ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

by Dr. Bruce G. Trigger

James McGill Professor
McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Rival Approaches: Old and New

For two decades processual and postprocessual archaeologists have
monopolized theoretical debate in anthropological archaeology. Their two
positions seemed such perfect opposites of one another that most archaeologists
came to believe that, if either side did not exist, the other would have had
to invent it as a foil. Now, however, this battle appears to be winding down,
with the protagonists intellectually exhausted and neither side close to being a
winner. Key issues remain unresolved, while those involved try to ignore new
theoretical approaches that challenge their monopoly of ideas. Concepts that
both of these positions silently excluded now appear to be as important as those
that each of them embraced. It is now time for a postmortem and for examining
alternatives.
Processual and postprocessual archaeology are not each sharply defined
approaches: instead both are clusters of related positions. The two clusters
are, however, largely non-overlapping and occupy the materialist and idealist
ends of the theoretical spectrum. Processual archaeologists attempt to explain
human behavior in terms of ecological adaptation, emphasize cross-cultural
regularities, and embrace a cultural evolutionary view of social change. They
tend to epiphenomenalize culture and dismiss idiosyncratic cultural variability,
such as is found in art styles, as being of little interest. Postprocessualists
seek to account for human behavior in cultural terms. They adopt an idealist
epistemology, emphasize crosscultural variability, and, rejecting metanarratives,
embrace a contingent, historical view of cultural change (Hodder 2001a;
Preucel 1991; Preucel and Hodder 1996).
These positions have gained authority as the result of being grounded in
antithetical Western philosophical traditions that were defined as early as

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

the eighteenth century. Processualism is closely aligned with modernism and

the ideas of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thought, with its emphasis on
rationalism and cultural progress, was preoccupied with the uniformities shared
by peoples at the same level of development. Postprocessualism is deeply
influenced by the postmodernist movement. Postmodernism in turn is derived
from romanticism, which developed as a reaction against Enlightenment thought
and stressed the emotional aspects of human behavior and an idiosyncratic
cultural diversity rooted in attachments to home, family, community, region,
country, ethnic group, and religion. In the nineteenth century, evolutionists
studied regularities in human behavior, while romantics, inspired by the German
philosopher Johann Herder, celebrated the cultural diversity of human groups
by emphasizing the idiosyncratic variations among cultures (Trigger 1998;
Zammito 2002). Yet, as Hegmon (2003: 232) has pointed out, postprocessualists
have embraced modernist as well as postmodernist ideas. Among the modernist
approaches she includes Marxism, structuralism, critical theory, and Giddens
theory of agency and structuration. Nevertheless, postprocessual archaeologists
have given each of these positions a postmodern spin.
Processual and postprocessual archaeology have been construed very
differently in the United Kingdom and the United States. In Britain, the two
approaches are generally viewed as mutually exclusive and their differences as
grounded in the nature of things; hence it is assumed that eventually the triumph
of one will result in the annihilation of the other. Most American archaeologists
view these approaches as complementing one another. They assume, for
example, that a processual approach is well suited for studying subsistence
patterns, but that a postprocessual one might be better adapted for investigating
religious beliefs. Until recently, however, this eclecticism remained pragmatic
and naive, and little effort was made to specify the conditions under which the
two approaches might be synthesized to produce an articulated whole.
The more relaxed American approach seems to reflect the systematic training
that most American archaeologists have received in general anthropology. This
training has made them aware of the longstanding tensions between ecological
and cultural approaches in the social sciences and, in particular, of the failure
either of the neoevolutionism of the 1960s or of earlier and later cultural
approaches to dominate sociocultural anthropology. By contrast, the disciplinary
separation between archaeology and anthropology in Britain has meant that
British archaeologists tend to select and utilize particular anthropological
theories, often with great sophistication, but with less general background
knowledge. The growing impasse between processual and postprocessual

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

archaeology tends to justify the American view that these approaches are
complementary rather than antithetical.
Both processual and postprocessual archaeology are being challenged
by other approaches. One of the most assertive of these is Darwinian or
evolutionary archaeology (Barton and Clark 1997; Dunnell 1980; OBrien
1996; OBrien and Lyman 2000; Teltser 1995). This approach seeks to explain
both human behavior and the material culture observable in the archaeological
record using the concepts of biological evolution. Its principal contributions
so far have been its freeing of evolutionary concepts in anthropology from the
assumptions of unilinearity and teleological development that were associated
with neoevolutionism. Yet Darwinian archaeology, no less than processual and
postprocessual archaeology, has become a cluster of related positions. Purists
argue that natural selection acting on individual humans is the main factor
bringing about adaptive change (Dunnell 1978, 1980). More liberal Darwinian
archaeologists see selection as acting mainly on ideas or artifacts and allow
that cognitive factors and decisions by individual humans play a significant
role in this form of selection (Leonard 2001; Leonard and Jones 1987: 214;
OBrien and Holland 1990). The latter position presupposes that innovation
and selection are not wholly separate processes, as mutation and selection are
construed to be in biological evolution (Boone and Smith 1998: S148-S149;
Cowgill 2000: 52).
Convincing evidence has been presented that both natural and conscious
selection affect human behavior, although human cognitive abilities appear to
play a major role in making conscious selection by human agents a far more
efficient, less wasteful, and more unilinear process than is natural selection.
Many species of animals can learn to avoid life-threatening incidents as a
result of personal experience, but only human beings are capable of learning
such behavior solely by admonition and instruction (Boone and Smith 1998;
Boyd and Richerson 1985; Roscoe 2002: 111-113; Shennan 2002; Snow 2002;
Trigger 1998). Long ago Kroeber (1952) argued this point eloquently and in
great detail, although his work is now generally forgotten.
Another rapidly developing approach is cognitive archaeology. It reflects an
increasing interest in the findings of cognitive and evolutionary psychology and
neuroscience concerning how innate factors influence human behavior. Basic to
this development is the belief that human thought is not simply rational but has
various built-in goals that shape human behavior. For example, arguments are
advanced that human beings are naturally predisposed to be hierarchical as well
as sociable; that they are naturally inclined to try to maximize their reproductive

