00:00.00 David Howe Give me something for the payos I. 00:00.22 archpodnet And wine when welcome back Davidson 43 of lives podcast featuring ah Robert breath in now. So to to. 00:04.46 connor I Why? ah. 00:10.97 David Howe A bore. 00:18.57 archpodnet Um, this is yeah this this is fine. This is difficult this is this is yeah yeah, know this this is absolutely fine. Um, so to to top off today's episode 00:19.61 connor I well this is great. No our already we we did keep the whining because me and Carlton did at the exact same time and it was beautiful. 00:20.58 David Howe Let's just go from the start over. 00:29.73 David Howe Ah, a. 00:35.74 archpodnet Looking at archeological theory we're really gonna kind of stop here in the mid Twentieth century. Um, kind of moving beyond the cultural ah culture historical approach here. We have a guy that not many people in archeology know about unless you've taken an archeological theory course really and that's Walter Taylor he got his ph d in the 40 s like. Kind of pushed him through because he wanted to go fight. Krauts came back and his his big idea which he was he was right? Um, was that the culture historical approach was wrong. However, the way he went about. 01:00.33 David Howe Yikes. 01:14.22 archpodnet Telling people. It was wrong wasn't wasn't the best and what I mean by that um is that he didn't really how to describe it. He didn't have proof like his like he is his. Piece called a study of archeology broke down why culture historical approaches wrong and came up with this idea of how we can better. Um, analyze the archeological record but he didn't have proof or evidence to support it and he went after a bunch of like top american archeologist. At his time such as Avy Kidder emil howy Frank Robert Jr William Webb William Richitchie and James B Griffin and he like also calls out the Carnegie Institute so here's this like young upstart who just got back from world war ii probably like not super thrilled to have a bunch of like. White collar academics yelling at him after he went and just fought nazis while I stood at home. So I think there's probably a little bit of that going on probably some p at tsd just a tinge a little just spice things up. Um, and so it's not even a published piece. it's it's a monograph and he's. Promoting what's called the conjunctive approach which combines archeology with ethnography and social anthropology. So basically it's more like a fusion of archeology and sociocultural more so than there already was like he kind of recognized like hey archeology is really starting to branch away. We need to bring it back in. 02:46.99 archpodnet Um, he attacks these 6 prominent archeologists without providing an example of how the conjuctive approach could work. 02:54.44 connor So he like he like brought a gun to a gunfi but didn't bring any ammo starts like shooting it people. 02:58.94 archpodnet I think he just brought his fists to a gunf fight like like he didn't even bring a gun. He's like these like look how smart I am this is stupid but like you just have to trust me on it and it's like holy shit dude like the balls on this dude. But ultimately. He got like run out of archeology. Um, he wasn't able to terminate the culture historical approach like he just got shit on by these 6 prominent archeologists dominating american archeology and like one of the key institutions at Carnegie that's like get out like we're done with you. 03:21.60 connor Will. 03:36.68 connor Well yes you you you yell at the funding mechanisms and you yell at the people who in all sorts of regions like Frank Roberts is isn't he like the kind of midwest guy and then you have kidder who's down in South america so you like like drawing yourself out of a whole like a continent. 03:37.64 archpodnet Um, but. 03:46.10 archpodnet Yes. 03:51.77 archpodnet Yeah, he's like attacking the standard barriers for all these different cultural areas like he's hitting the top guy in every region like you're an idiot Yourin idiot you're an idiot and they just run him out of the field because like they're the ones with all the students like. 03:54.66 connor Not going to be able to work in by shitting on all these people. 04:02.62 connor Um. 04:08.40 archpodnet Taylor doesn't have any students. He's not tenured anywhere but like and it's a monograph like it's not even a published book. It's like a pre-book you know and. 04:10.21 connor Yeah. 04:18.88 connor It's It's not even yet, it's not even reviewed or anything whatever over that's called. 04:26.70 archpodnet But like even though he gets run out his idea of the conjunctive approach kind of starts getting adopted by other folks. So like there's this big debate in the 50 s called the Ford Spalding debate which was a series of articles between James Ford and Albert Spalding over theoretical differences towards the approach of scientific inquiry and archeology. Um. 04:39.86 David Howe Perfect. 