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Archaeological Theory:
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief—
Marxist and Critical Approaches

From Big Men to Big Ideas

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How do archaeologists deal with the

political, social, and economic aspects of past societies—
especially the differences between members the same society?

How do we track these ephemeral dimensions of people’s lives?

How is our understanding of these social and economic systems

shaped by ethnographic data?

What do we do with this knowledge?

Social, Political, and Economic Organization:

A Primer

Netsilik Family, Canadian Arctic

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Social Organization

— concerns the mechanisms and institutions by which people

interact with each other to stabilize family and group relations:

kinship and lineages

organizations and societies
social classes

Political Organization

— concerns the processes and institutions by which decisions are

made:

egalitarian societies
ranked societies
stratified societies

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Economic Organization

— concerns the mechanisms and institutions by which resources are

obtained and distributed:

reciprocity
redistribution
market economy

Elman Services’
Four Primary Types
of Human Societies

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Hunter-Gatherers

• <100 in overall group size

• no permanent settlements
• egalitarian
•…

Characteristics of “Typical” Hunter-Gatherers

• subsistence based on hunted and gathered foods

• division of labor: men hunt and women gather
• small group size (10-30; several extended families)
• relatively high mobility
• non-permanent seasonal camps
• few personal possessions
• low birth rate; low population
• low population density
• egalitarian: no real leaders of positions of power
• band level of cultural system
• strong kinship networks basis of law and order
• hunter-gatherers tend to work only 2-3 days a week

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Political, Social, and Economic Organization

Positions of Power and Authority

Tribes

• up to 1,000 in overall
group size
• permanent settlements
• ranked
•…

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Big Men
— the most influential man in a tribe. Power is achieved through recognition
(by skill, wisdom, or material possessions) and not inherited. He lacks coercive
authority and his position is informal and unstable. A Big Man “gives away the
fat, and keeps the bones.”

Ongka’s Big Moka (Kawelka of New Guinea)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D8o0mHSKMk

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Ongka’s Big Moka Preview

vs. Chiefs
— power is inherited or earned; position is relatively permanent. Major
responsibilities include redistribution of resources. In preparing for a feast,
a Big Man will contribute more than anyone else, the Chief often less than
anyone else.

Maori Chief Patarngukai Chief, Dayak Tribe, Borneo, Indonesia Zulu Chief, South Africa

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Types of Status

Achieved Status
— recognition earned during one’s lifetime

Ascribed Status
— recognition that one is born with/into

Chiefdoms

• 5,000 – 20,000+
• hierarchical polities
• organized religion
•…

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States
— power is centralized

• > 20,000
• urban centers
• centralized government
• taxation
•…

Seeking Status through Mortuary Analysis

Archaeologists make the assumption that people who were

treated differently in death were treated differently in life.

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Seeking Status in Mississippian Societies

Cahokia

Life and Death at

Moundville, Alabama

AD 1000-1500s

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Life and Death at

Moundville, Alabama

Life and Death at

Moundville, Alabama

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Moundville,
Phase III
AD 1400–1550

Grave Goods

Other Items

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Grave Goods

Copper-covered ear spools

Grave Goods

Exotic Trade Goods

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Grave Goods

Copper Axes

Grave Goods

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Look at these again

Do they reveal anything about social and political structure

at Moundville

High Status Indicators

at Moundville

Other Items

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High Status Indicators

at Moundville

Copper-covered ear spools

High Status Indicators

at Moundville

Exotic Trade Goods

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High Status Indicators

at Moundville

Copper Axes

The Moundville Elite

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Moundville Social Status

Moundville Social Status

How has the structure of

Moundville society
been identified?

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What are some of the consequences

of Moundville sociopolitical structure?

How should we approach it:

– as class-based society?
– as “haves and have nots”?

Questions?

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Time to Get Marxist

Archaeological Power and Prestige

meet the Marx Brothers

Chico Groucho Harpo Karl

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Who are the Marx Brothers?

In Duck Soup (1939), in the mythical country of Freedonia….

Groucho (glasses, moustache) is the prime minister;

Harpo (and later Chico),, who are spies, break into his palace, each
disguised as him, to steal the war plans.

