The Archaeological Process: An Introduction.
by Ian Hodder
Oxford: Blackwell, 1999
242 pp. + xiv, 24 illustrations, 1 table
ISBN 0-631-19885-7
(paper)

Reviewed by Matthew Spriggs

Archaeological writing careers often go through several stages. They begin with an early bright ideas phase, when interesting but often in retrospect rather naïve prognostications are made. Having got everyone's attention, the scholar often then moves into an over - achieving phase where too much is published, representing often superficial and undigested ideas. The aim here is to achieve a measure of job security and rise up meteorically through the pecking order. If this tactic works, a mature phase then follows, usually after the scholar has achieved Reader or Professor rank. Bigger and well - thought out projects are often the basis for more mature reflection on where the discipline is headed. Sometimes, usually attendant upon retirement, a magisterial phase begins, but with this always comes with the danger of increasing pomposity. In some sad cases, the espousal of extreme right - wing politics at this stage is a clear sign of approaching dementia.

I loved Hodder's early work of the 1970s, drawing heavily upon the 'new geography' of Chorley and Haggett et. al. In retrospect, a lot of the assumptions of the spatial archaeology he helped pioneer can be seen as naïve, but they were stimulating and liberating ideas in British archaeology which even at the beginning of the 1970s was desperately trying to distance itself from the more extreme Hempel - worshipping forms of Americanist 'New Archaeology'. Something went wrong for Hodder about 1982, perhaps around the time of the publication of Symbols in Action, and he entered a long period of the intellectual doldrums, with too - many and too - smart works of little lasting substance. He also spawned some real monsters as students and acolytes, and archaeology remains much - vexed by them to this day. As in our least - favourite CDs by our favourite artistes, there are always solitary passages of genius, and such nuggets can indeed be found in many of Hodder's books of the later 1980s and early 1990s. His 1992 compilation Theory and Practice in Archaeology contains a few (but by no means all) of them.

The professorship finally came in 1996, and as my model would predict, there is considerable evidence of a more mature and measured view of the subject emerging in Hodder's work now that he does not have to prove so much any more. The Çatalhöyük project, both in choice of site - it would be very hard not to find amazing material there - and in its reflexive conception as a kind of 'excavation of an excavation' is destined to become one of archaeology's real classics.

The book under review is an introduction to the set of ideas that led up to the thinking behind the project. There is a clear lineage of these back to his bright ideas period, but the main criticism of this book is that here are still too many ideas that did not work in the 1980s and 1990s and still do not at all convince today. When will we be free of Derrida, Ricoeur, Foucault, Lyotard and these other charlatans? The fact that British archaeological theorists can mention them all in one breath would make any self - respecting French intellectual have a coughing fit over her Gauloises. A bricolage of completely contradictory thinkers' ideas half - understood and taken out of context is still baloney whatever way you slice it, and whatever the political couleur of the bricoleur.

A feature of much of the 'Me - generation' of archaeological theory was that they wrote primarily for each other, not to engage with the practice of archaeology. Most archaeologists throughout the world were disenfranchised from the debates by the deliberate use of impenetrable jargon, and carried on with surveying and digging and thinking about the past regardless. The first two chapters of The Archaeological Process, 'Crises in Global Archaeology' and 'Archaeology - Bridging Humanity and Science', rehearse a lot of ideas most archaeologists managed to absorb during that era without wide reading in the latest -isms. Readers may well feel vaguely insulted by Hodder's presentation of these ideas as some new revelations he has come up with in order to get the rest of us 'Digging outside the shelter' as he puts it in the Preface, an echo of Merriman's (1991) call for museums to 'look beyond the glass case'.

The result is a history of recent archaeology that few practitioners will recognise. For instance, I too was a student of David Clarke and have always felt that Hodder never understood or else has forgotten his master's project. Clarke's Analytical Archaeology (1968) was not so much the height of confidence in universal methods among new archaeologists as Hodder claims here (p.2), it was more an attempt to codify a pre - New Archaeology schema, that of Gordon Childe's hierarchy of archaeological entities, so that the subject could move on. It was also as much a response to new computer technologies and their logics as the book under review here. The more things change…..

While Hodder was away talking theory with his mates, archaeologists came to realise that much greater reflexivity (= a self - critical approach) was required, that to an extent our theories reflect our background and our prejudices, that this does not require a relativist position in relation to all theories, and that the archaeological evidence can contradict what we think about the past. We also recognised that there were multiple audiences and multiple constituencies interested in the past (called here 'multivocality'), that in some circumstances indigenous peoples might have great difficulty with the practice of archaeology as it affects their interests, and that their legitimate concerns must force a concern with archaeological ethics world - wide.

