New Archaeology

From the Publisher	3
Foreword of 2009	5
Introduction	11
1. Purpose of the study	11
2. Urgency of the task	11
3. Problems and methodological aims	12
4. Favorable circumstances	16
Part I. General characteristic of the new archaeology Ch. 1. Separation of the New Archaeology	17
1. The term “New Archaeology” and the chronological border	17
2. Criteria of the separation and the images	20
2.1. “Modern Archaeology” (“progressive”, “vanguard”)	20
2.2. “The Emperor’s new clothes”	22
2.3. “Scientific Archaeology”	26
2.4. “New Alchemy”	28
2.5. “Binfordianism”	30
2.6. “Neoscholasticism”, “New Dogmatism”	32
2.7. “Youth Community”	34
2.8. “Binford’s Mafia”	35
2.9. “Novum organon” (“New System”)	36
3. Systemic approach	36
Ch. 2. Concept of the New Archaeology (The New archaeology as a teaching)	39
1. Philosophy of the New Archaeology	39
2. Theoretical system of the New Archaeology	43
3. Operational system of the New Archaeology, its methods and techniques	53
4. Three directions:	60
4.1. Hempelian	60
4.2. Analytical	62
4.3. Serutan	66
Ch. 3. Outer parameters of the New Archaeology (The New Archaeology as a school)	69
1. Scholarly production	69
2. Cadres	73
3. Advance and resistance (the history of the New Archaeology and an outline of the criticism of it)	78
Part II. Leading themes of the New Archaeology Ch. 4. The systemic approach and archaeology	85
1. New Archaeology as Systemic Archaeology	85
2. Escalation of the Systemic approach in the New Archaeology	87
3. Three general approaches	92
4. The concept of a system	94
5. The way to the systemic approach in biology	99
6. The way to the systemic approach in archaeology	101
7. Hearths of culture and sequentions	105
8. The principles of the systemic approach in archaeological modification	108
9. The principles of the systemic approach of an archaeologist	111
Ch. 5. Models in archaeology and the “Ecological paradigm”	121
1. Models in science	121
2. Models in archaeology	123
3. Models in the New Archaeology	127
4. Kinds of models in archaeology	132
5. The problem of “ethnographic parallels”	135
6. Ethnographic parallels: the crisis of the method	136
7. Ethnographic parallels in the New Archaeology	143
8. Ecological Paradigm	147
Ch. 6. Culture as an object of archaeological exploration	155
1. Culture and archaeology	155
2. The main ideas of culture (a short survey)	159
3. Ideas of culture in the post-war American archaeology	167
4. Processualism against “normativism”	170
5. The definition of culture from Marxist positions: a problem	175
6. Culture in the first approximation	179
7. The positive characterization of culture	182
8. Material culture and spiritual culture	187
Part III. Three directions of the New Archaeology in their main themes Ch. 7. Explanation in archaeology	193
1. Explanation in archaeology – the hobby of the Hempelian wing	193
2. Polemics concerning the explanation	200
3. Explanation in archaeology and the limits of determinism	204
4. Explanative hypothesis and the reliable knowledge	212
5. Archaeological explanation	215
Ch. 8. Analytical archaeology without the noise	219
1. Analytical methods before the New Archaeology and in the frame of it	219
2. Analytical machine	221
3. Reductionism and cultural systems	224
4. Polythetic principle and its philosophical base	227
5. Polythetic principle and its practical realization	229
6. On the language of cybernetics	234
7. “Information” and “noise”	237
8. Inner contradictions	241
Ch. 9. The source of culture development	243
1. The touchstone of the New Archaeology	243
2. The causes of cultural transformations	246
3. Criticism of the regulative theory	252
a) Explanatory possibilities	252
b) Multiplier effect and its source	252
c) Positive feedback and growth	254
d) Positive feedback and regularity	256
4. Cultures and their connections	259
5. Process and history	263
6. Machinery in work	264
Part iv. Historical roots and the meaning of the New Archaeology Ch. 10. Social and economic foundation and the political basis of the New Archaeology	270
1. Self-consciousness	270
2. Economic basis	272
3. Platonic love?	274
4. The question of stimuli	275
5. Troubled decade	278
6. Gained topicality	279
7. Interests of administration	282
Ch. 11. The background of the New Archaeology in archaeology	284
1. The forerunners in the U.S.A.: “taxonomists” and “conjunctivists”	284
2. The pedigree of the New Archaeology	289
Ch. 12. Revolution in archaeology?	294
1. Fundamental revision	294
2. New Archaeology: the problem of its revolutionary character	297
3. Debates on disciplinary development	299
4. New Archaeology and the New Wave	310
5. Criteria of scientific revolution	312
Conclusion	318
1. New Archaeology and Soviet archaeology	318
2. Perspectives of the New Archaeology	324
Bibliography	327
Summary	357
Vasilyev S. A. On Klejn’s New Archaeology	360
Sher Ya. A. New Archaeology and Klejn’s “New Archaeology”	364
Klejn L. S. Comment on Ya. A. Sher’s Afterword	372
Name index	374
Subject index	383

CONTENTS