The action begins when the disguised Harpo runs into and breaks the
large mirror, and then pretends to be the mirror image when he
confronts the prime minister.

But Groucho is not quite convinced it is his mirror image....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKTT-sy0aLg

Who are the Marx Brothers?

from Duck Soup (1933)

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Why Karl Set off on His Own

HEY GUYS! CAN’T YOU
EVER BE SERIOUS
ABOUT ANYTHING?

Marxism offers . . .

– A way to know the world

– A critique of the world

– A means to change the world

– A challenge to the political

neutrality of archaeology

“Marx, Childe, and Trigger,” 2006

(1818–1883)

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Marxist Archaeology:
Key Elements
• Evolutionary – seeks to understand processes of change in human history through
broad general principles.
• Materialist – starts with concrete realities of human existence emphasizing production
of the necessities of life (and contradictions between ideal (norms)/real behavior).
• Holistic – provides a clear view of the workings of society as a whole.
• Marx constructed a typology of different forms of social formations that correspond
to different modes of production, e.g., primitive communism, ancient (Greece and
Rome), Asiatic, Feudal.
• He anticipated a future stage of cultural evolution in which monogamy, private
property, and the state would be replaced by a communistic mode.
• Change within a society comes mainly from the contradictions (the dialectic) arising
between the forces of production and relations of production.
• Belief system is influenced by, and is in fact the product, of material conditions of
existence; i.e., the economic base.
Standout point: marxism cannot divorce intellectual thought from political action.

Marx 101: Dialectics

• A dialectic views society as a whole within which any given entity is
defined by its relationship to other entities;
• Each social entity exists because of the existence of its opposite:
upper class lower class
students teachers
slaves owners
humans as natural beings as social beings
traditional knowledge Western knowledge
the “haves” the “have-nots”
processual archaeology postprocessual archaeology
• Each element also contains contradictions and conflicts and the germ
of its ultimate demise because they are defined by and require the
existence of their opposite.
• When change occurs, the old social form is remade, not replaced.
(R. McGuire, “Marx, Childe, and Trigger,” 2006)

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Marx 101: Dialectics

“Thus slavery defines both the master and the slave. For one to exist so
too must the other, yet they are opposites and as such potentially in
conflict. Each has contrary interests and a different lived experience in
the context of a shared history.”
Randall McGuire, “Marxism,” 2005

Bonus Track: Marx 101: Dialectics for KidsBon

http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/

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Marx 101: Dialectics

http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/whatheck.htm

Marx 101: Key Concepts

Mode of production
- hunting/gathering, horticulture, pastoralism, agriculture

Means of production
- the tools, materials, and knowledge of production

Relations of production
- social interactions relating to production, exchange, and distribution of goods

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Marx 101: Key Concepts

The Bourgeoisie
— defined by their monopolization of the means of production
and subsistence (e.g., factory owners)

The Proletariat
— defined by their lack of access to the means of production
(e.g., factory workers).

Deconstructing Marx’s Life

1976

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Deconstructing Marx’s Life

2000

Tylor and Morgan’s Unilinear Evolution

Civilization

Tylor Barbarism

Savagery
Morgan

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Tylor and Morgan’s Unilinear Evolution

Tylor

Frederick Engls Karl Marx

Morgan

Historical Materialism

A Marxist political economy focuses on

the historical reality of lived conditions
and on how these conditions produce —
and are products of — social action.

Marx

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Cultural Materialism

Cultural Ecology
Steward

Cultural Evolution
White

Historical Materialism
Marx

Cultural Materialism
A scientific research strategy that
prioritizes material, behavior and etic
processes in the explanation of the
evolution of human sociocultural systems.

Marvin Harris

1968/2001

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1979 1982

The !Kung Song

Music by Stephen Foster

Words by Marc Zeitschik,
with apologies to Richard Lee

Oh, the
!Kung San ladies gather all day— at Du-da, Du-da,
Gather mongongos where they lay— oh, the Du-da San.
Eat the nuts all night,
Roast the nuts all day,
Plenty of protein and calories too,
Quite tasty, so they say.

