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Why The Death of Archaeological Theory?

Julian Thomas
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures
University of Manchester, UK

Abstract
Why has there been a discussion of a death of theory in archaeology over
the past decade? In practice, this term has referred to three different
phenomena: a supposed triumph of technique over inference; a perceived
failure of practitioners to employ multiple competing hypotheses to
archaeological evidence; and the more general belief that the whole enterprise
of archaeological theory has ground to a halt. It is the third of these that is the
most troubling. In this contribution, the origin of the term death of theory is
sought in literary studies, and the differences between this context and
archaeology are emphasised. Our expectation that the discipline should entirely
renew itself through radical rethinking every twenty years or so is questioned,
and the particular circumstances of archaeology in the later twentieth century
are identified as the source of this perhaps unrealistic view. Finally, it is
emphasised that archaeological theory is continuing to develop, although
incrementally rather than through paradigm change. The positive aspect of this
is that new approaches are increasingly emerging in tandem with other
disciplines, rather than by adopting already established frameworks for
investigation.

Introduction: chronicle of a death foretold

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of archaeologists
began to postulate that a death of theory was taking place within their discipline.
These speculations eventually gave rise to a pair of conference sessions, hosted by
the European Association of Archaeologists and the Theoretical Archaeology
Group (Bintliff and Pearce 2011; Chapman 2009). Although, for reasons that we
will discuss below, these discussions have now subsided to some extent, it may be
illuminating to consider why they should have emerged at this particular moment.
What I will hope to demonstrate in this contribution is that the notion of a death
of archaeological theory has something important to tell us about the recent
history of the discipline, and the way in which it has been interpreted. The first
point to make is that with the benefit of hindsight and in the light of the
publication of some of the relevant conference papers, it is now evident that the
phrase was actually being used to mean a number of different things, and that
there was no unanimity amongst the protagonists in these debates. At least three
distinct perspectives on the fate of archaeological thinking can now be identified.

A first understanding of what a death of theory might mean lies in the belief that
technological advances within the discipline have now moved on so far as to
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render theory redundant. In other words, it proposes a return to nave empiricism.

Just as Stephen Hawking has recently claimed that new developments in quantum
physics have made philosophy unnecessary (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010: 1), so
stable isotopes, DNA analysis, more precise forms of dating and more rigorous
versions of taphonomy are now able to answer archaeological questions that were
hitherto metaphysical. So techniques alone can now tell us all we need to know
about the past, and interpretation is superfluous. In an odd way this recalls the
early days of the New Archaeology, in which the enthusiasm for the hypothetico-
deductive method was such that it was imagined that archaeological evidence
alone could answer any legitimate question concerning the past, without recourse
to ethnographic models, so long as a rigorous system of hypothesis construction
and testing was employed (Binford 1977: 3). This was anything but an
atheoretical position, although it relied on a rather mechanistic understanding of
what theory was, and what it could do. Yet it came to be seen as overoptimistic,
and the notion of a purely evidential archaeology is equally flawed, for it
overlooks the fundamentally inferential character of the discipline. At the very
least, archaeological techniques always face the problem of equifinality: the
results that they generate can be identified as the potential outcomes of a number
of different processes, and their significance is often altered according to the scale
at which they are addressed. New analytical methods are to be welcomed, for they
provide us with more strands of evidence to work with. But their results will
always require evaluation and contextualisation in ways that transcend mere
technique. Further, Kristian Kristiansen (2011: 78) has argued that technical
developments may stimulate new strands of theoretical reflection. As he says,
theory may change course as a result, but it is not extinguished (see below).

A second perspective on the death of archaeological theory is offered in one of

the founding statements in the debate, and in retrospect seems very distinct from
other contributions. John Bintliff (2011: 16) argues that theory in archaeology is
already dead, for the subject has moved away from a mode of archaeological
procedure that was originally proposed by David Clarke (1968: 34). In this way of
working, theory is used as a means of constructing a series of parallel models,
which are then tested against a continually growing body of archaeological
evidence. Theory is therefore conceived as a toolkit of concepts and approaches,
each of which might potentially prove valid in explaining the complex structure of
the data (Bintliff 2011: 18). Yet Bintliff holds that while this vision of
archaeology had been introduced by the first generation of processual
archaeologists, even they had been guilty of the principal failing that he identifies
in archaeological thinking: the incorporation of personal beliefs or a priori
understandings about the way that the world is into ones arguments. Thus, Clarke
had accepted as an article of faith that the complexities of human existence could
be adequately represented in the form of mathematical models, while Lewis
Binford had presumed that universal laws of culture could ultimately be identified
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(Bintliff 2011: 12). As soon as structures that are simply attractive to the
researcher are used to organise archaeological data, argues Bintliff, they have
ceased to be a theorist, and they have become an ideopraxist. That is, they have
chosen to impose a single ideological package on the archaeological record, rather
than observe an open-minded eclecticism. It follows from Bintliffs argument that
anyone who was to identify themself as a Marxist, a feminist, or a structuralist
archaeologist would be not a theorist but an ideopraxist. This definition of theory
is perfectly coherent, but contrasts with the normal state of affairs in other
disciplines, where the commitment of practitioners to one of a multiplicity of rival
interpretive programmes is generally the norm (see, for example, Barry 2009;
Bertens 2014; Dillon 2014; Layton 1997).

