The development of archeological thought is analyzed by examining archeological history to determine to what extent its trends reflect archeologists' personal & collective interests. List of Illustrations Preface The relevance of archaeological history Classical archaeology & antiquarianism The beginnings of scientific archaeology The imperial synthesis Culture-historic The development of archeological thought is analyzed by examining archeological history to determine to what extent its trends reflect archeologists' personal & collective interests. List of Illustrations Preface The relevance of archaeological history Classical archaeology & antiquarianism The beginnings of scientific archaeology The imperial synthesis Culture-historical archaeology Soviet archaeology Functionalism in Western archaeology Neo-evolutionism & the new archaeology The explanation of diversity Archaeology & its social context Bibliographical Essay References Index. (This is actually a review of the second edition, which you should get) This is quite simply an awe-inspiring book. The sheer amount of reading Trigger must have done to construct this incredibly dense and detailed (but still able to see the bigger picture) overview of the history of archaeology is insane.

1. A History Of Archaeological Thought
2. Bruce Trigger A History Of Archaeological Thought
3. History Of Archaeological Thought Trigger 2006

PDF, ISBN: 978-1-78374-069-7, £0.00. This intra-disciplinary book bridges the gap between theory and practice. She researches on the history of archaeology and South Asia and has. Wikimedia Commons: (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license).

His reference list is nearly 100 pages long, and I think he really read almost everything on it. Trigger not only provides us with a very balanced account of the various approaches archaeology h (This is actually a review of the second edition, which you should get) This is quite simply an awe-inspiring book. The sheer amount of reading Trigger must have done to construct this incredibly dense and detailed (but still able to see the bigger picture) overview of the history of archaeology is insane. His reference list is nearly 100 pages long, and I think he really read almost everything on it.

Trigger not only provides us with a very balanced account of the various approaches archaeology has taken since the European renaissance, but he also has a lot of well-informed opinions about where archaeology is headed and what directions the next generations of archaeology might take. He convincingly demonstrates that the 'extreme relativist' position is untenable and that the accumulation of data and the increasing self-awareness of archaeologists has made the more absurd theories completely untenable and increased the objectivity of archaeological research even though it is probably impossible to overcome bias altogether. The one weakness is that although the book does have some very interesting sections about archaeology in the wider world, the vast majority of the material covers the history of archaeological thought in the US, the UK, and to a lesser extent Continental Europe (including a good section on Soviet Archaeology). I would have liked to see Trigger provide the incredibly comprehensive treatment he gave to the areas he focused on to Latin American or Chinese archaeology especially. However, Trigger is only one man and this book is already enormous in scope, so I think we can excuse him for this.

Someone else will have to do what he did not. If you're an archaeology student or someone who is seriously interested in archaeology this book is MANDATORY reading. It provides the historical context you need, well-reasoned justification for archaeology as a discipline, and a detailed perspective on the evolution of the field that has important lessons about recognizing archaeology's limitations, not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and realizing that your current understanding of archaeology is basically guaranteed to look primitive 20 years from now whether it is overturned or just refined.

This book, as its title says, is a history of archaeological thought. The book opens with a short explanation of Triggers own theoretical stance, which serves to explain the underlying dismissive attitude towards certain other theoretical positions. Following that, the beginnings of archaeology in various countries are explored. For the main part, it offers a very condensed overview over the entirety of archaeological theory.

It follows the US/UK discourse on the topic in some detail, focusing o This book, as its title says, is a history of archaeological thought. The book opens with a short explanation of Triggers own theoretical stance, which serves to explain the underlying dismissive attitude towards certain other theoretical positions. Following that, the beginnings of archaeology in various countries are explored. For the main part, it offers a very condensed overview over the entirety of archaeological theory. It follows the US/UK discourse on the topic in some detail, focusing on prehistoric archeology. Historic archaeologies are mostly left out. Although Trigger discusses this discrepancy, readers interested in historic archaeologies might feel that a lot of the issues discussed in this book do not apply to them (which is wrong), or apply to them in a very different way.

Additionally, while Trigger very valiantly tries to incorporate non-English literature and even non-Western perspectives, they are still severely underrepresented. This can hardly be blamed on the author, as the current book as it is already incorporates a vast amount of literature, and Trigger does offer the starting point for several other perspectives both in the text and the bibliography. The book ends with a conclusion by Trigger, in which he discusses limitations, problems and methods of contemporary archaeology. This part is among the most complex of the book, and assumes that the reader has understood the last few hundred pages of archaeological thought. It is also the part that will be of interest to readers already familiar with archaeological thought, and want to know Trigger's opinion on the subject. The commented and exhaustive bibliography is a good starting point for anyone interested in specific problems.