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The !Kung Song

Mongongos make me jump and shout— at Du-da, Du-da,

Specially when the elephants shit them out— oh, the Du-da San.
My, the fruit is fine,
But, the nut is best,
We'll gather a few kilos in our kaross,
Then go home and rest.

!Kung San hunters stalk all day— near Du-da, Du-da,

Find their kudus where they may — oh, the Du-da San.
Everyone loves meat,
Say it can't be beat,
But hunters miss so much of the time,
It never ceases to be a treat.

The !Kung Song

!Kung San birth-rate low, low, low— at Du-da, Du-da,

Long birth spacing makes it so— oh, the Du-da San.
Feed them on demand,
Just as long as you can,
Vigorous lactation makes the hormones flow,
That's the secret of the San.

Eco-Marxism explains it all best— at Du-da, Du-da,

Richard Lee's way ahead of the rest— oh, the Du-da San.
Weigh them every season,
Never mind the reason,
Gifts of tobacco and a fatty roast cow,
Anthropologists know what's pleasing.

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The !Kung Song

!Kung San people changing fast— at Du-da, Du-da,

Study them soon they may not last— oh, the Du-da San.
Yes, they're settling in,
Forgetting about their kin,
Penny capitalism and all-night drunks,
A war they just can't win.

!Kung San foragers were such a treat— at Du-da, Du-da,

A hunter-gatherer culture, so perfectly neat— oh, the Du-da San.
Bushfolk rarely fought,
Bushfolk loved to play,
Happy, healthy, and well-fed too,
It's a wonder they'd want to stray.

Deconstructing Marx’s Influence

Tom Patterson

2003

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Marx’s View of the

Totality of Natural History and Social History =

“… [a] multileveled, historically and developmentally contingent and

dialectically structured unity that exists in and through the diverse
connections, interpenetrations, and contradictions that shape the
interactions of the parts with one another, as well as with the totality
itself. It is structured by processes and relations that are not always
apparent on the surface, the constituent parts are not identical with each
other or with their relations to the whole, the parts do not exist prior to
the totality but rather acquire their characteristic properties in the
interactions that constitute the unity, the totality is in continual flux
through the parts and levels may be changing at different rates, the
transformations may destroy the conditions that brought the totality into
existence, and they may create possibilities for new structures that have
not existed previously.
Thomas Patterson on Marx
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014

Deconstructing Marx’s Influence

“Marx was indeed an anthropologist. His

anthropology was empirically grounded in the
changing realities of everyday life in his own
society broadly conceived and in accounts of
other societies—initially past societies in the
West and increasingly contemporary societies
in other parts of the world…. His
anthropology was also rooted in a life-time
exploration and elaboration of the
ontological categories— the essential or core
features—that characterize and structure
human existence. These observations
buttressed his critical analyses of both the
contradictions of modern society and the
possibilities and contingencies of alternative
pathways of social change in the immediate
future. Marx’s anthropology was thus
2009 cautiously optimistic.”

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Marx’s Influence

1983

Putting Marx’s into Practice

Randy McGuire

1992

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Putting Marx’s into Practice

Bob Paynter

Symposium on Marxism and

Archaeology
edited by Dean J. Saitta
Rethinking Marxism 17(3), 2005

“Probing Praxis in Archaeology: The Last Eighty Years”

– Randall H. McGuire , Maria O'Donovan & Louann Wurst

“The Turn to Agency: Neoliberalism, Individuality, and Subjectivity in Late-

Twentieth-Century Anglophone Archaeology”
– Thomas C. Patterson

“Marxism, Tribal Society, and the Dual Nature of Archaeology”

– Dean J. Saitta

“Contesting Culture Histories in Archaeology and Their Engagement with Marx”

– Robert Paynter

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Deconstructing Marx’s Influence

Archaeologists influenced by/working within a Marxist orientation:

- Gordon Childe
- Louann Wurst
- Tom Patterson
- Antonio Gilman
- Philip Kohl
- Mark Leone
- Barbara Bender
- Rancy McGuire
- Michael Parker-Pearson
- Paul Shackel
- Robert Chapman
- Robert Paynter
- Dean Saitta
- Russell Handsman
- GN

