Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 3, No.

2, 1996

Archaeology Without Gravity: Postmodernism and the Past

A. Bernard Knapp I

Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the past and the present have become commonplace: anthropologists now situate cultures in their historical contexts, while historians pursue particularistic ends within politicoeconomic or ideational structures. Archaeologists have cast their nets even more widely, not only toward anthropology and history, but to fields ranging from molecular biology to hermeneutics. Postmodernist approaches maintain that archaeologists shouM be looking at the past from muln'ple perspectives and listening to its muItivocality. Archaeologists, in fact, not only develop different ways of understanding the past, but actually develop alternative pasts. This paper argues that multiple paths to alternative pasts enhance archaeological understanding and, at the same time, stimulate the development of archaeological theory.
KEY WORDS: postmodernism; modernism; postprocessualism; social/interpretive archaeology.

INTRODUCTION In a recent essay on the "Crisis in Hunter-Gatherer Studies," Richard Lee (1992, p. 36) lashes out at the poststructuralist critique in anthropology. To exemplify the position of cool detachment and distancing considered to be the hallmark of the postmodem "condition" (Jameson, 1984; Harvey, 1990), Lee targets the advertising media and suggests that the consumers of the world today may be excused for donning a shell of cynicism to ward off such postmodem assaults. Lamberg-Karlovsky (1989, p. 13), referring to postmodern anthroPOlogy, is even less charitable:
The proliferation of such twaddle is perhaps only comprehensible in the narcissistic appreciation of self--a strong component of all that passes for "post-modern." One 1Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Scotland G12 8QQ. 127 lff72-5396/96/wzfD.0127509.50/o o 1996PIcnurnPublishing Corporation

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can only hope that such inane, post-modernist, reflexive, critical, post-structuralist abcesses do not affect archaeology.

Turning to archaeology, Bintliff (1993, p.92) finds little to "salvage from the wreck of Post-modern archaeology." Peebles (1993, pp. 251, 253), in turn, delivers a scathing critique of certain tenets of postmodernism within archaeology:
The excess of reason came to archaeology in the form of logical empiricism; its opposite, the deficiency of reason, came most recently with the tenets of post-modernism . . . . [This is] a world of sham and illusion, and this world is being imported to archaeology, under the banner of a cognitive archaeology, sometimes as a post-structuralist archaeology, and sometimes as a post-processual archaeology.

Thomas and Tilley (1992, p. 106) maintain that postmodernism is the "most nebulous of terms" which refers to a "loss of faith in progress and western rationality, a loss of confidence in the fixity of meaning . . . . [and] a reduction of identities to the status of alternative commodities." Postmodernism, then, is not an intellectual movement as much as "a set of actually existing circumstances" (Thomas and Tilley, 1992, p. 106). Another archaeological impression holds that postmodernism has consecrated rapid change and instability in our material conditions: changing forms of production and attitudes to consumption now provide us with new goods to meet needs we never knew we had (Gosden 1994, p.60). Given these essentially caustic opinions, it might be concluded that most anthropologists and archaeologists today are highly skeptical of poststructuralism and postmodernism. A broad survey of the current archaeological and anthropological literature demonstrates otherwise, although one must wonder how many fieldworkers actually practice postmodern anthropology or archaeology. Whereas consideration of anthropological and sociological perspectives is never far distant in this study, the main concern is with archaeology. How has postmodernism, or the plurality of other "isms" that characterize social theory today, affected the field of archaeology? Is the past "real"? How, and to what extent, is postmodernism related to postprocessualism? And how has the latter impacted upon an archaeological view of the past? Of course, it is not only archaeology, anthropology, or history that has been affected by the spread of postmodernism: other fields include architecture (where it all started), literary criticism, English, psychology, feminist and masculinist studies, and "science." One can comprehend easily some postmodern trends or debates in architecture, the visual arts, and literature (e.g., Fokkema and Bertens, 1986; Burgin, 1986; Soja, 1989). But when one turns to mainstream social theory (e.g., Nicholson, 1990; Rosenau, 1992; Seidman and Wagner, 1992; Seidman, 1994), postmodernism is regarded more as a threat to the integrity of the field, at the

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very least a problem that must be investigated. In order to deal with this very unwieldy topic, and to examine its denial of and/or impact upon several fields that seek to find some meaning in the past, I propose to categorize these fields--archaeology, anthropology, history--collectively as social approaches to the study of the past, as human science. This should dispel any charges of prejudice toward either the social sciences or the humanities. From an archaeological perspective, this division seems artificial if not counter-productive: the past is human and involves individual histories; the past is social and involves ideological, technological, and environmental patterns and processes. Postmodernists regard most approaches to the study of the past as creations of modern, first-world, Western societies: they are, in postmodern terms, oppressive to third-w0rld societies, irrelevant to the present, lacking in reality, and--in a word--exhausted. The more "critical" postmodemists (discussed below) question whether there is a real, knowable past, and deny any notion of evolutionary progress. They not only question objectivity, but also dispute the idea that reason is a valid means of explaining the past. Postmodernists, predictably, share a counterintuitive view of time, space, and history: cyclical, polychronic (not linear) time, and inconstant, immeasurable space are more germane to their viewpoint and, so, deserve more attention than the past as a means of comprehending the present. To a critical postmodernist, the study of the past is too subject-centered, logocentric, prejudiced, closed, and privileged to be of much concern. Knowledge and meaning (at least "etic" meaning) are irrelevant--postmodernists are concerned chiefly with style, with surface rather than depth. The icons of yesterday have been discarded in favor of the seductive charms of anything new (Gold, 1992, p. 239). In this paper, I examine critically the postmodernist position vis-a-vis the study of the past. My aim is twofold: (1) to provide an overview of postmodernism as a contemporary cultural phenomenon and (2) to consider its impact on human science generally and, more specifically, upon social approaches in archaeology. Another main concern is to examine the relationship of postmodernism to postprocessualism in archaeology and the extent to which present-day archaeology may be termed postprocessual in its outlook (cf. Bintliff, 1991, 1993). Finally, I argue that a multiplicity of paths to the past if not multiple pasts, wherever or whenever they may have been, must enhance archaeological understanding and stimulate our attempts to develop archaeological theory. There is no ultimate explanation but, rather, an array of interpretive approaches that can provide a better understanding of past environments, social processes, cognition, and human agency.

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POSTMODERNISM: MOVEMENT OR "CONDITION"? Postmodernism is not a cogent or unified philosophical, artistic, or political movement. Indeed, Walsh (1990, p. 278, 1992, p. 53) argues that it is not a movement at all but, rather, a "condition" stemming from the incongruities of a post-World War planet, where information technology, the mass media, and the growth of geopolitics and multinational economies serve as triggers for social change. Jameson (1984) and Harvey (1990) paint equally bleak Neo-Marxist accounts and argue that the social experiences of the modernist, or "Fordist," era--characterized by tradition, centralized authority, government or industrial interventionist planning, and the comforting certainties of everyday community and politicoeconomic life--became undermined and displaced by the incomprehensible, "post-Fordist," postmodern forces associated with decentralization, economic fragmentation, and cultural disillusionment (cf. the Marxist study Callinicos, 1989). Labeling postmodernism as a "condition" scarcely conceals hostility (but cf. Lyotard, 1984) toward a phenomenon that has had a positive effect on several intellectual fields and established itself as more than a passing fancy--something which therefore must be taken seriously. Postmodernism, in fact, goes beyond style and poses questions about one's orientation to, and one's place in, the contemporary world (Gitlin, 1989, p. 348). Several strands of postmodernism are in vogue (Featherstone, 1988, p. 207), but for heuristic purposes it is useful to outline two general orientations: the critical and the moderate [Rosenau (1992, p. 15) terms them skeptical and affirmative]. Although it is misleading to lump together the writings of Baudrillard, Derrida, and Kroker, critical postmodernism may best be associated with their work (e.g., Derrida, 1981; Baudrillard, 1983; Kroker and Cook, 1986). Moderate postmodernism, on the other hand, may be linked to the writings of a much wider range of scholars: Foucault, Soja, Barthes, Giddens, Rabinow, Clifford, and Marcus. It must be emphasized that this division is somewhat arbitrary: for example, the interconnections between theorists such as Derrida and Foucault are far too substantial and informative to sever (Boyne 1990). Furthermore, it would be misleading and counterproductive if such an arbitrary division were to become reified in the archaeological literature, since the work of one group or the other might be dismissed all too easily as arch-radical or ultraconservative. The critical postmodernists, said to be inspired by European philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger (Rosenau, 1982, p.15; Thomas, 1993, p. 9; Gosden, 1994, p.108), represent the "dark side of postmodernism:" despair, demise, genocide, environmental devastation, and death; the impossibility of "true" knowledge; the denial of representation; the end of the individual author. Baudrillard and Eco believe that the "simulacrum"