I found the book relatively accessible and easy to read. It is however not the beginner-friendly entry into archaeological theory that some reading lists make it appear to be. Even though most terms are (briefly) explained, without general knowledge about the history of science readers will probably feel overwhelmed by the many -isms that appear and reappear throughout the book. Without some idea about archaeological literature it will also be hard to understand its relevance. A further complication is that the book actually follows a narrative, in the sense that it tries to explain the archaeological thought as a gradual development. The constant cross-referencing within the text means the individual chapters do not stand alone too well, and it is advisable to read them in order. 'A History of Archaeological Thought' is therefore of interest mainly to advanced students of archaeology and scientists from other disciplines, trying to understand where archaeology came from and where it currently stands.

Despite any claims to the contrary, it is not an introduction to archaeological theory, and it will probably be terribly boring for anyone not interested in scientific thought. Well, I ended up reading it in less than a year.

The breaks in reading were many. I don't feel particularly qualified to write a review about it, as approximately the entirety of everything I know about the history of archaeological thought is what I learned in this book-I don't know how to evaluate its content in a way external to it itself. I would say that it seemed like Trigger tried to strike an interesting balance between summarizing 300ish years of different schools of thought in Well, I ended up reading it in less than a year.

The breaks in reading were many. I don't feel particularly qualified to write a review about it, as approximately the entirety of everything I know about the history of archaeological thought is what I learned in this book-I don't know how to evaluate its content in a way external to it itself. I would say that it seemed like Trigger tried to strike an interesting balance between summarizing 300ish years of different schools of thought in archaeology, including ongoing controversies, and putting forth his vision for an ideal theory of archaeology. In the last few chapters, in particular, he tries to find a middle way between hyper-relativists and hyper-positivists, and has pretty strong words for both extremes.

The last 20 pages really successfully recapitulate a lot of the rest of the content of the book. They were a nice way to finish reading it, as they left me feeling like I had a better grip of the broader themes that he was dealing with than I had had when lost in the very specific details. My current interest in archaeology is stimulated by a desire to situate myself to do collaborative research with archaeologists in the future, or to incorporate archaeological methods/findings into my work in historical linguistics. There was no discussion of interdisciplinary work with linguists, which was a little bit disappointing to me, but also is not obviously an issue of theory, but rather of practice, so I can see it not having as much of a place in this book. Additionally, collaboration between linguists and archaeologists may not have been as prominent in 1989, when my edition of this book was published, as it is now. The first time I read this book, I read it in a week. I didn't like it.

The second time I read it, I was under pressure and I hated it. This is the type of book that deserves some time, like a soup sitting all day in a crock pot. It's understandable that people find that 'A History of Archaeological Thought' as an overwhelming and daunting book, but if read slowly over time in digestible chunks, then, it becomes interesting. Archaeologists are influenced by the world around them, and this become The first time I read this book, I read it in a week.

I didn't like it. The second time I read it, I was under pressure and I hated it. This is the type of book that deserves some time, like a soup sitting all day in a crock pot. It's understandable that people find that 'A History of Archaeological Thought' as an overwhelming and daunting book, but if read slowly over time in digestible chunks, then, it becomes interesting. Archaeologists are influenced by the world around them, and this becomes reflected in their production of archaeological thought. Readers can see this pattern happening from the birth of archaeology, to culture history and beyond.

Is Trigger somewhat biased, yes, but one needs to keep this in mind when reading the book. Undoubtedly, there is more information here than most readers want to know, but it serves as an excellent resource for those who want to know more. Be sure and take notes, or use the kindle version to annotate the book. However, with that said Matthew Johnson's Archaeological Theory: An Introduction, gets down to the point without getting bogged down in the details. Bruce Graham Trigger, OC OQ FRSC was a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian. Born in Preston, Ontario, he received a doctorate in archaeology from Yale University in 1964.

His research interests at that time included the history of archaeological research and the comparative study of early cultures. He spent the following year teaching at Northwestern University and then took Bruce Graham Trigger, OC OQ FRSC was a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian. Born in Preston, Ontario, he received a doctorate in archaeology from Yale University in 1964. His research interests at that time included the history of archaeological research and the comparative study of early cultures. He spent the following year teaching at Northwestern University and then took a position with the Department of Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, and remained there for the rest of his career.