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

capacity; and that they can more readily solve problems relating to social and
practical matters than they can problems framed in terms of abstract principles.
It has also been proposed that different types of intelligence developed at
various stages of biological evolution and that the relatively recent interlinking
of these intelligences explains unique features of human behavior, such as the
development of art and religious beliefs (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Boyer
1994, 1996; Carrithers 1992; Donald 1991; Mithen 1996; Shennan 2002; Steele
2002). Topics such as these represent the revival of the investigation of what
nineteenth-century evolutionary anthropologists called psychic unity and to
which, instead of to technological and ecological factors, they attributed most
of the parallels in human behavior that they believed had occurred at specific
stages in cultural development. In recent years, archaeologists also have been
studying the effects on human behavior of writing and other forms of material
culture that can serve as means of external symbolic storage (Renfrew and
Scarre 1998; Schiffer 1999).
Social archaeology continues to offer new perspectives that are intended to
explain prehistoric human behavior. The most active tendency is behavioral
archaeology, which diverged from processual archaeology in the 1970s, and
in the course of doing so shed processual archaeologys preoccupation with
ecological factors as prime movers. The goals of behavioral archaeology are
to relate human behavior to material culture and explain how human beings
created the archaeological record (Schiffer 1976, 1995, 1999). In Spain, a new
generation of Marxist archaeologists seeks to use classical Marxist concepts
relating to relations of production, consumption, and power to understand the
archaeological record (Chapman 2003). Once it is accepted that the concept of
function does not inevitably preclude an interest in change (Evans-Pritchard
1949, 1962), it becomes possible to perceive considerable overlap between
what social archaeologists study as function and what moderate Darwinian
archaeologists investigate as selection. Finally, Kehoe (1998) has attempted to
rehabilitate culture-historical archaeology.
Dialogue and Contestation
In the United States, an increasing number of attempts are currently
being made to promote dialogue between various theoretical approaches in
archaeology in order to determine to what extent they are complementary and
might become the basis of more comprehensive and useful hybrid formulations.
For over a decade, many American archaeologists have argued that processual

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

and postprocessual archaeology are complementary rather than contradictory

analytical approaches (Cunningham 2003; Preucel 1991; VanPool and VanPool
1999, 2003; Wylie 1993, 2000). Behavioral archaeologists are actively seeking
to build bridges with other approaches (Schiffer 1996, 2000; Skibo and
Feinman 1999; Skibo, Walker, and Nielsen 1995). Hegmon (2003) documents
the various ideas that are being combined to constitute what she has designated
as processual-plus archaeology. Pauketat (2003) expounds a theoretical
amalgam that he calls historical-processual archaeology. The chief opposition
to such outreach comes from Darwinian archaeologists, who are intent on
establishing a hegemonic position for their own approach (Lyman and OBrien
1998; OBrien, Lyman, and Leonard 1998). Even they, however, seek to
incorporate what they regard as the most enduring concepts of culture-historical
archaeology into their own theoretical structure (Lyman, OBrien, and Dunnell
1997; OBrien and Lyman 2000).
It is clear that sometimes what are alleged to be outreaches that seek to
reconcile very different approaches are undertaken in the hope that by this
means one theoretical orientation may absorb another (VanPool and VanPool
2003:1). In Britain, many postprocessual archaeologists, while formally
acknowledging the constraints of data, relentlessly seek to relativise the
arguments of archaeologists who are not postprocessualists and continue to
pursue interpretive programs that do little to rigorously test the claims they
make about beliefs in prehistoric cultures (Gosden 1999; Hodder 2001a;
Johnson 1999; A. Jones 2002; S. Jones 1997: 139-144). Other archaeologists
sincerely seek to derive mutual benefits by subjecting existing perspectives
to critical analysis and trying to harmonize them (Preucel 1991; VanPool and
VanPool 1999, 2003; Schiffer 2000). Both predatory and altruistic dialogues,
by enhancing a detailed understanding of different points of view, increase
the possibility of developing more comprehensive and useful theoretical
formulations.
That existing bodies of theory are not only mutually comprehensible but
capable to some degree of selective integration is evidence that they should
not be regarded as paradigms. A crucial feature of Kuhns (1962, 1970, 1977,
1992; Bird 2000) delineation of paradigms was their incommensurability;
Kuhn maintained that no paradigm could be clearly understood by a scientist
who worked within the context of an alternative one. Treating theoretical
orientations as paradigms therefore encourages exclusion and polemic rather
than the systematic comparison, testing, and synthesis of ideas (Schiffer 1996:

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

659; VanPool and VanPool 2003). Its discouraging of dialogue also encourages
much reinventing of the wheel by the adherents of rival paradigms.
Theory can be defined as the guiding principles that help us to make sense
of specific cases and of the world around us (Hegmon 2003: 213). Scientific
theory consists of such principles as are testable or at least supportable
using sensory evidence. More specifically, guiding principles propose lawful
mechanisms that claim to account in a generalizing manner for how things
operate and how they have come to be as we find them (Bunge 1997). Such
an approach requires a realist epistemology, which admits that not only what
can be perceived but also phenomena that are currently unobservable as well
as hypothesized processes are appropriate objects for scientific study (Bhaskar
1978). Anyone who accepts a biological evolutionary origin for the human
species must also embrace a materialist explanation of human behavior. That
does not, however, entail a reductionist approach that denies the emergence
of qualitatively unique forms of human behavior requiring their own forms
of explanation (Trigger 2003b: 133-134). Good theories lead us to look for
evidence we might otherwise overlook or underrate (Terrell 2003: 74).
High-level theory consists of the abstract rules which interrelate the
theoretical principles that are required to understand a major category of
phenomena (Bhaskar 1978; Clarke 1979: 25-30; Harris 1979: 26-27). In
archaeology, high-level theory invariably deals with propositions concerning
human behavior. Yet, as a result of recent advances in the study of material
culture, high-level archaeological theory can now be defined more specifically
as all social science theory that assists archaeologists to understand artifacts in
terms of human behavior and human behavior in relation to artifacts.
Do archaeologists really need high-level theory or would it be preferable
to try to get along without it? Relatively few archaeologists are primarily
interested in archaeological theory either in the United States or in Britain;
instead they seek to learn more about specific sites, peoples, cultures, and
forms of behavior. Traditional Baconian induction construes theoretical
understanding as being the end point of archaeological research and general
theories as something that should grow out of research. The problem with
this position is that every aspect of archaeological research is influenced by
presuppositions which constitute implicit theory. The main difference between
a deductive and an inductive approach is the extent to which archaeologists are
aware of these presuppositions. The history of archaeology provides numerous
examples of how in the past unconscious beliefs influenced practice and
interpretation in ways that reinforced racial, class, and gender stereotypes in

