Summary
This book was written in the late 1970s following the events of the 1960s – 1970s in the archaeology of England and America. Being in communication and debate with the leaders of the New Archaeology (NA) the author had his own views, friendly and critical, on the development of this strong and interesting trend, and analyzed its theoretical positions. Yet because of the prevailing conditions in the USSR it was impossible to publish the book (how can there be a revolution in archaeology in a bourgeois country!). Then the author was arrested and put into a hard-labour camp, and the manuscript was lost. Later, new developments occurred in archaeology, and when the MS was found, the book seemed to be no longer topical. However, the author used to give it to his students to read, and it helped them to understand the theories of contemporary archaeology. Recently these young people persuaded him to put the MS on the internet (at least as a monument to the history of the discipline.
During preparation, the text has been observed by a guest, a Publisher from Donets University (Ukraine). He liked the MS and became enthusiastic about publishing it. The reasons are these: by critically analyzing the positions of the NA, the author, firstly, acquaints the Russian archaeological community objectively and in detail with this important part of Western archaeology. Secondly, and more important, he incidentally presents his comprehensive elaborations of all the theoretical questions put by the NA: the functions of theory in archaeology, the place of laws, fact and explanation, models, interrelations of history and evolution, the systemic approach, axiomatization and analytical machine, culture and type, ethnographic analogies and parallels, the polythetic principle allowing one to discern classification and typology, etc. These are original elaborations based on traditions of domestic scholarship. The author combines them with the experience of the NA, but the result differs strongly from the propositions of the NA. The result appears a detailed reference-book in all those questions that still trouble archaeologists today, and it is no surprise that young Petersburg archaeologists still actively use this MS as a text-book.
For western archaeologists, the author’s critical elaborations and polemics were always interesting, as leaders of NA such as Lewis Binford, David Clarke, and Colin Renfrew expressed more than once, and as was noted by such a competent observer as Bruce Trigger. The author was flattered by the fact that Colin Renfrew reckoned him to the “few European archaeologists who could respond to the intellectual challenge of the Americans”. The former “new archaeologists” themselves have turned now to new guiding principles, and the author’s critical but friendly criticism of their former positions is now much more understandable and acceptable to them than previously.
The book consists of four parts. In the first, a general characteristic of the NA is given, in the second its main theoretical problems are considered; the third describes separately its three directions, and in the fourth the author exposes its historical roots and estimates its significance.
In these four parts there are 12 chapters, three in each. In Part I, the first chapter is devoted to the problem of distinguishing the New Archaeology, various definitions of it are analyzed, both friendly (i.e. “progressive archaeology”, “vanguard” and the like), and sceptical or hostile (with nicknames like New Alchemy, Neoscholasticism etc.). The second chapter looks into the idea content of NA – its philosophy and content (different varieties of Neopositivism and Postpositivism). In this chapter the theoretical system of the NA is also described, as well as its methods and techniques. The third chapter considers the outer parameters of the NA – its scholarly output (the most important collective volumes, monographs and articles), lists its main proponents, and describes the resistance met from traditional archaeologists.
Of the three chapters in Part II, one (ch. 4) is devoted to the history and application of the Systems Approach. From the author’s point of view, the Systems Approach in its strict sense is not applicable to archaeology because archaeological culture builds neither an organic nor a dynamic system. The next chapter deals with models. The term “model” is overused by NA where it stands for various concepts (scheme, example, pattern, type, structure etc.), but there are some proper models and in this usage they are effective. One should only apply them exactly and narrowly defined. In exactly the same way, one should be selective in the application of ethnographic analogies (the limitations of which are discussed). In chapter 6 the general concept of culture is considered as applied to archaeology, along with the concept of cultural norms, in the criticism of which the NA was not altogether successful.
The chapters of Part III are devoted to the three main directions of NA, the different kinds of NA, and in each of these chapters the problem most typical for the given direction is analyzed. For the Hempelian wing of the NA (named after the philosopher Hempel) this is the problem of explanation. In their opinion to explain is to put a phenomenon under a general law (covering law). Law absent, no explanation. Meanwhile not all variability of phenomena in the world is covered by laws, much is determined by probabilistic laws, much else is fortuitous (owed to chance). It is evident that an archaeologist can explain things using other means.
The analytical direction is built on a naïve conviction that everything can be reduced to exact rules, and if you know them, you possess an “analytical machine” with the help of which you can reconstruct unambiguously the lost parts of the entire whole from the safe and mixed particles (to reconstruct the past). In actual fact these rules are limited, and you can reconstruct only general lines, and at a certain probability. The third direction of the NA exploits the regulative theory of feedbacks and multiplier effect and ignores the source of the growth.
The chapters of Part IV brings together the history of the NA with traditional Marxist analysis. In the first of these chapters (ch. 10) the social and economic roots of the NA are revealed (in the production development of the SW of the U.S.A.) as well as its political basis (in the youth and Negro movements of the “troubled decade” in the 1950s and 1960s). The next chapter elucidates the conceptual sources of the NA in archaeology itself – the predecessors of the NA are considered (“taxonomist” and “conjunctive” directions). In the last chapter the author asks how far the emergence of the NA can be considered a revolution in archaeology, and to what extent the revision suggested by it is fundamental. Here also the more general question of the criteria of scientific (or scholarly) revolutions is asked.
In the conclusion the striking parallels of NA with early Soviet archaeology (of the 1930s) are noted.
There is a foreword by the author in which he tells how the book was created and explains why it is being published now. At the end of the book there are two afterwords from archaeologists of two different generations: one from Ya. A. Sher (well-known theoretician and the author’s contemporary), the other from S. A. Vasilyev (Palaeolithic specialist, from the following generation). Both believe the book is in general still topical. This may be because post-processualism is over-humanized and has now exhausted its potential, and the archaeological community is again seeking a sound basis for scientific work.