Volume 31, Number 4, August-October 1990 1 469 exempt on this count.) Relaying international theoreti- cal trends and interpreting them in the light of local circumstances is also given ample space (R. Meszaros, 'A terkapcsolatok CrtelmezCsCnek nChany osszefiig- gese,' no. Gulacsi and J. Nemes Nagy, 'Regionalitas Cs telepiilCsszerkezet egy shift-analysis eredmCnyei,' no. 2, pp, 21-35), but the papers on cur- rent problems of society and economy from a regional perspective are of most immediate interest and origi- nality.

From the Study of Its Past, Optimism about Archaeology's Future CURTIS N. RUNNELS Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass. 02215, U.S.A 2 11 90 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. $59.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.

My feeling that archaeology had been drifting during the past decade-exhausted, perhaps, after the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s-was dispelled by reading Trigger's re- freshing and optimistic vision of its next stage, a vision based on a thorough and far-reaching analysis of the ori- gins and development of archaeological thought. Paradoxically, archaeologists often remain unconscious of the future of their discipline and indifferent to its past. The fog and fable that cloak the early history of archaeology have only partially been dispersed by pioneering efforts in the history of the discipline, espe- cially by Daniel (e.g., 1976) and by Willey and Sabloff (1974). These works are too often ignored by younger archaeologists, whose indifference to the history of ar- chaeological thought is no accident.

During the upheav- als of the 1960s enthusiastic New Archaeologists re- jected the achievements of their predecessors, and time has not tempered this zeal: I have been repeatedly in- formed by colleagues, in all seriousness, that there is no point in studying the history of archaeology, for nothing of importance was written about method and theory be- fore Walter Taylor or, for some extremists, before Lewis Binford. A History of Archaeological Thought should convince the most skeptical reader of the importance of its sub- ject. The learning displayed in this work is astounding, providing evidence on every page that the author has collected materials for years and reflected deeply upon his subject.

The scholarship is displayed, however, with- out effort or ostentation, and the reader is guided safely through the thorny and abstruse philosophical thickets. Trigger does not simplify, but he explains the most difficult of concepts with enviable precision. Perhaps the greatest strength of this work is the per- spective it brings to the discipline. All of the trends, schools of thought, and individual contributions may be seen as embedded in a stream of thought that continues today. It is refreshing, for example, to find that Binford, that most outspoken and well-known advocate of the New Archaeology, makes his appearance only after nearly 300 pages, where his views on processual and evo- lutionary archaeology are seen to be firmly in the main- stream of American archaeological thinking-itself the result of decades, even centuries, of development. The book traces the development of archaeological thought from ancient times to the end of the 1980s; it achieves nothing less than a complete reevaluation of the discipline's purpose and goals.

Trigger identifies his main theme early on: 'the development of archaeology has corresponded temporally with the rise to power of the middle classes in Western society' (p. Thus from the outset his exegesis is firmly rooted in a social con- text. He places the emergence of classical, or historical, archaeology and antiquarianism firmly in the Enlighten- ment world of the 18th century. An important corollary to his theme is that many and varied paths have been taken by archaeologists in the construction of their dis- cipline.

From the ensuing discussion of Scandinavian archaeology, the antiquity of humanity, and the emergence of Palaeolithic archaeology we learn that the goal of explanation is not the sole property of modern ar- chaeology (an idea that may spark indignation in some quarters), having been in fact the chief concern of early practitioners such as Worsaae, Thomsen, and Sven Nils- son. Trigger recognizes that potentially testable ideas about the human past long antedate the development of 'modern' concerns with hypothesis testing (p. 408): contrary to what some archaeologists allege, in their desire to portray all previous phases in the develop- ment of archaeology as primitive and unstructured, archaeologists have not been unaware of the continu- ing need to question accepted interpretations of ar- chaeological data.

Nor have they failed to utilize new evidence in an attempt to gain a more objective understanding of the past. Since at least the eigh- teenth century they have sought to devise tests that relate to the behavioural significance of archaeolog- ical data. Although he gives due credit to the impact of Darwin's theory of evolution, Trigger finds Enlightenment ideas of cultural evolution to have been most influential in archaeology's formative years (pp.

Particularly potent were a materialist point of view and the tenets of psychic unity and cultural progress-progress being seen as found in all aspects of human life, as perfecting hu- man nature, and as the result of rational thought, per- mitting human beings to acquire greater control of their environment and their own development. Trigger re- minds us that the Enlightenment ideal of social progress appealed to the nationalist sentiments of the European middle class (pp. Trigger traces the synthesis of archaeology and En- 470 ( CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY lightenment thought in the 19th century, particularly in the work of Lubbock, a synthesis he sees as shaped by and contributing to its social context.