04:43.73 archpodnet Ford believed that artifact types were constructions that were imposed by archeologists and not necessarily representative of creators right? So like modern day people applying their own beliefs as to what cultures in the past were doing with these materials which he's right turns out, it's like yeah. Our idea of what a cup looks like might not be the same idea that someone's idea of a cup was in the past. Um but spalding was way more like quantitative methods based in archeology and believe archeologists to try and reveal the emic approaches of objects like so there. Both trying to get at the same thing through different methods. So like Ford is trying to be like well we need to do way more ethnography where spalding's like well math will do it for us and it's like they're just tacking past each other to do the same thing and so Ford was the one really? um, kind of. Using this as an extension of of the conjunct. Both of them were actually but kind of applying the conjunctive approach. Actually they both kind of co-opted what Taylor was doing. It's like yeah culture historical is probably wrong and use the baselines for Taylor's monograph to like argue in articles with these 2 guys. Um. Like the conjunctive approach called for collaboration between social anthropology and archaeological methods. So it's like taking the qualitative data gained from socio-cultural and merging it with the quantitative data from archaeology rather than archaeologists trying to come up with the qualitative on their own and. 06:13.57 archpodnet Bring in their own biases outside of these worldviews that produce these cultures. Um the Ford spawed in debate though and did in the 1960 s really with new archeology. 06:23.94 connor Yeah, what you could say is built built off of steward and kind of Julian Stewart's fieldwork and his adaptation stuff. So it's kind of coming out of there that humans are adapting to their environment using these quantitative and qualitative approaches and ultimately. 06:25.77 David Howe Um, take. 06:31.77 archpodnet Yeah, for. 06:43.53 connor Trying to numbers. Everything is what at least starts out as it feels like. 06:46.46 archpodnet Yeah, and like Taylor is is alive during this time and he is and like Lou Benford is really the the standard bearer of new archeology precesional archeology and like Taylor is like in the sixty s like writing is like well wait a minute. Well I started this like Lou biford. 06:49.48 David Howe Theoryation. 07:05.37 archpodnet Is doing what I did and it's like shut up. You didn't prove it like yeah you threw this idea out before you proved it and your idea got utilized people recognized it and they're able to prove it on their own and they could they wrote articles about it like you you didn't do much with this man. Um, just like Lou Benford was also like you got to use ethnography and. 07:23.74 connor Yeah. 07:25.27 archpodnet Idea of New Archeology was like very quantitative focused. It's like we need it. This is what archaeology is going to be a science with Capital S we're going to use the metric system. Everything's in meters now welcome to it. We're going to make squares. We're going to use grid paper rulers for everybody. 07:44.16 connor Kill a calories. She said. 07:44.90 archpodnet And we're going to yeah kill calories like we're going to. We're going to turn this shit into a science and but based on ethnography right? and Benford I wish I could admit the guy because if you listen go back and listen to Bob Kelly's episode because Bob Kelly talks about a thanksgiving he spent with benford. And it ends with the broken window in New Mexico it's a great little window into the past. Um. 08:12.10 David Howe Um, to. 08:12.24 connor Yeah, um, which also mentioned David Clark and this sort of like the he's the european lou essentially isn't he the Cambridge. Yeah so he he promotes the the percesual archeology in Cambridge and is kind of um. 08:18.31 archpodnet Yes. 08:30.18 connor Kind of given the they're both the bulldogs of Precesual Archeology is what I call them I wouldn't call him the founding father the founding fathers. They're the bulldogs. There's the ones who bully us into fucking doing science based archeology. 08:37.41 archpodnet Yeah. 08:43.29 archpodnet Yeah I think Bully is a really good word. They're big big personalities and they get things done. They have it their way. 08:46.90 connor Yeah, it's. 08:48.76 David Howe Buller. 