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(a copy of a copy, lacking an original) is even better than the original. In hyperreality (Eco, 1987), only pure simulacra exist, because all origins are lost, or cannot be recovered, or never existed in the ftrst place (Bruner, 1994, p. 407). Whereas moderate postmodemists also find modernity of any sort abhorrent, they share a more constructive view of the postmodem world. The moderates tend to be 'Anglo-Americans," who often promote certain types of political action (struggle and resistance), or a variety of New Age social movements. They are not so dogmatic and ideological as their critical counterparts, yet assume a strong ethical stance, support issue-specific political coalitions, and believe in a hierarchical system of values (Rosenau, 1992, p.16). Postmodem roots run deepest in continental Europe, especially France and Germany; its recent popularity among North American intellectuals has been compared to the popularity of Beaujolais Nouveau in the same market (Morin, 1986, p. 82). Described as an intellectual reaction against modemism's anticulture and antinature biases (Friedman, 1992, p. 847), postmodemism incorporates a number of different, often conflicting, intellectual orientations: French structuralism, nihilism, existentialism, anarchism, hermeneutics, critical theory, and certain strands of Marxism. Postmodernism, paradoxically but also perhaps predictably, shares elements in common with and at the same time quarrels with every other intellectual movement (Rosenau, 1992, pp. 12-13). It is also positively inclined toward "libido liberation, creativity, lost values, and communion with nature" (Friedman, 1992, p. 847). Modernism. To understand the challenges or the potential of postmodemism, it is useful first to understand its antithesis and precursor, modernism. Modernism really begins with the Renaissance and with the tradition of "enlightenment rationalism." This period witnessed the beginnings of what we now call "science," which in its early form served as an alternative worldview to that held by the arbitrary authorities of the church and and the state (the latter in the form of monarchies). Both authorities legitimized their positions through theology. Eventually modem science came to make its own claims on the monopoly of rationalism and "objective truth," through the use of rigorous methodological procedures, and the study of materials rather than metaphysics. Claims were made for "objective" facts about the world and, eventually, about the universe. Moreover, during the modem period, what postmodemists call "metanarratives" began to emerge: these provided a global worldview based on a rigid objectivism and assumed the validity of their claims to the "truth." Examples are Marx's Capital, Darwin's theory of evolution (Walsh, 1990, p. 278), or Thomsen's three-age system in archaeology (Daniel, 1981, pp. 55-64; Rodden, 1981). Arts and sciences alike were dominated by "great men" (or women in the

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same guise): Ranke and Momigliano in history, Schliemann, Albright, Braidwood, Willey, Blegen, and Kenyon in archaeology, Tylor, Boaz, Kroeber, and Mead in anthropology, Landsberger, Goetze, and Jacobsen in Assyriology, and Kantor and Porada in ancient art history--to cite some of the most obvious examples. The Hermeneutic tradition, from Vico to Gramsci, and the Annales "school" (Knapp, 1992), from Febvre and Bloch through Braudel to LeGoff and Duby, may have been less vulnerable to postmodernist criticism, but they were still represented by the tradition of "great men." When the legitimacy of these great traditions--in both the arts and the sciences--was called into question, and as it became possible to doubt or even deny the possibility of truth and value, of developmentalism and human progress, the modernist tradition began to lose ground. Postmodernists were very uneasy with, or openly hostile to, this enlightenment rationalism and the methodological suppositions of enlightenment science. Postmodernism: A Definition? Postmodernism is a slippery topic to define (Gellner, 1992, pp. 22-23). One prominent archaeologist struggled to understand postmodernism as follows (Hodder, 1989a, p. 65):
It is thoroughly engrossing for an archaeologist, a student of cultural change, to be living through the apparent "birth" of a new cultural style, Yet it is surprising how difficult it is to define and understand what is happening. The more I try to tie down post-modernism, the less coherent it seems....the growth of the style seems bigger than any individual's attempt to characterize it. Ultimately it engulfs any attempt to fix it.

Postmodernism is perhaps easier to define in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is (Harvey, 1990, p. 43; Haraway, 1990, pp. 203-204). Friedman (1992, pp. 846-847, Fig. 1) describes it in terms of a polar relationship with modernism. Perhaps if postmodernism cannot be defined to the satisfaction of positivists, we might at least examine its appeal, however restricted that may be. Unlike what might be expected from an age of "enlightenment rationalism," the record of "modernity" in the late twentieth century is far from rational and enlightening. From the mainly unpleasant, highrise landscapes of most urban centers [which propelled "postmodern geographies" (Soja 1989), one of the most effective postmodernist critiques], to the military disasters and environmental debacles that typify the last 50 years, to the increasingly unbreachable gap between the poor and the rich, there is little consolation in the notion of progress, or faith in human reasoning to provide a better future. Postmodernism flourishes in a ruptured past, a beleaguered history that has severely eroded faith in the holy trinity of patriarchy, science, and the state (Gitlin, 1989, p. 353). Mass communication media--from radio to the cinema, and from TV to satellite communications, and e-mail--have broken through many cultural

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and social boundaries, even if economic, ethnic, and ideological barriers still stand. Industrialization, high technology, urbanization, life in the fast lane: all were idealized in a positivist, modernist world, and all are challenged and denied, many on moral or ethical grounds, by postmodernism. From Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground to Devo and the Talking Heads, to INXS and the gangster-rap, machine-gun volley of Ice-T or Snoop Doggy Dog, pop culture relishes in undermining authority, denying values, questioning reality. And this pop culture blends fight into mainstream AngloAmerican or west European culture, even into high culture. How is it that Western capitalism has so effectively invented, appropriated, and exploited postmodemism? Postmodernism's broad appeal results in part from its open-endedness and tack of specific definition, a blankness that condemns capitalism and commodification even as it endorses and perpetuates it. This postmodern apprehension of the world highlights the inherent instability of meaning, and the capacity to invert or recycle symbols in different contexts, thus transforming their point of reference (Daniels and Cosgrove, 1988, pp. 7-8). For Jameson (1984, p. 79), the amorphous, freefloating qualities of symbols and images are tantamount to the unrestrained circulation of commodities (Thomas, 1993, p. 8). On the one hand, postmodernism may be regarded as an intellectual luxury for a generation of Americans, Europeans, and Australians who enjoyed political liberty and freedom from want and who could afford to focus on the individual instead of the collective. On the other hand, postmodernism is a product born out of desperation, particularly to a generation of scholars who, upon graduating with higher degrees in the late 1970s1980s, confronted a dwindling job market, loss of credibility, and unemployment. Economic privation, in this case, promoted nostalgia as well as resentment (Habermas, 1986, p. 150; Stauth and Turner, 1988; Rosenau, 1992, p. 11). With its focus on the marginal, the decentered, and the powerless, perhaps it is the very content of postmodernism that explains its mixed attraction within academic disciplines. And yet, postmodernists have used their involvement in this highly vocal and very trendy intellectual movement to further their own careers. This sort of "conceptual positioning" through denunciation of older traditions is common throughout academia (see, e.g., Price and Lewis, 1993, p. 2). There is a contradiction here between power and powerlessness. As an example, take the case of gender, for two decades a central tenet of feminist theory (e.g., di Leonardo, 1991). Whereas postmodernists substitute for Enlightenment tradition, or "reason," the study of the contingent, the historically specific, and the culturally constructed, feminists maintain that gender, and whatever practices may constitute gender, are one of the most crucial contexts in which to situate the "universal" subject of reason