- and others

Deconstructing Marx’s Influence

Archaeologists influenced by/working within a Marxist orientation:

- Gordon Childe
- Louann Wurst
- Tom Patterson
- Antonio Gilman
- Philip Kohl
- Mark Leone
- Barbara Bender
- Randy McGuire
- Michael Parker-Pearson
- Paul Shackel (student of Leone)
- Robert Chapman (student of D.L. Clarke)
- Robert Paynter (faculty, UMass-Amherst)
- Dean Saitta (fellow grad student, UMass-Amherst)
- Russell Handsman (student of Mark Leone; co-directed Robbins Swamp Project)
- GN

- and others

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A Marxist Archaeology (ist)

“Theoretical debate (in archaeology) has
focused on fundamental questions between
science and humanism, evolution and history,
materialism and mentalism, and determinism
and relativism. In an overly simplistic way, this
debate has often been represented as an
opposition between processual and
postprocessual archaeology. This volume
enters this debate from a position not
Randy McGuire described by these oppositions. It does not
resolve the debate or the oppositions that lie
at the heart of the debate. Rather, it argues
that the font of knowledge lies in the tension
created by the debate and in the ambiguities
implied by the oppositions that drive the
controversy.”
R. McGuire, A Marxist Archaeology

A Marxist Archaeology (ist)

Randy McGuire

“When archaeologists put down their fiddles

to engage the sociopolitics of our practice
2008
they enter into a dynamic, complex, and bewildering
terrain. [This book] reflects my attempts to navigate
this terrain.”

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A Marxist Archaeology (ist)

“A relational approach to the evaluation of
knowledge involves a multifaceted dialectic
between:
1. Coherence: logical and theoretical harmony
of our interpretations;
2. Correspondence: how our theories fit the
interpretations we can make of the real world;
3. Context: the social, political, and cultural
milieu of our interpretations;
4. Consequences: a serious consideration of
what our interpretations serve for the
communities we work with.“
McGuire 2008
This approach contributes to praxis:
theoretically informed action to contribute to a
more humane world.

A Marxist Archaeology (ist)

“The real question facing archaeological

praxis is is not whether archaeological
knowledge should be subjective or objective
but, rather, how scholars can connect the
subjectivities of knowing and the realities of
the world in our construction of
archaeological knowledge.”

McGuire 2008

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Putting Ideas into Action

2014

“Archaeology, Relevance, and Activism”

Workshop, Amerind Foundation

Atalay, McAnay, Clauss

Casteñada, Welch, Norder, Pyburn, McGuire, Nicholas, Ferris, Stottman, Ferguson

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“Archaeology, Relevance, and Activism”

2011 Workshop, Amerind Foundation

Also of interest?

“The discipline is not about an abstract

‘archaeological record’ but about living
individuals and communities, whose lives
and heritage suffer from economic and
social inequalities and from the abuse of
power relationships with corporations,
states, and their agents.”

from McGuire’s Preface

2008

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2008

Legacy of Marxist Thought in Archaeology

Marx has led archaeologists to question:

• political neutrality of archaeological record
- state and religion naturalizes status quo
- ideology naturalizes haves/have nots
• usual dichotomies of subjective/objective.

Some future applications?

• Northwest Coast ranked societies
• Interior B.C./social ranking at Keatley Creek
• Puebloan societies in the Southwest
• Exploring nature of the relationship between
archaeologists and Indigenous peoples.

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Keatley Creek

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde

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The Ludlow Massacre

The Colorado Coal Strike was one of the most violent strikes in United States
History. Although they were ultimately defeated, the coal miners in this strike
held out for 14 months in makeshift tent colonies on the Colorado prairie. The
strike resulted in an estimated 66 deaths and an unknown number of wounded
on April 2oth, 1914. Although the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)
lost the Colorado Strike, it was, and still is, seen as a victory in a broad sense for
the union. The Coal War was a shocking event, one that galvanized public
opinion and eventually came to symbolize the wave of industrial violence that
lead to the "progressive" era reforms in labor relations.