Bintliff argues that the shift from theory to ideopraxis has been accompanied by
the emergence of a New Scholasticism, in which leading figures in the discipline
exercise control of what it is acceptable to think. As intellectual fashion moves
from one philosopher to the next and new sacred texts are identified, students
struggle to keep up with a changing disciplinary landscape (Bintliff 2011: 8).
However, Bintliffs approval of a synchronic eclecticism of parallel models is at
variance with the more usual process in which scholars try out a series of
theoretical frameworks in the course of their careers, in repeated attempts to make
sense of a given body of evidence. While they may often choose to employ ideas
that are currently in vogue, it would probably be inaccurate to suggest that
archaeological thought has been dominated by a single dogmatic ideological
package at any point over the past thirty years, and it is currently distinguished
above all by its diversity (Pearce 2011: 80). There certainly are examples in the
literature of multiple approaches being applied simultaneously by a single author
to a single set of evidence. The classic case is found in David Clarkes work, in
his study of the Iron Age Glastonbury lake village, where the author constructs a
post-depositional model, a structural model, a social model and an economic
model (Clarke 1972a). This was represented as a means of juxtaposing the
insights that might be generated by the competing paradigms that Clarke had noted
emerging in contemporary archaeology, most notably in his immediate
environment in Cambridge (Clarke 1972b: 43-9; see further discussion below).
Similarly, Christopher Tilleys work on the Swedish rock art site of Nmforsen
involved a series of separate analyses from structuralist, hermeneutic and Marxist
perspectives (Tilley 1991). What is notable is that although both Clarke and Tilley
employed multiple sets of interpretive resources, and arguably constructed
multiple models, neither author really used the evidence to refute one model or
confirm another. In both cases, the parallel approaches actually provided
complementary insights. The principal difference is that while Clarke presented
his models as mutually enriching steps toward a comprehensive understanding of
the Glastonbury site, Tilley explicitly resists any attempt to synthesise his findings
and arrive at a final answer to the meaning of the Nmforsen art.
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Arguably, Bintliffs conception of archaeological theory is based on a slightly

selective reading of David Clarke. For although the latter did advocate the testing
of multiple models against data, this was not the full extent of his view of what
theory should represent. Clarke also drew attention to the importance of what he
called archaeological metaphysics, which involved the critical appraisal of the
concepts, categories and methodologies that we employ (Clarke 1973: 14).
Equally, much of Lewis Binfords contribution to archaeological thinking lay in
the recognition that archaeological evidence was not a self-evident body of
information that could be set against propositions about the past (Binford 1977: 4;
2001: 676). Although we might take issue with his proposal to establish middle
range theory as an entirely separate corpus of theory concerning the structuring of
the archaeological record through dynamic impacts (see below), his efforts
demonstrate that archaeological theory cannot be limited to the construction and
testing of hypotheses about past dynamics using static evidence. Both within
archaeology and in other disciplines, theory involves the way that we render our
evidence intelligible, construct our research questions, evaluate our own
interpretations and those of others, question the appropriateness of our
methodologies, and assess the socio-political and ethical dimensions of our
practice in the present (Pluciennik 2011: 32). Bintliffs argument is entirely
consistent in its own terms, but in order to accept his claim that archaeological
theory is dead one must first agree with his account of what theory represents.
And if one does, it is equally pertinent to ask whether theory in this sense ever
really saw widespread acceptance within the discipline as a whole.

A third possible account of the death of archaeological theory is perhaps the

most troubling: the charge that the theoretical approaches introduced between the
1960s and the 1980s have failed to deliver on their initial promise, or that the
whole enterprise of archaeological theory has somehow ground to a halt. There
are certainly arguments to the effect that theory has arrived at a consensual point
of closure, perhaps with processualism-plus, cognitive processualism, or some
similar formula (Hegmon 2003: 216; Renfrew and Bahn 2004: 496). Equally, it
could be conjectured that since the passionate theoretical debates of the 1980s
have cooled a new generation have come to accept authorized versions of the
history of archaeological thought, rather than delving into the richer and more
diverse published heritage of past decades (Pearce 2011: 82). In consequence, a
cannon of standardised citations has emerged, and a new orthodoxy has come into
being by default. These alternative narratives of resolution and hollowing-out
converge on a prognosis that theory in archaeology has ceased developing, and
will henceforth simply be taken down from the shelf and operationalised, or that it
has reached such an ossified state as to be increasingly rejected by practicing
archaeologists. Given the terminology of death, destruction and apocalypse being
employed, it appears that our present predicament is being identified as the local
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manifestation of a more global crisis of theory, as we enter the post-ideological

twenty-first century. The problem here lies with the relationship between
archaeological thought in particular and intellectual history in general, and with an
unrealistic set of expectations that were generated by the explosive development
of archaeological thinking between 1960 and 1990, and the way that this was
understood at the time.

Literary theories
This term, the death of theory, originated in the context of literary studies,
and it is important to realise the very particular significance that Theory took on in
relation to literary criticism during the later twentieth century (Jameson 2008: 564;
Culler 1983: 20). While the ideas that challenged the New Criticism of F.R.
Leavis and William Empson had developed in philosophy, political economy,
psychology, anthropology and linguistics over a period of many decades, their
introduction into English departments was an accelerated one, which coincided
with the political unrest of the 1960s (Lentriccia 1980: 104; Eagleton 1983: 30).
As such, it also coincided with the Return of Grand Theory in the humanities in
general, and the social sciences in particular. Sociologists in the immediate post-
war period had largely edged back from the attempt to forge a systematic and
global theory of society (of the kinds pioneered in their different ways by Marx,
Durkheim and Weber), and had instead adopted a form of positivism that focused
on piecemeal empirical research, modelled on the framework of the natural
sciences (Skinner 1985: 5; Giddens 1971: vii). The rejection of this approach was
connected with growing scepticism over the purported value-neutrality of the
sciences, the increasing politicisation of academics in the context of the civil rights
movement, the Vietnam War and second-wave feminism, and the re-evaluation of
Marxism and psychoanalysis (Gouldner 1970: 354).