The Enlighten- ment notion of unilinear evolution at the core of archaeological theory fell victim to the disintegration of the belief in psychic unity and the similarity of races that resulted from rising nationalism in the wake of Napoleon's defeat. Now the natural environment was pressed into service to explain the differences between human groups, and pre-Adamite polygenesis and Dar- win's natural selection were invoked to explain the ra- cial inequality proposed by Gobineau and others. All this satisfied national vanity and, not incidentally, con- ferred scientific approval upon the imperial schemes of the Western world.

Ultimately, the evolutionary para- digm, particularly its unilinear variety, was replaced by a historical conception more akin to the earlier Scandina- vian approach. Increased attention to individual archaeological cultures offered support to assertions of na- tional identity and unity. Soviet archaeology rejected external causes of change in social systems and clung to unilinear evolution long after it had ceased to be rele- vant in the West. In recent years a new interest in ex- ternal factors and a revival of interest in cultural chronologies and diffusion have brought Soviet archaeologists more in line with Western developments. Western archaeology, in turn, has, by shrugging off un- due reliance on diffusion, migration, and other external processes in recent years, moved closer to the Soviet position. Processual archaeology was born when culture-historians shifted their sights from ethnicity and partic- ularism to the ways in which prehistoric cultures operated and changed through time. The transformation of synchronic functionalism into neo-evolutionism oc- curred in America and was the basis for the New Ar- chaeology.

There were social reasons for this shift in thinking: the neo-evolutionism of the 1960s was 'an- other attempt by anthropologists living in a politically dominant country to 'naturalize' their situation by dem- onstrating it to be the inevitable outcome of an evolu- tionary process that allowed human beings to control nature' (p. Thus the success of the New Archaeol- ogy, according to Trigger, owes something to its empha- sis on nomothetic and hypothetico-deductive philoso- phy, a philosophy that 'appealed to the tendencies of. Americans to value what was technologically useful' (p. Historians in America, however, continued to em- phasize the study of processes in the context of human actions. The different approaches pursued by historians and archaeologists resulted in a distinct element of anti- historicism in American archaeology that contributes to the lack of interest among younger American archaeologists in the history of their discipline.

A History Of Archaeological Thought

Nomothetic and hypothetico-deductive approaches were 'useful for the management of modern societies,' and their adoption can be seen as 'an ideological reflec- tion of the increasing economic and political interven- tionism of the United States on a global scale after World War 11,' not to mention the rise of the American middle class (p. Trigger maintains that 'it is fairly obvious that the high-level evolutionary theories that guided the interpretation of archaeological evidence in the 1970s reflected a serious and prolonged economic, political, and social crisis in which the interests of the dominant middle classes were perceived as deeply threatened' (p. This assertion may be an attempt to kpater les bourgeois, and the reader may ask why British archaeologists are exempted. Moreover, the appeal to class consciousness does not explain the lack of enthusiasm for the New Archaeology among middle-class archaeologists in other economically dominant countries, for example, France, Germany, or Japan.

The reader may not be convinced by Trigger's analysis, but unquestion- ably the New Archaeology was preoccupied with the study of the adaptive and ecological aspects of cultural evolution, with an emphasis on processual change in individual societies. In this sense it shows its indebted- ness to functionalism and social anthropology and is characterized by notions fundamentally different from those of the Enlightenment: that there are regularities in processes (in other words, cultural laws), that change is determined by ecological and demographic forces, that change is always external to cultural systems, and that humans are passive victims of these external forces (p.

Bruce Trigger A History Of Archaeological Thought

In sum, 'what is most striking about the New Archaeology is its unwillingness to accord human con- sciousness or volition any role in bringing about cultural change' (p. Throughout this book, Trigger shows how dominant paradigms in archaeological thought are challenged, each in their turn, and he offers a critique of the neo- historicist, neo-Marxist, and contextual approaches of the 1970s and 1980s that have emerged at least partly as a reaction to the New Archaeology. After making short work of the old positivism, Trigger criticizes the new relativists: 'extreme relativism. Makes definitive claims about what can be known concerning the nature of reality that contradict its own basic position that nothing can be known for certain' (pp. Relativ- ism reflects nothing more than the 'growing despair among American intellectuals that scientific knowledge can help bring about constructive social change' and 'encourages the belief that all so-called scientific knowledge of human behaviour consists of nothing more than self-serving fantasies that can only assist those who seek to discredit. As a guide to human action.' The main value of the relativist critique is that it identifies the New Archaeology's rejection of human volition and intentionality as part of the histor- ical explanation of cultural change.

