the correlograms show no differences between objects made by men and women.

A

larger sample of data and further analysis, which considers more than one or two variables at the same time, will allow spatial patterning in the types and shapes of the objects to be examined more fully. SOME TENTATIVE IMPLICATIONS FOR ARCHAEOL005T5 The work outlined above is the result of the first of a series of fieldwork studies to be undertaken by the author in the Baringo Area. It is really too early to attempt broad generalisations and conclusions of general validity for interpreting prehistoric data. But the initial detailed fieldwork and analysis suggest some thoughts which are perhaps worth expressing. (1) It has often been assumed by archaeologists, including the author, that similarities and differences in material culture relate in some way to patterns of 'interaction' in a generalised sense. Interaction is certainly one of the factors affecting the form of distributions of artifacts, and especially of traded items. But, if the evidence is considered in detail, the distributions of the majority of locally made items in the Baringo area (whether utilitarian or decorative) can best be interpreted in terms of feelings of conformity and tribal identity. Distinctions in material culture can be maintained between identity groups despite frequent interaction. The prehistorian should perhaps consider why people in different societies show different needs to conform overtly to local customs. This is a large and complex area of study and only a few of the factors can be discussed here. One factor which may relate to the degree of conformity expressed members of a society is the degree of political centralisation in that society.

by

"In the acephalous societies of northern Ghana, political incorpora-

tion means cultural assimilation. In the state systems it may entail no more than co-residence, though the degree of cultural assimilation clearly affects a man's political role" (Goody 1961 p. 171). Although 'cultural' is here being used in a wide sense, the ethnic and cultural heterogeneity of states or centralised governments as opposed to decentralised systems has frequently been noted (Colson 1969, p.30; Lancaster 1974, pp. 707-8). "In noncentralised societies

...

men deliberately seek to merge with the social rural

community and entrench their position by an appeal to common grassroots values of kinship, neighbourhood, and shared culture. Under these circumstances men tend to ignore past differences in their concern for maintaining aseries of open-ended networks capable of creating ties and maintaining

125

social order over satisfactorily wide areas" (Lancaster 1974,

P.

708).

Cer-

tainly, in western Kenya there has .been some suggestion that movements of large numbers of individuals into the Turkana area resulted in quick and thorough assimilation of the newcomers.

"An immigrant from another tribe

assumes complete Turkana status, including age-set position, within a few years" (Gulliver and Gulliver 1953,

p.

54).

Cultural assimilation of outsiders

amongst the Tugen, Njemps and Pokot occurs very quickly.

Newcomers,

especially newly married women, soon adopt local styles of dress and other cultural characteristics (Hodder 1977).

The participation and assimilation

of immigrants amongst the Samburu is also thorough (Spencer 1965,

pp.

76-7).

There is insufficient evidence known to the author to allow any certainty that heterogeneity in terms of material culture is generally greater in centralised than decentralised societies.

But the degree of centralisation may cer-

tainly be expected to cause differences in the needs felt by people overtly to conform. There are numerous other factors which may encourage or hinder the development of a 'conforming' society and these have been discussed in some detail by Barth (1969).

They include the degree of security and protection

from warring and aggression, the degree of economic dependence between neighbouring groups, and the demographic balance between groups of different sizes. For the non-centralised societies of the Baringo district, Spencer has made a distinction between the Samburu and the Rendille, on the one hand, who are said (1965, p. 298) to be more "conforming' than the Turkana and Doboro on the other.

This difference cannot be related to differences in the

harshness of the environment and the scarcity of resources, although overt conformity may be encouraged by greater needs for economic interdependence between individuals.

Amongst the 'conforming' Samburu, comparatively high

rates of polygamy (ibid., p. 289) and the age-set system (ibid.,

p.

304)

rigidly prevent men from marrying before they are approximately 30 years old.

Such a system necessitates strong social pressures and controls on in-

dividuals.

For example, the adverse effects of public opinion discourage a

man from marrying at an earlier age.

The less 'conforming' and more in-

dividualistic Turkana have less controls on the age at which a man marries although the average age of marriage is also about 30 (Gulliver 1955,

p.

20).

The age at which men are allowed to marry, the strictness with which this age limit is applied, and the average number of wives of older men, might be suggested as being some of the variables which relate to the severity of social controls on men (and women in different societies.

-

see above) and to the degree of conformity

In the discussion above, the Njemps have appeared

more 'conforming' than the Tugen.

Although there has been little anthropo-

logical study of Njemps social organisation, their affinity with the Samburu suggests that the age at which men marry may be more strictly controlled than amongst the Tugen (although the average age of marriage is similar in both the Tugen and the Njemps), and that older men tend to have more wives than amongst the Tugen.

Such differences in social rules and the strictness

with which the rules have to be complied with may relate to different degrees of overt conformity in the different societies.

However, much work still

needs to be carried out on the reasons why different societies show variation in their 'conforming' tendencies.

126

One other factor which might be relevant to this problem is whether the society in question is going through a period of instability and insecurity, for example during tribal wars. In communities in which there is aggression, warring and competition for land and cattle, it has been suggested (Barth 1969) that there may be a greater ned for overt identification with a group. Internal sanctions arise in such societies which tend to enhance overt conformity within, and cultural differences between communities. If a person is dependent for his security on the voluntary and spontaneous support of his own community, self-identification as a member of this community may need to be explicitly expressed and confirmed. Some of the numerous factors which may encourage individuals to express their conformity with, and membership of, their society have been mentioned. Until there is greater understanding of these factors, it seems unlikely that archaeologists can make any significant headway in the interpretation of material culture distributions. Anthropologists have collected very little data on the details of distributions of material items in 'primitive' contexts. With this lack of data, it cannot simply be assumed that dispersed and locally-made items directly reflect patterns of exchange and interaction, or, for example, post-marital residence rules (Deetz 1967). It seems possible that, in certain cases at least, material culture may be used to symbolise and express particular sentiments of conformity and identity. Future ethnographic work may be able to ascertain the nature of these sentiments, and may be able to determine in what situations and in which ways material culture is used to express the sentiments. (2) It would be possible to study the similarity between compounds in the Baringo area, using the traditional 'cultural' methods of the archaeologist. This approach would involve making a list of traits associated with each compound, and grouping or clustering compounds together according to the similarity between their trait lists.

For example, Clarke (1968:358) has

examined the similarities between American Indian tribes in this way. Such an approach would undoubtedly conclude that the Tugen are more similar to the Njemps than to the Pokot. Such a patterning has been suggested by Hennings (1951, p. 118) and demonstrated by Huntingford (1953, p. 15). At the moment it is not easy to determine the causes of this pattern of relative similarities between the three groups. The overall pattern is the result of varying relationships, different origins, and complex migrations and adaptations over a long period of time. Although the Pokot may have been an early offshoot from the Nandi group (Tugen, Keyo etc.), the present situation is that they are included as members of the Kalenjin, separate from the Maasai and Njemps. These present relationships could not be evidenced by the traditional 'cultural' approach. The only way in which the present situation can correctly be determined from the material culture evidence is by detailed study of distributions and by the examination of boundary areas in the way that has been shown. (3) Various classes of artifacts and traits have been considered in the analysis of the data. These include utilitarian items, items of adornment and compound plans. There are similarities between the structures of the distributions of items from all these classes. Even items with different modes of production and dispersal often produce similar distribution patterns. Some

127

of the products of specialists (some pottery and the Njemps stools) show a clear boundary between the Tugen and Njemps, as do locally-made and nonexchanged items (some types of ear decoration, the kerebë (made by women) and tube (made by men) ). On the other hand, both locally made types of stool (3-legged), and specialist produced spears have widespread distributions crossing tribal boundaries. No two items have exactly the same distributions and the differences cannot fully be accounted for by the type of object nor by the mode of production and dispersal. Consider again the traditional approach which might be followed by an archaeologist studying cultural distributions. The total similarity between compounds would be assessed according to the material culture items available, and clusters of similar compounds ('cultures') would be constructed. The results and conclusions which could be drawn from this approach depend entirely on the items of material culture available, or chosen, for study. According to which items are available for study, even within one general class of object (for example, decorative or utilitarian), different results will be obtained from attempts to define 'cultures'. Ways in which the archaeologist may be able to obtain rather more reliable information from partial and biassed data are mentioned in the final section. (4) In the above two sections it has been indicated that any attempt to erect 'cultures' (in the traditional archaeological sense) in the Baringo area would have been rather sterile because very little information tained concerning the human groups and relationships. analysis described in this paper demonstrates the value approach which is concerned more with detailed spatial

could have been obIt is hoped that the of an alternative relationships and as-

sociations. One can consider how a given set of archaeological distributions might best be studied if the maximum information on social and group structure and organisation is to be obtained. Before the distributions themselves are examined it would be important to ascertain as much as possible about settlement patterns and organisation, and possible degrees of political centralisation. Such study would involve the examination of the distributions of settlements of different sizes and functions. For example, are the larger settlements in a region clustered together or are they evenly spaced? Are the second-level centres near the larger centres or mid-way between them? Do the sizes of the settlements fit the rank-size rule (Crumley 1976), or do they depart from this rule in a way that suggests clear hierarchical levels? Are certain artifact types better represented in larger settlements than smaller settlements (cl. Struever and Houart 1972)? Also, from cemetery data it may be possible to determine whether any items are particularly associated with men or women, or with different age groups. (Shennan (1975) has indicated the possibilities in this sphere.) Examination of the fabric of pottery (cf. Peacock 1969) and the origin of artifacts of distinctive rocks may be able to show the distances travelled by objects. With this background of information, the structures of distributions of different objects and traits can provide considerable information about human organisation. In particular, attention may be focussed on the degree of association between distributions, the extent to which boundaries exist between areas of similar material culture, the detailed behaviour of artifact distributions at these boundaries, and, for example, the spatial

128

patterning of male- and female-associated traits.

It seems likely that a more

detailed approach of this type is capable of releasing greater information from the data than has traditionally been possible. The simple definition of 'cultures! tells us very little about the processes which produced artifact and

trait distributions.

The extent to which any of the Baringo evidence discussed above might be expected to survive for the archaeologist, and the ways in which burial practices may distort the living patterns, have not been examined here.

The aim

has been to understand the relationship between material culture patterning and human behaviour.

It is from such an understanding that the prehistorian

may be able to ask productive questions and begin to offer valid interpretations of his inadequate date. Work of the type presented here may also encourage links between prehistorians and anthropologists, particularly those such as Barth (1969) who are interested in the expression and maintenance of group identity.

Archaeologists and anthropologists have much to offer each other

in any attempts to understand the use of material symbols to indicate conformity and identity, to understand how these symbols are used differently in different societies, and to comprehend the changing expression of group identities over the past millennia. NOTES

1.

Without reliable maps of the total present-day settlement pattern it is difficult to determine accurately what percentage of compounds was visited.

In the areas near the Tugen-Njemps border it is estimated that

about 50% of compounds were studied.

Figure 1 does, however, give a

good indication of the relative densities of settlement in the different parts of the area examined. 2.

Although, in the context of Kenya as a whole, the Baringo district is relatively traditional in many aspects of life, the effects of colonial and more recent governmental control have undoubtedly been felt in the area. The establishment of non-traditional chiefs, the spread of local schools, and the policing of the area to prevent warfare and raiding are some important recent changes which have had considerable effects on the structure of society. This does not make study in the Baringo area invalid. In fact, the impact of central government control can he identified in the material culture patterning, and this is discussed in the text.

