Archaeology: socio-cultural development

Giorgio Buccellati – July 2026

The wider context

to t-theory?

While contextual archaeology deals with the immediate stratigraphic context, one must also consider the wider context to which the stratified evidence gives witness. The underlying methological problem has to do with the issue of referentiality. Recent archaeological theoretical research has focused on this wider context, and we will here briefly outline the major aspects of this research which have conditioned my research on the grammar (see below for bibliographicsl references).

The grammatical dimension is actually limited: the archaeological record with which the grammar is concerned relates, precisely, to the “record,” hence to the data as they emerge during the excavations. With the framework of the UGR, therefore, the wider socio-cultural issues play a more limited role. They are, however, a major factor in the strategy of excavation, beginning with the choice of a site to dig. I will give below some examples from the Urkesh excavations.

Theoretical developments

The main thrust of archaeological theoretical research has been, in recent years, in a socio-cultural direction (see in the section on references under the topic theory). The distancing heralded by the “new” archaeology, beginning with Binford ¹, was less of a break than it appeared at the time. It is true that there had not been, before that, any real concern to encase an understanding of socio-cultural development within an explicit theoretical framework. But this does not mean that there was no methodological awareness: it just was not developed into a system of its own.

The initial lack of a distinctive term for the “new” effort is in a way indicative. That it should have come to be called “processual” only as an afterthought points to a degree of methodological self-awareness lower than the one advocated. Also the handing over of methodology to another discipline (“archaeology as anthropology”) does not speak for a high degree of methodological mindfulness.

I will address here two areas in which these developments influenced the progress of this grammar: methodology and history.

Methodology

The emphasis on theory and methods called for a better articulation of the fundamental presuppositions behind the discipline – which is exactly what the “grammar” aims to do.

We may look for example at the emphasis on the identification of “laws of behavior.” While this was overdone in the early periods, it called for the definition of expected regularities in the record, which became a basic presupposition of the grammar.
A case was also made for a more developed use of statistics. Anticipating the digital turn, this pointed in the direction of a need for a global record, i. e., a record that did not rely on selectivity in the analysis of the data.

The historical dimension

The confrontation of archaeological theory with history has been long and complex, see a review in the section on references. In essence one sought to replace a given historical model with other historical models, whether based on anthropology in an attempt to look at process in terms of a predictable process, or leaving room for subjectivity.

This was related to the very definition of archaeology. It was more than a terminological issue, since it called into question the nature of archaeology: to what extent is archaeology an independent discipline, based on a theory and method of its own? If not history or anthropology, then what?

Here, too, we will look out the impact this had on our grammar.

Tie to place adds an important element in the distinction from “history,” which considers all data, whether of material culture or not, whether from a broken or a living tradition.
Semiotics
hermeneutics

Examples

how does the grammar account for it – semiotics, hermeneutics

Hurrians

urban formula – perceptual geography

Notes

¹^ In an autbiographical vein, I may recall my first personal encounters with the “new archaeology” and in particular with Lewis Binford – first during my student years at the University of Chicago in the early sixties and then at UCLA in the late sixties. Direct personal contacts with Binford were limited, but the general atmosphere within which his early career developed touched me directly, and was in fact an important factor behind my role in establishing the Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. A major reason behind the founding of the Institute was the desire by colleagues with diverging ideas about theory and method to etsablish an institutional framework within which these idea could be aired. My personal friendship with colleagues as different as Clem Meighan, Jim Hill or Jim Sackett on the one hand and Marija Gimbutas on the other played an important role in the whole process, as well as Colin Renfrew’s presence at UCLA as a result of his collaboration in the field with Gimbutas.