Structuralism: one critique of

Enlightenment project
Individual: influenced and composed by its
society, under power of irrational
subconscious
History: events are less important than longterm factors. No causation, adaptation.
Civilization: no notion of progress
Language: Meaning in language is arbitrarily
assigned by individual cultures

Post-structuralism
Individual subject is a construct, not a
unity. Culture specific notions of
subject
Histories are decentered and
emphasized difference. Geneaologies.
Language: A web of signifiers, a system
with no center of meaning

Post-processual critiques of New Archaeology

archaeology is cultural history or it is nothing
Ian Morris

Focus on universal and repeatable limits the

description of unique aspects of history
Focus on natural and environmental factors,
cultural processes, obscures human agency
Describes long-term developments better than
one-time events
Scientific method assumes repeatability of
investigation impossible for excavations
Scientism breeds false objectivity that fails to
account for locatedness of observer

Interpretive archaeology
Historical and geographic contextualization
Locatedness of the observer
Attenuation of subject-object dichotomy by
recognizing artefacts as products of human
agency
Recognition of contingent quality of data as
constructs produced by the academy