In search of the truly critical

Post–processual archaeology is an amorphous phenomenon; it assumes many different shapes and forms, deriving inspiration from fields as diverse as contemporary literary criticism, women's studies, and human geography. As Earle and Preucel (1987) have recently suggested, post–processual archaeology may, in fact, constitute more a radical critique of the long dominant, “new” Anglo–American archaeology of the sixties and seventies than a unified research programme or disciplinary paradigm in its own right simply due to this diversity. It is such a mixed bag that it is difficult to define a common core, a new orthodoxy that has already replaced or, at least, is trying to dislodge the positivist, systemic ecological functionalism (or what I prefer to dub “animalism” – as opposed to the overused “vulgar” or the misnamed “cultural materialism”), championed most stridently by L. Binford and his disciples.

Yet if the adjective new had the most positive connotations in American culture and American archaeology in the late sixties, defining a rebellion against all that was old, traditional, and therefore suspect, the adjective critical today seems to be accorded the highest status, possibly uniting the diverse strands of post–processual archaeology into a single critically self–conscious, reflexive enterprise.