08:54.39 David Howe Can we Define Precesual archeology for the for the audience. It's pretty no but like I'm asking if you guys could pretend on the audience who doesn't know what it is. 08:55.28 connor Yeah. 08:57.68 archpodnet Yeah, go for it. David. Do what I where why don't you pretend I'm the audience that doesn't know what it is. 09:10.32 David Howe Well percesual Arch Yeah, like I don't know the the exact definition but it's looking at like archaeology scientifically like doing things like of a various data driven standpoint. Um I don't know if there's like a a full textbook definition of it. But um. 09:19.23 archpodnet Yes, ah. 09:24.20 connor There's usually adaptation thrown thrown into that to adaptation is kind of the key and people adapting their modes. 09:26.28 archpodnet Yeah, so the big one is yeah precessual archeology argues that ideas and theories mean nothing without any ability to prove them. This is the scientific approach right? So it applied the scientific method archeology emphasizing the need for objectivity when looking at the material record and this is my personal gripe. 09:27.10 David Howe Okay. 09:45.34 archpodnet With percesual archeology because like they came up with the idea that an archaeologist can relieve themselves of all bias and study the archeological record like you can go into these things and train people to come in with a clean state like you show up to an archeological dig and you just like empty all your knowledge of culture and how you use things and be able to study. 09:53.91 connor Yeah. 10:04.34 archpodnet And identify what things were of the past so like 60 s and seventy s yeah. 10:05.20 David Howe Well, what were they when were they pushing this with the fifty sixty s yeah so like we weren't you know we weren't exactly where we are today with society so that it's a lot of objectivity is missing. 10:14.87 archpodnet Yes, it was like 1 of those like if you listen to the Joe Watkins episode when he talks about like when he was getting into archeology and undergrad like archeologists told him because he was native. He couldn't do archeology because he couldn't. Be unbiased towards the archeological record like he came in knowing too much and therefore he couldn't be able to do archeology because he's going to be too biased and it was like wait the fuck a minute like that's completely ridiculous that and we talk about it that I won't talk about it here, but it was just like 1 of those funny ideas that people thought. 10:45.84 connor Yeah, yes. 10:51.48 archpodnet Early on that you could just empty yourself of all biases. 10:54.13 connor And what Carlton's kind of hinting at is because so you have procesual archeology pop on the scene Lu Binford's a dick and just like yells at people he can't write for shit. He writes like huge monographs and with a bunch of numbers and stuff like that and then you have this very very prominent. Critique of this idea you know coming off of the idea that archaeologists aren't biased and and things like that. So you have a big reaction to percesual archaeology. Um, kind of arguing that humans aren't specifically numbers and they want to bring. Archeology closer to anthropology because you can see it kind of veering away from it as the precessual archeology comes in so there is this backlash to things I think it's after Lou dies to be honest. 11:40.45 archpodnet Yeah, so like Perceualism has its merits like it really did move us towards science like which I is I believe correct like we need to standardize these we have to hypothesize tasks like we can't just make claims about the past without testing them so it very much is needed. 11:58.26 connor Ah, absolutely. 11:58.80 archpodnet And it's standardized a lot of practices and methods and that's where we you know people criticize methods like well can you repeat this experiment. How do you know this? Um, but that idea that Connor said of like you can't be unbias in their archeological record created this. There was like a critique of it so before we have like a whole new theoretical paradigm and this is where I think. Personally what happens after new archaeology or precesal archaeology. It's not really a new paradigm but just a critique and realignment of precessual archeology. But I know other people would argue against that. But that's in my head. How I see it because it's like wait a minute. What's called post-proceualism where postmodernism seeps into our archeology. Is is really a critique of like wait a minute we are biased and we have to acknowledge that but that doesn't mean it's to our disadvantage that some of our backgrounds can actually help us better understand the archeology. So an indigenous person might be able to better identify what some of these tools are for or people that are local to the area not necessarily and indigenous. Like there's a really good case study of archaeologists in the alps who found that it looks like a ah dodeckahhedron a many shaped giant dice looking thing it it. Maybe I think it might have been like a d 15. 