Processual Archaelology and Whiteheadian Process Philosophy

amazon link

Whiteheadian process philosophy is an integral philosophy of everything. It is how the world works; how the world developed; and how humanity came to be as birthed within a processual cosmology. In a far looser context specific to process systems themselves it will be noted that all sciences - including that of evolutionary and archaeological studies - are taking into their accounts of creation and human development the ideation of "processual systems" and how those entangled matrices have impacted one another.

The science-filled descriptors of "processual evolution" may not be exactly Whiteheadian in nature but are Whiteheadian by reference and observation to the processual creation we are bound to and how it morphs and gleans over-and-over-and-over, again-and-again-and-again, moment-by-moment. It is how the world works.

So then, by way of illustrating Whitehead's processual observations at work in a non-Whiteheadian processual context - that of science - let us briefly review the obtuse discussion below watching how it reflects how science might interact with the constructs of latent and dynamic processual systems as observed by Whitehead in the 1920s and 1930s.

R.E. Slater

November 15, 2022

* * * * * * * *

https://prezi.com/dyy52z9kue9i/processual-archaeology/

https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cYXledM5qJ

What is the ‘process’ in cultural process

and in processual archaeology?

article link

Posted on May 15, 2020 by sooteris kyritsis

(continued from 12/03/19)

SHIFTING MEANINGS OF CULTURAL PROCESS

I suspect that what made the concept of cultural process difficult to discuss in the 1970s and 1980s was that it was a ‘vogue word’ – a word that was used to show that the user had acquired the term and all the supposed intellectual accessories that went with it (Service, 1969). M. Johnson (1999: 188) correctly suggested that conceptual ambiguity was exacerbated because the term process could be ‘used by an author in one sense and read in quite another’. This ambiguity allowed an unremarked shift in the meaning of the term over time.

Binford (1968b; see also Binford and Binford, 1968b) not only recognized the difference between the category of processes comprising the synchronic operation family and the diachronic evolution family, but he also noted that the archaeological record had been created by human behaviors, among other processes, and that the creation processes comprised a different category (Figure 2). He argued that an archaeologist must distinguish between explaining the archaeological record – a modern static phenomenon –and an extinct cultural system – a past dynamic phenomenon.

A processual archaeologist seeks to understand ‘processual relationships among various classes of material items in the dynamics of cultural systems’, but such understanding can only come after one has explained observations made on the archaeological record [which] necessarily involves coping with problems of process. We attempt to explain similarities and differences in archaeological remains in terms of the functioning of material items in a cultural system and the processual features of the operation or evolution of the cultural systems responsible for the varied artifact forms, associations, and distributions observable in the ground. (Binford, 1968b: 273)

In the last quoted sentence, the wording before the second ‘and’ refers to behavioral processes that create the archaeological record; the words after that refer to the dynamic cultural processes (both synchronic operational and diachronic evolutionary) at work when the culture existed.

The distinction is made by an archaeologist interested in contributing to anthropological theory (Binford, 1962). It, along with Schiffer’s (1976) more detailed discussion, ultimately led to refocusing the processual approach not on what might be thought of as the ultimate goal of identifying category 2 processes – those involving the operation and evolution of dynamic cultural systems – but on the more archaeologically proximate goal of category 1 processes – what became known as processes that result in the formation of the archaeological record (Schiffer, 1987). (I use 1 and 2 merely to signify order of analysis.) By the middle 1980s, for example, the text of an edited book entitled Structure and Process in Southeastern Archaeology, comprising 14 chapters authored by 16 archaeologists (Dickens and Ward, 1985), hardly mentions category 2 (cultural) processes and instead focuses nearly exclusively on category 1 (formation) processes.

Schiffer (1988) highlighted the distinctiveness of the two categories when he distinguished between ‘reconstruction theory’ (concerning category 1 processes) and ‘social theory’ (concerning category 2 processes). In her introduction to the recent volume Processual Archaeology, A.L. Johnson (2004) suggests that processes involve how a cultural system operates and also how the archaeological record is formed.

Additional evidence that formation processes usurped the priority of cultural processes is found in recent perspectives on Wauchope’s dilemma. Keegan (1991) suggests that at least some processes of interest are the behavioral processes that created the archaeological record, and others are the cultural processes or dynamics of an existing culture. Following Terrell (1986), Keegan (1991: 186–7) indicates that ‘cultural processes are the unfolding patterns of variability through time in conformity with nomothetic principles’. Terrell (1986) seems to have skirted Wauchope’s dilemma by suggesting that repetitive archaeological patterns were the results of predictable types of patterned human behavior. Echoing Kroeber (1948), Cunningham (2003: 391) indicates that ‘causal processes interact and combine in the creation of material patterns’.