Social and cultural theory began to move away from a model of explanation, based
upon regularities between variables, and to rediscover two modes of interpretation:
the hermeneutic concern with relations of significance between cultural fragments
and cultural wholes, and the hermeneutics of suspicion. That is to say, the belief
that appearances are deceptive, and that beneath the surface of things lies a more
sinister reality, whether of subconscious drives and desires, deep cultural codes
and grammars, or brutal material conditions masked by ideological shells. In this
respect if no other, psychoanalysis, structuralism and Marxism were allied in their
criticism of the assumptions of positivist social science. So the theory that was
introduced to literary studies at that particular moment was Big Theory:
frameworks that attempted to address a wide range of cultural phenomena, and
which did not shrink from political engagement. As Terry Eagleton has pointed
out, the mushrooming of cultural theory in the 60s and 70s was partly attributable
to a proliferation of new phenomena that seemed to demand deeper investigation:
consumer capitalism, youth culture, popular music, advertising and marketing,
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film and television, fashion and design (Eagleton 2003: 25). Although many of
these intellectual developments had been anticipated by the cultural critique of the
Frankfurt School, the accelerated cultural change of the post-war period provided
a context in which dominant modes of investigation were manifestly inadequate,
and the need for alternative frameworks became acute. Moreover, a series of early
analyses that employed new approaches to address the hidden forces behind
emerging cultural trends proved spectacularly successful (e.g. Barthes 1973;
Hebdige 1979; Williamson 1978). The growing recognition that cultural
production and its critique formed part of a cultural politics that articulated with
the other political struggles of the period enhanced the sense that the universities
of the western world represented a cockpit of social unrest, manifested in student
radicalism in general and the events of Paris in 1968 in particular.
Consequentially, Big Theory in the humanities brought with it the conviction that
it was important not only to interpret the world (in various ways), but to change it
too. Conversely, it introduced the idea that both personal life and intellectual
activity were arenas of political struggle. By the 1980s, this imperative was also
to have an impact in archaeology, which could no longer be sheltered from
addressing its position within contemporary cultural politics. Theoretical
reflection and real-world events conspired to demand that archaeologists adopt
explicit positions on political matters (e.g. Ucko 1987; Zimmerman 1989).

All of this meant that the study of works of art and literature had lost its
innocence, and cultural phenomena were likely to be indicted for their role in
maintaining capitalism, colonialism or the patriarchy. But as archaeologists, from
the perspective of a very different discipline, what is most important for us to
recognise about these developments in literary studies is that they marked a
pronounced shift from a belletristic to a social scientific mode of investigation,
one that was deeply resented by many professional academics in the arts subjects
(Williams 1996: 27). This was most starkly the case with structuralism. In
archaeology, structuralist analyses were eventually introduced as part of the whole
bundle of ideas that characterised the post-processual era. Our assimilation of
twentieth-century intellectual history was even more abbreviated than that in
English studies. To many archaeologists, structuralism was initially understood as
part of a turning-away from the rigorous foundations of science, and toward the
metaphysical speculations of the humanities (Yoffee and Sherratt 1993: 4). In
English studies the precise opposite was the case: structuralisms claim to provide
a universal science of signs was perceived at worst as a kind of technocratic
imperialism, which sought to supplant close reading and sensitivity to the text with
the search for universal structural grammars. This was both de-humanising and
scientistic, and threatened the end of the established structure of literary criticism
(e.g. Easthope 1988: 133).

From deconstruction to culture wars

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However, the form of theory that had the greatest impact within literary
studies was post-structuralism, to the extent that for a while deconstruction and
Theory became almost synonymous. The death of the author, the assault on
truth, and the ultimate undecidability of meaning that this tradition promoted were
variously perceived as liberating or scandalous according to preference (Boyd
2006: 291). Post-structuralists generally sought to resist totalising histories,
essentialisms, and universal laws, even to the point of continually questioning the
terminology that we employ in academic discourse, while Derrida himself insisted
that deconstruction was a practice rather than a school of thought (Norris 1982:
21). Despite this, deconstruction became the biggest of big theories in American
criticism, relentlessly undermining the metaphysical foundations of all cultural
phenomena. Much fascinating work was produced, but the consolidation of the
approach into an orthodox position was not always attractive. As the 1970s gave
way to the 1980s, in the United States and to a lesser extent in Britain, theory in
the universities had become a last redoubt of radicalism against the rising tide of
neo-liberalism (and later neo-conservatism) in society at large. In a sense,
Americas cycle of culture wars, science wars and God wars can be seen as
rearguard actions following the more palpable victories of unreconstructed
capitalism in the Reagan era (see Butler 1997 for some of the flavour of the
period). In a curious way, they seem to represent the shadows or mirror images of
the Contra wars, oil wars, wars on terror and wars on drugs being fought by the
dominant power. The political centre of balance was shifting to the right, and this
was marked by conflicts pursued at numerous levels. Hence when Frederick
Jameson claims that attacks on theory in the academy were politically motivated,
he has something of a point (Jameson 2008: 563). The notorious Sokal hoax
(Sokal and Bricmont 1998) may have demonstrated the excesses to which
deconstructive criticism was capable of extending itself, but many of those who
cheered it on did not do so from a position of disinterested scholarly objectivity.