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

modern society as well as how archaeologists have been recruited and treated
one another (Conkey and Spector 1984; Leone and Potter 1988; Silverberg
1968). It is far better to try to deal with presuppositions at a conscious level than
to become their unwitting victims. Although it can never guarantee objectivity,
explicit high-level theory is essential for a mature and self-critical discipline.
The more accurately high-level theory can model human behavior and facilitate
an understanding of how material culture and human behavior relate to each
other, the more it can encourage objectivity in the analysis of archaeological
data (Trigger 1989a, 1989b, 2003b; Wylie 2002).
A separate issue is whether the processual-postprocessual debate has been
necessary? Processual archaeology developed within the context of widespread
dissatisfaction with the limitations of culture-historical archaeology. Yet
it was already well-known in the 1960s that ecological adaptation did not
account for many aspects of cultural variation, including numerous features
of subsistence patterns. Adaptations are rarely based on a perfect knowledge
of the environment and, in all but the most extreme circumstances, various
adaptive strategies can sustain a group in a satisfactory fashion (Sahlins 1976a).
Optimal foraging theory and deductive site catchment analysis rarely can
predict the precise subsistence pattern that was followed in a specific location
in prehistoric times. What I had learned as an undergraduate in the late 1950s
about geographical possibilism --the belief that, while the natural environment
imposes limitations on what human beings and their technology can do, it does
not determine specific human responses -- made it impossible for me to take
seriously all-embracing claims made by early processual archaeologists that
were based on the concept of ecological determinism (compare Meggers 1960;
Sanders and Price 1968; Struever 1968a,b and Trigger 1971). Childe (1928)
had applied the possibilist approach to archaeology long before, when he
argued that postglacial desiccation in the Middle East had probably resulted in
some hunter-gatherer peoples dying out, while other groups relocated to wetter
environments and still others invented agriculture. He also maintained that the
city-state system that developed in Mesopotamia and the divine monarchy
that had united ancient Egypt were merely alternative political strategies for
controlling larger and more productive societies.
Likewise, what anthropologists knew about the ethnography of Africa and
the indigenous societies of the Americas should have suggested that the models
of tribes and chiefdoms that were being constructed by Sahlins (1958, 1968)
and Service (1962, 1975) reflected primarily the Melanesian and Polynesian
societies with which they were most familiar. These models did not take into

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

account the distinctive features of societies at equivalent levels of complexity

elsewhere. Such extra data would have indicated that regional cultural
traditions, as well as ecological and evolutionary factors, were sigificantly
associated with cultural variation. I find it puzzling that in the 1960s Boasian
and social anthropologists did not challenge neoevolutionists more directly on
this point. Archaeologists were thereby deprived of critical guidance by their
anthropological colleagues.
Processual archaeologys preoccupation with cross-cultural regularities was
justified by appealing to Julian Stewards (1955: 209) concept of a core culture.
Steward maintained that only cross-cultural similarities were of scientific, and
hence anthropological, interest. From this point of view, all early civilizations
having kings would have been a phenomenon worthy of anthropological study,
but the culturally variable ways in which kingship was symbolized in various
cultures by crowns, stools, scepters, or parasols were not. Steward argued
that anthropologists should investigate only cross-cultural regularities, which
he maintained were adaptively significant, while abandoning idiosyncratic
traits to an inferior breed of culture historians. His ecological approach,
although taking account of environmental variation, tended to dismiss whatever
was culturally specific as epiphenomenal and hence of no scientific interest. In
this manner, Steward sought to discredit Boasian cultural anthropology. In his
earliest theoretical writing, Binford (1962: 220; 1965: 206-207) drew a similar
distinction between style and function.
The rejection of the significance of cultural idiosyncracies was an
exclusionary act of theory-building that archaeologists in the 1960s should
have recognized for what it was. Kroebers (1952) studies had already made it
clear that in anthropology, as in biology, the investigation of the processes of
evolution must be grounded on a detailed understanding of the specificities of
change. History and archaeology were to anthropology what palaeontology was
to biology. It also should not have come as a surprise to anyone when crosscultural regularities almost invariably fell short of neoevolutionist expectations.
Binford (2001) soldiers on, but increasingly restricts his research to those
aspects of human behavior that exhibit strong cross-cultural regularities.
On the other hand, cultural anthropologists, influenced by postmodernism,
have gone to the other extreme. Cultural variation is assumed to be even more
idiosyncratic than Boas (1963: 154) thought it to be. Geertz (1965: 101) declared
all cross-cultural regularities to be meaningless intellectual constructions and
stressed the need to understand each culture individually and contextually.
Studies of cultural evolution have likewise been rejected as ethnocentric and

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

intellectually indefensible in a multicultural, postcolonial world (S. Diamond

1974; Giddens 1984; Rowlands 1989). Cultures, if they are to be compared
at all, must be compared as wholes (Geertz 1973; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Latour
and Woolgar 1979; Rose 1991; Sahlins 1976a; Shepherd 1993). Within such an
intellectual environment, there is no place for cross-cultural generalizations. Is
this return to the relativistic ideas of Boasian anthropology justified and is it
true that ecologists and neoevolutionists have nothing to teach archaeologists?
Donald Browns (1991) study of human universals suggests that this is not the
case. The wholesale replacement of one theoretical position by another, without
a careful, systematic consideration of their respective strengths and weaknesses,
encourages reinventing the wheel.
In terms of general theory, the dichotomy between processual and
postprocessual archaeology was never justified. Most anthropologists have
long agreed that all human behavior is conceptually, and hence culturally,
mediated, although they have disagreed concerning to what extent it is
culturally determined. In his later writings, Childe (1949: 6-8; 1956) embraced
what has become the key tenet of postprocessual archaeology: that the world
humans adapt to is not the world as it really is but the world as people believe
it to be. Childe argued that the landscape of central Australia, as perceived by
Aboriginal hunter-gatherers, was not the same as that perceived by Europeans
interested in mineral extraction. Nevertheless, Childe remained a materialist; he
viewed cultural understandings as providing the extrasomatic means by which
human beings adapt, in a very flexible manner, to their natural environment.
Human beings can know only through their minds and brains, but minds and
brains exist within organisms that must survive in the natural world. Hence
every view of the world must accord to a significant degree with the world as
it really is in order to endure (Childe 1956: 58-60). Childe argued that both
the beliefs of hunter-gatherers and those of modern industrial nations must be
judged effective according to the degree to which they achieved this goal in
their particular settings.
Yet effective subsistence practices do not signify that a hunter-gatherer
societys understanding of the environment must be based on the same
concepts as those used by Western cultural ecologists. Hunter-gatherers do not
calculate their subsistence behavior in terms of energy expenditures measured
in calories. In many traditional societies, knowledge of the environment and of
the impact that human beings have on it is encoded in religious beliefs (Tanner
1979). Yet such beliefs record a hunter-gatherers understanding of how the
environment works and how a living may be derived from it that is probably