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[Benhabib, 1994 (1992), p. 77]. However, concerns with the ethnocentrism and racial bias implicit in gender theory, what Bordo (1990) terms "gender skepticism," has propelled some feminists into a theoretical alliance with poststructuralism (A/coff, 1988). That alliance has promoted an authoritarianism which seeks to dictate "politically correct" ways in which to theorize identity, history, and culture (Bordo, 1990, pp. 136-142). The "self-exploding" quality of post-structuralist theory, which forces people to undermine the political ground on which they stand, can lead to "flush[ing] the Archimedean point away with the sewage of discourse" (Gitlin, 1989, p. 357). Moreover, the postmodern insistence on a plurality of interpretations, as well as the indeterminacy of cultural meaning, has led to criticism of the "gender template" for its mainly binary structuring of reality (Bordo, 1990, pp. 142-145). In its place have arisen narrative ideals that celebrate a supposedly feminine ability to accept change, fluidity, and otherness as features of reality. Such deconstructionist narratives often fall short of assuming responsibility or of taking a stance that may be critiqued or discussed recursively [for feminist narratives in archaeology, see, e.g., Tringham (1991, p. 124) and Spector (1991, pp. 397-401)]. If postmodernism is to support the politics of social change, this question of agency must be answered (Gutterman, 1994, pp. 223-224). Postmodem feminism [e.g., Flax 1987, 1990; Lovibond, 1989; Nicholson, 1990; Benhabib, 1994 (1992)], in other words, has in some cases encouraged the shift of basic feminist concerns like gender to questions of adequate theory (Christian, 1988). Several feminist writers (e.g., Harding, Di Stefano, and Bordo; cited by Nicholson, 1990) have urged caution in the wholesale embrace of a postmodem feminism (also Fraser and Nicholson, 1990, p. 35). Because of the complex relationship between male and female, gender cannot be regarded as a pure, binary construct: rather it must be examined in the context of lives shaped by a multiplicity of influences. Grimshaw (1986, pp. 84-85) argues that gender "inflects" one's experience of race, class, and historical coherency; in fact, gender also deconstructs those experiences. The inflections that modify experience are endless, and the trajectories of individual interest do not always lead where one imagines: Could the multifaceted "deployment" of feminist genderskepticism now be operating in the service of reproducing "hegemonic masculinist" structures of power and knowledge (Bordo, 1990, pp. 150-151; Carrigan et al. 1985)? The idea that knowledge and "truth" are contingent, or multiple, may actually disempower feminists, by alienating them from their own reality and by shoring up dominant, androcentric viewpoints just when their legitimacy is being challenged effectively (Hodder, 1991c, p. 9; Mascia-Lees et al., 1989). The postmodern critique of liberal humanism, in other words, itself risks an "emasculating "liberal" even-handedness"

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(Bender, 1993, p. 258) and has been undercut by its tendencies to insist on the "correct" destabilization of general categories like class, race, and gender. In so doing, postmodernism has promoted a fragmentation of the feminist critique.
For those of us who want to understand the world systematically in order to change it, postmodernist theories at their best give little guidance .... At their worst, postmodernist theories merely recapitulate the effects of Enlightenment theories--theofies that deny marginalized people the fight to participate in defining the terms of interaction with people in the mainstream. (Hartsock, 1987, pp. 190-191)

NIHILISM AND RELATIVISM/PLURALISM Whatever rationale one provides for postmodernism, the nihilism and relativism propounded by its critical adherents at best present severe problems for the human sciences, at worst undermine their very raison d'etre. The nihilistic strain of postmodernism emphasizes the uncertainty of the human condition and maintains that much knowledge is essentially a contradiction. Instead of truth, there are only regimes of truth and power (Foucault, 1980), and knowledge itself is shaped solely by the cultural constructions of the observer (Lee, 1992, p. 35). If there is no difference between sense and nonsense, between truth and error, then all beliefs are equal, and this paves the way for nihilism as well as relativism (Vattimo, 1988; Schiffer, 1988, pp. 467--468; Trigger, 1989a, 1991, pp. 68-69; Rosenau, 1992), or "interpretationism" (Harding, 1990, p. 102, n. 5). Anthropology has always been sensitive to the formation of ethnic identities, even as it strives to maintain "an objective distance from its ethnographic reality" (Friedman, 1992, p. 847). Since the time of Boas in the early 20t h century, a major tenet of anthropology holds that it is the study of differences; if the postmodernist position merits consideration (e.g., Burr, 1990), this tenet is no longer tenable. Wolf (1994, pp. 10-11) suggests that postmodernist thought has transformed the "existentialist other" into a subject so incomprehensible that comparative understandings of sociocultural encounters have been declared inadmissible evidence. Postmodernists believe that ideal of objectivity pursued by social scientists during the colonial era was no more than a tool of domination and oppression (also Said, 1978, 1985) and that "subjectivist relativism" provides a way of freeing ourselves from them. In archaeology, and by extension the study of the past, nihilism surfaces at several points, most disconcertingly in the notion that we cannot know the past (i.e., some "truth" about the past) or that the past is only useful inasmuch as it can be made relevant to an activist political present.

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The ultimate outcome would be to disempower archaeology as a viable source of knowledge about the past (Trigger, 1991, p. 69).
The past resists our constructions, its empirical materiality has to be respected. At the same time it is necessary to realise that there is no firm bedrock or foundation to which we can anchor our statements about the past, no criteria of validity to come to terms with a materialist position in which it is realised that any (serious) archaeological practice involves minimally a triple dialectical relation: between the materiality of the past, the materiality of the present, and the materiality of the process of constructing discourses, writing texts. (Tilley, 1990, p. 136)

Today, such "radical" poststructuralist statements about the past have become more moderate, and we might state instead that archaeology comprises many different practices, types of evidence, and aspects of theory: no definitive statement applies to all of them. We can "know" more about some things than others where there is a hierarchy of knowledge (Trigger, 1989b, pp. 391-396). It may be a commonplace in the mid-1990s to say that we can never know the "real" past (or truth) unerringly: even so, it remains a common goal, one that stimulates archaeological research, and motivates the legitimate study of the past. Our understanding of the past, not its explanation, may become increasingly comprehensive, but it will never be complete (Trigger, 1991, p. 73; Johnsen and Olsen, 1992, pp. 420422). As is the case with cosmology or quantum mechanics, one may obtain an "answer"--an approximation that fills ones needs, but never "the" answer. Moreland (1990, p. 259) emphasizes that even if we cannot acquire objective knowledge of the past, at least we can gain some understanding about the "polyphonic" past. Postmodernists prefer relativism to objectivity and, in any case, regard the former as inescapable: "signifiers" (words or texts) "trigger off an infinite number of meanings to any number of people and the meanings experienced by each person are going to be unique" (Walsh, 1990, p. 280). Critical postmodernists maintain that language transforms truth and theory alike into linguistic conventions. Since, therefore, it is impossible to say anything with confidence, everything is worthy of attention and a pluralism of more or less equal viewpoints exists (Rosenau, 1992, p. 22). Good or bad criteria do not exist, and all interpretations therefore become equally valid. Relativism in postmodernism raises the question of authority: Whose interpretation of some past social world is correct? What sort of "security" or "independence" of evidence is required to substantiate interpretive claims (Wylie, 1992a, pp. 276-281)? How closely are archaeological notions of "truth" linked to the archaeologist's contemporary politics (Fotiadis, 1994)? As Shanks and Hodder (1994) point out, the main point of concern about relativism and pluralism is centered on absolutes: "truth" and objec-