What is

important for this study is that traditional methods of manufacture and exchange of many items still exist in the area, although in the author's opinion such methods are on the verge of disappearing.

A large scale

money economy, and mass-produced factory products are not significantly developed in the area.

Every attempt was made to avoid localities with

a non-traditional aspect such as the irrigation scheme near Marigat, and the small factory concerned with fish processing near Kampi-ya-Samakj.. Compounds containing young men and women who had been to school and were wearing European dress were not studied.

Precautions of this

nature, although the influence of the central Kenyan government should not be ignored, allow patterning in traditional material culture to be compared with the patterning of a particular mode of human organisation and behaviour. 3.

The information was collected in December 1975 and January 1976 after an earlier visit to the same area. 129

4.

It was necessary to make some choice of items to be studied.

To avoid

too arbitrary a choice, an attempt was made to study all artifact types within the main categories of objects coration, weapons.

-

utility, personal dress and de-

The only widely found objects not studied, as far

as the author is aware, are calabash containers, the form of which depends considerably on the shape of the original calabash, and metal cooking pots which are now coming into use.

Rarer items such as circumcision

dresses were also not studied. 5.

6.

At least among the Tugen, it is becoming increasingly more common for a man to make his own choice of wife. The fact that female-associated items and traits are more localised than male-associated items might suggest a matrilocal society in which, on marriage, a man moves to live near his wife's family (Deetz 1967).

How-

ever, the Baringo tribes practise virilocal post-marital residence.

REFERENCES

Barth, F., 1969. Boston. Clarke, D. L.

•

Ethnic groups and boundaries.

1968.

Analytical Archaeology.

Cliff, A. D. and J. K. Ord, 1973. Colson, E., 1969.

Little, Brown and Co.,

Methuen, London.

Spatial autocorrelation.

Pion, London.

African society at the time of the scramble.

In L. H.

Gann and P. Duignan (eds.) Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, C rumley, C. L., 1976. settlement. Deetz, J., 1967. York.

27-65.

Toward a locational definition of state systems of

American Anthropologist, 78,

Invitation to archeology.

Dundas, K. R., 1910.

59-73.

Natural History Press, New

Notes on the tribes inhabiting the Baringo district,

East Africa Protectorate. Institute, 40, 49-72. Goody, J., 1969.

pp.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological

Comparative studies in kinship.

Routledge and Kegan

Paul, London. Gulliver, P. and P. H., 1953. The central Nilo-Hamites. African Institute, London. Gulliver, P. H., 1955.

International

The family herds, Routledge and Kegan Paul,

London. Hennings, R. 0., 1951.

African morning.

Chatto and Windus, London.

Hodder, I., 1977. The distribution of material culture items in the Baringo district. Submitted to the Royal Anthropological Institute. Huntingford, G. W. B., 1953.

The southern Nilo-Hamites.

African Institute, London. 00

International

Johnston, H., 1902.

The Uganda Protectorate.

Lancaster, C. S., 1974. Zambezi valley.

Hutchinson, London.

Ethnic identity, history, and "tribe" in the middle American Ethnologist, 1, 707-30.

Matson, A. T., 1972. Nandi resistance to British rule 1890-1906. African Publishing House, Nairobi. Middleton, J., 1965.

Kenya:

changes in African life, 1912-1945.

East

mV.

Harlow, E. M. Chilver and A. Smith, (eds.) History of East Africa. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

M:ungeam, C. H., 1966.

British rule in Kenya 1895-1912.

Clarendon Press,

Oxford. Peacock, D. P. S., 1969. Neolithic pottery production in Cornwall. Antiquity, 43, 145-9. Salamone, F. A., 1975.

Becoming Hausa:

ethnic identity change and its

implications for the study of ethnic pluralism and stratification. Africa, 45, 410-24. Shennan, S., 1975. 288.

The social organisation at Branc.

Spencer, P., 1965.

The Samburu.

Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

Struever, S. and Houart, G. L., 1972. Sphere.

Antiquity, 49, 279-

An analysis of the Hopewell Interaction

In E. N. Wilmsen (ed.), Social exchange and interaction.

Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 46, 47-79.

ACKNOWLEDGE ME NTS

The fieldwork in Kenya was funded by the Leeds University Travel Grants for Research in Kenya, the Sir Ernest Cassel Educational Trust, and the British Academy. A Landrover was kindly lent by the Depart:iient of Earth Sciences, Leeds University. The work was made possible by a research permit (Ref: OP. 13/001/c 1977/16.) granted by the Office of the President, Nairobi. Iowe much gratitude to Richard Leakey, National Museum, Nairobi, and he British Institute in East Africa for their support in Kenya, and to Frances Ngeticn for his help in the field.

Valuable comments on the work have been

made by Jean Brown, David Phillipson and Françoise Hivernel.

131

cc 0

0

Q

0

0

I

Fig. 5.

The distribution of 4-legged stools of Njemps type.

Open circles and

those containing various symbols inside indicate stools made by different craftsmen living at Langarwa (at the centre of the major group of radiating lines). Large filled circles indicate alocal type of 4-legged stools with expanded feet and obtained at Kampi-ya-Samaki. Small filled circles indicate that 4-legged stools are present, but no information is available about the manufacturer.

Fig. 6.

The distributions of different types of female ear decoration. Filled circles

-

small distinctive rings worn on the upper part of the ear by the Njemps.

Triangles with central dot

A type of ear strap.

-

Open circles

-

B type of ear strap.

Circles containing crosses C type of ear strap. Filled triangles D type of ear strap. Vertical bars coils and rings attached to the edges and lobes of the ears. -

-

-

4-c:

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.3 Fig. 8.

The distribution of different compound plans.

Filled circles

compound plans of the types shown in the inset. 4 = cattle enclosure

I = hut:

2

and open triangles = store:

=

3 = goat enclosure

Horizontal bars = Njemps compounds which are not of these types. Filled triangles and open circles = other localised types of compound plans. The distribution of the main type of Tugen compound is not shown.

Fig. 9.

The distribution of people wearing fawn coloured cloth in the Njemps area and red coloured cloth in the Tugen area.

Circles

-

wearers older than 50 years of age.

Females.

Triangles

Open symbols

-

-

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THE RELATION BETWEEN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

*

M. J. Rowlands and John Gledhill

ABSTRACT The paper demonstrates that archaeology and anthropology can command common objects of knowledge through the development of a diachronic and structural-transformational approach. It emphasises that no complete theory exists in either discipline for the attainment of these goals and archaeology cannot rely on borrowing existing theory from anthropology to attain stated goals of interpreting long term processes of socio-economic change. If these aims are accepted, common theoretical goals have to be established and methodological assumptions about the nature of meaning of different categories of data have to be examined in both disciplines.

The whole notion that an interdisciplinary linkage exists or can exist between archaeology and anthropology raises such a large number of issues -

-

relating to differing perceptions of the objects of knowledge in the two areas and the methods of acquiring it that it is hardly possible for any paper to cover them fully. This was reflected in the papers of the Cambridge conference where issues ranged from the broadest epistemological levels to those of archaeological problems of data and their relationship to the ethnographic record. It is perhaps superficial in this respect to observe that the problem has a 'golden age'

-

a time when, philosophically speaking, even to consider the

question of a separate identity would have been counter to the prevailing conception of the aims of a science of man. The comparative method in early evolutionism hinged on the assumption that whilst the archaeological record confirmed hypothetical stages in the development of human society by embedding them in the 'empirical facts' of stratigraph,r and sequence; the ethnographic record, on the other hand, could be used to 'flesh out' the archaeological record. Typological sequences of material culture arranged in their natural order from simple to complex were the keys to comparison of past and present societies. On the analogy favoured by

-

but hardly first coined by

-

Gordon Childe, the archaeologist

This is a revised version of a paper which although first appearing in 'Critique of Anthropology', No. 6 was commissioned for the present volume.

143

would be to the anthropologist as the paleontologist was to the zoologist, by establishing historical sequences of culture in particular regions and, through inductive generalization "establish stages in cultural evolution, the evolution of society in the abstract" (Childe 1936: Chaps Iand 2; Childe 1951:13-27). -

Whilst Gordon Childe retained up until his death a fundamental belief in such an aim for archaeology in general, and believed that he had partially achieved his goal with the publication of Social Evolution and The Prehistory of European Society, it was a goal that his colleagues found hard to assimilate and to which anthropology would have been largely antithetical. Without going into a history of ideas, it is necessary to emphasise that the rupture between archaeology and anthropology is a relatively recent phenomenon, and largely due to developments external to archaeology itself. Whether one recognises its cause in terms of a rejection of conjectural history by the structural-functionalist school of British social anthropology, or the rejection of universal laws of cultural development and the adoption of a geographical and relativist approach in Boasian anthropology in North America, past events indicate that a viable relationship between the two subjects cannot be simply desired to appear nor can they be based on the individual choice of particular practitioners. It can only be on the basis of a recognition of a commonality in the kinds of knowledge that the two disciplines might seek and find some agreement on the establishment of theoretical frames of reference for the production of such knowledge. Certainly, unlike their relationship with the natural and biological sciences, archaeologists have had no cause to become used to anthropologists wanting to reanalyse their data nor to subvert their aims into a branch of paleo-this or paleo-that a situation that in the long term against the backdrop of their common origins in evolutionism may -

-

-

be both understandable and a reflection of their more fundamental connectedness. Of particular pertinence to British archaeology, and related to why so few of its practitioners found little desire to pay any attention to developments in. contemporary social anthropology, is the implicit historicism that has imbued the subject in the past. The historicist view that, as an individual, one must feel oneself into a period and into history as a whole, drawing upon imagination and sympathy in order to bring back to life past peoples, events, social forces and catastrophies, had at the same time to be controlled and subordinated to factual evidence and criticism. The danger, of course, of these "two horns of the historicist dilemma", besides its anti-positivist position, lies in the tendency to de-emphasise the role of imagination, whilst a concern with the strict presentation of facts becomes rigidified into dogma.

Translated into

traditional British archaeology one might encounter extreme examples such as may be found in the writings of Jacquetta Hawkes (Hawkes 1968) although other cases are found in the introduction of Stuart Piggott's Ancient Europe (1965) or the more general papers of Humphrey Case (Case 1973). It is interesting to note, therefore, how the more positivist position of Gordon Childe, with his notion of archaeology contributing to a science of history, led him to keep abreast and benefit from developments in social anthropology and at the same time in our experience to be the only archaeologist that many anthropologists in this country ever admit to having read. Similar problems concerning the nature and meaning of the historical record to those -

-

144

which have exercised those archaeologists who see their discipline as a branch of history have beset anthropologists' perceptions of their relationship to history. Perhaps the main proposition which this paper seeks to establish is that if a relationship exists between archaeology and anthropology, it may well be a false one until both, as a first step, come to terms with their relationship to history. The material culture record in archaeology has been interpreted as a hierarchical set of entities to be ordered taxonomically. In the last analysis, archaeologists have not so much neglected the socio-historical meaning of material culture assemblages (since, in general, it has always been assumed that the ordering of material would lead to inferences about people) as displayed a timidity towards it which has much in common with that displayed by the Boasian school in ethnography. Implicit is the faith that 'understanding' will arise of its own motion from the accumulation of fact upon fact with increasing refinement of detail. Many archaeologists see the problem in terms of a contrast between 'subjectivity' and 'objectivity'. Now it is true that the archaeological record is a product of sampling activities of which archaeologists themselves have frequently been unconscious. Many of the developments in the last ten years or so have been concerned with elucidating the range and content of this record and with establishing techniques that might improve the basic quality of archaeological data. Recent emphasis on quantitative methods, sampling techniques and stress on factors that disturb or distort the survival of material have certainly led towards a better understanding of the statistical nature of the record. But the search for methods of 'automatic classification' as an analytic procedure has pursued an 'objectivity' which has seemed increasingly illusive.