10

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

even more detailed and precise than is that of a cultural ecologist. Much
wrangling between processual and postprocessual archaeologists might have
been avoided had processual archaeologists, in conformity with their claim to
be behaviorists, accepted that what they were discussing using archaeological
evidence was whether prehistoric societies had behaved rationally in terms of
their subsistence activities and not what specific concepts were guiding their
behavior.
The diachronic expression of Childes position, and its origin, can be found
in Karl Marxs assertion that human beings make their own history... not under
circumstances chosen by themselves, but [under ones] directly encountered,
given, and transmitted from the past (Marx 1852 in Marx and Engels 1962,
I:247). Thus Marx took cultural traditions seriously, although he believed
that they could be altered relatively easily by the pursuit of cross-culturally
meaningful economic interests. Over the years, this seminal formulation has
played an increasingly important role in stimulating debates about social
science theory. Much discussion has focused on the degree of ease or difficulty
with which people can transcend and transform their cultural heritage as a
result of goal-seeking. Bourdieu (1977), by drawing attention to the role of
non-verbalized and often unconscious behavior (habitus), has emphasized the
intractable nature of our cultural heritage. There is also debate concerning the
units in terms of which such changes are best studied. While Marx preferred
to consider interest groups, which may in some cases correspond with social
classes, Giddens (1984) has stressed the role of the individual.
It is tempting to conclude from this that the development of archaeological
theory would have occurred faster and more straightforwardly had more
attention been paid to Childes later theoretical writings. In particular, a
large number of tedious and unproductive debates between processual and
postprocessual archaeologists might have been avoided. Yet I do not believe
that in reality such fast-track development would have been possible. Closely
argued, passionate, and dramatic debates are a vital part of the adversarial
approach that characterizes discourse in the social sciences. Young scholars
often initiate controversies in hopes of promoting their careers, while protracted
quarrels between established academics fascinate their colleagues. The debate
between Lewis and Sally Binford (1966) and Franois Bordes (1972) as to
whether different Mousterian industries represented tribal groups or specialized
tool-kits epitomized the rival claims of the culture-historical and processual
approaches of the 1960s and 1970s. There is, however, a down side. Kus (2000:
169) has observed that Too often the way to attention in our discipline... is to

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

11

wrest agenda setting by producing the next heresy-aspiring-to-dogma. Given

the nature of the game, we have all been pushed into stronger stances of
critique and argumentation than we might feel stylistically comfortable with.
Kelly (2000: 78) has observed more trenchantly that archaeologists reward
polemic, bombast, and showmanship rather than the serious testing of ideas.
Sometimes specific theoretical debates encourage fruitful inductive research
that conclusively resolves contentious issues. All too often, however, arguments
tend to focus on one or a few inconclusive case studies. The primary goal of
the participants is to score points rather than to ascertain the truth. In particular,
this approach tempts analysts to select facts and otherwise to gloss over or
disguise weaknesses in their arguments. Rhetoric and polemic are greatly
admired. It is widely assumed that, as with legal trials, truth will emerge from
such partisan behavior. Yet, the track record of modern legal systems does not
make this analogy a particularly encouraging one. Most debates of this sort,
rather than producing broad new agreements, sputter out inconclusively, with
the exhausted combatants still at loggerheads, as appears to be happening with
processual and postprocessual archaeologists.
There is, however, a reason why debates are essential: even if they do not
produce conclusive answers, they result in a more detailed understanding of
the issues involved than could be achieved by a less adversarial approach
(Kuhn 1977). Despite the extraordinary lucidity of Childes later theoretical
writings, many aspects of his ideas remained undeveloped. This made his
basic concepts difficult for most archaeologists to understand. There was also
much about them that we can recognize in retrospect Childe himself did not
understand. Seemingly endless debates between processual and postprocessual
archaeologists have been needed to clarify the sorts of issues that Childe dealt
with and make them widely understood.
The more recent theoretical approaches in archaeology have their own
problems that require discussion and clarification. Despite the claim that
Darwinian archaeology provides a self-contained replacement for existing
high-level theories, the distinction that Darwinian archaeologists draw between
traits that are subject to selection and those which are not perpetuates the
differentiation between adaptive and non-adaptive features that limited the
explanatory power of processual archaeology and encouraged the development
of postprocessualism. Nor is it universally accepted that culture-historical
archaeology has adequately accounted for the behavior of non-selective
traits, as Darwinian archaeologists maintain (compare S. Jones 1997: 130-131
and Lyman, OBrien, and Dunnell 1997). Some studies call into question the

12

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

belief that stylistic aspects of material culture are merely passive reflections
of rule-governed behavior. They maintain that on the contrary all material
culture is actively involved in processes of social production, reproduction,
and transformation (Hodder 1982; Miller 1985; Shennan 2002: 75-77). Such
findings suggest that all traits are subject to selection, although some may
be selected to enhance cognitive coherence within a culture while others are
selected in terms of ecological adaptation. Boyd and Richerson (1985) have
demonstrated that repeated transmissions of knowledge result in selection in
favor of more useful variants of ideas as well as of ideas that better serve
collective as well as individual interests. Cultural traditions also accumulate
alternative behavioral strategies that provide individuals with ready-made
guidance for coping with variable conditions, such as good and bad crop years
or weak and strong leaders (Salzman 2000). Contrary to the belief that new
is better, most forms of knowledge that endure over long periods may have
enhanced selective value, especially from a societal point of view.
It is also questionable whether Darwinian archaeologys idea of material
culture as an extrasomatic phenotype (Leonard 2001; Leonard and Jones 1987;
OBrien and Holland 1995) has more to recommend it than has the conventional
view of material culture as a humanly constructed environment. In general,
the reductionist tendencies of Darwinian archaeology seem to ignore the
complexity and emergent novelty of human behavior as well as the conscious
and constructive role played by individual humans in the selection process.
Finally, there is considerable overlap between Darwinian archaeologys concept
of selection and the concepts of function and adapation used by processual
archaeologists. Darwinian archaeology certainly has much to offer that is of
value; yet it probably provides no more in the way of a complete theoretical
perspective than do processual and postprocessual archaeology (Schiffer
1996).
Cognitive archaeology remains in an embryonic state. Archaeologists
generally believe that behavioral patterns are likely to become biologically
embedded only if they have been selected for over very long periods;
hence, like other anthropologists, they reject the more extreme claims of
sociobiologists (Wilson 1975). For their part, cognitive psychologists and
neuroscientists know little for certain about the biological basis of human
behavior, although progess has been made in determining the genetic basis of
some features of grammar (Gopnik 1997). Are human beings naturally driven
to try to maximize the number of their biological descendants or has such
behavior, if it ever existed among other primates, been overridden in the course