The emphasis upon external factors of adaptation and evolution that is found in materialist and positivist explanations of the past must be tempered, in Trigger's view, by the recognition of intentionality found in historical studies. In conclusion, Trigger sees many similarities between American processual archaeology and Soviet archaeol- ogy and predicts a convergence: 'the growing sense of unity and complementarity of historicism and evolu- tionism in Western archaeology should allow ar Volume 31, Number 4, August-October 1990 1 471 chaeological explanation to move beyond the vulgar ma- terialism of processual archaeology, the sterile idealism of historical particularism, and the ersatz Marxism of the critical and structuralist approaches' (p. In sharp contrast to the particularists, he maintains that 'a body of procedures for inferring human behaviour has developed within Western archaeology that is now sufficiently mature to influence how it interprets its data, sometimes in opposition of external beliefs and values' (p. An attempt is made in the final chapter to predict future developments. Trigger reasserts his belief that a rapprochement is possible for the idealism, particu- larism, and evolutionism in archaeology and that it will bring an end to the struggle between history and science. In American archaeology science came to be regarded, after Kluckhohn and Steward, as directed solely towards the discovery of laws of human behavior, and this posi- tion left history 'as a humanistic residual' to account for the unimportant, the unique, the exotic, and the par- ticular. Thus 'science dealt with ecological adaptation, while history studied stylistic aspects of culture' (p.

Trigger rejects this schism and reminds us that 'nomothetic generalizations and historical explanations are indissolubly linked processes' (p. He also rejects the extreme claims of the relativists: 'archaeological findings about what human beings have done in the past have irreversibly altered our under- standing of human origins and development, at least for those who are prepared to abide by scientific canons of reasoning' (p. Although interpretation has many pitfalls, 'erroneous interpretations of what happened in the past can be detected as a result of the discovery of new archaeological evidence. An awareness of new theories of human behaviour. And the development of middle-range theory.

The deliberate construction and testing of two or more mutually exclusive interpreta- tions of data can enhance this process, a point. Largely lost sight of as a result of processual archaeology's insis- tence on the importance of deductive explanations' (p. He concludes his narrative on a strongly optimistic note: 'all but the most fanatical relativists will see the results of such a process of critical comparison and rein- terpretation tending in the direction of a more objective understanding of the behavioural significance of archaeological data' (p.

He assures us that 'archaeol- ogy is itself a product of social and economic change. and has led us to believe that the past is more than a fanciful projection of contemporary social concerns into the past' (p. 'In a world that has become too dangerous for humanity to rely on trial and error,' he suggests, 'archaeologically derived knowledge may. Be important for human survival' (pp. I cannot say whether these prognostications will prove to be correct, but I do predict that this handsomely pro- duced volume will find its way onto archaeologists' bookshelves everywhere. For those who do not care to read it through, it will serve as a helpful reference for placing an archaeologist or a whole school of thought in context.

It is without doubt the essential text for any course in the history of archaeological method and the- ory, and for those who have developed a taste for the history of archaeology it is a welcome introduction to a new domain of intellectual pleasure. Work and Community in a Complex Society KATHERINE C. DONAHUE Department of Social Sciences, Plymouth State From Tank Town to High Tech: The Clash of Com- munity and Industrial Cycles. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. $54.50 cloth, $18.95 paper From 1982 to 1986 June Nash studied the effects of in- dustrial change on community and family in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

She interviewed workers in industrial organizations and observed their lives, their construc- tion of culture, their community, and the corporations and businesses in which they worked. Although her focus in From Tank Town to High Tech is primarily on the General Electric plant and its workers, her analysis reaches beyond the community to the state and federal government, the national and international economy, and the interlinkings among all these various aspects of social, governmental, and economic organization.

While keeping her eye firmly on the individual, the household, and the community, she recognizes that Pittsfield is not and never has been isolated from decisions made and events occurring elsewhere. Nash's previous work on tin miners in Bolivia had raised her interest in relations between consciousness and economic relations of production.

History Of Archaeological Thought Trigger 2006

Her fieldwork coincided with a period of deindustrialization that has had major effects not only on communities such as Pittsfield but also on many of the industrial cities of the United States. As she says, her study provides a base for assessing the future of this deindustrialization. The re- sponse of blue-collar workers to the loss of jobs, the dis- mantling of federal human-resources programs during the Reagan years, and the consequent threat to corporate hegemony are all discussed in Nash's book. As Nash describes it, the growth of Pittsfield depended on the growth of the General Electric plant there.

By World War I the plant employed 6,000 workers. During World War 11, when the plant employed 12,000, the ci- ty's population as 53,560, two and a half times its 1900 population (p. 'When General Electric has a cold, College, Plymouth, N.H. 03264, U.S.A. Seller Condition Item Price Shipping Total Cost Very Good Ships from Reno, NV.

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