If critical theory in the universities kept radicalism alive after the defeat of the
New Left in Europe and America, the purported decline of theory might be
construed as a reflection of the more general depoliticisation of western society. It
makes a neat story to have the death of the author followed by the death of theory,
but as in the case of Samuel Clements, the rumours of mortality are exaggerated1.
For while the late 1980s and early 1990s might have seen a death of
deconstruction or an end of theory in literary criticism, this properly refers to
Theory with a capital T. That is, Grand Theory. And while many commentators
on the right have attempted to portray this as the end of philosophical reflection in
the humanities altogether, the genie is out of the bottle, and there is no return to an
innocent past of connoisseurship to be had. Theory is dead, but long live theory:
the all-encompassing conceptual frameworks of the 1960s to 1980s were simply
replaced by more localised and contingent approaches, including the new
historicism, post-colonialism, cultural studies, science studies, and queer theory
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(Pluciennik 2011: 34). The terms and tenor of Grand Theory have very much
influenced and in fact formed the theoretical matrices of present practices,
suggests Williams (1996: 24). While the focus on identity politics that this reveals
may be a sign of retrenchment, it certainly provides no comfort for those who
would like to herald a post-theoretical dawn. Moreover, if the change in literary
criticism has been from globalising theories of everything to more strategic and
targeted theoretical practices, we should be very wary of seeking a read across
between English studies and archaeology. In our discipline the conditions
attending the introduction of novel philosophical ideas were entirely different, and
the uncritical pilfering of a resonant phrase may not be entirely helpful.

Archaeological reasoning and paradigm change

It is arguable that both literary criticism and archaeology are hermeneutic
exercises, concerned with the relationship between cultural phenomena and their
contexts. Yet archaeologists have sometimes been interested to understand the
significance of the artefacts that are available to them, and sometimes to infer the
dynamic interactions with living organisms in which they were implicated in the
past. While both of these pursuits generally involve the implicit or explicit use of
theoretical reflection, it is in the latter case that the practical impossibility of an
atheoretical archaeology is most starkly revealed. It was of course David Clarke
who clearly outlined the extent to which archaeologists are at the mercy of their
own controlling models, with the result that they could choose to work with
theory implicitly and subconsciously or explicitly and critically, but they could not
do away with theory altogether (Clarke 1972: 5). Clarke held that during the
1960s and 1970s archaeology was undergoing a transition toward a phase of
critical self-consciousness, in which technological developments were driving
philosophical reflection. New methods such as radiometric dating, extensive field
survey and computing were producing new kinds of observations, which could not
be accommodated by existing conceptual schemes. A critical evaluation of
archaeological practice was leading to the eclipse of regional traditions of
particularistic research, and a growing concern with general theory. What Clarke
called theory of archaeological reasoning was therefore becoming central to the
disciplines identity (Clarke 1973: 16).

However, it is revealing that Clarke divided general archaeological theory into a

series of sub-fields: predepositional and depositional theory; postdepositional
theory; retrieval theory; analytical theory; and interpretive theory (Clarke 1973:
17). In other words, Clarke held that the bulk of archaeological thinking was
concerned with relationships amongst archaeological data, and their formation,
while interpretation was understood as something that was introduced at the end of
the process, once the data had been assembled and sorted. Clarke acknowledged a
place for social theory, but he clearly considered it as subsidiary to the
consideration of purely archaeological entities. In a significant way, these
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arguments parallel those of Lewis Binford, who although he drew the important
distinction between dynamics and statics, none the less used middle range theory
as a means of presenting the archaeological record as a hermetically-sealed realm
of artefact physics (Binford 1972: 89; 1977: 6; 1983: 119). Binford and Clarke,
then, both saw archaeology as primarily concerned with the structure of the
material evidence, and questions of both interpretation and the relationship
between past and present as secondary issues. For Binford in particular this was a
virtuous position to hold, for archaeologists had too often rushed to provide
accounts of past social, ecological and economic processes without having first
understood the character and structure of their evidence. However, we should
perhaps remember that archaeologists of the first processual generation were
building on the work of forerunners like Walter Taylor, who had explicitly
presented archaeology as a methodology (see also Flannery and Marcus 2011: 24).
As soon as one progressed from description and classification to explanation, one
was actually engaged in anthropology. Archaeology per se is no more than a
method and a set of specialised techniques for the gathering of cultural
information. The archaeologist, as archaeologist, is really nothing but a
technician (Taylor 1948: 43). So for Clarke and Binford to claim that
archaeologists must develop instruments for the explanation of their evidence was,
in some ways, a radical step.

Clarke drew on Thomas Kuhns work in the philosophy of science to provide an

account of the archaeologys very rapid development from disciplinary innocence
to critical self-consciousness. He characterised the early 1970s as a time of
professional insecurity and uncertainty, in which archaeologists were oscillating
between a series of rival paradigms (Clarke 1972b: 28). Kuhns term paradigm
refers to models of procedure exemplified by particular investigations, which
serve to enshrine specific modes of inquiry. Paradigms effectively delineate what
are and are not legitimate data, and how they can profitably be addressed (Kuhn
1970: 45). Clarke argued that the new environment of 1970s archaeology had
given rise to four competing paradigms: morphological, anthropological,
ecological and geographical. It is significant, though, that when he talks of an
anthropological paradigm he does not mean the application of analogies or
insights drawn from social anthropology to archaeological evidence, but the use of
archaeological materials to generate hypotheses concerning social organisation, as
in the case of the so-called ceramic sociology of Deetz, Hill and Longacre
(Clarke 1972b: 7; Deetz 1968; Hill 1970). This was archaeology as
anthropology, archaeology standing in for anthropology, rather than archaeology
as one element of a four-field anthropology in which an active conversation takes
place between archaeologists and anthropologists. Broadly speaking, then,
Clarkes argument was that rapid paradigm change was something that had been
generated within archaeology, out of the internal social and technological
transformation of the discipline (Clarke 1968: 25).
 10.

