Editing Processual archaeology (section)

==Theory==
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|quote     = "New Archaeology represents a precipitate, unplanned and unfinished exploration of new disciplinary field space, conducted with very
varied success in an atmosphere of complete uncertainty. What at first appeared to be merely a period of technical re-equipment has produced profound practical, theoretical and philosophical problems to which the new archaeologies have responded with diverse new methods, new observations, new paradigms and new theory. However, unlike its parent, the New Archaeology is as yet a set of questions rather than a set of answers; when the questions are answered it too will be Old Archaeology."
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|source    = Processualist [[David L. Clarke]], 1973.<ref>[[#Cla73|Clarke 1973]]. p. 17.</ref>
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Processual archaeologists believe they can understand past cultural systems through the remains they left behind. One theory that influences this is [[Leslie White]]'s theory that culture can be defined as the exosomatic (outside the body) means of environmental adaptation for humans.<ref>White, 1959:8</ref> That is, archaeologists study cultural adaptation to environmental change rather than the humans' adaptation over generations, which is dealt with by evolutionary biologists. This focus on environmental adaptation is based on the [[cultural ecology]] and multilinear evolution ideas of anthropologists such as [[Julian Steward]]. In exosomatic adaptation, the culture is determined by its environmental constraints. As a result, processual archaeologists propose that cultural change happens within a set predictable framework, and they seek to understand the adaptation analyzing its components. Moreover, because the framework is predictable, science is the key to unlocking how those components interacted with the culture as a whole.<ref>Trigger, 1989:289</ref> Consequently, processual archaeologists hold that cultural changes are driven by evolutionary "processes" in cultural development. The resulting cultural changes would be adaptive relative to the environment. In this framework, the changes within the culture are not only understandable, but also scientifically predictable once the interaction of the variables is understood. In effect, archeologists should then be able to completely reconstruct these "cultural processes." Hence the name "processual archaeology," and its practitioners becoming known as "new archaeologists".<ref>Trigger, 1989:295</ref>

Scientifically however, the challenge facing proponents of New archaeology was developing a methodology of analyzing the archaeological remains in a more scientific fashion, as no such framework existed. The lack of this type of analysis in works of archeological science led Willey and Phillips to state in 1958, "So little work has been done in American archaeology on the explanatory level that it is difficult to find a name for it".<ref>Willey and Phillips, 1958:5</ref> Different researchers had alternative approaches to this problem. [[Lewis Binford]] felt that ethno-historical (history of peoples) information was necessary to facilitate an understanding of archaeological context.<ref>Binford 1962:21</ref> Ethno-historical research involves living and studying the life of those who would have used the artifacts—or at least studying a similar culture. Binford wanted to prove that the [[Mousterian]] assemblage, a group of stone artifacts from France during the [[ice age]], was adapted to its environment. To prove this, Binford spent time with the [[Nunamiut]] of [[Alaska]], a people living in conditions very similar to those of France during the period in question. Binford was successful with this approach, and though his specific problem ultimately eluded complete understanding, the ethno-historical work he did is often referred to by researchers today and has since been emulated by many.<ref>Watson 1991:267</ref>

The new methodological approaches of the processual research paradigm include [[logical positivism]] (the idea that all aspects of culture are accessible through the material record), the use of quantitative data, and the [[hypothetico-deductive]] model (scientific method of observation and hypothesis testing). An example of such hypothesis testing is the [[Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis]], developed by [[Arthur Saxe]] and [[Lynne Goldstein]] in the 1970s, which predicted that the use of formal areas for the disposal of the dead would correlate with the degree to which a society contained corporate groups asserting rights to certain resources via claims of descent from the ancestors buried in them.<ref>Morris 1991:149</ref>

During the late 1960s and into the 1970s, archaeologist [[Kent Flannery]] began championing the idea that [[Systems theory in archaeology|systems theory]] could be used in archaeology to approach questions of culture from an unbiased perspective, as the study focuses on the symbiotic whole of a culture rather than its parts, or artifacts. Systems theory however, proved to have problematic limitations for archaeology as a whole, in that it works well when describing how elements of a culture interact, but performs poorly when describing why they interact the way they do. Despite its lacking, systems theory has become a very important part of processualism, as it sets archaeologists with parameters to examine other cultures unique to its peoples, while limiting interference from the researcher's own cultural biases.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023|reason=Issue resolved by editing to refer to specific topic matter rather than an unsupported generalization.}}

An example of processualism, in the field of [[paleolinguistics]], [[Colin Renfrew]]—who in his 1987 re-examining of [[Proto-Indo-European]] language made a case for the spread of Indo-European languages through neolithic Europe in connection with the [[Neolithic Revolution|spread of farming]]<ref>Renfrew 1987.</ref>—outlined three basic primary processes through which a language comes to be spoken in a specific area. These processes are initial colonization, replacement, and continuous development. Supported by linguistic analyses, accepted migration progressions, and archeological records, Renfrew proposed a radical new conclusion that contradicted long-held linguistic-origin theories. With Renfrew's proposal being far from conclusive, ''The New York Times'' published the findings, claiming that Renfrew's work has since been both supported and challenged in multiple studies by linguists, archaeologists, biologists, geneticists, statisticians, and computational mathematicians.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Wade |first=Nicholas |date=2015-02-23 |title=The Tangled Roots of English |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/science/new-light-on-the-roots-of-english.html |access-date=2024-02-15 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>{{refn|{{Cite news |last=Wade |author= |first=Nicholas |author-link=Wade, Nicholas |author2= |date=2015-02-24 |title=The Tangled Roots of English |language=English |page=D1 |pages= |work= The New York Times|publisher= |format=fee required |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/science/new-light-on-the-roots-of-english.html#:~:text=This%20theory%20was%20challenged%20by,who%20brought%20agriculture%20to%20Europe. |access-date=2023-07-04 |quote=}}}} Though Renfrew's conclusions still garner debate, the scientific understanding gained from the wide interdisciplinary studies demonstrates processual analyses of a complex topic provides valuable data that can be analyzed, refuted, and built upon to further understand cultural history.