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

13

of hominid evolution? Do individuals possess a variety of different forms of

intelligence and, if so, how do these forms of intelligence relate to one other?
Many adaptive forms of behavior can be explained more economically in terms
of the generic rationality invoked by processual archaeologists than by the
special forms of human reason postulated by some Darwinian archaeologists
(Shennan 2002). Experimental research on conditions that promote optimal
problem solving by humans has led to different conclusions (Steele 2002: 3237). Most archaeologists and anthropologists rightly fear that countenancing
any biological interpretations will result in reseachers trying to embed
biologically whatever they wish to believe about human behavior (S. Jones
1997: 65-72). As a result, archaeologists have generally avoided contact with
these fields (Sahlins 1976b). Yet the failure by archaeologists to develop closer
relations with evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists exposes their
own discipline no less than these other fields to the threats of quackery and
racism. This is a theoretical approach that is in need of much interdisciplinary
development before its promise for archaeological interpretation is realized.
Comparative Evaluation
Human behavior is clearly complex and influenced by biological
predispositions, cultural programming, and a variety of ecological factors that
express themselves in varied forms of selection and functional constraints.
No theoretical formulation invoking a narrow range of causal factors, such as
ecological or cultural determinism, is likely to account for the totality of human
behavior or its material expression. While each major approach currently used
by archaeologists provides useful explanatory insights, none of them excludes
other theories. So what are archaeologists to do?
Hodder (2001b) has noted that it is increasingly necessary for archaeologists to
combine different bodies of theory to answer specific problems. Yet he questions
the wisdom of efforts to create a unifying framework for archaeological theory
and suggests that instead archaeologists should view specific combinations
of theoretical propositions as collections of discourses that are often, like
paradigms, mutually incomprehensible. This proposal accords with a relativist,
cultural perspective of the Boasian sort, which seeks to deny that there are other
than contingent explanations of human behavior or sociocultural processes.
Hodders intervention is the equivalent of asking whether there really was an
elephant for the proverbial blind folk to examine, or whether they were feeling

14

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

something else perhaps each other. His viewpoint constitutes a transparent

and uncompromising attempt to establish the supremacy of postprocessualism.
The alternative possibility is that different types of explanations can be
integrated within a larger theoretical framework and that, by working together,
archaeologists (and sociocultural anthropologists) who hold varied theoretical
positions can begin to determine the nature of this framework (Kelly 2000:
78). This option supposes that the proverbial elephant exists and that the blind
people studying it can eventually determine what it looks like.
To investigate this possibility, I decided in the late 1980s to undertake a
detailed study of similarities and differences in culture and behavior in early
civilizations in order to determine whether patterns could be discovered that
would shed light on this problem (Trigger 1993, 2003a). This decision was
premised on my belief that a thorough comparison required the examination of
idiosyncracies as well as of what is cross-culturally similar, keeping in mind
that the latter can be the result either of historical connections or of convergent
development. I chose to study early civilizations because it is currently
impossible to distinguish whether many shared features among hunter-gatherer
societies are homologies resulting from historical connections going far back
into human history or analogies that result from independent convergent
development. While early civilizations share various historical connections,
especially among the geographically more remote ones these connections are
tenuous and can be distinguished from convergent development by examining
closely the archaeological record of the rise of each civilization.
To make the detailed comparisons my study required, I needed early
civilizations that were thoroughly documented both archaeologically and
textually. Detailed information about sociopolitical organization, economy,
beliefs, and values is available for only a few of these societies. I therefore
decided to compare the seven best documented early civilizations around the
world: Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt, early Mesopotamia, Shang China,
the Valley of Mexico in the early seventeenth century AD, the Classic Maya,
Inka Peru, and the Yoruba-Benin culture of West Africa in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries AD. Overall, these civilizations were sufficiently widely
distributed to minimize historical connections and provide sound evidence
concerning convergent development. In addition, the early civilizations that
were in close geographical proximity and for which there was considerable
evidence of historical connections displayed unexpectedly high degrees of
structural variation. A major area where early civilizations had developed that
could not be included was South Asia: neither the Indus nor the early Gangetic

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

15

civilization was sufficiently well-documented, archaeologically or textually, to

be included (Trigger 2003a: 15-39).
To minimize biasing my data and construing them ethnocentrically, as
postmodernists regularly accuse comparativists of doing, I spent considerable
time trying to understand each early civilization from an internalist (emic)
perspective. For example, each early civilization I studied had a head of state
who was normally male and whose office was hereditary in theory, practice,
or both. Most comparative anthropologists would refer to such an individual
as a king and treat these office-holders as equivalent. Yet, it becomes clear
as a result of my textual research that the powers and responsibilities of these
rulers varied considerably from one early civilization to another and that their
office was never conceptualized in precisely the same way in any two early
civilizations. The Egyptian nswt was terminologically marked as a universal
ruler: only one person in the world could legitimately bear this title and he
had to be an Egyptian. By contrast, each city state in the Valley of Mexico was
headed by a tlatoani, or great speaker, one of whose main duties was to be
a military leader. The Yoruba term oba was restricted to rulers who claimed
descent from the earth-creating god Oduduwa, and hence could be applied
only to kings who were Yoruba or could claim Yoruba ancestry. Obas were
ritually secluded, which meant that, while they were held ritually responsible
for the outcomes of wars, they normally did not lead armies (Smith 1969: 120).
Any valid comparison of kingship in early civilizations must take account of
these and other cultural differences (Trigger 2003a: 71-91). Only by using
textual data to determine the meaning of offices, institutions, and religious
and legal concepts was it possible to accord something approaching equivalent
importance to cultural and behavioral data. And only by doing this was it
possible to critique in a realistic and relatively unbiased manner the materialist
and idealist theories that have prioritized behavioral and cultural explanations
respectively.
My attempts to achieve a rounded understanding of each early civilization
tangentially produced some interesting insights into the history of behaviorist
and cultural approaches in archaeology and anthropology. Works published in
the 1960s, when behaviorism and neoevolutionism were dominant, yielded
detailed and very useful information about ecological, economic, social, and
political behavior in early civilizations, but few insights into how people
living in these societies had viewed these activities, themselves, or the cosmos.
Only beginning in the 1980s did archaeologists and anthropologists attempt
to understand the religious beliefs, values, and worldviews of people living in