13:08.81 connor A D twenty. 13:13.49 David Howe At. 13:13.71 archpodnet Or d 12 it's something and and they like showed it to locals so they didn't know what it is and then ah like a local grandmother saw it and laughed and like came back. She had one and it's it's used to knit mittens and so this woman living in the alps who makes Mittens was able to recognize something from an archeologist from like Rome. Who's doesn't who's not accustomed to making mittens couldn't identify right? So there's it's not just you have to be samoan to understand simone culture but like interacting with locals is a big part of it. 13:38.90 David Howe Right. 13:43.55 connor Yeah I would say that there and I think you're correct because that's that's probably where you exist and um, theoretically right is you're kind of in your perces. You're post percesalist because you um, but you have scientific methods but there are people in archeology who are going more postmodern. 13:53.96 archpodnet Thought I. Yeah, yeah. 14:01.31 connor And they are going down that rabbit hole which is you know teach to each their own. It's not how I would approach the past but there are people in that postprocessual critique starts that kind of jump into the postmodern approaches to things. 14:10.72 archpodnet Yeah, and what kind of yeah, go ahead David sorry. 14:13.53 David Howe Yeah, it's like when I went to the the flit napping Festival like I learned so much more about lithicx and like ancient stone tool like manufacture from like working with live people Flinapping. From all different perspectives of it that like I was like oh so that's what that would be for and like more than I've ever learned from an archaeologist which is I mean in terms of like understanding lithics at a site and stuff I'm want to learn that from an archaeologist but like how are they doing this. How are they doing that How the flakes form and things like that that I learned that from flint Napping. So That's pretty post percesual. 14:47.76 archpodnet Yeah, and and so postprocesual archeology is sometimes called interpretive archeologies and this is what kind of drives you off the wall you have like postprocession you have precesible which is new archeology sciencebas and then they attribute like indigenous archeology gender archeology like all these other different archeologies to post-processual. 14:48.38 David Howe Way of looking at stuff like oh like yeah. 14:55.66 David Howe Um, if I see. 15:06.73 archpodnet And like kind of going back like I don't think postprocessual archeology is necessarily its own theory I Really just think it's just a readjustment of precesual like no, there are women in the past. No there are other people in the past we just got to remember that and and do that because it's not like women didn't exist before in their archaeological record before Precesual archeology. 15:24.57 David Howe Yeah. 15:26.62 archpodnet That that makes sense. It's like so that's where I come from of like I don't. 15:29.40 connor Do they so they like pigeonhole you like if you say you're an indigenous archeologist people start like rolling their eyes like oh he's doing some sort of like postmodern approach but you still use science and and data in your in your research. 15:37.90 archpodnet Yeah, and and I and most archeologists like people that are like ascribed post percesion now I do think there are adherents or I do know that there are people that would like well I'm a post percesual archologist and want to distance themselves I'm like the only difference is like. Precesual archeology is the use of data. You're still using data. So like I don't see it as a paradigm shift I think it's I call it the postprocessual critique like wait a second we we got to remember we're dealing with people like people aren't numbers. We got to bring the anthropology back and remember that so I just see it as 1 giant. 16:13.77 connor Yeah. 16:14.98 archpodnet Theory that we've been doing since the sixty s and just kind of that's how I see it and like I'm probably a minority in that because I'm also one of those folks I don't ascribe myself to a particular theory like I don't I know some of my colleagues are like. 16:19.28 David Howe Um, yeah. 16:30.14 archpodnet Um, a marxist I do marxist archeology. That's how I see the world people are energy fuck the capitalists and I'm like no I just use what I need to understand the archaeological record that I'm digging like you know like. 16:42.13 David Howe Right? Like there's more than like you don't have to subscribe to just one I think that's something that we all get bogged down with in in school like ah like I have several grad students that message me on Instagram that are like I don't know like which one to pick and you don't have to pick one like. 16:55.55 archpodnet Yeah. 16:57.87 David Howe I'm probably super postmodernist than what I do but like but like degree wise I'm extremely perceptual. It's to like I can't just like we're hitting people gallopers. 