However, it is at least implicit within his argument that these endogenous

processes were complemented by developments outwith archaeology, and
paralleled by the emergence of a new geography, a new history, a new economics
and a new sociology (see, for instance, Chorley and Haggett 1967; Lloyd 1986:
59). Computing, statistical techniques, hypothesis-testing, spatial models, systems
theory and neo-evolutionary ideas had been introduced into a range of disciplines,
with similar effects, and archaeology was distinguished by adopting the package
just as other academic communities were beginning to appreciate its failings.
Indeed, it is arguable that Clarkes appeal to Kuhn had a role in sewing the seeds
of dissatisfaction with positivism and functionalism, since the burden of the
latters argument is that scientific progress is rarely if ever achieved by the testing
of hypotheses, so much as by the shifting of academic consensus. Kuhn sees facts
always being addressed through the conceptual apparatus of a particular paradigm,
rather than having an absolute value, or being able to arbitrate between rival
theories. Such arguments could be seen as a first step in the directions of
hermeneutics, Marxism, or Latourian science studies.

Now, it is certainly the case that when what we now refer to as post-processual
archaeology emerged in the early 1980s it was widely understood as a further
paradigm change, in Kuhnian terms. But it is worth remembering that the
examples of paradigm shift that Kuhn himself supplies are epochal
transformations in the way that the world is understood: from Ptolemaic to
Copernican astronomy; from Aristotelian to Newtonian dynamics; from
corpuscular to wave optics, and so on (Kuhn 1970: 10). Kuhn does admittedly
argue that scientific revolutions can be of varying degrees of magnitude. And he
suggests that what distinguishes a new paradigm is that it provides a new way of
doing things while leaving space for converts to find something new to
investigate. None the less, it may be too grandiose a claim to make that
archaeology went in the space of a quarter of a century through two separate
internally generated spasms of conceptual revision. A more modest view of
archaeologys development of critical self-consciousness might be that a discipline
within which theory had hitherto been underdeveloped (although not absent)
opened itself up to the influences of first the natural and then the human sciences,
tailoring what it borrowed from each according to its own preoccupations and
objects of study. Indeed, the corollary of Clarkes critical self-consciousness
argument is that although archaeologists have always been motivated by some set
of ideas about the past and humanity, archaeological theory as a recognisable
entity has only be explicitly discussed since the 1960s (Johnson 2006: 119). I am
indebted to Bjrnar Olsen for the observation that in comparison with other
disciplines, archaeology therefore had more white space to fill once it began to
develop its theoretical framework. The impact of both sets of conceptual
apparatus upon practitioners was undoubtedly a profound one, whether positive or
 11.

negative, and I do not wish to underplay the transformative effect on the discipline
of the introduction of concepts such as agency, gender, identity, ideology, power
and personhood. However, the drawback in conceiving the New Archaeology and
Post-Processual Archaeology as two successive paradigm changes has been the
perception that periodic fundamental change should be the norm a twenty-year
cycle (Pearce 2011: 82). In other words, we have come to expect a kind of
Maoist continual revolution, just as the modern west in general has come to accept
the state of crisis as normality (Benjamin 1970: 245). It is this view that gives rise
to a vague feeling of disappointment that nothing new has come along since the
post-processual revolt. For my generation of graduate students it is mildly
surprising (if something of a relief) that the next big thing has not already swept
in, rendering our own ideas redundant. Claims have been made for new forms of
evolutionary theory as such a fundamental revolution (Shennan 2002: 10), but
these approaches have so far only proved convincing and useful to an enthusiastic
minority of archaeologists (Pearce 2011: 82). Successive conferences of the
Theoretical Archaeology Group come and go, apparently only offering more of
the same. Where are the new radicals and the new iconoclasts? I would like to
suggest that this is an unnecessarily pessimistic view.

The assimilation and recontextualisation of ideas

Perhaps because archaeology is a study to which the ideas and methods of
the hard sciences, the social sciences and the aesthetic humanities all have
something to contribute, its post-1960 assimilation of outside ideas at a frantic rate
threw up some curious anomalies. Thus, both structuralism and its post-
structuralist and practice theory critiques were being explored by archaeologists at
much the same time. In this respect, Ian Hodders Symbolic and Structural
Archaeology (1982a) is in hindsight revealed as a slightly curious volume, offering
both new approaches and their refutation at one and the same time. This was not
in itself a bad thing, giving rise to theoretical incoherence, but it did create a sense
of tumult, and of ideas being worked through and evaluated by raising them
against each other. More importantly, although post-processual archaeology is far
from being characterised by a coherent and uniform set of views, it has for the
most part been concerned with historical and cultural specificity, the rejection of
cross-cultural laws, and an emphasis on methodological pluralism. Yet of course,
this is exactly what had characterised the reaction against Big Theory in literary
criticism. So it is arguable that we in archaeology had our theoretical and post-
theoretical turns all in one go. Ian Hodder originally argued that it was the
rejection of functionalism that characterised the decisive break between processual
and post-processual archaeologies, and the subjects achievement of maturity
(Hodder 1982b: 3). But it may equally be that the most fundamental change that
has overtaken the discipline over the past half-century has been the gradual
recognition that archaeology is primarily concerned with mediating the
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relationship between past and present, that this relationship is an irreducibly

inferential one, and that consequentially all archaeology is theoretical archaeology.