This is clearly because the ordering of the record is a

cognitive process in which dimensions are selected consistent with perceptions of the aims of archaeological interpretation. The more rigorous the method of classification, the more articulate must these dimensions become, and the more imperative becomes the question of 'meaning'. Thus even the development of ways of making truly 'objective' statements about the intrinsic properties of artefacts, through for instance the use of geophysical techniques, has simply underlined the need for systematic social interpretation.

The more

patterns archaeologists discern in their data, the more questions will be forced upon their attention. These enquiries have thus amplified a basic dissatisfaction with the object and mode of explanation in archaeology which was to a great extent responible for stimulating them in the first place; but they have not provided, and bannot provide, a resolution.

Archaeologists have not simply become inter-

sted in new questions, nor dissatisfied with the performance of simple monocausal explanations. It is the basic meaning of the archaeological record Itself which is now being reexamined. Partly one can see here already the contradiction that Hymes observed in his review of Clarke's Analytical rchaeology (Clarke 1968; Hymes 1970), namely, on the one hand the view that archaeology deals with aunique set of data material culture that re-

-

quires its own concepts, methods, etc. in order to produce knowledge, and on the other the observation that such a record can only be studied if its former coupling within a socio-cultural system is taken into account;

145

an admission

which presumably should lend the subject to being theoretically open-ended towards related disciplines that also deal in patterned forms of human social behaviour. There is no need to pursue a critique of a book that the author himself recognised to be 'old', except to note that the internal perception of the nature of a discipline inevitably colours the expectations of its members concerning the potential contributions of members of other disciplines. The expectations of archaeologists in general of the ethnographic record tend to be couched in demands for data or parallels for the function of such categories as four-post structures (granaries/shrines), and the distribution of hearths in hunting sites demands legitimised by the empirical fact that these are the kinds of data

-

found by archaeologists. Inevitably, where the ethnographic record provides any information of this sort, it is delivered in a concealed and highly arbitrary form, the variety of which serves only to confuse attempts at interpretation still further. Assuming that there is some meaning in the phrase 'the linking of the material culture record to the Sociocultural system', we suggest that comparing archaeological material to ethnographic material cases and their assumed functions is an invalid procedure at the methodological level. It serves only to compare isolated empirical fact to empirical fact without going through the intervening stage of assessing the social or cultural structures that might have generated similarities of the material culture record in both the ethnographic and archaeological contexts. Considered in this light, the whole problem of ethnographic analogies, or parallels, dissolves as a methodological fallacy based on an empiricist trap that material fact can be compared to material fact without ascending to a more abstract theoretical level to cover both the material situations White and Thomas (1972).

-

for instance Drewett and Ellison (1971),

The same critique applies whether one deals with folk models, general comparative or ethno-archaeological approaches. To us, at least, there seems to be little merit except perhaps at the methodological level in following the ethno-archaeologists' advice to observe, for example, what happens to a house and its contents when abandoned, or to assess the dispersal of food debris on a recent site, at any rate beyond making an assessment of the partiality of the archaeological record. If ethno-archaeology is to develop from this limited 'service' role, it would seem essential for its practitioners to reorientate themselves towards assessing the ethnographic material culture record in its own right rather than to continue to search for illumination or insight for the archaeological record. It can only legitimise itself in the -

long term by carrying out analysis of types of social formation and the particular and distinctive material indicators that such types generate in the ma-

terial record.

Only a marginal division of labour is possible between the

social anthropologist dealing with social structure and the archaeologist dealing with material culture with all the attendant risks of both misunderstanding -

the perceptions and interests of the other. Whether anthropologists will alert themselves to paying attention to the material culture record of contemporary societies or whether ethno-archaeologists become theoretically competent at the social anthropological level is scarcely relevant since the same purpose will be served by both.

146

If the results of anthropological research are capable of making any contribution to archaeologicar interpretation, it would seem to us, therefore, not to lie at the level of analysis or comparison of particular ethnographic cases. Anthropology is not, of course, ethnography, however much it may have come t be identified in the eyes of many of its practitioners as well as of members of other disciplines with its classical and distinctive techniques of observation. Indeed, valid criticisms have been made of the assumptions implicit in the archaeologist's expectation that ethnography is relevant to the sociological interpretation of archaeological data outside the 'ethnographic areas' of classical anthropological field-work. (Freeman 1968) The assumption that 'primitive' societies are in some fundamental sense 'like' prehistoric societies 'before civilisation' obviously begs a set of evolutionary questions. We might at least ask whether 'primitiveness' is a characteristic of societies occupying peripheral or marginal ecological niches, or a function of certain demographic or technological constraints which might in turn be related to particular characteristics of social structure. This in turn begs the more significant question of whether anthropologists have ever adequately studied the dynamics of primitive social types to serve as a basis for comparison with the dynamics of prehistoric formations. Indeed, the fact that anthropologists have studied 'social change' with its implicit static assumptions rather than social evolution must raise doubts as to whether the mainstream of anthropological research has any dynamic perspective at all. Anthropologists have, of course, participated in the study of 'Civilisations' and more 'centralised' social formations.

But the constraint of technique has

operated here. Anthropologists have tended to look for the equivalent of a pelagic island in the midst of complex societies dispersed widely in space and firmly embedded in at least a partially known history. The anthropology of India or China is not wholly the ethnography of village studies but it is largely that. This approach can certainly be justified to the extent that crucial aspects of a society's functioning can and must be analysed at the level of 'effective' interpersonal relations at the local level, and statistical analysis of marriage patterns does indicate the existence of surprisingly small kinship isolates even in the Western urban milieu. But dissatisfaction with a micro-sociological approach in a static framework has grown to the point where history and a wider view of culture become indispensible

.

Thus Dumont was constrained

to deny categorically that all -social systems, whatever their history, are susceptible of a structural-functionalist analysis with the same chance of success as the "relatively stable and isolated" systems that make up the classical ethnography (Dumont 1970:209). If anthropologists are in abetter position today to reintegrate time into their analyses, this situation has largely come about as a result of developments at the theoretical level in anthropology which are often taken as the very negation of an historical perspective.

The development of 'structural

anthropology' is often taken as the ultimate reinforcement of the synchronic bias in anthropology engendered by the linking of observation to the life-span of the observer. But it would be more accurate to say, of the work of Levi-. Strauss at any rate, that it represents a shift to a 'meta-chronic' level, at which phenomena are purged of all that they owe to history and their physical and cultural environment.

Far from being a negation of an historical

147

perspective, this step can be seen as absolutely necessary for its concrete integration into analysis, and as the precondition for generalisation-based comparison. In Les Structures Elmentaires de la Parent, Lvi-Strauss demonstrated that a vast range of 'kinship systems' from different parts of the world could be reduced to a set of underlying 'exchange' structures. In other words, he showed that systems playing a key role in a type of social formation, 'kinship' itself and related phenomena making up a 'total' exchange-system, could be understood in terms of invariant structural principles which could generate the variety of empirical cases produced under parameters specific to each 'real' society. Because such a fundamental invariant basis was lacking in the structural-functionalist approach, it could yield only abstract 'descriptions' of particular systems; comparisons in time and space could only be made in terms of the abstracted empirical features, differences seemed arbitrary, and comparison itself fell into disrepute. Indeed, the functionalists were not only unable, for example, to follow up Mauss's (1954) precocious recognition that the potlatch systems of the North-West Pacific coast had something basic in common with the ceremonial exchange systems of Melanesia they even failed to achieve any satisfying sociological understanding of the systems individually, and resorted to 'explanations' of the potlatch in terms of psychopathology or 'latent functions' with respect to ecologically-determined local productivity variations. The latter approach, subsequent analysis has shown, could not even be justified in its own terms by the facts, and it is interesting to note the extent to which recent research from a structural approach has shown both distortion and neglect of aspects of the available data by writers who prided themselves on their empirical approach. (Cf. Rosman & Rubel 1971.) Levi-Strauss's work in this field can in turn be criticised on the grounds that the exchange of women is sometimes given an undue prominence at the expense of other aspects of the total exchange cycle, and also for its neglect of the wider social and material factors which underlie the actual occurrence of a particular variant. But it is only when we start from the structural approach that the latter kind of question can be properly answered. It is clear, for example, that environment and techno-economic constraints do not determine aunique social form which alone is compatible with them; to 'explain' social organisation teleologically in terms of putative ecological functions alone is thus a metaphysical kind of argument. There is a degree of freedom in the evolution of social systems such that different forms may be compatible with the same constraints. We can, of course, say that some forms are incompatible in functional teruis with certain constraints, and thus allow a negative kind of determination.

But within these outer limits

we must leave room for culture history and the hybridisation of social systems, and for the internal logic of social development. Furthermore, the whole question of history becomes more meaningful when we consider what happens as structures operate in a wider system context through time, precipitating change as they run up to the margin of their functional compatibility with their constraints. The contribution which anthropology is capable of making to archaeology must therefore lie at the level of more general questions about basic social 148

types, dealing with structural modalities rather than empirical abstractions. In the first instance, it is the general conclusions and concepts that anthropologists have reached concerning the nature of social forms lacking markets, centralised states, true-monetary economies etc. that can most usefully be employed by archaeologists for the analysis of their material. The ethnographic corpus at this level acts as a series of illustrations of types of social organisation that can be illuminated by models of social structure. It must be emphasized that such models should not be confused with generalized concepts such as 'tribe', 'chiefdom' or 'state' derived from empirical comparisons for similarity and dissimilarity in particular ethnographic cases. Rather they identify particular sets of social relations and their logical functioning within a system to create a generalized model which precedes and facilitates the comparison of particular empirical cases for the identification of cultural variants.

(As examples of this approach see Ekholm (in press) and Bonte

(in press).) Hence such models must act as formal, logical constructs that operate at a sufficiently generalised level that specific variants can be generated by a single underlying structure. If anthropological research is to be invoked in archaeological interpretation, it would seem essential that it should be at such a formal, structural level which may then be used to construct specific models which can be given their own history and specific parameters. It is only in this way that interpretative frameworks might be established, and yet be modified to account for the variability of specific, historically distinct systems, whilst still retaining their general explanatory power. To a certain extent, some archaeologists are now moving in this direction. At the present stage, perhaps the greatest danger lies in archaeologists' failing to appreciate the nature of the theories invoked, a failure for which they could hardly be blamed since many a sterile controversy has been generated in anthropology by similar misunderstandings. For example, archaeologists who have considered the question of 'gift-exchange' have tended, misled by the IVlaussian terminology, to view it in terms of a simple dichotomy with 'trade'. Implicit here is our own society's idea of a 'gift' and its distinction from 'commercial transactions'. Now it is true that 'trade' in Prehistory has covered a multitude of ethnocentric assumptions, and the recognition that there may be several interpretations of patterns attributable to 'exchange' is a significant advance. But the anthropological theory of exchange is not about certain social activities that are 'not commercial transactions', it is a positive theory about the very foundations of different types of social systems. It is certainly true that some pre-capitalist societies distinguish different types of exchange. To take a familiar example, in the Trobriands 'kula' exchange is distinguished from 'gimwali' (barter). But there is a world of difference between this case and our own structurally. In the Trobriands the first type of 'exchange' plays a central role; in the transmaritime exchanges the Kula cycle of personal relationships organises the barter transactions in a way which is functionally equivalent to the 'impersonal' juridical framework which normalises Western market transactions. It is also of key significance in the internal structuring of Trobriand society by asymmetric exchange. In the West, in contrast, 'gift-exchange' is a peripheral not a central institution, residual trace of older forms, and other structures have taken on its politico-economic role in our society.