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tivity do not exist inherently as abstract principles in the past but, rather, have to be demonstrated and "crafted." The four main tenets of a "relativist epistemology" (Laudan, 1990 as outlined by Trigger, 1991, pp. 65-66)--subjectivity, underestimation of theory through the use of data, a holistic approach, science as a social activity-serve to deconstruct the positivist approach that has long characterized Anglo-American archaeology. Given the polysemous nature of human culture and the diversity of material culture, a theoretical and methodological pluralism is dearly warranted. In the field of (cultural) anthropology, critical postmodernists have welcomed relativism because it incorporates their own belief that cultural traditions are unique, synchronic, and analytically unable to encompass the meaning and discourse of other cultural traditions (Tyler, 1984, p. 328; Marcus and Fisher, 1986, p. 32). Whereas histOrians have often embraced a moderate form of relativism (e.g., Collingwood, 1946; Carr, 1961), Trigger (1989a, pp. 778, 791) warns that the social sciences must avoid "the current trap of extreme relativism." In archaeology, the application of critical theory as a way of linking the material past, selfreflexively, to the present first led to the call for experimental site reports, excavation as theater, and other "alternative forms of archaeological discourse" (Potter, 1991; Tilley, 1989; Hodder, 1989b). R. Watson (1990, pp. 678-679) castigated much of this "dogmatic relativism" as contradictory or, at best, inconsistent. However one regards these earlier stances in postprocessualism, there is a growing acceptance among archaeologists that human behavior has produced an archaeological record far too variable and complex to be explained by Neo-evolutionism and/or ecological determinism (Trigger, 1991, p. 66; Wylie, 1992a, 1993). Moderate postmodernists seem uncomfortable with both relativism and objectivity and, occasionally, make contradictory compromises. Feminists, for example, support postmodernism's criticism of modern social science and its denial of a privileged male status; at the same time they must denounce postmodernism because it gives equal authority to the oppressor and the oppressed, to perpetrators and victims alike. A relativist form of postmodernism, in other words, is inconsistent with a commitment to challenge an objective reality (Harding, 1990, pp. 88, 102, n. 6; Rosenau, 1992, p. 115). While the mainly male, white, and Western postmodernists are proclaiming the death of anthropology and the social sciences generally, the voices of women, people of color, and aborigines struggle to constitute themselves as subjects of history, and makers of their own history (Lee, 1992, p. 36). On the one hand, then, "polyvocality" may be regarded as highly relevant for developing contemporary social theory or as deeply significant for those utilizing "signifiers" to push semiotic theory in anthropology and ar-

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chaeology. On the other hand, polyvocality must be understood not just as a concept that can demonstrate how restricted our archaeological imagination can be, but also as a reality that may threaten the identity and selfdetermination of people who are the victims of unequal access to power or resources (Hodder, 1991c, p. 9; Murray, 1993, pp. 504-505). In a multivocal world, where everything is subjective and every voice must be heard, of necessity some people will be empowered, while others will be marginalized (Bender, 1993, p. 258). The postmodernist notion that there is no truth, and that everything is a construction, is in fact the ultimate contradiction. Moreland (1990, p. 260) points out that even those historical constructions that make no claims to the truth (concerning their particular vision of the past) in fact create narratives that can be read as reconstruction (and thus a particular version of the "truth"). By asserting the view that "there is no truth," postmodernists assume a position of privilege and at the same time affirm the possibility of truth--their own truth. Some postmodernists try to circumvent this dilemma by maintaining that the views they express are strictly their own and, therefore, not superior to other views. But even this relativist position assumes truth, by stating that it is no more true than other positions (Rosenau, 1992, p. 90). Silence may offer the only logical escape from such a contradiction (Gellner, 1992, p. 37).

POSTMODERNISM AND THE PAST Postmodernists have concerned themselves with the unique instead of the general, with "intertextual relations" instead of causality; with the unrepeatable instead of the recurring. From a postmodernist perspective, then, human science becomes more humble and subjective as truth gives way to uncertainty, and synthesis to difference (Rosenau, 1992, p. 8). In certain respects, the postmodernist position is based in hermeneutics, and the debate between positivism and hermeneutics is already an old one in social theory (e.g., Popper vs. Adorno). More usefully from the perspective of studying the past, postmodernists have rejected the traditional, rigid boundaries between academic disciplines, notably between the natural and social sciences, the humanities, art and literature. However, on the archaeological side, the extreme versions of postprocessualism rampant in the late 1980s often sought to sever interdisciplinary links rather than construct or develop them. Prima facie, the moderate trajectory of postmodernism seems favorably inclined to the study of the past and, concomitantly, to the interpretation of archaeological data. Such postmodernists question the superiority of the

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present as a source of real knowledge, and reject any preference for the complex, intellectual lifestyle of the modern urban center over the more simple, practical, peasant routines of the countryside (Rosenau, 1992, p. 6). Traces of 61ite culture, material or documentary, have too long been used to construct discourses applied to society as a whole, rather than--as would be more appropriate--to other, alternative voices or meanings within society (Barrett, 1988, pp. 9-12). Postmodernists regard the traditional, the sacred, and the irrational as worthy of serious scholarly attention, as they do studies related to custom, myth, intuition, chronology, magic, and mysticism. At the same time, postmodernists reveal a measure of contempt for conventional history. Any attempt to know and represent the past is regarded with suspicion, and the critical postmodernists collapse history into an instantaneous moment between yesterday and tomorrow. Critical postmodernists promote a depthless, synchronic history, a personal rhetoric which maintains that we can only catch hazy glimpses of a past that has never really existed (Walsh, 1990, p. 281). Time and space are regarded as uncontrollable and unpredictable, and in the end there remains only "pastiche," a free-floating hodge-podge of views and ideas, including elements of opposites [such as old and new (Rosenau, 1992, pp. 21-22)], that denies logic and symmetry and, instead, sanctions contradiction and confusion. In terms of modern society, culture is seen to have reached its pinnacle: all that can be done is to copy and/or remix previous styles and call them something new. Postmodernists are especially critical of "humanist" history, i.e., the view that humans can direct the course of events, and that human agents represent society's individual and collective experiences (Rosenau, 1992, p. 63). Postmodernists, like poststructuralists, make an issue of decentering individuals or of discounting human beings as subjects of intentionality (Patterson, 1989, p. 559); in Trigger's (1991, p. 68) estimation, "such approaches treat people as prisoners of their own culture." Moderate postmodernists, however, while agreeing that the more repressive qualities of time, space, and history need to be transformed, look for inspiration to various forms of "New History" (e.g., Burke, 1991)--genealogy, gender, microhistory, oral history, "history from below"--and give priority to local regional space. In other words, they seek to revitalize history, perhaps to reconsider its epistemologicat assumptions rather than to annihilate it as their more radical counterparts might. These postmodernists regard "storytelling" (Terrell, 1990), what Geertz termed "thick description," to be as valuable' as explanation; there is tittle room for exclusively event-oriented history on their agenda. Contradictions are acceptable, inasmuch as we may expect many different "stories" for any historical epoch or event (Scott, 1989), not least because each generation--if not each dif-