This results in three things:

First, a particular pattern ‘can be created by entirely different sets of causal processes’ (2003: 392); this is equifinality (Lyman, 2004).

Second, analytical reconfiguration of processes allows one to ‘explain behavior that may differ substantially from any modern situation’ (Cunningham, 2003: 394). And,

Third, different processes and combinations thereof create different patterns in the material record (2003: 395).

Identifying which processes and combinations thereof create which patterns is not only the goal of formation process studies (Schiffer, 1987) and middle range research (Cunningham, 2003), but it is, seemingly, now of importance equal to that of identifying the cultural, social, and behavioral processes that processual archaeologists originally sought.

DISCUSSIONS OF CULTURAL PROCESS BY PROCESSUAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS

Eisenberg (1971) argued that Deetz’s (1965) analysis exemplifies processual archaeology because it adopts the view of a culture as a system and seeks to understand the role of kinds of artifacts (in Deetz’s case, ceramic decorations) in a cultural system. It was in fact a systems-theory perspective that produced the two most detailed discussions of cultural processes by archaeologists of which I am aware. One was by David Clarke; the other was by Frank Hole and Robert Heizer.

Clarke (1968: 22) wrote that the ‘primary processes are those of inevitable variation, multilinear development, invention, diffusion and cultural selection. Combined in many permutations and circumstances these processes give rise to such complex processes as acculturation, and cultural growth, decay and disintegration’. He explicitly defined a process as ‘a vector which describes a series of states of an entity or system undergoing continuous change in space or time’ (Clarke, 1968: 42, 668). Clarke (1968:43) believed that a ‘general system model . . . should be representative of cultural processes at several levels within a sociocultural unit’. He sought ‘a model for archaeological processes – archaeological entities changing as special kinds of dynamic systems, susceptible to analysis in terms of general systems theory’ (1968: 72). He indicated that ‘We should not expect the processes that operate upon cultures or culture groups to be the same as those that operate upon artifact attributes, although since the former entities are compounds of the latter elements we might expect the processes appropriate to higher entities to integrate the simpler processes as well’ (1968: 409). The first part of the immediately preceding sentence echoes Wauchope’s dilemma, and the last part concerns the magnitude and scale of processes.

Clarke (1968) lists various processes and provides a detailed and relatively lengthy

statement on category 2 (cultural, behavioral, social) processes that he thought operated on or within most sociocultural entities. He specified three ‘general processes’ ontogeny, migration, interaction – and then suggested that each was manifest in various ways by development of variants, decrease of variety, increase of variety, and transformation of variety of cultural elements (Clarke, 1968: 409–10). The problem, Clarke thought, was to derive a ‘nested hierarchy of socio-archaeological processes’ – processes that linked sociocultural change to change in artifacts of whatever scale (Clarke, 1968:411); this is an effort to resolve Wauchope’s dilemma. Each process Clarke listed is a general kind that includes more specific kinds of processes. Many of his processes fall within the diachronic evolutionary family.

Changes in Hole and Heizer’s multi-edition introductory textbook capture the growing importance of culture processes in archaeology. There is minimal mention of culture processes in the first two editions (Hole and Heizer, 1965, 1969), but the 1969 edition contains a discussion of the importance of systems theory to understanding cultural dynamics. The third edition (Hole and Heizer, 1973: 439) discusses cultural processes explicitly. 

The term ‘process’ or ‘processes’ crops up frequently in the writings of scientific archeology, and it is also used in history, in manufacturing, and in analysis. As we understand the term colloquially it refers to the sequential set of operations that lead from A to B . . . [Given examples in history, manufacturing and research one] can readily see that process means two quite different things. First, it may refer to a sequence of events. Second, it may refer to the causes of the sequence of events. In both meanings, process is conceptually linked with the states or conditions of the things under observation at different times. As process is used in archeology, it refers to an analysis of the factors that cause changes in state.

[I will suggest that Alfred North Whitehead's titled work, "Process and Reality" goes into the state of processual relationships in a far, far deeper manner than what is gleaned here in this article. - re slater]

The authors provide the same discussion in an abridged version of their book (Hole and Heizer, 1977: 358), where they also define ‘process’ in the glossary as ‘the operation of factors that result in a change of culture’ (1977: 387). Note that Hole and Heizer indicate that a process can be a simple description of a sequence of events, or it can refer to cause(s) of that sequence. Given processual archaeology’s hopes to explain the archaeological record rather than just describe it (Lyman and O’Brien, 2004), a reasonable inference is that processualists sought to identify causal processes that operated prehistorically.