16

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

specific early civilizations. Prior to the 1990s, studies of Inka religion were little
more than recitals of superficial, ethnocentric observations made by Spanish
writers in the sixteenth century. Only recently have scholars begun to examine
more detailed colonial records and to carry out ethnographic research in order
to gain deeper insights into Andean religious beliefs (Gose 1995; MacCormack
1991; Salomon 1991). Likewise, while in the 1960s social scientists of both
Yoruba and Western origin produced excellent studies of traditional Yoruba
agriculture, economic and political organization, and warfare, detailed studies
of Yoruba beliefs, values, and worldview did not appear before the 1990s
(Apter 1992; Barber 1991). Thus a rounded understanding of each early
civilization could be achieved only by combining the findings of materialists
and new cultural anthropologists. These observations supported my initial
impression that, although processual and postprocessual archaeology are based
on antithetical theoretical positions, they are fundamentally complementary.
The environmental settings, subsistence patterns, and production and
exchange systems of the seven early civilizations I examined displayed far more
variation than neoevolutionists, such as Julian Steward (1949), had imagined.
General ecological constraints are obviously important: for example, no huntergatherer society has ever developed a monarchical form of government and
anthropologists seem agreed that no society combining these two features will
ever be found. The different agricultural systems of the seven early civilizations
represented the intensification of distinctive, separately-evolved, and locallyadapted practices that had been in place in particular regions long before the
earliest state or civilization developed there (J. Diamond 1997). Farmers had
long possessed detailed ecological knowledge that allowed them to adjust their
production techniques as population density increased and ecological conditions
changed. Much of the variation in subsistence patterns among early civilizations
therefore can be explained as adaptations to different environmental settings.
Early civilizations developed in many different kinds of environments: river
valleys in arid climates (Egypt, Mesopotamia), tropical forests and savannas
(Maya, Yoruba), highland valleys (Mexico, Peru), and temperate rainfall zones
(Shang China). The radically different natural configurations of the Nile and
Tigris-Euphrates floodplains meant that very different hydraulic regimes had
to be developed in these two regions (Adams 1981; Butzer 1976). The main
factors facilitating the development of the state were not the development
of particular agricultural regimes or forms of craft production but sedentary
life, investment in land to maintain and increase its productivity, and growing
numbers of possessions. Ralph Linton (1933, 1939) recognized long ago that

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

17

these factors increased the need for privileged groups to ensure protection
of their property, which in turn made effective, long-term coercion by rulers
possible (Trigger 2003a: 279-337).
By contrast, only two basic types of political organization were evident
among the well-documented early civilizations I examined: city states and
territorial states. City-state civilizations consisted of clusters of small states,
each of which had a relatively compact urban center inhabited by a considerable
portion of the total population, including many farmers. The rulers of these
states exerted varying degrees of power over their neighbors and sometimes
forced rulers of weaker nearby states to pay them tribute; yet little effort was
made to micromanage the governing of subordinate polities. Territorial states
were much larger and were governed by state officials who were located
in a nested hierarchy of relatively small and often less compactly arranged
administrative centers inhabited only by rulers, civil servants, elite artisans,
and their servants (Maisels 1990; Trigger 2003a: 92-141).
Those who seek to privilege idiosyncratic variation suggest that many more
types of political organization existed in early civilizations (Cowgill 1997;
Kenoyer 1997; Maisels 1999: 186-259; Possehl 1998). Yet the documentation
supporting these alternatives is invariably weak and delineations based on it
highly speculative; hence some or all of these variations may prove as illusory
as did Eric Thompsons (1954) Classic Maya theocracies.
Some of the variation in the economic organization of early civilizations
correlates with the distinction between territorial and city states. In city-state
systems, public markets generally flourished, foreign trade was often carried
on by merchants who were relatively free of government control, and fulltime craft workers produced goods for a broad clientele. In territorial states,
elite artisans worked for the government and the upper classes, while farmers
generally manufactured and exchanged goods made from inexpensive, local
raw materials for their own use. Foreign trade was a government monopoly in
territorial states (Trigger 2003a: 338-374).
Despite claims to the contrary (Claessen and Skalnik 1978; Feinman 1998;
Marcus 1998; Renfrew 1997), these two types of early civilizations did not form
a developmental sequence nor do they correlate with different environmental
settings. Contrary to Michael Manns (1986) argument that small states were
the norm, city-state systems and territorial states appear to represent alternative
patterns that were functionally viable at the level of organizational complexity
and productivity achieved by early civilizations.

18

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

The significant economic variation that correlates with these two political
types demonstrates the utility of functionalist approaches and also reinforces the
integrity of these two varieties of early civilizations. Whatever factors shaped
the development of early civilizations, only a few basic patterns of political
and economic organization appear to have had sufficient coherence to survive
over long periods (Flannery 1972). These findings suggest the utility of social
anthropological and materialist Marxist approaches, which both view society as
a point of departure for explaining many aspects of human behavior.
Contrariwise, elite styles of art in early civilizations provide striking
examples of cross-cultural idiosyncracy. One does not have to be a specialist
to be able to distinguish ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Shang Chinese, and
Aztec art in modern collections. This accords with the generally-held belief that
specific art styles are purely cultural phenomena, unlike the capacity to produce
art, which is a ubiquitous, species-specific feature of human behavior that can
be documented as having evolved at least as early as the Upper Palaeolithic
period and is related to the human ability to symbolize (Mithen 1996). Elite art
styles tended to emerge quickly in the early stages of the development of each
civilization. Thereafter, while these styles slowly changed, their basic patterns
remained intact for long periods (Kemp 1989: 19-63; Townsend 1979). While
each civilization evolved a distinctive art style, there is no way to account for
its specific features, except by tracing its historical origins and development.
These styles were employed to symbolize and reinforce the political
coherence of states and state systems, while at the same time they affirmed
the political and economic dominance of the upper classes, who directly or
indirectly controlled the production and use of high-status goods. Carrying
out these functions required elite art styles to be internally homogeneous and
recognizably different from those of any neighboring culture. Within city-state
systems, individual states sometimes developed local variants of the elite art
style of the civilization of which they were a part in order to signal their own
identity within a broader context of shared values and upper-class alliances.
Elite styles tended to be more unified and refined in territorial states than in
city-state civilizations, because the single rulers of territorial states controlled
much more wealth and monopolized the services of the most skilled artisans,
as well as the procurement of the exotic materials that these artisans utilized.
In city-state civilizations, where full-time craft workers produced goods for a
broader social spectrum, the best quality works of art were manufactured for
hegemonic rulers, who controlled more wealth than did tributary kings (Trigger
2003a: 541-583).

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

19

Darwinian archaeologists maintain that elite art styles are selectively neutral
(Dunnell 1978). The alternative formal possibilities are sufficiently numerous
that no two styles ever independently duplicate one another. Yet the social
functions of such art were so important that no early civilization failed to
develop its own elite style. Elite art therefore has stylistic features that are
quintessentially culturally idiosyncratic, but also social and psychological
features that must be understood cross-culturally. The stylistic unity of the elite
art produced within each early civilization also exemplifies Gellners (1982)
proposition that, in those aspects of cultures where the chief constraints on
what people do are not imposed by limited natural resources, it is necessary to
impose a symbolic order in order to render culture meaningful. With elite art,
this symbolic ordering takes the form of elaborate stylistic patterning.
One of my most surprising and potentially most controversial discoveries
was that three basic concepts underlay the highly varied religious beliefs of
all seven early civilizations. It was believed in each early civilization not
only that gods, who were, or who animated, the universe, nourished and
sustained humans, but also that, if humans did not in turn nourish deities with
sacrifices, the gods would weaken or die and the universe fall into chaos.
Thirdly, while farmers produced most of the food that fed the gods, the upper
classes, and especially kings, claimed an essential role in ritually channelling
this nourishment back into the supernatural realm. These views seem to have
represented a metaphorical projection of tributary relations that existed on the
human plane into the cosmic realm. By grounding the survival of the cosmic
order on both the productivity of farmers and the administrative and ritual
skills of the upper classes, this view also appears to have enlisted supernatural
concepts to help maintain a political balance between rulers and ruled that was
necessary for early civilizations, with their relatively rudimentary mechanisms
of political control, to survive (Trigger 2003a: 472-494; also Houston et al.
2003).
These religious beliefs constitute evidence of cross-cultural regularity
that can only tendentiously be construed as being ecologically-grounded.
Neoevolutionists generally have maintained that religious beliefs are less
determined by ecological constraints than is economic or political behavior, and
therefore that religious beliefs are more likely to take the form of selectivelyneutral cultural traditions and be cross-culturally idiosyncratic (Friedman
and Rowlands 1978: 203-205). My findings demonstrate that significant
cross-cultural regularities underlie the more specific religious beliefs of early
civilizations. These particular general regularities, which are not present in less