149

It must be stressed that structural models are not descriptions of actual societies or behaviour; still less do they attempt to make real systems conform to a series of 'ideal types'.

They attempt to identify the fundamental

relationships that connect social groups in a given type of system and determine' the way it functions and develops. In different types of society different structures dominate the reproduction of the social system in this sense, and structures fulfil different functions according to their place in the system as a whole.

These differences are clearly the product of historical processes,

and are reflected in social categories. We distinguish 'politics', 'economics' and 'religion' as separate domains of social activity, but we must remember that the distinctions are the product of a particular historical development. The danger of the Binford-Renfrew paradigm for studying the inter-relation of a single set of subsystems making up a cultural system lies precisely in the ethnocentric assumption that distinctions of recent European derivation are applicable outside a capitalist Europe (Binford 1964; Renfrew 1972: 476-504). If anthropologists have learnt anything it is that the greatest barrier to understanding is the separation out as 'kinds of activity' of aspects of social organisation whose essence lies in their non-separateness in the analysis of particular social situations. It remains true that archaeological interpretation is at its most underdeveloped in the field of social structure. Concepts such as 'social stratification' do not in themselves constitute adequate frameworks for the study of social systems. 'Power' is meaningless without some hypothesis about the social relations through which it might have been exercised unless prehistory is a chapter of naked violence. Certainly, more sophisticated developments have been made within the framework of general and multilinear evolution and have by and large been concerned to elaborate models demonstrating the relative importance of particular factors such as technological development, ecological adaptation and population growth. In this respect, anthropology's traditional concern with social structure has exposed its fundamental unsophistication at this level and may gain considerably from studying the contributions of archaeology in these fields.

Perhaps the most influential work for anthropo-

logists so far has been Ucko and Dimbleby (1969). Much of this work deals onlywith the identification of stages and is concerned only with technoecological and demographic factors as independent variables presumed to be those most causally significant.

Criticism of prime-movers and single factor

explanation are quite common at the present time leading to more complex systems models being proposed which attempt to give weight to the interaction between these material variables rather than the variables themselves. Rarely, however, has the notion of social process been explored in any systematic way. Some evolutionists, Adams (1966) and more recently Flannery, have been critical of their colleagues and attempted to develop an approach to these problems that stressed the social determinants in evolution. Even here, however, there is little concern for what is socially specific. Flannery (1972), for example, using a system's analytic framework has discussed the evolution of states in terms of promotion and linearisation within control hierarchies.* *

The latter are a series of hierarchically ordered sub-systems

The critique of control hierarchy models is developed more fully in the introduction to Friedman J. and Rowlands M. (in press) The Evolution of Social Systems (London). 150

in which higher level controls act upon the output of lower levels without interfering in the actual operation of these levels. Thus, lowest level subsystems deal with the immediate process of production, the next level sets the goals of production and distribution and a higher level may organise general administrative and ideological means of maintaining the lower order systems. One of Flannery's main arguments is that many different kinds of environmental pressures may cause aunit at a lower level to shift to a higher level, for example militarism promoting new leaders from a group who were excluded from power in a priest-manager dominated system. This kind of argument goes back to Rapapport's description of the way in which, for example, political leaders of one or another sort come to occupy a place in the control hierarchy that formerly was devoid of personnel and served as a general ritual regulator of population adaptation (Rapapport 1968). While there is no doubt that the notion of control hierarchy in which a discrete number of functions are clearly linked in terms of increasingly inclusive hierarchical levels can shed a great deal of light on some important aspects of evolution, it would be inadequate to assume that such a framework can account for any social transformation. Firstly, it is not the case that control hierarchies correspond to discrete social institutions. Thus, transformations of social structures will not reflect simple shifts of level such as those implied by Flannery. In fact, such a control hierarchy tells only that some functions control the output of others in a series of given length. It says nothing about the specific content of the levels nor of the kinds of units which are associated with them. Thus, what is promoted and how it is promoted cannot be accounted for in this framework. The internal logic of evolution is left aside. This would be analogous in biology to an equivalent model of the hierarchy of physical functions. Even if there were a clear hierarchy of this type, it would never tell us anything about the nature of the bio-forms within which the functions were organised, except in so far as it sets limits on possible kinds of structure. The fact that the brain co-ordinates a number of lower order functions does not help us to explain its structure, that is the particular way in which it performs these functions. What evolves in living systems is structure and not control hierarchies which are, as is assumed, rather constant. Thus the problems for evolutionary theory must be more directly related to the structure of social systems themselves. Whilst the systemic or cybernetic approach is partly responsible for the current rejection of the simple programmatic materialism which has characterised much American neo-evolutionism, it is not clear how the social and/ or cultural properties of evolution could be interpreted using this framework. It is usual in evolutionary theory to treat stages as if they were objects abstractions from particular types of institutions. It has been suggested that an ordered juxtaposition of social types is in itself inadequate to the problem -

at hand. This is not to deny that social institutions can be classified in such categories. Rather, it is a question of the kind of theorizing that results from such preliminary categorizations. Most attempts at explanation have singled out factors such as technological improvement or population growth as causes of evolution. Factors which can be shown to be variables whose values cannot be independently determined. We know that technology can develop and that population can grow.

We also know that technology does not

151

develop itself and that the birth-rate, which appears increasingly to be the dominant factor in systematic population growth, is socially and not biologically determined.

Such factors must be accounted for in terms of dominant

social relations and cannot be treated as independent variables. Multivariant models constructed along systems theoretic lines may avoid some of the above problems but since they are normally restricted to such abstract categories as population size and density, technological organization, trade, warfare, etc. they are not specific enough to account for the actual transition from one social form to another. (For instance Carneiro (1970), Homer (1970), Renfrew (1972), and Steward (1955).)

This must necessarily be the case

where the models in question contain no social properties. It is the integration and specification of the above categories in a social system which determines the particular significance of any one of these elements.

Whilst

the insistence on such properties for adequate explanation is a vital development, a feature recognised by some of the traditional cultural materialists, their inclusion in evolutionary schemes has not so far shown any operational capability. In an interesting way, however, this trend points towards an increasing convergence of interest between archaeologists, social anthropologists and social and economic historians in the development of satisfactory concepts for interpreting social transformations. Success at the operational level may also require a more sophisticated awareness of the material culture record. The usual assumption that material culture encodes fossilized behaviour patterns which can be obtained by asking the right questions and applying correct procedures, whilst possibly being true in a gross sense, does raise questions about the nature of the reality uncovered. The treatment of material culture as a non-verbal system of communication raises general points about the kinds of information best transmitted through an essentially visual medium that can combine both aesthetic and symbolic elements. Natural objects or cultural artefacts that convey heavy symbolic loads are unlikely to have utilitarian functions in order to prevent ambiguity of meaning in cases where symbolic load takes precedence over more mundane usage. Meaning therefore selects for specially constructed artefacts to act as essential mediums in contexts where symbolic content is of fundamental importance. For the same reasons previously functional objects may be elaborated to a non-functional level or a wide range of material items carrying less heavy symbolic loads (including clothing, house-structures, domestic utensils and tools) may retain multifunctional roles, the meaning of which is governed by the context in which they are used. The polysemic nature of such artefacts (the multiple meanings at both the conscious and unconscious levels) implies that in addition to the immediate, conscious messages encoded in them their use in a social context will convey what Bateson (1974: particularly 101-125) has termed meta-information. This concerns the nature and order of unconscious meanings that are attached to the conscious messages in a particular context. Meta-information is thus not localised in the artefacts themselves and is available only to those who have acquired a competence in the symbolism. 'Cognitive anthropology' (Tyler 1969) strives to acquire a kind of surrogate competence, with the aim of translating the non-verbal sign-systems into terms which have meaning

152

in our own culture. This usually means translation into the natural language of the anthropologist in the last instance. But a 'native' does not require this conscious, verbal translation: as Levi-Strauss once put it, (1963a) gifts are already "elements in a dialogue". This raises the question of 'native models', first recognised by Boas but inadequately developed before the rise of the structural approach (cited in Lvi-Strauss 1963b). Meta- info rmation can be 'received' because the receiver has a set of implicit models for structuring the input and determining his behavioural response. It is possible that a model of structure itself may exist in the collective consciousness of a society, but this conscious and articulate model may "act as a screen to hide" the underlying structure at the unconscious level, and thus constitute a 'secondary rationalisation' of behaviour. For Lvi-Strauss the native's conscious model is as significant as the anthropologist's model precisely because it may act not to explain the underlying structure but rather to accommodate it. In as much as the existence of a particular conscious model may be seen as an illusion which in fact serves to maintain the stable operation of a deeper structure which is contradictory, structural anthropology is in close contact here with classical Marxism. The distinction between conscious and unconscious structures has wider implications for the material culture record. For example, anthropology can point to a number of cases where the physical arrangement of settlements in space provides a direct insight into the social structure and cognitive systems of a given group. So significant does this projection appear to be, in expressing a whole hierarchy of social oppositions in a cosmological framework, that even temporary encampments display the same structural uniformity. However in many cases these objectified representations of social structure have been shown by further analysis to be a complete inversion of the underlying reality (see Levi-Strauss 1963c). If conscious models serve in some cases to disguise and perpetuate an underlying structure and it is that conscious representation that is transformed into the material culture record then in a sense the detection of such a pattern represents only a first stage in an analysis. The aim of analysis may not be to interpret that pattern but to elucidate what it conceals. A fortiori, the patterns themselves cannot be taken as invariants for comparative analysis. Clearly, such a problem cannot be dealt with at this level in isolation without becoming absurdly speculative, and analysis must depend on the presence of other patterns in the material culture record that are generated by deeper lying structures. The archaelogical record, therefore, is a constant interplay between unconscious structures and conscious patterns that take on a superficial appearance of reality. If appearance alone is accepted, interpretation will not be carried very far. Seen in this light the general controversy in archaeology between the so-called normativist, or mental template, approach and a logicodeductive method is found to be false in the sense that one is as good as the other, although as Levi-Strauss remarks: from the underlying reality as the other."

"Each may be just as remote

When the question of social structure is considered, it is inevitable that the archaeologist's attention should first be drawn towards assemblages of a more overtly structured kind, such as those found in funerary contexts. 'Rich burials' are often said to imply 'social stratification', 'wealth

153

differences' or, particularly where the structures imply the expenditure of large quantities of social labour, differences in 'power'. These 'interpretaLions' are scarcely satisfying. Certainly there needs to be much more work done, for example, on the internal structuring of cemeteries and the patterning among assemblages deposited with burials. But whilst this can make more precise the primary empirical content and range of any 'differences' apparent in funerary contexts, and may yield some further clues as to relations in the world of the living, we cannot hope to say much that is more systematic and concrete about their sociology without exercising our model-building faculties. It would, of course, be a mere platitude to say that funerary evidence alone is insufficient for the construction of models of social organisation, but the real point at issue is not in a particular case the incompleteness of the potentially available record. For even where the data pattern appears to be a direct objectification of structure, which we have seen may be the most not least problematic case, the data are esentially that which is structured not structure itself, and it is futile to imagine that in general answers will emerge directly from them. What we can say is that synchronically, a certain structural arrangement will exclude certain empirical possibilities and that different structural models will generate different diachronic patterns. If we contented ourselves with a static analytic framework, the criterion for selection of a particular set of empirical modalities would be parsimony, and the selection would probably not be unique. It is a diachronic perspective that offers the best promise of defining possibilities with greater accuracy. The method of working must involve the construction of structural models which are articulated in a way which defines their ramifications in terms of archaeological data indicators. These should display both their internal developmental logic and the degree of consistency inherent in their dynamic operation with a set of techno-environmental constraints that are also, in principle at any rate, definable archaeologically. Clearly defined regional studies would also be a prerequisite for studying significant micro-variants within a transformation group and divergent paths of development, and for relating these variants to constraints of a lower order. We thus return to the question of history.