One of the alleged benefits of archaeologists adopting systems theory was that ‘questions phrased in terms of [systems] concepts direct our attention away from institutions and events and toward processes, away from efforts to discover the first appearance of particular cultural practices and toward efforts to understand their gradual evolution,and away from constructions of these events that are relatively hard to define in terms of archaeological observations toward ones that are more sensitive to the data with which we deal’ (Plog, 1975: 215). Plog is unclear, but I suspect he hoped to identify dynamic cause(s) rather than describe static events in temporal terms. Thus perhaps Plog was concerned with how a cultural system operates. Salmon (1978: 175), after all, pointed out that ‘anthropologists were engaged in analyzing social and cultural systems long before the advent of modern systems theory’ (see for example Kluckhohn’s [1951] discussion of Linton [1936]). This is particularly evident if one is aware of the structural–functional approaches in anthropology early in the 20th century, and also of the typical definition of a system as the relationships (mechanical, structural, functional)between entities comprising the system (Hill, 1977; Maruyama, 1963; Plog, 1975;Salmon, 1978). Systems theory seems to be preadapted to studying the dynamic operation (static state of being) of a cultural system.

When Clarke wrote his magnum opus, he modeled his recommendations for archaeological research on systems theory. But he did so with the following explicit and emphatic caution:

"It would be all too easy to take systems theory as our model for archaeological [that is, sociocultural] processes and the cultural entities that generate them, without isolating precisely the kind of system these entities represent. This would simply extend systems theory and its terminology as yet another vague analogy of no practical potential." (Clarke, 1968: 39)

Because in Clarke’s (1968: 39) view, anthropologists were ‘only just beginning to analyze social systems in [systems theory] terms’, he devoted the majority of the nearly 700 pages of Analytical Archaeology to building a model of culture, including artifacts, as a system. He used systems theory concepts and terms such as ‘feedback’ and ‘homeostasis’ in his modeling efforts, but his cultural processes were not categorized by him as the generic deviation counteracting ones of the first cybernetics meant to study stasis nor the deviation amplifying ones of the second cybernetics meant to study change (Maruyama, 1963). Rather, they were ‘technocomplex repatterning’, ‘culture group repatterning’, ‘acculturation’, ‘diffusion’, ‘invention’, and the like (Clarke, 1968: 410–12). Flannery (1968, 1972), on the other hand, categorized the cultural processes he identified (seasonality, scheduling, centralization, segregation) as either one or the other of these two general categories (deviation counteracting or amplifying), and he, like Clarke, identified and named specifically cultural processes.

A significant influence on processual archaeologists’ focus on cultural processes was Maruyama’s (1963) discussion of the second cybernetics, or ‘deviation-amplifying mutual causal processes’ (see Flannery, 1968, 1972; Hill, 1977; Plog, 1975 for an introduction). In his 16-page article, Maruyama used the term ‘process’ 40 times, or 2.5 times per page. What Maruyama means by the term is never explicit. I suggest that he meant several things, including dynamic causes, relationships (mechanical, functional) between variables or entities, and influences of one variable or entity on another. Perhaps because it is unclear whether he meant static mechanical relations or causally dynamic ones, to this day some authors define a cultural process such as ‘centralization’ as ‘the degree of linkage between the various subsystems and the highest-order controls of a cultural system’ (Spencer, 1997: 215). This definition does not identify a dynamic cause though it does imply some kind of mechanical or functional relationship between phenomena. The name of a process has been applied to both a dynamic cause and its result. This seems to be the way that Maruyama (1963) used the term process, and his use likely influenced archaeologists.

(to be continued)

R. Lee Lyman

University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

Then and Now: Trees, Oceans, and Mass Extinctions

click to enlarge | site reference here

As a Whiteheadian process theologian interested in processual evolution and what that may mean to us today when developing processually-alive ecological societies - by which I mean, "those which pay attention to the results of human interaction with nature and each other in our communities" - I will from time-to-time post cool articles on the earth's ancient processual systems as those living earth systems developed and interacted with competing eco-environments.

Moreover, as a one-time evangelical (a Baptist with an M.Div. degree which included a deep study of Covenant Theology in the bible; now a Reformed Protestant "Process" guy or "progressive post-evangelical") I was generally ignorant to the study of evolution having focused at a large state university on math, engineering, and the physical sciences before switching schools and focusing on biblical studies.

