The codification of archaeology as a distinct field of study apart from history was established in Europe by the nineteenth century. Likewise, the discipline of anthropology - broadly construed as the study of humanity - can be traced to the post-Enlightenment period and the colonial encounters of Europeans with peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. But blending the broad theoretical issues of anthropology with the archaeological study of specific material remains of the past took place in the Americas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout most of the Americas, archaeology is classified as one of four subfields of anthropology (along with sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, and biological/ physical anthropology). Likewise, within American universities archaeology generally is taught as part of the curriculum of a department of anthropology.
Archaeology as practiced in Europe and many other parts of the globe has a less anthropological and a more historical bent. This proclivity is particularly apparent in classical and biblical archaeology where historical texts can play a large role in determining the location of archaeological research and often lead the interpretation of excavated materials. Even prehistoric archaeology (the investigation of material remains from the time before written texts) within Europe often is viewed as a tool with which to investigate the deep history of historically known cultural groups. The goals of this type of archaeology, therefore, tend to be historical and somewhat particularistic.
In contradistinction, anthropological archaeology tends to focus on broad themes - such as social identity or the domestication of plants and animals - which are investigated with archaeological information from one or more parts of the world. Cross-cultural comparisons are encouraged within anthropological archaeology and are not thought to violate the historical uniqueness or singularity of a ‘culture’. Here, ‘culture’ is used to refer to a constellation of material remains across space and through time for which there is an observable redundancy in stylistic and technological characteristics that, by convention, allow archaeologists to refer to such a bundle of material things as a culture.
An argument can be made that anthropological archaeology arose in the Americas because early scholars pursuing archaeological research in this part of the world largely were of European ancestry with insufficient appreciation for the deep history of indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere. Indeed, many American archaeologists/physical anthropologists of the early twentieth century - such as Ales
Hrdlicka - spent their entire career disputing evidence that indigenous peoples had a presence in the Americas for more than a few thousand years. During the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century, the monumental structures that had been built in the Americas before sixteenth century European incursions - the soaring pyramids of the Maya region or the massive platform mounds of the Mississippi Valley - were routinely credited to shipwrecked Egyptians or some other circum-Mediterranean classical culture. Cultural evolutionists of the Victorian era were of the opinion that civilization had arisen only in Europe and the classical world and so reasoned that evidence of colossal pyramids or elaborate palaces in the Americas must have been the result of ancient migrations from areas of acknowledged civilizations. Of course, we now know that the peopling of the Americas was well underway by the close of the last Ice Age (the Pleistocene, generally thought to have ended about 12 000 years ago) and that, over the course of the deep history of the western hemisphere, plants and animals were domesticated and civilizations merged and were eclipsed in a manner that was independent of events that took place in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Nevertheless, the earlier, erroneous notion of a shallow time depth to the first peopling of the Americas favored the investigation via archaeological techniques of broad comparative topics over the construction of deep and chronologically controlled local prehistories, such as were under construction in other parts of the world.
Although anthropological archaeology germinated in the milieu of Colonial Period bigotry and racism, it soon outgrew its questionable origins. As knowledge of the temporally deep occupation of the Americas grew through the first half of the twentieth century, anthropological archaeologists began to refer to their study of the past as culture history and some employed an approach called the ‘direct historical approach’ to link ethnographically known groups - such as Southwestern USA Pueblo peoples - with earlier Pueblo ruins such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. In this way, archaeology in the western hemisphere came to be anthropological because of its use of ethnography as a starting point of inquiry. At the same time, this research was decidedly historical in focus, more particularistic in its goals, and employed and further refined many archaeological techniques, such as pottery seriation, that had been pioneered by European archaeologists.
The flowering of a distinctly American anthropological archaeology that privileged broad research issues over historical sequences and embraced the scientific method began in the late 1950s and continued through the 1970s. This brand of anthropological archaeology - often called processual or new archaeology - reengaged with the broad themes of cultural evolution but rejected the prejudicial, unilineal schemes of earlier evolutionists. Asking ‘why’ societies had changed, anthropological archaeologists of this era investigated remains of the past in order to test theories regarding mobility and settlement patterns as well as major social transformations such as the advent of sedentism, plant and animal domestication, social ranking within societies, civilization, and urbanism (see Processual Archaeology). Realizing that archaeological sites were a skewed sample of what had once existed, archaeologists concerned themselves with issues of sampling, designed their studies so as to minimize bias, and elevated archaeological surface survey to a recognized stage of field research. During this era, the emphasis on theorybuilding and quantitative techniques lent a tone of abstraction to archaeological interpretations. Moreover, in the search for explanatory theory priority was accorded to environmental and technological factors - the forces of production as per Marx - while ideology and religious beliefs (in Marxian fashion) were considered epiphenomenal and not central to social change (see Marxist Archaeology). Through the 1960s and the 1970s, social change within the USA - the rise of feminism as well as black and red power movements - began to infiltrate anthropological archaeology and had an impact on both contemporary practice and interpretations of the past.
World History