To the extent that aside from

the effects of time and nature and the biases of the archaeological recovery of data, the archaeological record is predominantly generated by unconscious processes in its original social milieu, it does in a real sense have a certain objectivity in comparison with historical records of other kinds.

As a dis-

cipline, of course, history operates at two levels, the one concerned with real events in a real chronology, the other with deeper structures below the conscious level, such as the nature of time-reckoning or, in the work of Marc Bloch, with social structure itself in its anthropological sense. Whilst it is certainly possible on occasion to detect 'events' in the archaeological record, what is important in terms of the relationship between anthropology and archaeology is that the archaeologist is invited by the general nature of his data to offer a structural explanation of them, in which their ramifications can be viewed within the fullness of time. Having said that, we must emphasise that the archaeologist cannot expect to find his models ready-made in anthropology. After along period of dominance in British anthropology in the structural-functionalist era of an 154

unusually static framework for the analysis of social structure there are indications of changing perspectives which are likely to encourage greater awareness of long term processes of socio-economic change. Anthropology's attitude to history in the past, however, has not been entirely successful in the sense that history has often been treated as simply background for an analysis of the present or as 'streams of events' that describe in 'causal' fashion the development of particular sequences. The notion, accepted by structural-functionalists and many 'structu mli sts' alike, that anthropology should avoid the whole problem of diachronic structures as being too complex to deal with until the synchronic level has been elucidated, has on the other hand, been vitiated by recent successes in economic and social history. If anthropology is now able to consider whole social formations as essentially dynamic phenomena, freed from the shackles of models which merely describe a given actuality, it has yet to proceed far in carrying out the analysis required. At the present time, therefore, the responsibility lies with archaeologists to develop theoretically the structural models that will be required to achieve recently stated aims concerning the explanation of long-term processes of change. That such structures are of a very different order from those normally dealt with in anthropology cannot be doubted. The danger of a simple borrowing of existing anthropological theory lies in the archaeologist converting a temporal sequence of transformations into a sequence of synchronic stages, piled one on top of the other. If such was the case, it would only be possible to explain the internal logic of each of the stages isolated arbitrarily and to link them together by a kind of narrative that simply describes and will not show how a transformation from one stage to another has been generated. This situation may, however, represent a false distinction between synchrony and diachrony and hence theoretically a false division of labour between archaeology and anthropology. It implies instead that evolution has always to be conceived as a single set of temporal processes in which there is a certain structurally determined order. As such stages are always described (dialectically) as in the process of 'becoming', that is, they are time periods in which the processes of change are dominated by a particular structure Which emerges and is transformed throughout the stage. Thus it is impossible to describe a fixed set of institutions appropriate to each stage since they are no more than a cross-section of a complex of processes.

This is essen-

tially a point made recently by Friedman, who argues that history can thus be incorporated into the anthropological field of analysis rather than being se1arated from it (Friedman 1975:162). It loses its autonomy in the transendence of a static frame of reference, so that streams of events are seen to be generated by a particular structure in the process of transformation. While a system pursues its trajectory through real time, a dominant tructure begins to break down under the impact of its internal contradictions and external constraints, after the purely organisational changes which might accommodate them are exhausted. As the dominant structure enters this critical phase marking a stage transition, another structure, whose elements were already born under the existing regime though subordinate within it, is steadily deconstrained and moves towards domination of the social reproduction process.

This in turn it simultaneously transforms

155

-

itself moving in turn

from genesis to transformation and at least partial suppression through a series of inter-systemic interactions: i.e. there are two processes of transformation going on.Level One: the process of. social reproduction, and Level Two: the process of the deconstraining of the structure. The key point is that we seek to account for the genesis of a structure, in terms of conditions produced by the operation of another. Thus, for example, in the Marxian model commodity-capitalist structure is produced by the process of primitive accumulation during the last phases of feudal society, as the mercantile system which had developed within the latter transformed its political and economic relations with the agrarian sector; social elements were freed, actively in the case of the master, passively in the case of the workers, to enable literal capitalisation first on old and then, after the mercantilist phase, on new technology within a new dominant structure of social reproduction. Structural anthropology has accomplished the preconditions for this approach in moving from descriptions of real societies imprisoned in their particularity to the generative basis of their myriad forms. To this extent it approximates the Marxian structural analysis of 'pure' capitalism as a dominant structure which may coexist with non-capitalist features in a real society. But the latter, articulated at the level of social formations as whole dynamic systems, always generates not synchronic states but processes of directional change, a step which anthropology has yet to take. Evolutionary processes also occur, however, within a spatial framework, so that it is impossible to analyse social entities in isolation from the spatial systems to which they belong. It must be recognised that evolution is rarely stable in space but is characterised by shifts in political location, often from core to periphery, so that what often appears to be discontinuous is in fact linked in a wider system of transformations in space and time. The necessity for external exchange or for talking in terms of systems of a real integration is thus not simply the result of a fortuitous juxtaposition of local societies, nor the result of differential access to certain kinds of goods but a product of the internal structuring of the societies making up a regional system.

Thus

whilst Childe's excessive diffusionism has recently been criticised on the basis of revisions in dating and specific items of cultural content, it would be unfortunate if archaeologists' enthusiasm for h1l or nothing' explanations were to lead to a rejection of the entire perspective. It would be unacceptable to ignore the relations between, for example, tribal societies of Central Europe and Mediterranean societies as of decisive importance in later European prehistory. The early commercialisation of this area before the emergence of any centralised state control may well prove significant for understanding later feudal development and the particular decentralised feudal/mercantile formations that led to European capitalism (Frankenstein and Rowlands n.d.). A relationship between archaeology and anthropology may therefore in itself turn out to be a false reality, in the sense that its initial premise may be dubious. Although disciplinary specialisation is a necessary response to the complexity of knowledge, the institutionalisation of disciplines in a pedagogic context naturally leads their members to be too conscious of the uniqueness of their subject matter and the rigour of their techniques to

156

elucidate and critically examine their objects of analysis, which become all too often badges of corporate identity.

This tends to obscure the fact that at

a higher and more abstract level it may be more pertinent to be involved in a unifying dialogue so as to share equally in the resolution of theoretical problems and to avoid a reaction to what is perceived to be a one-sided theoretical indebtedness to other disciplines.

For all its faults, the common-

ality of views and aims that characterised early evolutionism recognised the essential complementarity of archaeology and anthropology as a single field of study a perception of a science of man which, in our opinion, could be restored to the benefit of both. -

REFERENCES

Adams, R. Mc., 1966. Bateson, G., 1973.

The Evolution of Urban Society

‚

Chicago.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind, London.

Binford, L., 1964.

A consideration of Archaeological Research Design.

In American Antiquity, 29, Bonte, P., (in press).

pp.

425-441.

" Non- stratified Social Formations among Pastoral

Nomads". In Friedman J. and Rowlands M., Evolution of Social Systems, London. Carneiro, R. L., 1970. "A Theory of the Origin of the State". (3947) pp. 733-8. Case, H., 1973.

"Illusion and Meaning.

of Culture Change,

-

Science 169

In Renfrew C. (ed.) The Explanation

London, pp. 35-46.

Childe, V. G., 1936.

Man makes himself, London.

Childe, V. G., 1951.

Social Evolution, London.

Childe, V. G., 1958.

The Prehistory of European Society, London.

Clarke, D., 1968.

Analytical Archaeology, London.

Drewett, P. and Ellison, A., 1971. Iron Age: Dumont, L., 1970.

Pits and Postholes in the British Early In P. P. S. XXXVII, pp. 183-94.

Homo Hierachicus, London.

Ekholm, K., (in press). problem:

"

some alternative explanations".

"Deep structures and the Matriliny-Patriliny

Rethinking Central African Kinship.

In Friedman J. and

Rowlands -M. The Evolution of Social Systems, London. Flannery, K., 1972.

"The cultural evolution of civilisations".

Annual

Review of Ecology and Systematics 3, 399-426. Frankenstein, S. and Rowlands, M. (n.d.).

The Evolution of Political

Structures in Later European Prehistory, unpublished manuscript.

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Freeman, L., 1968. "ATheoretical Framework for interpreting archeolo­ gical materials". In Lee- R. and Devore l. (eds.) Man the Hunter, pp.· 262-7, Chicago. Friedman, J., 1975. : 11Tribes, States andTransformations". InBloch, M. Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, London, pp. 161-202. Hawkes, J., 1968. "The Proper Study of Mankind". In Antiquity 42, pp. 255-262. Horner, M., 1970 . "Population Pressure and the Social Evolution of Agriculturalists." In Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26 (1) pp. 67-86. Hymes, D., 1970. "Comments on Analytical Archaeology". Archaeological Review 3, pp. 16-21.

Norwegian

Lévi-Strauss, C., 1949. Les Structures élémentaires de la Parenté, París. Lévi-Strauss, C., 1963a. "Social Structure". In Structural Anthropology, London (particularly pp. 296-309). Lévi-Strauss, C., 1963b. "History and Anthropology". In Structural Anthropology, London, pp. 1-27. Lévi-Strauss, C., 1963C. "Do Dual Organizations Exist?". In Structural Anthropology, London, pp. 132-63. Mauss, M., 1954. Piggott,

s.,

The Gift pp. 17-45 (translated by Ian Cunnison), London.

1965. Ancient Europe, Edinburgh.

Rapapport, R., 1968. Pigs for the Ancestors, Yale. Renfrew, C., 1972. The Emergence of Civilisation, London. Rosman, A. and Rubel, A., 1971. Feasting with mine enemies, Columbia. Steward, J., 1955. "Cultural Causality and Law: A trial formulation of the 'development of civilization'." In Theory of Cultural Change, Urbana. Tyler, S., 1969. Cognitive Anthropology, New York. Ucko, P. J. and Dimbleby, G. W. , (eds.) 1969. The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, London. White, J. P., andThomas, D. H., 1972. "What mean these stones? Ethno­ Taxonomic models and archaeological interpretation in the New Guinea Highlands". In Clarke D. (ed.) Models in Archaeology, London, pp. 275-308.

158

COMMENT

159

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Edmund Leach

This paper which was completed on the fifth of November is designed as an entertainment with fireworks. The fun begins somewhere around But first Imust play a game of skittles.

p.

169.

Iwas neither a participant nor an observer at the one day Cambridge conference on which this symposium is based. At the time of writing Ihave read the following contributions in their edited form: Ellen, Haselgrove, Hodder, Rowlands and Gledhill. enthralling experience.