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ferent school of thought--asks different questions about the past (Lowenthai, 1985). The study of the human past is contingent on the existence and interpretation of evidence derived from previous human experience--experience that is natural, social, or artifactual, and evidence that is material, textual, tithic, or skeletal. If there are no facts to consider, or processes to unravel, and if all interpretations are equal, as critical postmodernists maintain, then it would be pointless to question the validity of different approaches to the study of the past. However, the notion of eliminating history, or ignoring historical depth is not revolutionary: sociology, social anthropology, structuralism, and the "new archaeology" (especially where systems analysis was involved) have long maintained a similar viewpoint, which also precluded the study of ideology, cognition, and human agency. Many of these exclusionary notions, or claims to the "truth" held by groups as disparate as postmodernists, social anthropologists, structuralists, antiquarians, or religious fundamentalists ought to be rejected outright. Anthropologists increasingly accept the need to situate cultures in their historical context or to consider the "social life of things" (Appadurai, 1986), while historians today pursue short-term, particularistic goals within a social or ideational framework. Archaeologists have been even more innovative: in the search for models to interpret the material remnants of the past, they have cast their nets not only toward anthropology and history, but to fields ranging from molecular biology to hermeneutics. Given this profusion of paths to the study of the past, where does postmodernism fit in? Is postmodernism the "intellectual parent" of postprocessualism (Bintliff, 1993, p. 91)?

POSTMODERNISM AND POSTPROCESSUALISM If it is acknowledged that certain similarities exist between the two movements, does it necessarily follow that postprocessualism in archaeology is simply derivative of postmodernism? As is the case in postmodernism, there is no single, coherent postprocessual movement: Patterson (1989) defined three "strains" of postprocessualism based, respectively, on the ideas of Hodder, Shanks and Tilley, and Leone. In the early 1990s, there was still as much variation, discourse, and disagreement within postprocessual archaeology as there was between it and processual archaeology (e.g., Hodder, 1991a, p. 37; Watson and Fotiadis, 1990, pp. 613-615). Watson (1991, p. 270) personified processualism as a vision of "soulless method" and postprocessualism as a vision of "methodless soul." Shanks and Hodder (1994) point out that the current, "(post)modern" debate between processualism and postprocessualism revolves around (1) the forms of knowledge appro-

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priate to a social science (their emphasis) (2) archaeological conceptions of society (structure and pattern vs individual intention and power), and (3) the ideologies and cultural politics of late 20th century archaeology. As is the case with postmodernists, many contemporary archaeologists might be categorized as either critical or moderate, even if many of them would contest the categorization (Bintliff, 1993, p. 100). More to the point, Thomas and Tilley (1992) have reacted justifiably against the charge that postprocessualism can be equated simplistically and directly with postmodernism. The fundamental distinction between what may be called, in parallel with the discussion above, critical and moderate postprocessualists is that the former would not consider themselves bound to the study of archaeological data, whereas the latter do (see the exchanges in Shanks and Tilley, 1989). Ironically, as Hodder pointed out (1991a, p. 39), processualists were interested chiefly in adaptive processes within ecoenvironmental systems, while the more dynamic, social processes were relegated to a static, systemic role. In other words, postprocessualists have for the first time developed an adequate account of "process," and considered the relational process that links social structures to human agents or historical events. On the other hand, making assumptions explicit--which translates today into the concepts of consciousness, critique, and deconstruction--was a core concept of processualism. Combined with the locational techniques and statistical analyses that helped to establish a "quantitative revolution" in spatial archaeology and the "new geography" alike, processualism held, and still deserves to hold, a prominent place in archaeology's theoretical development. And yet, despite the explicit attention give to theory, the main contributions of processualism were largely methodological in nature (Schiffer, 1988; Hodder, 1991b, p. 6). Furthermore, there was a fatal flaw in the processual edifice: it revolved around the diminished, if not denied, role of human agency in all these generalizing, systemic, ecoenvironmental preoccupations [this shortcoming has recently been foregrounded by the "distinguished lecturers" in the American Anthropological Association's lecture series (Brumfiel, 1992; Cowgill, 1993; but cf. Redman, 1991)]. Social (i.e., gender, class, faction), ideological, and cognitive factors placed a distant second, if they were ever considered. Processualists drew a distinction between evolutionary studies and history, favoring the former because, it was said, evolutionary generalizations could account for most specific, historical situations (Trigger, 1991, p. 66). An antihistorical bias was evident, particularly to those working in Old World archaeology: textual (historical) evidence was distrusted and often discounted, because it was not material and mute (similarly, Moreland, 1990, p. 256). Because such documentary evidence could have been subject to manipulation and misrepresentation by the ancient authors,

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processualists often surmised that material data alone provided more "objective" evidence. This position, of course, presumed that new archaeologists had no biases whatsoever, based as they were in sound "Scientific," and thus "objective," procedure. This position was perhaps revealed most directly in Earle and Preucel's (1987, p. 506) review of processual archaeology, where they stated that prehistory is the primary focus of archaeology and that a "contextual" approach (like that of Hodder) might lead archaeologists astray, toward fuller consideration of historical and ethnographic contexts (similarly Gamble, 1993, p. 39). Why were some processualists so blinkered to historical and ethnographic input? Why was historical archaeology, primarily the domain of anthropological archaeologists like Stanley South, James Deetz, or Mark Leone, marginalized within mainstream American archaeology? Why did processualists believe so strongly that archaeology was primarily the study of prehistory? Data were paramount, numbers were privileged, and the cult of the computer was restricted to a small but growing elite. In other words, processualism involved a clear power strategy. The sharp dividing line between those who studied lithics and skeletal evidence (the majority of American anthropological archaeologists) and those who worked with pottery, metals, and architecture was more than just material in nature. This breach also involved more than Giddens' (1982, p. 7) "double hermeneutic" in sociology (the social world; the world of social science) or Shanks and Tilley's (1992, pp. 107-108) "fourfold hermeneutic" in archaeology (past and present; the "other;" contemporary society; contemporary archaeology): it is likely that at some deep level of materialism, "man the hunter" was felt to be a more suitable topic of study than woman the gatherer, or potter (similarly, Conkey and Williams, 1991, pp. 115-117; Gosden, 1994, p. 170). Such an observation is mitigated by the fact that virtually all archaeology from its inception to the 1960s was dominated by white, middle- and upper-class males. The methodological and theoretical rift that separates processualism and postprocessualism once seemed insuperable (Renfrew, 1980; Dyson, 1982; Glock, 1985; Snodgrass, 1985; Schiffer, 1988), but a competent archaeological discussion engages both positions (Gamble, 1986), what Shanks and Hodder (1994) have recently termed a "fusion of horizons." The prehistorian must deal with the same type of hermeneutic issues as an archaeologist working in historical or protohistoric periods: one cannot assume that any given culture in space and time was more similar to our own culture than any other. But can processualism possibly span the horizons of postprocessuat archaeology, with its jarring and often inconsistent postmodernist irruptions?