Hence, to those of you, who, like myself, would like to "catch-up" with the rest of the world, I have been providing hundreds of articles related to humanity's early ancestral origins including the earth's 4.5 billion year history.

Further, I don't believe I have listed "Evolution" or "Processual Evolution" as an Index topic on Relevancy22, however, many evolutionary articles can be found in the "process" and "science" Indices on the right-hand column.

As ever, I'm here to expand Christianity from its self-selected interests of culture and religion (sic, in it's terms, "what's biblical and what's not") onto far broader plains of interaction with the world, science, philosophy, religion, and human society  in general, than how I had learned my faith in my own closed circles of epistemic faith exclusivity and certainty. By which I mean, when coming here, I will speak my faith in a far different way than when I had learned it.

Enjoy,

R.E. Slater

November 15, 2022

* * * * * * * *

The Arrival of Tree Roots May Have Triggered

Mass Extinctions in The Ocean

Science Alert - Nature

NATURE | 15 November 2022 | ByCARLY CASSELLA

(NK08gerd/Getty Images)

The first land plants to evolve penetrating root systems, around 400 million years ago, may very well have triggered a series of mass extinctions in the ocean.

The expansion of plants onto terra firma was a big moment on Earth, completely restructuring the terrestrial biosphere. According to researchers from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the US and University of Southampton in the UK, the consequences for our oceans might have been just as profound.

During the Devonian Period, which stretched from 360 million to 420 million years ago, the marine environment experienced numerous mass extinction events. A particularly destructive event towards the end of this period resulted in the extinction of up to nearly 60 percent of all genera in the ocean.

Some scientists think trees were the root cause of these losses.

As plant life moved away from water sources, they dug ever deeper for new sources of nutrients. At some point their roots would have begun to pull phosphorus from minerals locked up underground.

Once the tree decays, those nutrients within its biomass dissolve more easily into groundwater, which eventually winds up in the sea.

In the Devonian, as root systems grew more complex and moved further inland, more and more phosphorus would have been dumped into the marine environment.

A new timeline of these nutrient pulses speaks to their destruction. The data is based on the chemical analysis of stones from ancient lake beds and coastlines in Greenland and Scotland.

"Our analysis shows that the evolution of tree roots likely flooded past oceans with excess nutrients, causing massive algae growth," explains IUPUI earth scientist Gabriel Filippelli.

"These rapid and destructive algae blooms would have depleted most of the oceans' oxygen, triggering catastrophic mass extinction events."

While scientists have suspected tree roots of playing a role in Devonian mass extinctions before, this study is one of the first to calculate the magnitude and timing of phosphorus delivery from land to water.

From site to site, researchers found differences in how much phosphorus was present in the lake environment, but overall, most cases suggest there were large and rapid changes during the Devonian.

The fact that rising phosphorus levels in the ocean largely lines up with major extinction events during this time suggests the elevated nutrient played a role in the crisis.

Peaks of phosphorus exportation did not necessarily coincide in time or magnitude at each site studied, but the authors say that's to be expected. The colonization of land by plants was not a "single punctuated event", they explain, "but likely staggered geographically, peaking at different times in different parts of Euramerica and other parts of the Devonian Earth."

The phosphorus on land depleted at varying rates depending on the location, leading to marine extinction events that lasted many millions of years. Although the precise processes behind the nutrient absorption, plant growth, and decay more than likely varied, an overall trend seems apparent. During drier periods, researchers found phosphorus delivery to lakes shot upwards, suggesting that tree roots might decay if not enough water is available, leading to the release of their nutrients.

Today, trees aren't nearly as destructive for marine life as they were when they first arrived on the scene. Soil on land is now much deeper, allowing mineral-bound phosphorus to hide far beyond the reach of roots to leave organic molecules containing phosphorus to cycle more easily through the ecosystem.

That said, what is happening today shares worrisome patterns with what occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.

During the Devonian, atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen reached similar levels to those of recent years, but back then the changes were, in large part, due to the slow advance of plant life, as opposed to rapid changes through human activity.

Pollution from fertilizers and organic waste doesn't require tree roots to make it out to sea. It is pumped there by us, and it's triggering 'dead zones' of low oxygen in many important marine and lake environments.

"These new insights into the catastrophic results of natural events in the ancient world may serve as a warning about the consequences of similar conditions arising from human activity today," says Fillipelli.

The study was published in GSA Bulletin.