The Ludlow Collective

http://www.du.edu/anthro/ludlow/cfarch.html

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The Ludlow Collective

1) How their daily struggles were linked with broader movements;

2) How historical conditions influenced local processes of class
formation;
3) How the tensions inherent in class structures affected the material and
social fabric of community life.

The Ludlow Collective

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Bonus Track 1:
Re-thinking Puebloan Society from a Marxist Perspective
McGuire, R.H., and D.J. Saitta
1998 “Although They Have Petty Captains, They Obey Them Badly: The Dialectics
of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization.” American Antiquity.

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The Hohokam

The Hohokam

Casa Grande
(Arizona)

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The Hohokam

The Hohokam – Ball Courts

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Re-thinking Puebloan Society from a Marxist Perspective

A comparison of two Hohokam

communities: Grasshopper Pueblo and
Chavez Pass Ruin

Under some circumstances, the Hohokam

sometimes acted in egalitarian ways, but at
other times as a stratified society.

Bonus Track 2:
Wealth, Power, and Prestige at Copan, Honduras

Videostreaming at:
www.learner.org.resources/series45.html

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Intermission

Peter Gabriel— “Sledgehammer”

Prospectus
(due today or ASAP)

Please label electronic submissions by:

Last Name Prospectus

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Writing Skills (1): Abstracts

(No longer required for your paper—but good to know)

From (previous) Term Paper Handout:

Abstract—This is a 100-150 summary of the paper that identifies the
issue addressed, methodology employed, and the results of the study. See
examples in American Antiquity; also useful advice here
(http://research.berkeley.edu/ucday/abstract.html)
• The abstract is not a preview; it does not serve as an introduction to
the paper.
• It is written after the paper is prepared, but intended to be read first.
(Abstracts for conference papers often written in advance)
• A good abstract encapsulates the entire paper, identifying the research
question, type of samples or data examined, methods and analyses, and
results.
• Do not include citations in the abstract.

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Informative of topic,
but not of paper
(why not?)

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Preparing for the Mid-term Exam

1) What to Expect

Preparing for the Mid-term Exam

2) Advice to Consider
Budget your time
Review exam to develop best strategy
- start with small stuff and work up to big point item
- or start with the big stuff while you’re still fresh
If time, review your completed exam as if you were grading it.
Make sure you answer the actual question, not the one you might
anticipate
Get caught up on your reading
Create a study group
Consider this: if you were writing the exam, and could only ask X
questions, what would those questions be? (i.e., focusing on the
important topics/issues/ideas/people)

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Seeking a Critical Archaeology

Past
Society

Class
Ideology

A Materialist View of History

A Marxist political economy focuses on

the historical reality of lived conditions
and
on how these conditions produce
and are products of social action.

Marx

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Critical Archaeology
A critical analysis stems from a Marxist position
and does not deny the possibility of knowing
the other, ethnographic or archaeological.

Rather, the position argues that all knowledge is

class-based and histories are composed for
class purposes.
Mark Leone
Leone, “Symbolic, Structural, and Critical
Archaeology,” 1998

Critical Archaeology
A key question: How is modern ideology
projected into / onto the past?

Ideology: how we think things are supposed to be,

in terms of values, beliefs, and ideals that
provide rationale for political and economic
Mark Leone
decision making, even gender roles.

Ideology becomes “naturalized” — that is,

invisible, taken-for-granted as to how things
are.

A critical archaeology seeks to make it visible.

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One of the New Archaeologsts

1972

Contemporary Archaeology (1972)

Part. 1. The Scope of the Changes in Contemporary Archaeology

1. The revolution in archaeology / Paul S. Martin

2. Issues in anthropological archaeology / Mark P. Leone
3. Old wine and new skins: a contemporary parable / Walter W. Taylor
4. Interpretive trends and linear models in American archaeology /
Raymond H. Thompson
Part. 2 The Origins of Contemporary Change
5. The urban revolution / V. Gordon Childe
6. Conjectures concerning the social organization of the Mogollon Indians /
Paul S. Martin
7. The economic approach to prehistory / Grahame Clark
8. The conceptual structure in Middle American studies / Clyde Kluckhohn
9. Review of James A. Ford's Measurements of some prehistoric design
developments in the southeastern states / Albert C. Spaulding