Chapman, Fletcher, Ihave not found it an

The conference purported to be concerned with the relations between archaeology and social anthropology. In their different ways the various authors all end up by saying that not only does no such relationship exist but that they find it very difficult to envisage how any practically useful cross-fertilisation of ideas might develop in the future. Platitudes apart, the implications seem to be wholly negative. If anthropologists are unwise enough to speculate about the past, archaeologists will probably have little difficulty in showing that their speculations are invalid;

if archaeologists offer hypötheses about a

generative social matrix which might have produced, in real time, the artifact patterns which their excavations reveal, then the anthropologists can quickly demonstrate that such social reconstructions are mere guesses and implausible guesses at that. Some of the philosophic disciples of Karl Popper appear to believe, quite erroneously, that negative procedures of this kind constitute the essence of normal scientific method, but personally Ican never get excited about learning what is not the case, and Isense that this lack of enthusiasm is widely shared among my fellow authors. Even those who, in courtesy to their hosts, have paid lip service to the enterprise of 'breaking down the parochial boundaries that are often set up' between the two disciplined rather quickly get lost in the desert. Chapman's paper "Burial Practices: an area of mutual interest" provides a case in point. The interest surely is highly lop-sided? Archaeologists are, in the first instance, interested in burial practices because the techniques of research by excavation are well adapted to the study of past burials and their contents. They have therefore come to think of burial as a specific category of human activity which exists in its own 161

right. That granted, it becomes meaningful to correlate varieties of types of burial with possible varieties in the social status or social condition of the individuals buried in the manner which Chapman discusses. But for social anthropologists, burial, as such, is just one of a whole range of possibilities within a grander category labelled 'mortuary rites'. All human societies need to have rules or conventions to meet the problem of 'what do we do with a corpse?'. But there are many different kinds of corpses and many different ways of disposing of them. They can indeed be buried, but they can also be eaten, burnt, dumped in water, hung from trees, thrown away in the forest, and so on and so forth. Chapman quotes Ucko (1969) as saying "one society will undertake several different forms of burial and these forms will be correlated with the status of the deceased". This may indeed be true, but the anthropologists have known, at least since the beginning of the century, that in any one society there are ...

likely to be several entirely different methods of corpse disposal which may likewise be correlated with differences in the social status of the deceased (Frazer 1911). My point is that while it may be perfectly proper for an archaeologist to make inferences from a comparison between a burial of one type and a burial of another type, such speculations are likely to arouse only minimal interest among anthropologists since, in this general field, the latter are first of all concerned to attribute significance to the distinction between burial and nonburial. But data on non-burial types of mortuary procedure will ordinarily be absent from the archaeologist's record. Iwould not want to challenge Chapman's statement (p. 27) that "the concentration of prestigegrave goods within particular tombs might reflect the existence of a ranked society." Of course it might; Icould provide Chapman with a number of ethnographic examples where it does but 'might' is not -

'must'.

After all it is generally the case in modern India (which still has one

of the most markedly 'ranked' societies known to history) that all respectable corpses are burnt and their ashes scattered, while only unsocialised infants and moral criminals (such as women who die in childbirth) are likely to be buried. On the other hand many of the grandest monuments in Asia originated as memorial cairns erected over the relics of an impoverished saint.

Ethno-

graphically there is no general correlation between grandeur in graves and grave goods and wealth and high status among the living. Despite this negative reaction to Chapman's presentation Iagree that there is, in this general area, a 'mutual interest', but it is an interest of a different kind from that which Chapman suggests. Archaeologists and anthropologistE alike are both interested in the possibility that there might be some kind of consistent metaphoric homology between the total structured pattern of social statuses which exists among the members of a society and the total structured pattern of behaviours in respect to the disposal of their dead. But the homology, if it in fact exists, will be detectable only at the level of abstract transformations. At the empirical level, the kinds of data which the respective specialists might bring to bear on such an hypothesis are quite independent and should not be confused.

162

When I started reading Fletcher's paper I thought he was going to make 2 '&t this sort of point but it do.esn 't work out that way. By the time he has got half way through he has lost all track of a possible structural homology between the independent findings of archaeologists and anthropologists and is simply suggesting that these separate frames of empirical reference should be treated as functionally independent parameters in a larger whole of an extremely fuzzy kind. As far as I myself am concerned the latter part of Fletcher's paper eommunicates nothing at all. Indeed of the contributors whom I have listed in my second paragraph the only one with whom I feel that I might have established sorne sort of useful dialogue is Haselgrove and I propose to turn now to a consideration of the latter part of that paper, the section entitled "Systems and Structure" which starts at p. 100. First however I must declare a prejudice. One the features of this collec­ tion of papers which filled me with complete astonishment was the frequent Laudatory references to the two papers by Jonathan Friedman listed as Friedman (1974) and Friedman (1975). I know these papers very well; I b.ave also read the, as yet unpublished, Ph.D. dissertation from which they .ire derived. I have read these items with care because Friedman has chosen to exemplify the utility of his highly personal version of structural-Marxism by rewriting my own book on the Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954). Friedman is at a disadvantage compared with myself in that he does not know the local language, he has never visited the area, and he has only read a small fraction of the available historical evidence. It also appears that he is quite singularly incompetent as a reader of maps. I would probably have been fairly contemptuous of Friedman's jargon-loaded theorising in any case but the manner in which he endeavours to make his theory fit the case of the gumsa/gumlao Kachins by the simple device of ignoring all the evidence runs directly counter to my scholarly conscience and I am bound to write off the whole enterprise as a waste of time. From my point of view the passage from F riedman ( 197 5) which Haselgrove cites near the foot of p. 103 is not just jargon-loaded verbosity, it is total nonsense from beginning to end. It is an abuse of language to write as if ex­ pressions like 'a multilinear system of trajectories' could be meaningfully ·related to the processes of history in real time while the assertion that 'any particular social formation is no more than a cross-section of a larger dia­! chronic system' is pure gobbledygook. Friedman uses éxpressions like nodel, system, trajectory, social formation, structure and so on as if he were performing the three card trick on a race track. By such means one night quite easily demonstrate that the moon is made of green cheese. I am deeply shocked that my fellow contributors should apparently have been taken in. But let me return to Haselgrove. Because of his quite uncritical adoption of Friedman' s smoke screen terminology I find it very difficult to know just what he is trying to say, but what he appears to argue is that, despite his recognition at the bottom of p.104 that eco-systems which exist in real time are far too complicated to be analysed, it still makes plausible sense to 163

imagine that anthropologists and archaeologists (teamed up presumably with theoretical Marxists) might produce a 'diachronic model' of a social system which would show that history, far from being a concatenation of random accidents, has an underlying logic such that the past can be inferred from the present and the future inferred from the past. It is apparently accepted as dogma, not merely that causal sequence in historical process exist, but that, by some magical exercise of the imagination, they might be open to discovery, if not by empirical observation then by the exercise of rational argument. extraordinary.

Such fantasies strike me as wholly

Haseigrove is by no means the only member of the contribU-

ting team to write in this vein.

The fallacies involved are numerous and deep

rooted and since they are associated in each case

w

ith

a com pl e t e a bsence

of reference to the work of L. von Bertalanffy, whose contributions to General Systems Theory stretch back over more than fifty years, I suspect that, despite all their grand talk about 'systems' and 'structures' the authors concerned really don't know the first thing about the subject. Haseigrove at any rate, in a further quote from Friedman on p. 103 shows clearly that he imagines that social systems have the characteristics of Bertalanffy's 'closed systems' which tend toward a time independent state of equilibrium.

In other words he assumes that there are 'limits to the possible

transformations of the structures' of such a system, and that the kind of radical 'social change' which is considered by those who talk about social evolution has to be seen as a 'break down' of the system.

But in fact, in the language

of General Systems Theory, social systems are 'open systems' which are never in equilibrium but which do quite frequently exhibit the characteristics of equifinality.

Finality in thi,s language, which derives from the Aristotelian

notion of 'final cause' is, roughly speaking, the reverse of causality, in that it implies dependence upon future instead of past conditions; in the growth processes of all normal organisms. cial case of finality: -

finality is exhUited

Equifinality is then a spe-

"An aspect very characteristic of the dynamic order in organismic processes can be termed as equifinality.

Processes occurring in

machine-like structures follow a fixed pathway.

Therefore the

final state will be changed if the initial conditions or the course of processes is altered.

In contrast the same final state, the same

'goal', may be reached from different initial conditions and in different pathways in organismic processes.

Examples are the

development of a normal organism from a whole, a divided or two fused ova, or from any pieces, as in hydroids and planarians, or the reaching of a definite final size from different initial sizes and after a different course of growth, etc."

(Bertalanffy (1968) p. 13)

But comparably, just as it is a characteristic of open systems that the same final terminus may be reached from different starting points, so also different finalities may be reached from the same starting point. Now there is a long tradition dating back over many centuries by which social scientists of all kinds have conceived of social systems as 'organisms'. The metaphor has a certain value, and in social anthropology, following a 164

model taken over from Durkheim, it has provided the basic justification for functionalist analysis.

But Durkheim, like Radcliffe-Brown and many later

social anthropologists, made exactly the same mistake as is now perpetuated by Haselgrove.

They assumed that the organic model of society implied that

societies could be, and should be, imagined as closed systems in equilibrium. Social anthropologists have understood for well over thirty years that such closed system equilibrium models are quite inappropriate.

On the other hand

concepts like 'open system equifinality' are almost impossible to apply to the practical analysis of concrete bodies of historically ordered data.

Theoretic-

ally oriented social anthropologists have tried to escape from this model building dilemma in various ways.

There was for example the 'as if' oscil-

lating equilibrium model first devised by Pareto and used by myself in Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954).

Then there are the "control

hierarchy models" used by Rapapport and others and which are criticised (for the wrong reasons) by Rowlands and Gledhill in this volume, and there have been various other attempts to fit closed system models to open system facts.

But all these efforts fail to come to terms with the really crucial

theoretical point that social systems are in fact open and not bounded. But the same defect generally applies to the arguments of the critics of such models.

For example, Rowlands and Gledhill who, like Haseigrove

and Friedman, favour an ultra archaic version of deterministic Marxism, criticise the Rapapport type model on the grounds that 'the internal logic of evolution is left aside'. existence of boundaries. n open system.

But notions such as internal and external imply the It is nonsense to talk about the 'internal logic' of

Internal to what?

The writers concerned seem not to have

understood the quite elementary distinction between equilibrium and steady state. All of which, it may be argued, hardly bears on the point at issue which becomes, in terms of Haseigrove's paper, the question whether archaeologists and anthropologists jointly or separately, in collaboration or in opposition, have anything interesting to say about the study of 'urbanism', whatever that word may be held to mean. The problem can be fined down.

Men, creatures like ourselves in all

heir physical attributes, have been around for a long time.

Up to an unde-

termined date somewhat later than 10,000 B.C. they all lived in a world in which there were no settlements anywhere which could be described, even by the loosest of definitions, as 'cities'.

