Historical Processualism

Con este trabajo queremos presentar un análisis del recorrido de la denominada arqueología del paisaje, comenzando por sus orígenes dentro de las ciencias naturales para acabar con las últimas teorías postprocesuales y su redefinición del propio concepto de paisaje.

According to Sebastian Brather, "ethnic identity" is beyond the reach of archaeology. He wants to separate archaeology from history in order to exorcise from German archaeology (especially, medieval archaeology) the demons of Kossinnian culture history. At stake seems to be an explicit discussion of archaeological theory, and more particularly, the nature of the archaeological record and its interpretation. At a closer look, Brather's claim that "archaeology cannot apprehend and explain individuals" is remarkably similar to Lewis Binford's fifty-year old observation that "we cannot excavate a kinship terminology or a philosophy."According to him, material culture is not directly tied to social, economic, or cultural processes (Prozesse), but instead reflects them indirectly. This is a plainly processualist claim that change happens within the entire system and not just within one of its components. However, despite some clear similarities between his mode of thinking and the agenda of New Archaeology, Brather's attempt to bring cultural process into focus is neither consistent, nor explicit -a direct consequence of the traditional reticence towards New Archaeology among German archaeologists. Rather, Brather's processualist inclinations do not allow for any actor perspective in order to understand how change comes about. To Brather, what the individual in the past thought or desired has nothing to do with "culture, power, and representation." Agency is thus effectively eliminated from any "objective" discussion of ethnicity. Moreover, ethnicity may be a form of social representation, but it is also "something (else)" that has apparently nothing to do with common origin.

The Middle Woodland period in eastern North America witnessed a fluorescence of monumental architecture and material exchange linked to widespread networks of ritual interaction. Although these networks encompassed large geographic areas and persisted for several centuries, extant archaeological models have tended to characterize Middle Woodland interaction as an historically unitary process. Using new data from the Garden Creek site in North Carolina, I argue that these frameworks obscure important historical shifts in Middle Woodland interaction. Recent collections-based research, geophysical survey, targeted excavation, and 14C dating (including Bayesian modeling) of this site reveal two coeval diachronic changes: a shift from geometric earthwork construction to platform mound construction; and a shift from the production of special artifacts (mica, crystal quartz), to the consumption of exotic artifacts in association with platform mound ceremonialism. These data hint at important changes in interregional relationships between the Appalachian Summit, the Hopewellian Midwest, and the greater Southeast during the Middle Woodland period, and provide a springboard for considering how processes of culture contact contributed to pre-Columbian cultural change.