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Part. 3. The Theoretical Base of Contemporary Archaeology

10. Archaeology as anthropology / Lewis R. Binford
11. Culture history v. cultural process: a debate in american archaeology /
Kent V. Flannery
12. Archaeology as a social science / James F. Deetz
13. Historical and historic sites archaeology as anthropology: basic definitions
and relationships / Robert L. Schuyler
14. Archaeological systematics and the study of culture process /
Lewis R. Binford
Part. 4. The Methodological Base of Contemporary Archaeology
15. Archaeological systems for indirect observation of the past / John M. Fritz
16. A consideration of archaeological research design / Lewis R. Binford
17. A review of techniques for archaeological sampling / Sonia Ragir -

Part. 5. Archaeological Strategy for the Study of Hunter-Gatherers

18. Lithic analysis in Paleoanthropology / Edwn N. Wilmsen
19. The Clovis hunters: an alternative view of their environment and ecology /
Frederick Gorman
20. Archaeological systems theory and early Mesoamerica / Kent. V. Flannery
Part. 6. Archaeological Strategy of the Study of Horticulturists
21. Post-Pleistocene adaptations / Lewis R. Binford
22. The ecology of early food production in Mesopotamia / Kent V. Flannery
23. Carrying capacity and dynamic equilibrium in the prehistoric southwest /
Ezra B.W. Zubrow
24. Explaining variability in prehistoric southwestern water control systems /
Fred T. Plog and Cheryl K. Garrett
25. Changes in the adaptations of southwestern basketmakers: a system
perspective / Michael A. Glassow
26. The Hopewell Interaction Sphere in Riverine-western Great Lakes
culture history / Stuart Struever
27. Archaeology as anthropology: a case study / William A. Longacre
28. A prehistoric community in eastern Arizona / James N. Hill
29. The Olmec were-jaguar motif in the light of ethnographic reality /
Peter T. Furst

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Part. 7. Archaeological Strategy for the Study of Complex Agriculturalists

30. Some hypotheses of the development of early civilizations /
Robert M. Adams
31. Praise the gods and pass the metates: a hypothesis of the development of
lowland rainforest civilizations in Mesoamerica / William L. Rathje
32. State settlements in Tawantinsuyu: a strategy of compulsory urbanism /
Craig Morris
33. Death's head, cherub, urn and willow / James F. Deetz and Edwin S.
Dethlefsen.

Critical (Historical) Archaeology

• Emphasizes the reflexive aspects of culture.

• Builds on Louis Althusser’s observation that “a dominant ideology

creates a false consciousness for all members of society.”

• Critiques the function of “the past” and our knowledge of it.

• Recognizes that (such) knowledge is used for class, nationalistic, and

other purposes to maintain the status quo.

• Reveals how ideology affects people’s lives, but also the interpretation of
those lives as reflected in material culture, historical documents, and/or
the archaeological record.

• Aims to increase social consciousness about our relations with the past
(i.e., archaeological and historical record), and to reveal ways of
confronting different perspectives on/values for the past without
destroying them.

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Critical (Historical) Archaeology

• Investigates relationship between power and ideology that permeates
social systems, as well as the mechanisms that produce, reproduce,
and perpetuate that relationship.

• Leone asks, “why do our taken-for-granted assumptions of the world

permeate every aspect of daily life, and work so effectively to uphold
dominant interests while making true knowledge of class interests
difficult.” (Wurst 2014)

• Goal is to uncover and critique the workings of ideology in modern

capitalist society.

• Need to translate our archaeological (and other) knowledge into

practical applications that solve real problems of social relevance.