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Binttiff (1991, pp. 275-276), although decrying most postmodernist approaches to the past, once suggested that a postmodernist perspective could make three "positive contributions" to archaeology: (1) postmodernism forces archaeologists to examine critically their social, moral, and emotional involvement with the study of the past in the present and, thus, to consider how the general public interacts with the past; (2) postmodernism calls into question the validity of reading all archaeological publications as "fact sheets" and, instead, implies that such "fact-sheets" should be regarded as "expressions" of specific culture-historic attitudes to the past; and (3) postmodernism encourages multiple views of the past and promotes greater awareness of the experiences of women, nonelites, and ethnic minorities in the past. Among those who have addressed directly the issue of archaeology and postmodernism are Patterson (1989), Hodder (1989a, 1990), Burr (1990), Tilley (1990), Yates (1990), Walsh (1990, 1992), Preucel (1991a), Bintliff (1991, 1993), Kirk (1991), Thomas and Ttlley (1992), Lee (1992), Davis (1992), Thomas (1993), Yoffee and Sherratt (1993a), and Shanks and Hodder (1994). Walsh and Hodder concern themselves more with the heritage "industry" and CRM than with the wider field of archaeology. Walsh's studies are comprehensive but critical in their assessment of postmodernism's impact on archaeology; they are also confined almost exclusively to museums and the English Heritage. The studies by Burr, Yates, Tilley, and Kirk are essentially nihilistic and look forward to the demise of archaeology as a closed discipline whose adherents seek only to dominate and limit social thought. Such views, typical of much postprocessual or poststructuralist thought in the late 1980s-early 1990s, have undergone a remarkable transformation: most practitioners are now more guardedly optimistic, and more open to reconciliation with other approaches in archaeology. "Radical" perspectives, for example, the stance that archaeology is relevant only inasmuch as it is capable of challenging the contemporary political order, have been displaced by "mainstream" postprocessualism (e.g., Shanks and Hodder, 1994). In keeping with its middle-class roots, however, postprocessualism resonates most with issues related to gender and to native or aboriginal peoples (e.g., Engelstad, 1991; Wylie, 1992b; Smith, 1995); it has revealed rather less interest in class issues (e.g., various papers in Gathercole and Lowenthal, 1990; Leone and Potter, 1992). Hodder (1990, p. 13) maintained that postmodernism is for the most part concerned with the present and concluded that its fascination with the past really stems from the "foreign-ness" of the past (i.e., its concern with the "other") and from the disconnected nature of the past. Archaeological

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data are fragmentary, and often have poor contextual associations, while archaeological time is distant, unconnected to the present. Archaeological data tend to be of an everyday, nonelitist nature and, accordingly, provide access to the mundane, the neglected, or the deprived. As such, they are susceptible to commodification. Indeed, the past can often be packaged and sold as a commodity: Viking coins at Yorvik, Cypriot pottery that replicates in detail the styles and techniques of Bronze and Iron Age potters, an exhibition catalogue which instructs the buyer in the pedigree of an artifact (Gill and Chippendale, 1993), or guides a consumer/collector in its purchase. The past, claims Hodder, is also put to use by various "subordinate groups," in order that they may situate themselves in relation to their heritage or experience, and thus maintain an alternative identity: national and ethnic minorities, women; rural and local folk and their lineage: At the same time, dominant groups and developers commercialize the past in the attempt to undermine claims to legitimacy (e.g., property ownership, access to mineral resources) made by subordinate groups (Hodder, 1990, p. 15). The perception and condemnation of postmodernism by Bintliff (1993), Lamberg-Karlovsky (1989), and Peebles (1991, 1993) are constricted and unwarranted, particularly inasmuch as they see it in monolithic terms and thus regard the postmodern "agenda" as inimical to the interests of individuals and socially marginalized groups alike. More to the point is Sherratt's charge (1993, p. 123) that a postcolonial guilt has often led to denunciations of the comparative method as inherently racist and colonialist, which in turn means that the "parochial tendencies of culture-historical archaeology" adopted by the postprocessualists preclude broader examination of the role and meaning of material culture. Yet this observation too must be tempered in part by realizing that certain trends in postprocessual archaeology are actively committed to understanding the broader (comparative) structures in which local manifestations occur and to considering a full range of spatial and temporal scales (e.g., Hodder, 1987; Knapp, 1992). Thomas and Tilley (1992, p. 107) insist that by its very nature there is no such thing as a postmodernist archaeology. They regard the barrage of new theoretical stances in archaeology as a generalized extension and opening up of the discipline to the current concerns of a social archaeology and the human sciences. This realignment of archaeology has enabled it to take on board a wide range of intellectual positions, many of which have little in common with postmodernism and to inculcate those positions into their own areas of expertise, e.g., into material culture theory, the study of long-term socio-structural change, or the role of human agency in the past and in the recreation of the past (Thomas and Tilley, 1992, p. 107; as an example, see Dobres and Hoffman, 1994). The fact that archaeologists write

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from within a given cultural and historical situation, lacking total knowledge of the world in general and the object(s) of their study in particular, does not mean that "anything goes." Gosden (1994, p. 59) makes much the same point: "Post-structuralism and hermeneutics represent an ongoing attempt to move from an objective of the world towards the idea that all truth is contingent, being culturally and historically based." Thomas (1993, p. 5) rejects any simplistic notion of a postmodernist archaeology, and instead presents a position which, whilst seeking no truths or common language, nonetheless eschews "a retreat into solipsism or an unqualified relativism." Following Bhaskar (1989), Shanks and Hodder (1994) now subscribe to an "epistemic relativism," in which knowledge is constructed and firmly grounded in a particular time and culture; this is quite different from maintaining that all forms of knowledge are equally valid. Just because we cannot present the full and indisputable "truth" about what really happened, it does not follow that total relativism is the only course open. "What it means is that while we accept that different accounts of the past may be written by different people, they are [all] equally deserving of our scrutiny within a critical archaeology" (Thomas and Tilley, 1992, p. 108; original italics). The real problem lies not with those who write from a particular viewpoint--be it political, Green, ethnic, sexist, masculinist, or feminist-since they make clear their points of view; the problem lies with those who believe they are writing objective, apolitical, ideology-free archaeology. Among the more basic issues to emerge in postmodernism and postprocessualism alike are the centrality of the "text" (both as metaphorical material product and as concrete historical document), and the changing nature of textual production and consumption. Trigger (1991, p. 70) warns that equating archaeological data and speech as "text" ignores the active and symbolic aspects of certain artifacts. As material culture, "texts" are said to represent enclosed symbolic systems that ordered and impacted on people's daily lives even as, recursively, people created these symbolic systems. As documents, most "texts" that concern archaeologists were produced by 61ites and must be assessed in a way that permits them to be seen as possibly biased attempts to impose a specific worldview, to legitimize the relations of subordination and domination, and to reify the historically contingent (Moreland, 1990, pp. 256-257). Both archaeologists and historians, therefore, function as "readers" and as "second authors" (Dyson, 1993, p. 202) who write down new texts that re-create the past. The meaning of any text may change as a result of the context and conditions of its reading--texts are not fixed but in a continuous process that structures, produces, and transforms their reading (Tilley, 1993, p. 12). In other words, the meaning of the text is not inherent in it, but in the way that people read or experience the text (Bruner, 1994, p. 407). Literacy and textuality

