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Recent Developments in the Functional Interpretation of Archaeological Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

John W. Bennett
John W. Bennett*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

In 1938 Steward and Setzler published a brief plea for a more enlightened interpretation of archaeological materials, calling attention to the necessity for ecological and configurational considerations of material culture complexes. Since that time a number of studies touching upon these features have appeared–enough to constitute a trend. It is the purpose of this paper to analyze these contributions and suggest further possibilities along functional lines.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , October 1943 , pp. 208 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1943

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References

1 “Function and Configuration in Archaeology.” American Antiquity, Vol. IV, No. 1.

2 The term “functional,” used throughout this paper, is rather loosely defined as indicating interpretations of artifacts as part of a total cultural scene, integrated within the social, political, and economic organizations, and not merely as unique material objects, devoid of any higher significance. The term “sociological” is occasionally used as synonymous with “functional.”

3 Strong's insistence on the mutual dependence of archaeology and ethnology, for factual and theoretical purposes, probably represented the beginning of this interest; at any rate, it set the pace. (See “Anthropological Theory and Archaeological Fact,” in Essays in Anthropology in Honor of A. L. Kroeber, Berkeley, 1936.)

4 American Anthropologist, Vol. XLIII, No. 3.

5 Martin, Lloyd, and Spoehr, Archaeological Work in the Ackmen-Lowry Area, Anthropological Series, Field Museum, Vol. XXIII, No. 2. Martin and Rinaldo, Modified Basket-Maker Sites, Ackmen-Lowry Area, Same series, Vol. XXIII, No. 3. In this latter publication Martin also includes a carefully-developed functional analysis of the relationships of pit houses to surface dwellings in transitional BM-PI times. In this study he draws upon ethnological evidence and general propositions of folk cultures to demonstrate his point. The conclusions seem reasonable and explicit, and can be taken as a model of the type of work described as desirable later in this paper.

6 Lewis, T. M. N. and Kneberg, M. The Prehistory of the Chickamauga Basin, A Preview,Tennessee Anthropology Papers, No. 1, Knoxville, 1941.

7 Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, No. 1.

8 Pitirim A. Sorokin, Fluctuations of Forms of Art.

9 A preview of this project can be found in Ford and Willey's article, “An Interpretation of the Prehistory of the Eastern United States.”

10 Winchell, N. H., et al. “The Aborigines of Minnesota,” Minnesota Historical Society, 1911, p. x.

11 Environment and Native Subsistence Economies in the Central Great Plains, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. CI, No. 3.

12 “Notes on Chipped Stone,” News Letter, Southeastern Archeological Conference, Vol. II, No. 3, Sept., 1940.

13 From a strictly methodological point of view, it would seem that the most fruitful technique in archaeology would be the sociological method known as “constructive typology”—an approach which features the analytical construction of ideal types of social forms and the use of these types as abstract comparative entities, with which to devise an analytical classification of real data. The method is already in implicit use by archaeologists: The concepts of “phase” and “pattern” in the McKern System are really ideal types which may bear no necessary relation to reality in the sense of cultural entities. These do not have to be stated in statistical form, as long as they have utility in generally placing cultures somewhere within the continuum they usually define. Redfield's “folk society” is an ideal type method; it has already been used by Southwestern archaeologists, as this paper has shown. Most archaeologists, consciously or unconsciously, use a variant of this method. It would be well to bring it out into the open.

14 Kluckhohn develops this point in his article, “The Conceptual Structure in Middle American Studies,” in the Maya and their Neighbors, Appleton-Century, 1940.

15 Analysis of Indian Village Site Collections from Louisiana and Mississippi, Louisiana Department of Conservation, Anthropological Study, No. 2.

16 See, for example, Van De Velde, P. and H. R., The Black Pottery of Colotepac, Oaxaca, Mexico, Southwest Museum Papers, No. 13. Also Griffin's review of this paper in American Antiquity, Vol. VII, No. 2, pt. 1.

17 Ingalik Material Culture, Yale University Publication in Anthropology, No. 22.

18 Prehistory in Haiti, Yale University Publication in Anthropology, No. 21.

19 See, for example, his statement in American Antiquity, Vol. IV, No. 4, and Colton's use of the principles, expressed in Prehistoric Culture Units and Their Relationships in Northern Arizona, Museum of Northern Arizona, Bulletin 17. Colton quotes this statement of McKern's (pp. 6–7), but in his analysis seems to follow none of the procedures.