Critical (Historical) Archaeology

Leone began with this problem of ideology and wondered why our taken-for-
granted assumptions of the world permeate every aspect of daily life, and work
so effectively to uphold dominant interests while making true knowledge of
class interests difficult. The driving force of Leone’s work was to uncover and
critique the workings of ideology in modern Capitalist society. Once armed
with this knowledge, people could work to overcome it: “ideology serves to
reproduce society intact; knowledge, or consciousness of ideology, may lead to
illumination or emancipation” (Leone et al. 1987: 284). Leone and his students
focused their research on many aspects of everyday life, such as eating utensils,
type face, clocks, town planning, and objects related to personal hygiene, as well
as the way that historical knowledge is presented to people through museum
exhibits. The dominant theme was to demonstrate that our notions of
segmentation, standardization, and individualism were intimately connected to
the dominant ideology and thus capitalism (Leone et al. 1987). Once aware of
how ideology masks the structures of capitalism, people could struggle to
change it.”
Lou Ann Wurst, “Critical Historical Archaeology,”
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014.

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Making Sense of Leone et al.’s

“Making Sense of Critical Archaeology”

Toward a Critical Archaeology

- Leone, Potter, and Shackel

“Critical theory is a varied set of attempts to adapt ideas from Marx to

the understanding of events and circumstances of 20th-century life that
Marx did not know.”
(Leone et al. 1987)

Goals of article:
1) To describe history and nature of critical archaeology
2) To identify why archaeologists need to consider “ideology”
3) To investigate this at historic Annapolis

4) …. Hmmm… Gee, this isn’t as easy to read; … is there really anything

important here?

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Useful Strategies

Historic Annapolis

How in the past did the architecture, landscape and material culture of
the city established and reinforced a Georgian order of individualism,
rationalism, equality and social contract?

• Ceramic Assemblages
• Capitalism
• Conflicts?
• Political competition

• Major separations:
• 18th Century : 19th Century
• White : Blacks
• Historic District : Navel Academy
• Residents : Visitors
• Insiders : Outsiders

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Critical Approaches to hoodoo

within 18th-century Annapolis

http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1155&context=adan

African cultural retention/resistance reflected in material culture.

http://anacostia.si.edu/exhibits/online_academy/Academynf/scholars/scholar_7_frame.htm

Historic Annapolis

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Historic Annapolis

Historic Annapolis

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Archaeology at the Wye House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu-r36M3JUM

Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

William Paca
and his Home
and Gardens

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Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

William Paca
and his Home
and Gardens

Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

William Paca Reflecting the ideals of the Georgian worldview:

• the person as individual;

• the afterlife as a reward to good personal behavior in this one;
• privacy
• segregation of everyday activities;
• segregation of family members
• the garden as a reflection of these values:
structured, balanced, and bilateral

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Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

Paca House Garden

Bonus Track 3:
Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

Leone on the “Illusion of Material Culture”

• When money is the only power base, those governing don’t need to
demonstrate right or power to govern;

• Ostentatious display of wealth becomes important when necessary to

convince the governed that those in power deserve to stay there;

• Such display is important when those in authority do not control the

power structure or economy.

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Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

“Why the illusion?” for William Paca?

• Paca a wealthy individual during a time of contradictions

• Slave owner who argued for the Bill of Rights
• Descended from plantations, linked to merchants, grew up and lived
in economic circumstances when everyone around him was facing
serious political and economic change.

Why build the garden when he did?

• Constructed in 1760s when increasing restrictions on trade and local
office holders reduced his power and profits
• Becoming social and economically isolated from poor farmers and
laborers.

Critical Approaches to
18th-Century Colonial Ideology

Leone’s Interpretation:

• Elaborate gardens such as Paca’s were built to demonstrate knowledge

of, control over, laws of nature;
• By such means, Paca creating the illusion that:
- he still retained power over his own wealth
- he should be granted new, American-based political clout to do so.
Thus, the Paca Garden is not a statement of what existed, but an
expression of material culture attempting to reduce loss of his class’
wealth and prestige.
Such formal gardens were statements designed to stabilize prosperity
and power, and not just serve as a reflection of either.

