Processualism Ian Hodder Summary

Postprocessual archaeology developed out of Processual archaeology in the 1990s and was championed by Ian Hodder. Postprocessualism is one of the most commonly used approaches to archaeology used today. It developed, much like Processualism, out of criticisms about how archaeology was being practiced at the time. In this instance it was a result of criticisms of Processual archaeology. Hodder argues that Processualism is flawed and to correct it we need to integrate parts of previous practices, such as cultural history, into the study of archaeology. In his critique of Processualism Hodder goes on to lay out three things we need to do in arcaheology. First, that we need to consider that there is meaning in the material culture. Secondly, that
The first he refers to is the material culture, and how, depending on culture, the material culture, as well as, both where and how it develops in the archaeological record can differ (Hodder 1991). This is something we can see in modern cultures as well, not all cultures around the world dispose of their refuse in the same way, or prepare food using the same cooking methods. Hodder secondly refers to the idea of the individual, in his argument he notes that Processual archaeologists tend to look at the system as a whole and not at individuals within the system (Hodder 1991). This is important because without looking at the individual how do you humanize a culture or add deeper meaning to the archaeological record? Hodder's final issue with Processualism is their failure to embrace history due to their attempts to distance themselves from cultural history; he argues instead we should use historic information if available, as opposed to making generalizations that we attempt to apply cross-culturally (Hodder 1991). This is a strong argument, as in most cases there is some for of historic or ethnographic information that may be linked to the culture you are