Today there are no human beings

anywhere who are not directly affected by activities which go on in cities and the great majority of human beings, 'primitive' as well as 'civilised', are, in one way or another, directly dependent upon the existence of cities. Furthermore, on the assumption that the Chinese did not in early times have direct contacts with Central America (a matter which is still in dispute), it Would appear that the 'idea of a city' course of human history.

came into being at least twice in the

Haseigrove and his fellow archaeologists see the issue as one of social evolution or even social revolution. They clearly postulate the occurrence of radical discontinuities in history as it happened in real time. City life

165

represented a new mode of economic organisation; it was symptomatic of a new social formation ajargon which one suspects Karl Marx would not have understood. But in any case, in this part of the jungle, my own guru is Weber rather than Marx. Iclaim that the innovating factor lies in the domain of ideas rather than socio-economic relations. -

Up to a point this proposition is implied by Haseigrove's own presentation, but it is not made explicit. A city is not just a settlement of a certain size, or of a certain population density, or a social organisation with a particular type of division of labour and allocation of resources, it is an idea: "And Cain knew his wife;

and she conceived and bore Enoch;

and he builded a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch" It was the act of naming, the creation of a verbal category, which first brought cities into existence. In my book Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) which Ihave already mentioned twice in the course of this paper, Idiscuss at some length (pp. 122124) just how the Jinghpaw speaking Kachins managed to identify the categories of their own polity, mare ('village cluster') and mung ('domain'), with the categories myo and mUng which are the words for 'township' (Ancient Greek Polis) in Burmese and Shan respectively. This material bears on Haseigrove's argument because, although Burmese myo and Shan mJng, in some of their aspects, would be identifiable in the archaeologist's record, the ideologically closely associated Kachin mare and mung would not. The real stumbling block which inhibits useful collaboration between archaeologist and anthropologist seems to me to lie just here. When archaeologists resort to model making, the 'structural system' (by whatever jargon you choose to describe it) is ultimately represented by a set of material lifeless things; when anthropologists engage in a comparable type of operation they are ultimately concerned with patterns of verbal categories; categories which belong to the realm of language and which can have no meaning at all which is independent of the living human beings who use that language. No doubt it is broadly the case that things on (or in) the ground are a reflection of categories in the mind, and vice versa but it is certainly not the case that there is a one-to-one 'reflective' correspondence between the two domains. If we are serious in asking how archaeologists and social anthropologists might interact then this lack of homology needs to be taken into account. And that brings us to the concept of history. Although Idisagree with Rowlands and Gledhill on almost every other particular Iwill admit that "if a relationship exists between archaeology and anthropology, it may well be a false one until both, as a first step, come to terms with their relationship to history" (Rowlands and Gledhill p. 145). History is the study of the past.

But is this really the case?

Clearly an

infinite number of separable events occurred in the past but by no conceivable concatenation of circumstances could we ever know anythinj at all about more than a tiny insignificant fraction of that vast mountain of circumstance. It

166

follows that the past with which history deals is not the past of real time; rather it is a past encapsulated in the minds of men of the present. In effect, history is the myth which leads up to and justifies how things are now. This explains why it is that, in all countries in the world, each generation finds it necessary to rewrite history to fit in with the changing value systems of the evolving present. Anthropologists take all this for granted. History is simply a reverse transformation of what we know to be now the case. In other words, just as the existence of cities in an idea rather than an empirical fact, so also, for the anthropologist, the sequence of events in history is an idea, ajustification for who we are and where we are and what we do; it is not an inventory of all the events that really happened. History for the archaeologist is something very different. By chance accident, odd residues of past human activities have survived into the present; by further chance accident archaeologists have come across some of these residues. The residues are intermittent, disconnected, but perhaps full of significance. It has for example very recently been discovered that Neanderthal men, hunting mammoths around 50, 000 B.C., were not just parasitic on the mammoth herds. Sometimes at any rate they cut up and stored the meat by dumping the animals in permafrost pits. Just why they did this is of course a moot point. Perhaps it was a rational economic activity preserving the meat for a future need; perhaps it was a religious procedure designed to ensure the perpetuation of the mammoth herds themselves; perhaps But in any case from this single fact of meat storage and there are many other consistent though disconnected facts relating to men ...

-

of the same epoch it can immediately be inferred that Neanderthal man, despite his strange appearance, was a human being like ourselves, a rational -

creature who could imagine the future, and that implies a creature operating with language in the two crucial dimensions of metonymy and metaphor. Comparably, the mere fact that archaeology demonstrates that there were men on the Australian continent some 40,000 years ago demonstrates that they were rational men like ourselves, for their ancestors had needed to design sea-born rafts and exercise forethought. They were not just members of the species Homo they were human beings capable of inventing brand new concepts. These particular men did not invent the concept of city, but they might have done so. Am Imaking my point? Ideas are more important than things; creative imagination is deeply entangled with the formulation of verbal concepts; archaeologists need to appreciate that the material objects revealed by their excavations are not 'things in themselves', nor are they just artifacts made by men they are representations of ideas.

-

things

-‚

But of what value can it be to discuss the invention of ideas in hypothetical languages which no living man has ever heard? I suggest that such argument is not entirely futile.

There are some things which seem to be true of all

existing human languages so it seems likely that they were also true of all extinct human languages. For example, the structure of verbal concepts is binary I/Other, We/They, Tame/Wild, Good/Bad, Living/Dead and so on. Moreover, at least in an approximate sense, the logic of verbal cate...

-

gory formation is 'transitive',

-

things that are opposite to the same thing

167

are equal to one another. We also know that the binary structure of human languages is imposed on the world.of experience. The world that is presented to our minds through the interacting operation of sensory signals and verbal categorisation is not how things really are. To a very large extent we see what we expect to see and our language tells us what to expect. A crucial aspect of this distortion is that, at the level of ideas, categories are clear cut and distinct, but, at the level of fact, the 'things' out there that are represented by the verbal categories are fuzzy at the edges. The boundary that separates the inside from the outside is neither one nor the other; it is both inside and outside, an area of confusion, loaded with taboo. This applies to the orifices of the human body and also to the thresholds of houses, and the entrance of cities, and some of the most interesting work in social anthropology in recent years has been concerning with demonstrating the existence of transformational structures in which it is shown that the lay out of buildings and of settlements 'maps' both the anatomical organisation of the human body and the social anatomy of the body politic. But how often have archaeologists ever thought about city walls and gateways and the lay-out of buildings within the city perimeter from this point of view, rather than from the purely empirical angle of economic and military efficiency?

Walls, fences, moats are not just 'defences', they are the

boundaries that distinguish the tame from the wild, culture from nature. The city centre is its heart, or more probably its stomach. The roads and bridges and gateways which transgress the integrity of such categories are sacred places because they are betwixt and between. Are such characteristically anthropological comments of any interest to the archaeologist? How can Iknow? Archaeologists who feel that their central concern is with 'laws' of evolutionary process, with the 'trajectories' of developmental sequences, with the inner 'logic' of historical contradictions, and so on will consider such observations to be trivial and irrelevant. But Iwas asked to consider whether the archaeologist and the anthropologist have anything to say to one another. And Iam saying that one major area of contemporary social anthropological enquiry is concerned with the interdependence of the exterior world of things and actions and the interior world of mental images, especially verbal images. So when Iargue that it is quite clear that even if we go back through time for 150, 000 years or more we still find that the men who made the artifacts which constitute the subject matter of archaeology were people like us, Iam also inferring that the objects and structures which they created in the world out there were manifestations of an interior world of mental images of a recognisable kind. Of course Iwill agree that, at the matter of fact empirical level, that world of mental images is now wholly inaccessible, and yet, in a truly historical sense, it is not wholly inaccessible. Because all human languages both past and present seem to have features in common, there may well be characteristics of that archaic mental landscape that we can recognise even though the language in which it was originally enshrined faded from existence many thousands of years ago. The things that men make are 'projections', 'externalisations' of their inner selves and Iwould suppose that this has always been the case ever since

168

Homo erectus somehow or other first learned to speak.

And this is relevant

for Haselgrove's problem of 'hrbanism'. The structural symmetries which became manifest in the evolution of ancient cities reflect something that is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. So much so that a blow-up of a microphotograph of the cross section of a single organic cell may look quite startlingly like the ground plan of an excavation of a prehistoric settlement. What on earth is this fellow talking about? Has he gone round the bend? Well that depends. Which bend? Iam talking about the interconnections between anthropology and archaeology and the level at which the facts of archaeology and the ideas of anthropology may, on occasion, interact. at a level of structure and not at a level of manifest empirical fact.

It is

So Iwould suggest, in criticism of Chapman's paper, that archaeologists who choose to study burial customs should not just concern themselves with possible correlations between types of burial and positions of social status, they should reflect on the category distinction between 'living' and 'dead' and the fuzzy area in between, and they should reflect too on the possibility that the boundaries of cemeteries are like the boundaries of cities, markers that divide off the sacred from the profane, the wild from the tame. It could be, for example, that cemeteries and temples on the one hand and cities and palaces on the other are entities of the same sort, structural transformations of one another. If archaeology and anthropology are to come together, as Ithink they might, it will not be under the banner of either ecological or economic determinism. What is common to the two disciplines is that they are concerned with men, and the unique peculiarity of men is that they have language and that they have ideas. That is where we can meet up. But enough of skittle playing, let us have some fireworks and Catherine Wheels. For the rest of this paper Ishall try to be constructive rather than destructive; bizarre perhaps, but positive all the same. Where have we got to? We are in Looking Glass Land where the signs may be familiar but all point in the wrong direction. Unlike my fellow contributors Itake it for granted that the sequence of empirical events in the world out there has always been continuous; there were no revolutionary breaks in the sequence;

from an empirical point of view

there was no original city or original agricultural settlement or original cemetery. Technological development and the associated changes of social organisation may be fast or slow but it is always continuous; what was the case last night will still be the case tomorrow morning. Revolutionary change is a matter of ideas; a shift in the human consciousness of how things are rather than a shift in how things are in empirical reality. Furthermore, although Iagree that such shifts in human consciousness tertainly occur, Iwould hold that it is reasonable to assume that some aspects of human consciousness have, all along, remained very much the same. And in this regard there is a direct link up between the residues of the earliest true men, and those of the 'first' neolithic settlements, the 'first' cities, the Villages of mediaeval Europe, and even an industrial conurbation like

169

contemporary Birmingham-Coventry-Wolverhampton. In every case the men concerned were 'projecting' themselves onto their environment. The residues that we can now observe were all, in their own context, expressions of 'the same thing' the polarity of consciousness which we try to express by such words as 'I'/'Other', 'We '/'They', 'Tame '/'Wild', 'Man'/'God', 'Culture'/ 'Nature'. -

It will be seen therefore that my basic approach is the direct opposite to that which Haselgrove recommends, or appears to recommend, in the section of his paper entitled "Explanation and the Archaeological Record" (pp. 97-00) for his emphasis on "the time-dependent nature of archaeological research" seems to imply a disjointedness as between past epochs which Iwould specifically reject. But that perhaps is neither here nor there. Let us proceed. The schematised system of binary oppositions and transformations which is laid out in the following pages is not intended to be just ajoke, nor is it intended to provide a serious analysis of any particular body of archaeological or anthropological materials. The point rather is this:Contemporary social anthropology, as exhibited in the work of a great variety of authors including, among others, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, Levi-Strauss and myself, owes a great deal to an insight which was originally developed near the beginning of the century by Robert Hertz and Arnold Van Gennep. Ruthlessly cut down to its bare essentials this insight is that when we encounter a pattern of cultural behaviour which 'manifests' a category opposition of the general type which Ihave indicated above, then the boundary which serves as a marker to distinguish the left hand number of the binary pair from the right hand member, the 'betwixt and between' element, is both ambiguous and sacred, and that the whole of religious cult organisation is concerned with precisely such border zone cultural phenomena. Mortuary rites are prototypical of all religious rites and their spatial, temporal and cultural location lies on the boundary between life and death. Now the relevance of this very general proposition for archaeologists is that it says in effect: "All material boundaries, including walls, ditches, fences, thresholds, gateways, are 'sacred'. Have you really considered the implication of this universal fact?". So let me light my Catherine Wheels. No doubt most potential readers will soon give up in total exasperation; this method of discourse is altogether too unfamiliar. But let me explain. Iam not trying to make statements of a straight forward linear kind like "the cat sat on the mat". Iam trying to generate free associations of a symbolic, metaphorical kind, in the hope that an archaeologist might somewhere have an inspiration and say: "Why yes, Ihad never thought of that; that is a possibility". my effort will have been worth while. 1.