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Bonus Track 4:
Russell Handsman and Mark Leone:
“Living History and Critical Archaeology in the Reconstruction of the Past”
Their purpose:
• Describe and understand the socio-politics of modern conscious
individuals
• Explore how contemporary ideology of individualism is constituted
within historical and modern America
• Show how that ideology obscures class relations, power, control, and
inequality
• By seeing the individual as both an implicit category and an ideological
process they begin to deconstruct it
- How is this category constituted in contemporary society
- Why is that category so fundamental to everyday life
- What are its socio-political effects
- How is the ideology rationalized, legitimized, or maintained
when these effects are revealed or challenged
In Critical Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology: Essays in the Philosophy, History and Socio-
Politics of Archaeology, edited by V. Pinsky and A. Wylie, pp. 14-17.

A Critical Approach to American History

Handsman and Leone use critical theory to illustrate how, in

such conventional and vernacular use, George Washington
(and Yankee clocks) are usually misunderstood.

Goals:
• To describe and understand the socio-politics of the
modern conscious individual
• To explore how the contemporary ideology of
individualism is constituted within both historical and
modern America; and
• To show how ideology systematically obscures class
relations of power, control and inequality

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Handsman and Leone ask

1) To what degree do the people in modern society,

and any mode of inquiry sustained by them, create
the past in their own image? That is, how is
modern ideology projected into the past and how
does the projection reproduce present society’s
relations of domination

2) What does critical knowledge of these socio-

political processes tell us about archaeologists and
how their work could be done?

A Critical Archaeology of George Washington (and ourselves)

An exhibit on George Washington was presented at the National

Museum of American History in Washington, DC in 1982
The exhibit is arranged in phases revolving around the life of George
Washington
The initial phases of the exhibit show how differently George
Washington was regarded from era to era in American History
The subject of the last phase was the discovery of a more nearly “true”
George Washington

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A Critical Archaeology of George Washington (and ourselves)

Handsman and Leone ask:

1. What happens when visitors explore an historically-validated
exhibit that intends to reveal the innermost thoughts and
feelings of a well-known historical figure
2. What are the hidden socio-politics of an approach that
promises to reveal the more human and emotional sides of great
people?

A Critical Archaeology of George Washington (and ourselves)

Two distinct yet complementary aspects of the single, now-

dominant ideology of individualism present in the exhibit:

1) There is the cultural separation that assumes that discrete

persons exist and function separate from social and political
relations such as class, family, profession, or discipline

2) Such separation is achieved and intensified in the exhibit by

exploiting the premise that a deeper, more real truth can be
achieved through emotional reaction and identity

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and… A Critical Archaeology of Working Class History

How does the ideology of individualism misrepresents our world,

reproducing social and class relations?

Handsman and Leone critique an exhibit titled “Keeping Time:

Clockmaking at Thomaston”

The exhibit offered visitors the opportunity to examine old clocks

and photographs, as well as the accompanying texts which
explained the history behind each object or picture

Together the texts and clocks offered two statements to the

visitor:

1) Clock making and Thomaston’s history were about capitalism,

although the term was never used

2) The town’s past could be explored only through the memories

of its working class

A Critical Archaeology of Working Class History

Key questions that may help visitors and ourselves

understand the exhibit better:

1. Are clocks more than things that are made?

2. Were clocks used to control the lives and work of those

who made them?

3. Was clock making always done as it is now

remembered?

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A Critical Archaeology of Working Class History

As we begin to see ourselves differently we can begin to construct a

greater awareness about what archaeology has become and how it
developed:
• The origins of individualism are bound up with the histories of merchant
capital and industrial capitalism
• A critical archaeology of individualism can show how the class processes
of using, forgetting, and recovering specific great leaders as unique
individuals were a relatively common tactic of legitimization
• Individualism is not universal and emerges in the construction and
protection of systems in inequality and is specific to historical and class
context.
• From this knowledge of the past, people can learn how their lives and
work became what they are and how they might be made different
• Archaeologists can learn this too, and this is reason enough for the
discipline to have a critical theory

A Canadian Example?

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Louis Riel?

Louis Riel

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Louis Riel

Louis Riel

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From Hanged to Her0 — Why?

1970

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From Hanged to Her0 — Why?

HAPPY

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Time for Group Discussion

1. What is so radically different about the post-processual

Turn away from the New Archaeology.

2. Hodder makes the provocative statement that

“any reconstruction of the past
is a social statement.”
What does he mean by this?

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