History and Explanation in Archaeology

Pauketat argued (2001: 73–98) that a new paradigm – historical processualism (HP) as operationalized by practice theory – is preferable to processual, behavioral, and evolutionary archaeologies as a source of explanation for culture change. To make his case, Pauketat sets up several contrasts between HP and the other three approaches. He claims that HP is superior because it neither essentializes behavior nor calls on potentially false universal laws to create explanations. He argues that HP holds that human practices – individual, particularistic human behaviors – generate new practices as they are continuously re-enacted and renegotiated, and thus practice is the proximate cause of cultural change. Evolutionary archaeology incorporates such particularistic and proximate causes but goes far beyond HP by providing an explanatory theory that specifies ultimate causes of culture change. It employs Darwin’s scientific theory of historical change, rewritten in testable , archaeological terms. In contrast, HP provides no testable implications of historical change.