First Basic Premiss.

If that happens even once,

All human beings think in the same way.

The

Mammoth Hunters of 50, 000 B.C., the men of Lascaux, the men of the Neolithic Revolution, the architects of Athens, Rome, mediaeval London, and contemporary Birmingham are/were all 'people like us'.

170

1.1

Second Basic Premiss.

bodies.

All human beings are interested in their own

They are interested in what distinguishes the inside from the outside.

They are interested especially in the orifices through which the inside connects with the outside ears.

-

mouth, anus, urethra, penis, vagina, nipples, eyes, nose,

In all religions known to history, to ethnography and to archaeology

such orifices have major symbolic significance even though we are not always certain just what they are symbolic of. 1.2 Third Basic Premiss. (mirror) image". 2.

"In the beginning Man created God in his own

A fantasy of mammoth hunters

2.1

I (We)

Other (They)

Live Man

Live Mammoth

(Culture) 2.2

(Nature)

Transform Man

uses a weapon

Mammoth

to kill Live Man 2.3

Dead Mammoth

Transform Man

dissects

Man

cooks and eats

Mammoth Mammoth meat

leaving residue of bones Inside the

Well fed

camp

live man

FIRE cooking hearth

(Tame)

2.4

/ BONES

//

eating place

Transform

(Wild)

(alternative to 2.3)

Man

dissects

Man

Mammoth

freezes & preserves

Mammoth meat

in ice pit Inside the

Hungry

camp

live man

(Tame)

//

//

ICE ice pit

Outside the camp

shrine

(Wild)

Dead/Live Mammoth (God) 2.5 FIRE

Inference :ICE

Outside the camp

: : Food :Hunger ::Life :Death Death :Life

171

(for man) (for god)

Therefore:

Life above ground for men

Implication: Alternatively: Implication:

=

Life below ground for God

Bury dead men so that they become like living gods Fire converts dead gods into food for living men Burn dead men and they will be reincarnated in some other form. (You could of course eat the body instead).

(N.B. At least two thirds of the world's population still act as if they believed in one or other of these 'implications'.) 2.6

By condensation of 2.1-2.4 we may infer that in the triad:

/

CULTURE [This World]

Betwixt &

/ NATURE [The Other World]

Between

The following classes of material object may appropriately symbolise the boundary category 'betwixt and between':i)

'S

anything which moves ac ross th e boundary in the course of the proceedings: excretions of the human body (faeces, urine, semen, head hair, saliva, vomit, tears, blood'), 'things ingested by the human body (food, drink)', 'things which express exchange relationships with others, the others being either natural or supernatural offerings, women in marriage, ceremonial valuable, animals -

-

which are killed' ('sacrificed i.e. 'made sacred'), 'actors' (they are in this world as human beings but as fictional characters they are 'other), 'priests', 'shamans' (i.e. men who communicate with gods) ii)

anything which acts as an agent for converting things in this world into things in the other world or vice versa 'weapons', 'fire', -

'cooking as a process', 'washing as aprocess', 'birth as a process', 'death as a process' iii)

residues of the conversion process all kinds

iv)

self contradictory images

-

-

ash, bones, corpses, relics of

a dead god, a virgin mother

Surely this is moving rather fast? Iam not so sure. Some mammoth hunters seem to have collected the bones of slaughtered mammoths and formed them into boundary walls. But Messrs. Chapman and Haseigrove were discussing Burial Practices and Urban Archaeology. Let us go back to that.

172

)

3.

Burial Practices

3. 1

What then shall we do with a corpse? The answer is plain enough:

Eat it, burn it, bury it.

But where shall we bury it? But that too is plain:

In the "betwixt and between" at the boundary of

the Other World. But where is this Other World? Have you not understood? the not Here.

The Other World is the inaccessible other,

It is (a) below the ground, (b) above the sky,

(C)

beyond

the city walls, (d) the holy of hohes in the temple shrine. 3.2

So where shall we put our corpse? Beneath the floor of the dwelling house, beneath the dancing floor where the living approach the other world through the path of ecstacy, in a cemetery adjacent to the church, in a tomb house high among the trees, in a tomb which itself becomes a temple So corpses can be put anywhere? Not really. living.

The land of the dead is always "other than" the land of the

If you can understand the logic of where men place their dead

you will begin to understand something about how they perceive themselves. "This world" and "the other world" form a binary opposition, the two halves of which are bound together into a unity by "that which lies between". The dead lie between.

In classical Athens, the Akropolis and the Agora were

above and below, with tombs in between as well as outside both. is too in my Lancashire home town of Rochdale.

And so it

In mediaeval times they

built the Parish Church on a 150 foot high crag and the cemetery grew up around it.

Then the market place grew up at the foot of the crag.

And finally

in the 19th Century they built the Town Hall immediately below the Parish Church.

There is a pattern to these things which expresses the feelings

that men have about themselves and their relations with the Other. Hm

Not much for Chapman there;

what about Haseigrove and his Urban

Archaeology, what about Cities and Empires? 4.

Cities and Empires We

The boundary limits

Civilised Men

of 'our' territory

Citizens

(City Walls)

//

Barbarians and Savages

(Territorial Frontiers) The great classical empires were not content just to mark it out on a map. The boundary must be marked with a fosse, even a major wall

173

...

Hadrian's

Wall, the Great Wall of China. symbolic as well as military.

But the significance of such structures is

During the closing years of the British regime in Burma, when you might have supposed that there were many other matters of more pressing importance, a number of senior British Administrative Officers were engaged full time on demarcating the precise boundary between 'administered' and 'unadministered' territory. It was an exercise entirely devoid of practical significance though Ido not doubt that many of the boundary markers, appropriately decorated with phallic symbols, are still in place waiting to provide some baffling puzzles for future generations of Asian archaeologists. 4.2

But cities engage in trade, in political and marital alliances, and in war, therefore: -

Civilised men in our city

//

Our city walls

/

Wilderness area inhabited by vagabonds and bandits but also by wandering hermits prophets, saints.

/

Their city walls

//

Civilised men in other cities (possible friends, foes)

Notice that, in this case, the 'Other World' is in the middle rather than on the outside. 5. 5.1

Buildings and Groups of Buildings The orifices of my dwelling house are like the orifices of my body.

If

a building has more than one entrance, as is commonly the case, these entrances will be of very different moral status, as mouth is to anus or penis to vagina. Generally the more ostentatious the entrance to a building the less frequently it will be used. The grandeur is symbolic rather than utilitarian.

This is true also of the city as a whole.

It is

the impressiveness of gateways that matters rather than their efficiency; they are sacred precincts. 5.2

Buildings differ among themselves not only in their prestige status royal palace, commoner's hovel cathedral/town hail. discriminated.

-

-

but on the spectrum sacred/profane

-

The organs of the human body are comparably

By introspection Icome to feel that the mysterious

entity the conscious 'I' is 'inside' my body, yet Ialso feel that it is somehow 'other than' my body. This illusion provides the basis for the Protean doctrine of the 'soul', and the 'seat of the soul' within the body is, like the orifices on the boundary of the body, a sacred precinct. The heart, the liver, the spleen, the spine, the nead and so on are credited with ritual value in accordance with locally prevalent notions of the spiritual anatomy.

174

The same is true of the relative status of buildings within cities; there are parts of the other world which lie at the centre of things and other parts which lie on the outside.

This radically affects the way the

inhabitants of a city perceive the urban environment in which they live. Quite apart from the possibility of status loaded symmetries and asymmetries, North/South, East/West, cities tend to have a concentric structure.

A shrine at the centre is surrounded by an area of ambiguity

which is surrounded by an area of secular activity, which is surrounded by the city wall (again sacred), which is surrounded by the outer wilderness. Rivers A river constitutes a natural boundary but also, like the alimentary canal of the body, it may provide economic sustenance to the city. ambiguities are manifested in various forms.

The resulting

The sacred Ganges is a boundary to the sacred city of Benares to which the dead and dying are brought so that they may achieve instant oblivion (moksha) when their ashes are cast into the Ganges waters.

Of Benares itself

it is said, not wholly without justice, that there are more temples than there are dwelling houses. There has been no urban development on the "other" side of the river which is secular and evil. However, there is one solitary and impressive structure on the other side;

it is the Rajah's Palace!

London grew up in rather similar fashion. Bank.

The city was all on the North

Southwark was simply a bulwark to guard the southern entrance to

London Bridge. It was not a fort but a church In Shakespeare's day there was only a single line of buildings close to the water's edge along the South .

Bank but also there were low status secular places of amusement the Bear

Pit and the Globe Theatre.

Rome likewise.

-

brothels,

The discrimination in status still survives.

In early Imperial Rome the inhabited city was all on the

Fast Bank of the Tiber, the cemeteries were outside the city walls to the South and also across the river to the West. these values. S. Angelo;

Christianity in part inverted

The Mausoleum of Hadrian on the West Bank became the Castel

the cemetery further West was developed as the Cathedral of St.

Peter and the Palace of the Popes.

The present day situation, with the

secular offices of the Italian State on the East Bank and the Vatican City on the West Bank, derives, in an immediate historical sense, from the circumstances of Italian politics since 1871.

But to the local inhabitants Rome has

'seemed' to be divided in this way for centuries.

A German woodcut view of

Rome dated 1493, when the whole city was part of the Pope's domain shows, on the East Bank, only buildings surviving from Imperial Rome eum, Pantheon, Trajan's Column and so on;

..

the Cobs-

the West Bank is entirely

filled by the Papal palace and other buildings with specifically Christian associations.

175

This paper has gone on too long already. only damp squibs. is simply this.

Perhaps the fireworks were

What Iam trying to say to my archaeological colleagues

The residues you recover from the ground are residues of

real human artifacts which existed in real time, and it is no doubt a part of your professional function to try to recreate in some fashion that empirical reality. But our own day-to-day experience shows us quite clearly that human beings do not perceive their physical environment to be as it actually is; they mould their experience to fit the expectations which emerge from the categories of their thought. What Ihave suggested in this paper is that it is not necessarily a wholly fatuous enterprise to try to discover the categories of thought which dominated the builders of ancient cities and the users of ancient burial grounds.

If the

Mammoth Hunters were really, as Ibelieve, people like us, then so also was everyone else. And that is an important fact which archaeologists would do well not to forget.

Cambridge 5 November 1976

REFERENCES

Bertalanffy, L. von, 1968. York. Frazer, J. G., 1911.

General System Theory (Revised Edition, New

'The Gifford Lectures' extended version reprinted in

Vol. 1of The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, London 1913. Friedman, J., 1974. Man 9: 444-69.

'Marxism, Structuralism and Vulgar Materialism',

Friedman, J., 1975.

'Tribes, States and Transformations' in M. Bloch (ed.)

Marxist Analyses and Social Anthropology, London pp. 161-202. Leach, E. R., 1954. Ucko, P. J., 1969.

Political Systems of Highland Burma, London. 'Ethnography and archaeological interpretation of

funerary remains', World Archaeology I, pp. 262-80.

176