But this is not all Hodder is saying, and if you can grit your teeth for the first 31 pages, you will be rewarded with chapters that do not always repeat the obvious as if it just came down from the mountain. Hodder's main point is that archaeological fieldwork itself remains relatively untheorised. The production of knowledge at the trowel's edge often dominates the eventual interpretation offered by the archaeologist, but is usually invisible to the reader of a final excavation report or synthesis of a region's archaeology. In that sense we can never properly evaluate another archaeologist's interpretation of a site. We might find it convincing or unconvincing but the process by which it was reached is a trail gone cold. An archaeological report of any site is a deliberate mystification, a cooking of the books, a premature closure of debate. The tapes are wiped, the tracks are covered up. In a sense a conventional archaeological report is a forgery. There are brilliant forgers who are never caught, and some who are arrested as soon as they try and pass their first still - wet hundred-dollar bill. But we should not forget that they are all criminals one and all.

So, the question is, can archaeologists ever make themselves into honest men and women? Can we give our interpretations the context they lack? If our interpretations as presented are a crime, can we provide the evidence of how and why that crime was committed so our deviant mind can be understood and treated? The Çatalhöyük project is attempting to do just that, carrying reflexivity beyond the comfortable zone we are all now well used to into more dangerous areas of self - analysis. Daily diaries are entered on a web site as well as standard recording sheets and a wide audience can read these 'true confessions'; the archaeologists are themselves under constant surveillance, with use of videotape of their excavation and a nosy anthropologist asking them why they hold their particular exotic beliefs; even the dread white - coats appear every other day on an inspection. No, not prison psychiatrists, but the laboratory specialists we usually just send bags of material off to with the assurance that they are all from secure contexts (when often they are not).

Hodder points of the fact that using the web and CD - ROM technologies we can produce reports that through links to daily diaries, record sheets etc can reveal much of the background to the final interpretations we author, and can allow the reader to interrogate a variety of data and better evaluate our conclusions. The hidden process of knowledge generation is, at least to some extent, revealed. Most readers will perhaps not have the time or the inclination to follow every verdict back to the clues on which it is based, but the archive is there at the click of a mouse. Hodder also notes that readers can get into a report at different levels. Accounts designed for children, the general reader, first - year students taking a methods course, or specialists in the archaeology of that time or place can all be constructed and cross - referenced.

The equipment to allow this form of publication is all easily available, including CD 'burners' to produce CDs on demand, so money cannot be used by any serious archaeologist as an excuse. But time can be. As someone who has tried to do a similar project on a much smaller scale, the time spent on data entry and constructing the necessary links is enormous. But is it any more onerous than producing a conventional archaeological report and properly archiving the data generated? Probably not, and you are producing more of an original work of art rather than a forgery.

The book seems to be written for an advanced undergraduate audience and has the feel of a semester - length course guide. This might explain why a lot of it repeats the obvious, but not why so much of the obvious is claimed as new. The progression between chapters is quite clear. After the first two (mentioned above) it moves on to 'How do Archaeologists Reason?', 'Interpreting Material Culture', 'Towards a Reflexive Method', 'The Natural Science in Archaeology', 'Using the New Information Technologies', 'Windows into Deep Time: Towards a Multiscalar Approach'. 'Archaeology and Globalism', 'Can the New Digital Technologies Deliver a Reflexive Methodology?' and the Conclusion 'Towards Non - Dichotomous Thinking in Archaeology'.

It is a useful book to check up on where British archaeological theory has reached at the end of the 1990s. But perhaps this is the problem I had with reading it. Because Australian archaeologists have had to come to terms with many of the issues seen here as manifestations of a post - modern world, particularly the relationship between archaeologists and indigenous peoples, they have already sorted through many of the arguments themselves, without ever having read the social theorists quoted here. To the extent that archaeological social theory is merely reflective of the times in which we live, this is perhaps not surprising. If you live a post - modern life, you must have constructed your own internalised post - modern theory of it in order to survive.

Hodder's only references to Australia are to quote Ros Langford's (1983) polemical article in Australian Archaeology on the relationship between archaeologists and Aboriginal people as she saw it at that time, and to make a completely unsubstantiated claim that in the conflicts over Aboriginal land rights, 'archaeological objective science came to be associated with vested establishment interests against which local communities had to fight'. Although not referenced, this presumably is from a certain reading of the furore more that twenty years ago over the film The Last Tasmanian. Set up as straw - persons to make a point, we are not allowed to change.

Is the problem that many of the British archaeological theorists have never had much to do with indigenous peoples? The multivocality they seem to have discovered and the post - colonialist theory they espouse may both be more to do with the threat of break - up of the British state and the increasing assertiveness of its own internal colonies in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, than any real understanding of the current situation in the third and fourth worlds, and in settler nations such as Australia. There is too much talking - the - talk instead of walking - the - walk in current British archaeological theory. This book perhaps reveals the isolation of British archaeology from the rest of the world, rather than providing the theoretical leadership it assumes. While British archaeologists may well need to 'dig outside their shelters' - it is up to them to say whether their own practice is being caricatured in the book - much of the rest of the world is perhaps already out there in the sunshine, reflexive trowels in hand.

Works Cited

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Matthew Spriggs, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University.

Copyright © M. Spriggs 2000

Copyright © assemblage 2000