20

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

complex societies, must have been invented at least several times to occur in all
seven early civilizations I have studied.
Such cross-cultural uniformities provide striking evidence that human
beings who lived in historically-unrelated early civilizations analysed social
problems in the same general fashion. Such thinking appears to have been
guided by tendencies to create similar metaphors (Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and
Johnson 1980; Tilley 1999). It was also shaped by the recognition at some level
of consciousness of a need in early civilizations to curb the personal material
and social self-indulgence of the upper classes in the long-term interest of
maintaining a collectivity on which rulers and subjects alike depended for
their survival. This sort of adaptive behavior was focused not on controlling
the natural environment but on constraining proclivities of human nature
that appear to be products of millions of years of biological evolution. Such
cross-cultural uniformity appears to be a manifestation of what has been called
psychic unity. Understanding better this aspect of human behavior requires
archaeologists to establish closer relations with evolutionary psychologists and
neuroscientists.
The most behaviorally consequential idiosyncratic beliefs of early
civilizations were about what constituted a good life. These beliefs were preeminently associated with upper-class males, but influenced how everyone
in these societies evaluated human conduct (Trigger 2003a: 626-637). Such
views, like styles of elite art, developed at an early stage in the evolution of
civilizations and persisted for long periods. They made each early civilization
a unique cultural experience in the Geertzian and the traditional humanistic
sense.
In ancient Egypt, the ideal man was an administrator who sought to please
his superiors. Such men strove to appear modest, personally unacquisitive, and
good team players. In this way, they climbed the administrative ladder (Morenz
1973: 117-123). The Mesopotamians principal ideal, like that of their gods,
was to acquire land and other forms of property and derive income from them.
Men who were successful at doing this did not have to work with their hands
but could serve on community councils, judge legal cases, and perform other
empowering community duties (Van De Mieroop 1999: 212-213). The ideal in
the Valley of Mexico was to be a successful warrior, which meant capturing
enemy soldiers for sacrifice. No hereditary noble could qualify for public office
without performing such feats, while commoners who excelled as warriors were
granted noble status (Soustelle 1961: 217-224). The Yoruba valued individual
competitiveness, but such behavior took two different forms. The warrior-

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

21

politican sustained armed retainers who intimated rivals and commoners

alike, enabling him to pursue a political career. The alternative was to become
a sage-priest of the Ifa cult. These priests were noted for their learning and
ability to resolve disputes. Both warrior-politicians and sage-priests competed
among themselves for influence and public recognition (R. Thompson 1976).
The nobility of Shang China regarded military prowess, and closely related
hunting skills, as important factors defining their social status. Such activities
also provided wild game and human victims that as sacrifices empowered the
spirits of noblemens ancestors and ensured their supernatural support (Lewis
1990).
Each of these ideals was elaborated until it became a design for living that
substantially influenced the lives of everyone in a particular early civilization.
Those who lived in the Valley of Mexico equated women who died in childbirth
with men who perished in battle, thereby symbolically identifying childbirth
with military combat (Soustelle 1961: 190). The preoccupation with warfare
also created a cosmovision in which armed conflict was represented as an
altruistic activity that sustained the universe. Honor, social mobility, and public
office all depended on a mans ability to serve the gods as a warrior (Carrasco
1999). The Mesopotamian preoccupation with property led in that civilization
to an unparalleled elaboration of techniques for accounting, payment, and
extending credit (Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993).
These ideals also imposed limitations on cultures. The Mexican desire to
capture prisoners for sacrifice did not equip them to defeat Spanish invaders
intent on military conquest. The Egyptian bureaucratic ideal may have created
good quartermasters, but it did not make for outstanding military commanders.
The bureaucratic ideal developed at a time when the relatively isolated Egyptian
state had no rivals. Yet it did not vanish when Egypt later had to contend with
aggressive military powers based in the Sudan, Southwest Asia, and Europe.
Despite Egypts wealth and substantial population, it came to be controlled by
a succession of foreign rulers. We thus find an important aspect of Egyptian
culture that, in spite of its seemingly negative selective implications, persisted
under changed conditions. It is clear that values and ideals sometimes have the
power to shape human behavior, even if that power is negative in the sense
that it sustains, rather than transforms in seemingly desirable ways, existing
behavior patterns.
There is also no reason why the distinctive personal values held in the Valley
of Mexico, among the Yoruba, and in Mesopotamia should have been specific
to each of those cultures, all of which evolved in the context of rivalrous city

22

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

states. Each of these city-state systems would have been significantly different
had its people embraced social values different from the ones they adopted.
The development of social values, like that of elite art styles, seems to have
been influenced by historical accidents that occurred at a formative stage in the
development of each early civilization. Yet values are not like art styles; they
influence societies in ways that are clearly not selectively neutral, as Darwinian
archaeologists understand this concept. We must therefore conclude that aspects
of ideational culture that affect societies at the same level of development in
functionally significant ways can display idiosyncratic cross-cultural variation
and that at least some features that significantly reduce the competitive ability
of specific early civilizations can persist for long periods (Hall 1986: 27-110;
Hallpike 1986: 288-371). This requires rethinking the range of strategies that
characterize cultural, ethnic, and political interaction.
Towards a Unified Theoretical Framework
The aspects of early civilizations examined above illustrate how systematic
comparative analysis can be used to evaluate archaeological theory as a basis
for trying to construct larger and more comprehensive theoretical frameworks.
Comparative studies offer an empirically-based strategy for systematically
assessing the appropriateness of specific types of explanations, the utility of
which in the past has tended to be determined on the basis of limited case
studies or ad hoc explanations supported by anecdotal evidence.
My research empirically supports rejection of claims that either a purely
ecological or a purely cultural approach can account for most of human
behavior or the archaeological record. Human behavior is both cognitively
mediated and the means by which human groups and individuals adapt to
the material world. Some aspects of human behavior must be accounted for
contingently, while other aspects are susceptible to more general explanations.
Contingent aspects often tend to be framed by more general ones; for example,
idiosyncratic art styles presuppose a pan-human capacity to produce art. Yet,
even when combined, processual and postprocessual approaches do not suffice
to explain all archaeological data.
Over millions of years, humans have evolved capacities for complex forms
of cognition and symbolically-mediated analysis, as well as hormonally-based
drives and various organic needs that constitute an internal environment to
which individuals must adapt both behaviorally and conceptually. Human
beings must cope with constraints imposed not only by their natural and