17:01.70 archpodnet Yeah I think we all are we came from very like Wyoming and you guys you came from Tennessee which is like also like davidve comes from very hard corporate statue. Yeah, very such old schools like Wyoming is a very processual school like but. 17:13.74 connor Yeah. 17:16.82 David Howe Ah. 17:21.11 archpodnet They still do data and work with living people like shit Todd Serll works with the Doha Bobb did all this stuff like they still did kind of what this could folks for central critique was like calling for more people to do, but it's really this bogged down like people get really way to like revolt like stuck in this idea. But procesual archaeologists do science and post processionists do interpretation and it's like you guys are all doing the same fucking thing. 17:45.47 David Howe Yeah. 17:46.97 connor Yeah, and I want to mention that like what you're studying matters to so like if you want to take marxist approaches to something you're probably talking about large scale societies and I've said this on the show before so there it's okay to change your approach and your theoretical understanding of things based on what you're studying I have I see 0 17:49.33 archpodnet Death. So yeah. 18:04.44 archpodnet Absolutely. 18:04.55 David Howe Exactly and a solid example of that too is like if you're doing historical archeology on someone's mansion from 1750 you can very easily do marx his archeology be like wow this person had slaves like he had a presentation. Well I wonder what the power dynamics were here. 18:06.29 connor Problem with that. 18:21.33 David Howe But if you want to look at stone tools and this archaic site in the great basin like really all you can go with is behavioral eology. You'd be like okay well they wanted to eat this many calories and fuck. So like like what what else do you have. 18:26.18 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, and and and stone tools don't come in pink and blue like you can't feel like there's no, you can't really do gender archeology like a lot of that stuff to do interpretive archeology when you're just working off of stone tools is. 18:42.83 David Howe Yeah. 18:43.10 archpodnet Fucking impossible and it just becomes like way more like not necessarily evidence based like you can do and that's you know that's where Wyoming succeeds really? well it like they do paleoon in archeology. There's only so much theory you need to count rocks and bones talk about divisions of labor. But you. 18:55.51 David Howe Yeah. 18:56.50 connor Yeah. 19:01.47 David Howe Well this pile of debotage had a better view of the River than this one so we can tell that this person was definitely a man. Yeah, you get. 19:02.46 archpodnet Can't necessarily talk about a by gender. 19:08.20 archpodnet Yeah, can't do that You know so a lot of it's just left to I mean yeah that that's it depends on the archeological record you're working in depends on the place. 19:21.62 David Howe There's also like the feminist archeology and then's queer archeology is like a big thing too which I've been seeing recently as well people are like we should talk more about this and all you but you we can. But again all we have us rocks So like what do we like? yeah. 19:24.17 archpodnet Yeah. 19:31.91 archpodnet Yeah. 19:36.60 connor It's up. It's not. It's not that we don't want to study it. It's that it's hard to you know, do good science and study it in Hunter Gatherer populations paleo indians. Yeah yeah. 19:44.30 David Howe Right? But if you're looking at like a plantation or something like that You can definitely do that like you're like you know something more recent. Yeah. 19:46.69 archpodnet Right? Yeah, yeah, we can't figure out who was like of um I don't want to get trouble. We can't get sexual orient intention. That's fine. 19:51.56 connor Yeah, for sure and that's I. 19:59.70 David Howe Um, I still hold that Lewis and Clark were gay. But. 19:59.92 connor Sexuality or anything like that yet. Yeah, don't you. 20:03.90 archpodnet But in the archaeological record I don't know what to say to that Probably maybe you know it's like there's only so much you can do in certain archaeological Contexts depending on the record that you have so like I most of us work we all work in an archeological record over. 20:06.36 connor And. 20:20.52 archpodnet Five hundred years ago Youtube work further in time than I do but even still, there's only so much I can figure out based on earth lodges and corn like I don't you know I don't do in historic archeology where there you can figure out more of these you know quote unquote post procesual archeologies. 