If we argue that what distinguished the archaeology of the 1960s to 1990s was the
assimilation of a plethora of ideas drawn from other fields of inquiry, it is easy to
understand why there might presently be something of a feeling of anti-climax.
The New Archaeology drew on Leslie White and Carl Hempel, Ludwig von
Bertalanffy and Peter Haggett. The first wave to post-processual archaeology had
Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. To
these were later added Hans-Georg Gadamer and Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak
and Gilles Deleuze. At the same time, a progressive broadening of the disciplines
focus of investigation took place, to include new objects such as modern material
culture, and engagements with other communities, including artists and performers
(Johnson 2006: 119). Throughout the later part of the twentieth century there was
an undeniable sense of excitement about the way that new theories could produce
new insights into existing archaeological problems and sets of evidence, as well as
opening up new views of what the discipline could achieve. This restless search
for new cultural theorists to assimilate has been decried as a use and discard
approach to theory (Bintliff 2011: 8). However, what this complaint neglects is
that this strategy actually worked rather well: a series of classic papers from the
1960s onwards achieved what Richard Rorty (1989: 16) would call a redescription
of established archaeological materials simply by bringing novel frames of
reference to bear on them. A very good example would be Mary Braithwaites
Ritual and prestige in the prehistory of Wessex c. 2200-1400 BC, a paper
originally given at the 1981 Theoretical Archaeology Conference at the University
of Reading (Braithwaite 1984). Braithwaite drew on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu
and Talal Asad in order to address the roles of ritual and symbolism in Late
Neolithic and Bronze Age Wessex, concentrating on the change from collective
activities in henge monuments to the establishment of a new system of
individualised prestige in the Beaker phase (Braithwaite 1984: 102). Although she
was at that point a postgraduate student, Braithwaites article was deservedly
influential, and has had an enduring impact on the subsequent development of
British prehistoric studies (e.g. Clarke, Cowie and Foxon 1985: 36). The
drawback to the strategy of redescription is not that it was superficial or morally
questionable, but that it was easier to achieve during a particular moment in the
disciplines development toward some kind of maturity. Undoubtedly, there will
always be new philosophers and cultural theorists to discover, but the era in which
whole regions of the human sciences remained to be explored for the first time by
archaeologists has now passed. This, I think, is why another conceptual revolution
of the same magnitude as the emergence of processual and post-processual
archaeology is unlikely to take place in the immediate future.
 13.

I have argued that archaeologys coming of age over the past fifty years has
involved it entering into a freer exchange of ideas and concepts with other
disciplines. The familiar complaint that we are only ever consumers of theory,
and that we need to develop a theory of our own is something of a red herring:
traditions of theory are generally inter-disciplinary and nomadic, rather than being
the prerogative of a single subject. Anyone who has worked closely with
colleagues in human geography, history, literature, drama, social anthropology,
religious studies or art history will know that they too periodically face the charge
of importing theory from outside. But as a result of this there has been a
tendency to try to understand the development of archaeological thinking in
primarily autochthonous terms, rather than in relation to the wider intellectual
world. I would suggest that it does not particularly matter if some of our
theoretical inspiration comes from beyond our own disciplinary confines. What
does matter, though, is the intellectual labour necessary to make those ideas
compatible with our focus on the material worlds that human beings inhabit, and
how these change through time. There may be few exclusively archaeological
theoretical approaches, but there are certainly archaeological ways of making use
of theory.

The new normal?

If archaeology has now established for itself a more dialogical relationship
with both the natural and the human sciences, how are we to envisage the future
development of archaeological theory? In practice, during the period in which the
debate on the death of theory took place, archaeological theory was in the throes
of renewing itself regardless, and the details of this process are instructive. Since
the turn of the millennium, a series of related developments in philosophy and
cultural theory have drawn on the work of thinkers as diverse as Latour, Deleuze,
Whitehead, Serres, Heidegger, Adorno and Spinoza in order to develop a suite of
distinct but overlapping conceptual frameworks that have variously been described
as speculative realism, assemblage theory, new materialisms and object
oriented philosophy (Bennett 2010; Bryant, Srnicek and Harman 2011; DeLanda
2006; Harman 2010; Meillassoux 2008). These approaches are potentially of the
greatest possible interest for archaeology, because above all else they react against
the neglect of material things in contemporary thought. What has been distinctive
about the archaeological reception of these ideas is that rather than exploring them
after much delay, just as everyone else is losing interest, archaeologists have been
engaging with them as they have emerged. This is partly because several of the
themes that they address have already been adopted within archaeology: a concern
with networks and relationships (Watts 2013), an emphasis on the active role of
artefacts (Hodder 1982b), and a critical, posthumanist attitude toward the notion
of human beings as free-standing agents (Fowler 2004). As new positions on
these issues have started to emerge in the wider academic world, their implications
 14.

have been worked through by various archaeologists, including (but not limited to)
those associated with a symmetrical archaeology (Olsen et al. 2012).

Many of these approaches are grounded in a critique of anthropocentrism, the

belief that human beings have a uniquely privileged position in creation as a
consequence of their ability to apprehend the world mentally, and render it
meaningful. Anthropocentrism holds that humans are qualitatively different from
other beings by virtue of their reason, and that as the sole interpreters of reality,
they are also its masters (Heidegger 1977; 1993). In this view, the really
important aspects of human functioning take place in the secluded space of the
mind, while the external world of things is composed of arrangements of inert
matter. Consequentially, societies are conceived as being composed of
intersubjective relationships between rational intelligences, and things are only of
tangential importance (Webmoor 2007: 567). As a result, material things have
generally been neglected in social analysis, and it has recently been argued that
even material culture studies have primarily focused on the social construction of
objects and artefacts, so that their symbolic and conceptual dimensions are
valorised over their mundane and tangible attributes (Olsen 2003: 87).