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(Goody, 1986) do not have the same social meanings and implications through time and throughout space. Archaeologists must deal recursively with ethnohistoric documents and material data (Knapp, 1992), which gain meaning only in relationship to one another, not in isolation. Both are forms of discourse (Barrett, 1988) that constitute and transform social relationships (Moreland, 1990, p. 257). Whereas such considerations provide both the necessity and the methodology for bringing together materiality and intentionality, the relationship between archaeology and history is still fraught with difficulties, misunderstandings, and conflicting--often nationalistic--traditions (various chapters in Hodder, 1991d; Klejn, 1993). Inasmuch as archaeology, like history, is concerned with the study of the past, both should draw inspiration from the ongoing discourse between the humanities and the social sciences. Archaeology, in fact, represents the critical methodological and theoretical link between the historical and the prehistoric approaches to the study of the past (similarly Schiffer, 1992). Because historians are by training bound to documentary sources, they often regard archaeology simply as the handmaiden--the man-servant?--of history. This viewpoint, archaeology as the means through which documentary data can be illuminated or "proven," is not only naive and misinformed, but detrimental to the practice of a holistic history. Archaeological data and primary documentary sources are as often contrasting or contradictory as they are complementary. In the study of a past informed (or dominated) by textual evidence, there must be a recursive dialogue between archaeological and documentary resources. Ancient textual evidence often deals with elite situations, whereas archaeological data stem from both extraordinary and mundane circumstances. Anyone who studies the past must not only make use of a diverse range of relevant material or documentary data, they must also be prepared to evaluate those data within an appropriate and relevant interpretative framework. Even if the resulting interpretations are often contradictory, this does not mean that one interpretation or the other is necessarily right or wrong; multiple interpretations of the past must be expected. We cannot gain the ultimate "truth." When we ask different questions of the past, we must expect different answers. However early, or "prehistoric," or "mute" the archaeological record may be, people acted according to the social construction of their world (Head, 1993, pp. 495-496). The "meanings" archaeologists place upon the material record must be regarded as public and social, rather than individual in nature (Shanks and Hodder, 1994). Furthermore, in terms of their theoretical perspectives, archaeologists are influenced by the contemporary sociocultural matrix as well as the material record of any given region, and

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by the nature of their own intellectual and social commitments (Paddaya, 1990, p. 46). Archaeologists not only have to deal with worlds widely separated in space and time, and to translate between this "other" world and their own present reality, they must also negotiate the variable social and cultural layers that have to be bridged. Past worlds have an otherness that may be encountered more usefully if we recognize that our own assumptions about the past are grounded in current discourses (Hill, I993, p. 71); Trigger (1989a, pp. 784-785) regards this as relativism's most important role in archaeology.
This entire argument draws us toward a position which some writers have routinely castigated as relativism. In other words, the pasts which are created in the present appear devoid of any external, objective measure by which assessment can be made of their "validity" or "truth." It as if no external reality, i n d e p e n d e n t of interpretation, is being allowed to intervene in the construction of this "relativistic" knowledge. This kind of criticism is misplaced. First, we are dealing with selections of material data without which no archaeological practice would be possible. Certainly our view of those data is necessarily prejudiced and interpretive, ...but the data are not entirely malleable and different ways of seeing them will produce recognizable, objectified paths for future research .... Second, if history is created out of numerous and sometimes contradictory interpretive programmes of action, then there never existed a single and unambiguous reality. (Barrett, 1994a, pp. 170-171)

TOWARD SOCIAL AND INTERPRETIVE ARCHAEOLOGIES While Binford (1962), L o n g a c r e (1970), Earle and Preucel (1987), and most recently Plog (1991) and Kingsnorth (1993) have maintained that only processualists and prehistorians can do archaeology, Wylie (1992b, c), Hodder (1991a, c), Preucet (1991a), Trigger (1991), and many others have sought to find a middle ground between processualism and postprocessualism. Archaeology in the 1990s has moved far beyond processualism, and a narrow, systemic, and strictly "anthropological" ethnography of the past (Whitley, 1992, pp. 76-77). The "postprocessual program" is not simply limited to "schools" that follow the lead of Hodder, Shanks and Tilley, and Leone (Patterson, 1989). Archaeology--whether that of yesterday, today, or tomorrow-cannot be dichotomized simply into processual and postprocessual paradigms (Stevenson, 1989, pp. 305-306; Watson and Fotiadis, 1990; Hodder 1991c, pp. 12-13; Wylie, 1992b, pp. 65-66; Zubrow, 1994, pp. 108-109): there are as many antiprocessualists as there are antipostprocessualists, and many others who are either oblivious to or dismissive of the entire debate. There is, in any case, a serious attempt

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to move beyond polemics to explore areas of possible a g r e e m e n t amongst c o n t e m p o r a r y archaeologists, and to demonstrate that no "grand synthsis [is going to] emerge Phoenix-like out of the ashes of existing programs" (Preucel, 1991b, p. 4). Processual and postprocessual approaches often appear blind to the conditions that spawned their differing perspectives (Hodder, 1991c, p. 12; Zubrow, 1994, p. 109). Multiple paths and multiple perspectives are called for, and postprocessualism, like moderate postmodernism, dictates that archaeologists must learn to live with the notion of mutually irreconcilable views about the past. Yoffee and Sherratt (1993a, p. 8) recognize the positive elements of postprocessualism:
Postprocessual archaeologists have effectively emphasized that archaeology is an interpretive science, that symbols, ideologies and structures of meaning are not merely reflections of how humans cope with the vagaries of external environments. Furthermore, as post-processualists have stressed, archaeologists have special responsibilities, not only in recovering the past, but also in ensuring that the past is not maliciously used in the present.

Wylie (1993, p. 15) proclaims that the archaeological record has an "infinite capacity" to "surprise" and to shape or constrain our interpretations of the past. There is no real contradiction between the goals of an interpretive archaeology (Hodder, 1991c; Shanks and Hodder, 1994) as they might be realized through the social-archaeological theory of Yoffee and Sherratt (1993b) or the cognitive-processual archaeology of Renfrew and Zubrow (1994). Sherratt (1993, p. 123) states that processualists need to confront instances of particularity and alternative interpretations, just as postprocessualists must take cognizance of the eco-environmental constraints that are common to past societies: "There is no necessary conflict between these objectives, and a recognition of this could help to overcome the cyclical social pressures to cast archaeology in one mould or another." Hodder (1991c, p. 10) stresses that it is time to stop emphasizing theory and, instead, to start relating theory to data as part of the interpretive process (similarly Trigger, 1991, pp. 69-70). If the label "postprocessual" has become too loaded for universal acceptance, even criticized as "obscure and difficult" by some of its leading figures (e.g., Hodder, 1991c, p. 9), it must also be pointed out that this term says nothing about the practice and procedures of postprocessualism (except as a reaction to processualism). Perhaps, then, it is time put these polarizations aside and consider the main tenets of an interpretive archaeology (Hodder, 1991c; Shanks and Hodder, 1994): (1) archaeologists are interpreters who must take responsibility in the academy and in public for their actions and interpretations; (2) archaeology is social in nature;

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(3) social p r a c t i c e s have to do with m e a n i n g s , and social interpretations are concerned more with understanding than with causal explanation; (4) interpretation is a multivocal, "polysemous" activity that must be responsive not only to the data but also to various constituents in the present and to disciplinary practice. We must, therefore, expect a plurality of archaeological interpretations, even as we seek out common ground for different archaeologies (e.g., Moreland, 1990, pp. 258-261; Hodder, 1991a; Wylie, 1992a, pp. 274-282; Tilley, 1993, pp. 3-5, 23). Archaeological goals cannot be met by empirical means alone. The division of knowledge into "facts" and "theories" is a spurious and misleading undertaking. Facts do not simply exist in a vacuum, waiting for the astute archaeologist to come along and reveal them, observe them, add them all up, and produce "truth" or "reality." Facts are important or unimportant only in relation to some general (or specific) theory (similarly Barrett, 1994a, pp. 168-169). And archaeological evidence is at least partially defined by our own assumptions about what is or is not relevant: it is thus partly constituted by theory, whether implicit or explicit. Even if we shift emphasis from studying the patterning of things to structuring social practice (Barrett, 1988, p. 11), what we observe as archaeologists are static materials that exist in the present: it is impossible to know or even to consider what sort of phenomena gave rise to their existence, distribution, or structuring in the absence of theory. This is an archaeological knowledge that implicates an understanding of past social processes. I am not making an argument for lack of rigor in data collection and analysis: the field techniques and analytical methods developed in archaeology are fundamental to the study of the past. But theory requires as much effort and rigor as do the empirical aspects of investigation. To consider basic human motivations such as the exercise of power or the role of gender in social relations is a pursuit far too important to be limited to a single discipline--or even a pair of disciplines (e.g., Cherry, 1987; Gero and Conkey, 1991; Saitta, 1992, pp. 894-895; Sherrat, 1993, p. 123). It is contradictory to call for an archaeology based partially on the level of individual decision-making and, at the same time, to play down historical methodology or the archaeology of historical periods (complex societies), as some new archaeologists did. The historical aspects of archaeological theory must be recognized and emphasized if cognition, ideology, and mentalitY--i.e., human agency--are to be accorded their proper role in the study of the past. This is the single most important factor that postprocessualism has raised in the debates that dominate the field of archae-