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

23

social environments but also by their own bodies and minds. For example, the
hierarchical behavior that was pervasive in all the early civilizations I examined
went far beyond what was functionally required to process information and for
authorities to enforce the decisions that were needed to administer complex
societies. This behavior may reflect competitive tendencies that are common
to all higher primates (Conroy 1990). While overtly hierarchical behavior was
largely suppressed by gossip, ridicule, and fear of witchcraft in small-scale
hunter-gatherer societies, where generalized reciprocity made ecological sense,
these cultural mechanisms for controlling a natural tendency ceased to be
effective as societies grew larger and more complex (Lee 1990; Trigger 1990).
No substitute has ever been evolved that effectively curbs such behavior in
larger societies (Trigger 2003c).
Finally, individual human beings and groups rarely, if ever, act on the basis of
perfect knowledge and hence cannot foresee many of the consequences of their
behavior. These outcomes are influenced not only by environmental factors but
by functional constraints and selective processes, including natural selection,
of which human beings rarely are aware. Yet archaeologists must strive to
understand such processes in order to account for the forces that have shaped
the archaeological record.
While parsimony is often stated to be a desirable goal when constructing
scientific theories, theoretical economy is self-defeating if it distorts or ignores
the complexity of what is being explained. If archaeologists are to construct
a comprehensive theoretical framework, they must take account of the crosscultural regularities and idiosyncracies that relate not only to the ecological
and sociopolitical spheres but also to belief systems. A general explanatory
framework that applies to the archaeological record must also address the
biological proclivities of human beings, the emergent properties of cultural
systems, what is needed to survive in a world that exists independently of
human volition, and the complex ways in which all these factors interact. This
clearly constitutes an emergentist, rather than a reductionist, view of social
science explanation.
Cooperating to construct a comprehensive theory of human behavior
that relates to the archaeological record may result in a common theoretical
framework within which archaeologists can recognize, negotiate, and attempt
to resolve their theoretical disagreements. While it is highly unlikely that such
an endeavor will ever result in unanimous agreement, trying to construct such
a framework ought to provide stronger and more efficacious incentives to
achieve a reasoned reconciliation of divergent viewpoints than does direct

24

BRUCE G. TRIGGER

theoretical confrontation. Hence these two approaches, the confrontational and

the systems-building, would complement one another. Even partial success in
creating a broadly-accepted corpus of theory would facilitate more informed
selection of frames of reference to guide research on specific problems
(Binford 2001). It would also reduce the need for archaeologists to renegotiate
positions as if nothing had previously been accomplished. They could stop
reinventing the wheel.
Assessing the relative value of different propositions and articulating them as
parts of a larger theoretical structure is not something that can be accomplished
by logic or by seeking consensus. It must be done empirically, by determining
how well specific theoretical propositions correspond with archaeological
evidence. Constructing a general theoretical framework requires paying
attention not only to ecological and cultural approaches but also to the findings
of biological anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience (Boyd and Richerson
1985; Butterworth 1999; Cowgill 1993; Dennett 2003; Donald 1991; Gazzaniga
1992, 1998; Low 2000; Mithen 1996; Pinker 2002; Renfrew and Scarre 1998).
More specifically, it requires ascertaining in what contexts particular sorts of
explanations are useful and integrating these approaches. Archaeologists must
strive to establish under what conditions and to what extent learned behavior
is likely to predominate over individual innovation and how innovations do
or do not become established in society. What combinations of factors are
functionally likely, possible, or impossible? Under what circumstances does
natural selection favor certain behavioral traits or types of sociocultural
systems over others and what effect does that have on general patterns of
cultural development? What sorts of behavior reflect drives or thought patterns
that are innate to humans and to what extent can such drives and patterns be
manipulated by cultural and social factors? To what extent must long-term
processes be understood separately from short-term ones, as historians such
as Braudel (1972) suggest, or are such trajectories, as evolutionary biologists
believe, outcomes of the same processes that produce short-term change? While
these are examples of the general types of problems that must be investigated,
significant progress can only be made by formulating such problems in ways
that permit their efficacy to be tested against specific bodies of evidence.
Acknowledging the complex networks of factors that influence human
behavior has important implications for conducting archaeological research.
The positivist approach, combined with assumptions of sharply-focused
causality and high-levels of cross-cultural uniformity, encouraged processual
archaeologists to investigate isolated problems out of context. Data were used

ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY: THE BIG PICTURE

25

to test specific theoretical propositions in the belief that, as with laboratory

experiments, each test contributes to establishing the validity of a particular
generalization. Once archaeologists acknowledge the complexity of factors
that shape specific aspects of human behavior, they must also accept that
a more accurate and informed understanding of how each individual factor
shapes behavior cross-culturally requires understanding how it interacts with
other factors in numerous specific instances. A detailed understanding of the
archaeology of a region, culture, or cultural tradition permits archaeologists
to evaluate contextually the various explanations that have been proposed to
account for specific aspects of the archaeological record. Absolute uniformity
of burials in an archaeological site cannot be interpreted as signifying an
egalitarian social order if it is accompanied by vast disparities in the size and
quality of dwellings (Parker Pearson 1999).
The intensive, contextualized study by archaeologists of a single people,
culture, or cultural tradition using as many different sets of data as possible not
only results in an enriched understanding of that group but also provides the
basis for more informed comparative research and theoretical generalizations
(Chapman 2003). Generalizations about major processes, such as the
development of complex societies, must be based on the detailed understanding
of all available specific instances of such development. In retrospect, Julian
Stewards Cultural Causality and Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development
of Early Civilizations (1949), which examined only in a cursory fashion even
the limited data that were available at the time, epitomizes not only the promise
but also some of the worst pitfalls of general theory construction.
Instead of being antithetical, idiographic (or historical) and generalizing
approaches constitute complementary modes for understanding human
behavior. While comparative studies are necessary for theory building, sound
studies of this sort must be based on well-understood case studies. Hence the
long-term, intensive research on particular cultures, peoples, or regions that
most archaeologists enjoy carrying out provides the most valuable data for
understanding the forces that have shaped the archaeological record.