In place of anthropocentrism, Bruno Latour and others have proposed a conceptual

levelling, in which it is recognised that humans and objects alike are participants
in any action that takes place in the world (Latour 2005: 70; Srenson 2013, 2).
This move is related to the notion of a flat ontology introduced by Manuel
DeLanda (2004: 58), which denies the causal role of transcendental or privileged
entities or organising principles in generating the structure of reality, seeing
change instead as immanent in systems of connections between entities. In the
archaeological context, the marginalisation of things is identified as manifesting
itself in the imperative to study the Indian behind the artefact (Flannery 1967:
120). That is, material culture is not considered of interest in itself, but only as a
means of getting at something else, whether meanings or societies (Olsen 2003:
98). A symmetrical approach seeks to place humans and things on an equal
footing, as co-constitutors of society and as actants in networks of action. At the
same time, in adopting a post-humanist agenda it rejects a concern with things as
repositories of thoughts and symbolism, or as surrogate human beings, focusing
instead on qualities that are independent of their involvement with human beings
(Olsen 2012: 21). Rejecting the Cartesian distinction between mind and matter
enables us to think of objects and substances as vibrant, constantly in motion and
capable of doing things, having a power of their own rather than amounting to so
much dead stuff (Bennet 2010: 6). On this basis it is possible to conclude that the
interactions between people and things are not categorically different from those
between things and other things:
 15.

Rushing water washing against concrete pillars will interpret or feel the
concrete surface as well as any hermeneut or phenomenologist (Olsen et al.
2012: 10).

Ultimately, this position is close to Alfred North Whiteheads view that human
perception and understanding are little different from the ways in which other
entities prehend each other (Shaviro 2011: 281). Undoubtedly, archaeologists
have to be more aware of the way that animals, plants, artefacts and substances
get on with each other in the absence of people, and need to consider humans as
just one element of an overall worldly ecology. However, there is a growing
tension between the view that archaeology should be a discipline of things, to
which humans, history and interpretation are incidental (Olsen 2012: 25), and a
concern that without adopting human exceptionalism, archaeologists should not
apologise for being interested in people (Fowles 2010: 23). Symmetrical
archaeology is concerned with mixtures and hybrids (Webmoor and Witmore
2008: 60), but these mixtures are heterogeneous, and only those that involve
human beings have given rise to cities, states, and motor cars. It is, perhaps,
possible to have a post-humanist perspective on the human career, which
recognises that whatever is distinctive about human beings (or more broadly,
animate beings) is not contained within any individual phenotype, but concerns the
way that they are in the world. That is, being an animate being involves a
particular mode of relationality.

One way of achieving this is suggested by Tim Ingolds account of humans and
animals as being enmeshed in an animate lifeworld that is continually in flux, and
in which all materials and substances as well as living creatures are forever in
motion (Ingold 2011: 71). Ingold, however, appears to admit a distinction
between materials that are simply captivated by their own motion, and animate
beings that are capable of directing their movements and channelling the
development of others through skill and craft. Crucially, though, he does not see
action in the world as the external outcome of thoughts generated in an
internalised mental sphere. Instead, he argues that thought is a worldly event: it is
the flow of materials as a whole that thinks (Ingold 2012: 438). Here he is
pushing the notion of the extended mind much further than has been the case in
cognitive evolutionism, to argue that the organism and its brain are only one
(essential) component in the activity of thinking. This is comparable with the
position developed by Heidegger, who argues that worldly entities are disclosed to
human beings, not because of their internal mental functioning but as a result of
their place within the world itself (Rae 2013: 6).

Further potential quandaries raised by the new materialisms also lie in store for
archaeologists. In proposing a speculative realism, Quentin Meillassoux argues
that since Kant modern thought has been fixated with the notion of correlation, the
 16.

relationship between things as they are in themselves and as they are apprehended
by the human mind. In this scheme of things, thinking and being cannot be
isolated from reach other, but only addressed as a unity, and it is impossible to
approach any object in isolation from the subject that thinks it (2008: 5).
Consequentially, epistemology is always privileged over ontology. Meillassoux
advocates an ontological turn, a return to metaphysics, in which we regain the
confidence to speculate about the way that things actually are, rather than how
they are represented in thought. An immediate problem here is that Meillassouxs
objects are very much things-in-themselves, isolated entities rather than materials
in motion, engaged in a world-process (in the sense of Ingold 2012: 436). The
same problem emerges in Graham Harmans object-oriented philosophy, which
brings together themes from Heidegger and Whitehead. Like Heidegger, Harman
argues that material things oscillate between a state of invisibility in which they
are simply submerged in everyday activity, and moments in which they announce
themselves and become conspicuous (Harman 2010: 46). Thus when we use a
hammer to pound nails into wood, it withdraws from notice, hidden within the
project of hammering, but when it breaks and fails it becomes visible as a thing of
a certain kind: a broken hammer. Harman places a Whitehead-ian spin on this
analysis, arguing that interactions between people and things should be seen as
merely a subset of interactions between things in general. Therefore, every
encounter between two entities is characterised by the revelation of some of the
qualities or energies of each, while the subterranean reality of each object is
withheld. When a falling leaf encounters a wall, it does so in a particular way,
eliciting a particular phenomenal surface from it (Harman 2010: 58). This
means that while putting all entities (human, animal and material) on an equal
ontological footing, Harman envisages them as always fundamentally separate and
remote from each other (Shaviro 2011: 282). Although things disclose something
of themselves in interaction, their intimate reality is closed in upon itself.