20:28.14 David Howe Yeah. 20:39.69 archpodnet Can be applied if anyone knows if someone that does Queer archeology research. Please let us know because I know nothing about it. Yeah yeah. 20:42.47 connor Yeah, hit us up. Yeah, we'd love to. 20:44.47 David Howe Yeah, we should actually get that on the show because I would love to know more about it like it examples and stuff. Yeah, well we just we just out of ourselves as straight archaeologist. So anyway and. 20:50.40 connor Yeah, all right? Um, we just yeah, well on on this case. Um, so that's thanks for listening to us. We kind of went all along. But I'm going to recommend 2 books for y'all to understand archeology and or um anthropology theory and archaeology theory 1 of them is visions of culture, an introduction anthropology an introduction to anthropological theories and theorists by Jerry D Moore he's awesome um he really puts stuff in bite size pieces and is easy to devour. Don't read bordeaux translations. 21:26.15 archpodnet Don't read bordeau. 21:28.63 connor Assock read Jerry D Moore another thing another book is archaeological theory and practice by Patricia Urban and Edward Shortman that's what we use at our archeology class to to study the history of that so something. Once again, that's bite size those are very easy to consume if you're interested in studying this further. 21:51.20 archpodnet Yeah, and I'll throw up as well. The theory books I got at boulder and also the ones we used at Indiana I don't know the ones in Indiana but like there's a lot of different theory books some are better than others and then um, honestly archeology Seventh edition by Bob Kelly and Dht is not a bad introde archeology book it. 22:06.30 connor Always. 22:09.17 archpodnet It has all the theories and and different. It's It's like a children's high school like textbook like it has vote out words. It's pretty good like for freshman like it is an excellent like here are the vocab words here are the questions you just think about here are the great pictures. Um. 22:14.35 David Howe Yeah, please pray sake. 22:26.60 David Howe And if you want to do mormon archeology. You might have suggest the book of mormon um, and if you would like to do behavioral ecology may I suggest the origin of species and the god dellution by Richard Dawkins I guess I think that's the. 22:29.76 connor 50 22:37.30 archpodnet Yeah, so we'll throw those out. So. 22:39.35 connor Like yep, like so subscribe review. Do the thing. 22:42.88 David Howe No it wait hang on. He has a different book that's on I believe like I will not just really sorry dead bad joke Conor what's your joke. 22:55.56 connor We're not quite there yet like review subscribe send us emails all that shit odd send it to us. We love you. We'll be back. 23:01.14 archpodnet We're getting your emails we we just we will respond to them. Thank you all so much for giving us feedback. It's been very critical constructively. It's their nice emails to read and God Bless you We love everything you send us. We really appreciate it and if you're listening on the all show feed please. 23:10.91 connor Nothing. 23:18.96 archpodnet Stop list subscribe and download our show we can I can see the numbers everybody I have access I have the power. We still got followers in Kazakckstan we want to boost those numbers though. So let us you know, tell all your causzicck friends about us and with that we are. Ah. 23:31.99 connor Um. 23:33.84 David Howe Number 1 podcast in all Kazakhstan. Ah. 23:39.34 archpodnet Ah, we good cancel all right I'll right back all right everybody. So now it is time Connor what joke do you have for us this evening. 23:50.60 connor Ah, so I just found out the Ceo of Ikea as the new president of Sweden he's still assembling his cabinet. 23:54.75 David Howe You him me give us time of think on that one I guess it wasn't we of a question. It was just a statement. Yeah part 3 where we talk about let's get a mormon archaeologist on. 23:57.45 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, that was good I like that one that was good. What are we doing next week 24:09.63 archpodnet I don't okay sounds good. Yeah, we'll do more theory next week. The close out of our series where we're going. We should probably do that in this segment war off and if they could make it this far like a little snitbit of next week 24:14.23 David Howe Um. 24:23.70 connor On the next week's episode of a life and ruins podcast. 24:23.77 David Howe If we can figure it out I let sell as these. 24:26.20 archpodnet Yeah, that.