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ology in the late 20th century. The second most important factor, already foreshadowed by processualism, is the recognition of the active role played by material culture in past social practice and social change. The former, namely, the role of the human agent in society, is consistently downplayed or denied by most strains of postmodernism, whereas the latter--material culture, and the changing nature of material relationships--forms an important tenet of "moderate" postmodernism. Unlike other human sciences, archaeology is seldom able to probe the nature of specific events, individual histories, or immediate circumstances. Rather it must set out the parameters and outline the circumstances in which human action takes place in the world. To do so, the notion of past meaning in social theory within archaeology must be seen as only one level of (pre)history, stemming from and interacting with other, slower-moving, behavioural, economic, or ecoenvironmental levels beneath (Gosden, 1992, p. 808). Moreover, past "meanings" of material goods were never fixed in the objects themselves but, rather, were "read" into them from other experiences and expectations, and acted upon: social life is therefore played out against material conditions which are themselves revised or reworked according to an individual's interpretation of some material reality (Barrett, 1994a, p. 170). As archaeologists, we must give primacy to material data, but "mindless empiricism" (Lee, 1992, p. 41) will not suffice: we must have a theoretical context as well. To do this, archaeology cannot simply borrow theory or metaphor from postmodernism or any other intellectual movement or discipline: it must continue to develop its own (Schiffer, 1976; Binford, 1977; Clarke, 1978; Hodder, 1991e; Yoffee and Sherratt, 1993b). This is the real way forward in the study of the past.

WHICH WAY(S) TO THE PAST?.

Post-processualism, ...while acknowledging the difficulties posed by interpretation, opens up the past. It stresses that it is human beings who reproduce and transform structures through daily practice. It asserts that we should not ignore the aspects of elite material culture which have been the bread and butter of archaeological, art historical, and historical research, but suggests that by putting them in the context of all material culture we can begin to better understand relations of subordination and domination .... Lastly, it offers us the chance to write a more democratic history and one which gives voice to those who so far have been denied history. (Moreland, 1990, p. 261) Archaeology, history, and anthropology appear as increasingly arbitrary positions of the necessary elements of comprehensive understanding. Far from being an activity of marginal theoretical relevance, therefore, archaeology is arguably central

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to a future configuration of disciplines capable of transcending the limitations of their cultural origins. (Sherratt, 1993, pp. 123-124) ...Approaches derived from post-structuralism and phenomenology actually have a greater general applicability than those operated by processual archaeology. Simply by ceasing to attempt to fix the past in a cage of inflexible concepts, one allows it a greater historicity. (Thomas, 1993, p. 23) It is simply no good to talk about studying the past; we need to specify what processes/practices/forces we wish to discuss and then explain how we are going to proceed. (Barrett, 1994b)

If postmodernism has taught us anything important, it is that there are alternative ways of knowing, conceiving of, and writing about, the past (Thomas, 1990; Wylie, 1993, pp. 14-15). That some (re)constructions of the past are erroneous, or limited, or different, is only to acknowledge the gaps in the archaeological record, our mishandling or misinterpretation of archaeological data, or the impact of our own views--and our own prejudices-on what is significant amongst those data (Renfrew, 1994, p. 10). Whatever Our approach to the study of the past may be, we cannot observe it directly: our evidence is incomplete, and our models--which seek to link the static (material or documentary) remains of the present to social practice in a dynamic past--are problematic, often contradictory, always subjective. There is no single truth, no one correct interpretation, no ultimate explanation. We not only develop alternative ways of understanding the past, in fact we develop alternative pasts. Pluralist enthusiasm and critical intelligence, however, need not cancel out one another. That such "polyvocalic" viewpoints are conflicting (Murray, 1993, pp. 504-505), and historically situated, and thus not just "alternative," is apparent in anthropology, for example, in the Mead-Freeman debate over the interpretation of Samoan culture; in ancient history, in Bernal's expos6 of the "ancient," Victorian, and contemporary "models" used to understand--or ignore--the Egypto-Semitic impact on Greek history and culture; in archaeology, in the striking contrast between Ian Hodder's contextual view of the European and Near Eastern Neolithic, and the prevailing processual views of James Mellaart, Donald Henry, Timothy Champion, and others. The presentation of different archaeological pasts opens up the possibility of recognizing differences, and for situating the present as a specific product of history (Hodder, 1990, p. 5). Preucel (1991b, p. 14) points out that "learning how to live with mutually irreconcilable views about the past ... does not imply that there was no real past," but, rather, that there are multiple perspectives--based upon specific research interests and procedure--that can be adopted to study the past in the present. At the same time, we must realize that one of the major theoretical tasks of archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians is to over-

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come the contradictions--and artificially contrasting conceptions of their research--created by the changing social contexts of each individual discipline (Sherratt, 1993, p. 123). Even if we must be resigned to the postmodern condition, to postmodernist dilemmas, does it necessarily follow that everything is hyperrelative and that we can never know the past? As a discipline, archaeology is responding to the valid challenges raised by postmodernism. Through its culture-historical bias, archaeology can provide the diachronic perspective that has always limited structuralist approaches to the past (Sherratt, 1993, p. 123). There is a decided shift away from simplistic evolutionary or ecological paradigms (Yoffee, 1993) toward a more nuanced, sensitive, critical, and historically aware understanding of the past. Make no mistake, in this regard archaeology leads the way. Even if there is no single explanation, at least there exists an array of interpretive approaches that provide a more comprehensive understanding of the past. Because of the ferment and fertility of thought that have characterized archaeology over the past quartercentury, no discipline is better poised to exploit such alternative ways of examining the past.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Earlier versions of this study were presented at Macquarie University, Sydney (1993), the University of Pennsylvania (1993), U.C. Berkeley (1993), and the University of Sydney (1994). I am grateful to those who organized these seminars and, especially, to those who attended and responded, because they gave me some measure of how the archaeological community would react to these issues. I also wish to thank Wendy Ashmore, Philip Duke, David Frankel and Jenny Webb, Sturt Manning, Lynn Meskell, K. Paddaya, Ariel Salleh, Adam Smith, and some anonymous reviewers for comments on early drafts of this paper. Suggestions from Alison Wylie, and protracted discussions with Christopher Chippindale, helped me to reorganize the presentation substantially. The title and several ideas developed in the paper resulted from discussions with Peter Grave (University of Sydney) about postmodernism, archaeology, and the movie Falling Down; I am grateful for his endless enthusiasm about the topic and for several references. Research for this study was conducted while the author held an Australian Research Fellowship (from the Australian Research Council, Commonwealth Government of Australia) in the School of History, Philosophy and Politics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. I am most grateful for that support.

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