So although Harmans perspective is one that takes objects seriously, it is one that
is far removed from the vision of things as gatherings, or openings into the
seamless relationality of the world (Webmoor and Witmore 2008: 64). Indeed,
Harman explicitly advocates a focus on individual, actual things rather than giving
priority to relationships. For him, objects are first of all isolated entities, and only
subsequently enter into relationships with each other (Harman 2011: 295). This
means that rather than attempting to transcend the object-subject dichotomy,
speculative realists imagine subjectless, autonomous objects (Bryant 2011: 14).
As Fowles (2010: 25) observes, there is a potential for the reaction against social
construction to lead us towards a new objectification of things as free-standing
entities. Ironically, archaeologists have often been attracted to this broad area of
thought by an interest in networks and relationships, only perhaps to find that
some of its elements are profoundly anti-relational.
 17.

It has been claimed that the encounter between archaeology and the new
materialisms is gradually giving rise to a new revolution as fundamental as those
of the 1960s and 1980s (Olsen 2012: 15). This is arguable, on the grounds that the
new positions involved are emerging incrementally, as an extension of post-
processualism. But in another way, these developments are more significant than
another revolution. This is because the arguments surrounding speculative
realism, flat ontologies and the rejection of anthropocentrism are still unresolved,
and in flux. They have not been introduced to archaeology after the event, as a
fully formulated body of theory. Instead, archaeologists have engaged with these
ideas as they have developed, in real time rather than in abbreviated form. As a
consequence, archaeology itself becomes the terrain over which these debates are
conducted, rather than simply a set of materials to which already-existing
conceptual apparatuses are applied. These are potentially the conditions under
which archaeology can properly begin to contribute to interdisciplinary debate.
Moreover, it is to be anticipated that the more measured process by which ideas
are evaluated and worked with as they develop in the interdisciplinary arena, and
revised in the light of their confrontation with archaeological problems and
materials, is likely to be characteristic of the progress of archaeological theory in
the foreseeable future.

Conclusion: from deconstruction to conditions of possibility

The emergence of new arguments within archaeology over the past decade
demonstrates that archaeological theory has not come to a halt, or run out of
steam. These may have been stimulated by developments in philosophy and
cultural theory, but they represent more than a slavish accommodation of
fashionable ideas to archaeological concerns. As I have attempted to demonstrate,
these ideas bring within them unanswered questions that archaeologists will have
to address for themselves. Furthermore, if archaeological thinking is now moving
forward in concert with other disciplines, rather than in the accelerated spurts of
the 1960s and 1980s, the way that theory is employed within the discipline may be
expected to change subtly. We have noted that where new conceptual resources
are readily available, they can be drawn upon to provide fruitful redescriptions of
existing archaeological problems. But as Bruno Latour (2004: 246) has observed,
critical approaches fuelled by novel conceptual approaches sometimes restrict
themselves to the deconstruction of existing analyses. This is why Latour calls for
a renewal of empiricism, using critical approaches to assemble the connections
that render things significant, rather than dismantling their conditions of
possibility. But just as the notion of a death of theory becomes problematic
when it is translated from literary studies to archaeology, so too this new
empiricism raises in acute form the difficulty of recontextualising concepts drawn
from other disciplines. As we have seen, philosophers and cultural theorists have
advocated a return to the empirical as a renewal of Husserls injunction to go
back to the things themselves. In the process it seeks to erase the distinction that
 18.

we often set up between the world that we inhabit and the realm in which our
knowledge of that world resides, and to shift our focus from epistemology to
ontology (Henare, Holbraad and Wastell 2007: 8). This is obviously something
very different from the anti-theoretical scientism described at the beginning of this
paper, and it would be very harmful to try to elide the two. None the less, we can
anticipate with despairing resignation a future conference session in which a
rejection of theory is linked to the rise of a new empiricism.

I have argued that the recent history of archaeological thought has given rise to
inflated expectations of how theory should develop, and how it should animate the
discipline. We have come to believe that theoretical debate should be in constant
flux, continually creating scandalous revisions and endless novelty. Because this
tumult has apparently quietened since the 1990s we are left with a sense of
disappointment, leading to the pessimistic diagnosis that archaeological theory is
dead, or at least on its last legs. Along with the Berlin Wall and student
radicalism, it represents a manifestation of a vanished era of ideological
polarization. But in practice, we have been privileged to experience the
unrepeatable process in which archaeology has integrated itself into the
mainstream conversations of the natural and human sciences. The intellectual
pyrotechnics that accompanied this development were a once-only show, and we
may now be entering a more sober phase of disciplinary history. Archaeological
theory is not dead, but it may need to become more modest and less excitable as it
settles down to middle age, embedded in a more patient and meticulous
engagement with the traces of the past. What follows may be less spectacular, but
no less rewarding.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Charlotte Hillerdal, Frands Herschend and Johannes
Siapkas for the opportunity to attend the workshop on Archaeologies into the
2010s Yet Another Turn? at Uppsala University, and for a most enjoyable
meeting. Thanks to Chris Witmore and Michael Fotiadis for helpful comments.

Notes

1. James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks
ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness;
the report of my death was an exaggeration. From a note Mark Twain (Samuel
Clements) wrote in London on May 31, 1897 to reporter Frank Marshall White.

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