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G
ustavo
G. P
olitis
Reflections on Contemporary Ethnoarchaeology
48
PYRENAE,
núm.
46
vol.
1
(2015)
ISSN: 0079-8215 EISSN: 2339-9171 (p. 41-83)
and collaborators in Uttam Nagar and Haryana in India—deserved a mention. As a result,
a new approach was developed: the search for general principles that connected human
behavior to material culture.
Processual ethnoarchaeology was confronted for the first time in the 1980s, when
ethnoarchaeology began to be included in a post-processual agenda as well. The leader of
this renovation was Ian Hodder, who after his vital ethnoarchaeological experience in the
late seventies in the Lake Baringo area in Kenya, developed a new theoretical approach
(Hodder, 1979, 1982, 1982b, 1985). Despite the methodological criticisms to Hodder’s ethno
archaeological research (MacEachern, 1996), his ideas strongly affected archaeological theory
and the consideration of social and ideational factors in interpreting the archaeological record
(Lyons, 2013). The new paradigm emphasized reflexivity and hermeneutics, and was based
in Bourdieu’s theory of practice, all of which permeated post-processual ethnoarchaeology.
Fieldwork and data collection took a more emic character (see, for example, Parker Pearson
and Ramilisonina, 1998; Silva, 2000) (fig. 1) in opposition to the externalism and quantita-
tive methodology that characterized processual ethnoarchaeology. In fact, Binford believed
that ethnoarchaeologists should be external observers of human behavior and its material
derivates, as this would cause observational advantages, since they would not be influenced
by what people themselves think about their engagement with the material world (Fewster,
2013: 2). Obviously, Binford did not believe in any influence of the archaeologist subjectivity
on his observations whatsoever; conviction that was strongly debated by post-processual
archaeologists, who made the first ethical reflections emerge (Hodder, 1982a: 39).
From within post-processualism, the range of interests that ethnoarchaeology incor-
porated was expanded, especially as it widened its focus beyond techno-economic aspects
—which dominated the previous years—to the understanding of greater levels of com-
plexity, in the attempt to discern material correlates of the social and ideational realms.
Mainly, this new current reconceptualized material culture, in the attempt to determine
the multiple dimensions in which it operates and focusing on its meaning. In this sense,
certain aspects that were hardly considered in previous research were emphasized, such
as symbolism and the study of the non-utilitarian dimensions of material culture in
society. Ethnicity, gender, style, power, agency and so on were among the new themes
dealt with by this innovative trend (i.e., David
et al.
1988; Smith, 1992, 1994; Jarvenpa
and Brumbach, 1995; Fewster, 2001b).
Within the frame of the behavioral ecology, a subset of evolutionary ecology,
ethnoarchaeology has always been an important source for theoretical reflections
(O’Connell, 1995) and for producing and testing models (O’Connell
et al
., 1988a, 1988b,
1990; Lupo, 1995, 2001; Bird, 1996, 1997; Bird and Bliege Bird, 1997, 2000; Lupo and
O’Connell, 2002; Bird
et al
., 2009). Although this approach could be criticized for its
inherent reductionism and implicit rejection of “culture” as an explanation for human
behavior (see Bird and O’Connell, 2006) or for its sociobiological orientation and ecologi-
cal determinism (González-Ruibal, 2006: 46), it has produced a tremendous amount of
original data, especially from hunter-gatherer societies.