Function and Configuration in Archaeology

Abstract

Cultural anthropology is generally considered to be a distinctive discipline which seeks an understanding of the fundamental nature of culture and of culture change. The nature of its ultimate objectives, however, is rarely made explicit, and a lack of agreement exists concerning even the more immediate objectives. There is reason to believe that within the last few years archaeology and ethnology are, in many respects, growing rapidly apart instead of contributing to mutual problems. It seems timely, therefore, to inquire whether there really exists a general, basic problem of culture and to what extent archaeological research may be brought to bear upon it.

A Historical Sketch on the Concepts of Archaeological Association, Context, and Provenience

“…Things began to change in the 1960s in both paleontology and archaeology. George Gaylord Simpson (1944) had earlier sought to bring paleontology into the modern realm of paleobiology, that is, as a field that studied not just fossils but the organisms, communities, biotas and ecologies represented by those fossils, paralleling Taylor (1948) and others (e.g., Steward and Setzler 1938) in archaeology. Simpson was followed by Norman D. Newell who made similar arguments and noted that the fossil record was particularly amenable to the study of many of the temporal aspects of macroevolution (Sepkoski 2009).…”

Hunter-Gatherers

“…Yet this must not obscure what should be obvious, specifically, that what was new about middle-range research was the innovative theorizing of Binford not the matching of theory and fact, which has always been with us (e.g., Steward and Setzler 1938).…”

Walter Taylor and the history of American archaeology

“…The ''detailed," ''comprehensive" and ''fair" element of this multifaceted critique is Taylor and Kluckhohn's implicit claim that archaeologists could ask questions and form theories about culture (as many cultural anthropologists conceived of the term) manifest in artifacts, but Kidder's typologies and procedures could not. Doing so required that archaeologists develop functional typologies (as conceived by Steward and Setzler, 1938). Using these typologies, archaeologists could determine associations between artifacts and hypothesize about their cultural contexts.…”