WENDY ASHMORE

Distinguished Lecture

"Decisions and Dispositions": Socializing Spatial

Archaeology
Archeology Division Distinguished Lecture
99th AAA Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, November 2000

ABSTRACT Concerns with spatial dimensions and social inference have long histories in archaeology. However, the two histories are
not always conjoined. This article considers changing understandings of space in archaeology in the last half century, and the variable
nature of what "social" has denoted and connoted during that same span. The review highlights recurring calls for a social archaeology, and the degree to which, in such instances, social inference has been expressed in spatial terms, especially as these have recognized people's "decisions and dispositions" as shaping the archaeological record. Life histories of place receive special attention as
ways of discerning the existence and social impact of such decisions and dispositions. These life histories constitute an arena in which
archaeologists from diverse theoretical perspectives can offer complementary insights. Moreover, they exemplify ways in which social
and spatial inferences in archaeology contribute to wider understanding of human experience. [Keywords: archaeology, social, space,
place, life history]

HE FIRST WORDS in my title come from David

Clarke's assessment of spatial archaeology a quarter
of a century ago. In that review, he summarized analytic
and interpretive accomplishments and offered some prognoses for future inquiry. My intention in this article is to
examine some of what has changed in archaeologists' attitudes toward the place of space in archaeological understanding since the 1977 publication of Clarke's review. In
so doing, I also describe ways in which a socialized spatial
archaeology both complements and contributes to wider
scholarly spheres.
It is an understatement to say that change in archaeology of space has been significant: From micromorphological analysis to GIS, our physical means of examining space have expanded in ways unimagined only a few
decades past. More important, however, have been the
changes in our premises about, and approaches to, interpreting meaning in spatial structuring of the archaeological record. My review here is highly selective and illustra-

tive with no claim to comprehensive history or inventory

of all the works or even all the significant works that have
appeared. My central contention, however, is that the
still-growing appreciation that space is actively inhabited,
and that social relations and spatial structure are linked recursively, has transformed our anthropologicaland our
humanunderstanding of the past.
Conceiving space in such socially active terms is the
principal meaning behind my subtitle's allusion to ''socializing spatial archaeology," and I further contend that
there are important contributions to this pursuit along
many of the often-divergent paths archaeological interpretation has traced in the past three decades or more. There
are works that most everyone would cite in such a review,
and while I include a good number of them, I try also to
acknowledge some other, perhaps underappreciated, contributions.
The changes that have taken place since the mid1970s can be attributed to multiple, synergistic factors. Al-

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 104(4): 1 1 7 2 - 1 1 8 3 . COPYRIGHT 2002, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Ashmore

though some might leap to ascribe key importance to the

rise of "postprocessualist" ways of thinking, this not only
falsely homogenizes the internal diversity embodied in
that constellation of approaches but also gives short shrift
to continuing innovative contributions by a wide and diverse range of other archaeologies. Of course, the same
rough quarter century witnessed significant, parallel, and
influential shifts in geographic thinking. Moreover, the
last couple of decades have seen a veritable explosion of
attention to space by authors other than archaeologists
and geographers, and we have drawn on the insights of
cultural anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and
others for whom space, per se, had not traditionally or
consistently been a discipline-defining attribute. As "social" disciplines have increased attention to space, spaceoriented disciplines have reexamined social matters. Increasingly explicit attention to social theory has informed
all these diverse approaches.
The pages that follow outline some of the changing
roles of space in archaeology, and what "spatial archaeology" has comprised or might be taken to comprise. The review also highlights the variable nature of what "social"
denotes and connotes, especially with regard to social aspects of spatial inference. Grounds wells in attention to the
"social" have certainly led to calls for a "social archaeology" at several points, varying from one case to another in
how the domain, wellsprings, and aims of such an archaeology might be defined. Although I attempt to illustrate
how these developments have been manifest in a wide array of research areas, I offer more extended reflection on
just one of the many recent lines of productive inquirythat is, looking at theory and practice concerning
what has been called the "biography" or "life history of
place." I suggest how this kind of inquiry, among others,
reveals materialized "decisions and dispositions," both ancient and modern, and how social and spatial inference in
archaeology contributes to concerns beyond archaeology.
WHENCE SPATIAL AND SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGIES?

Spatial and social interpretations of the archaeological record have long and distinguished histories, often but not
always intertwined. This observation begs what I mean by
the terms spatial and social.
By spatial archaeology, I mean simply the range of archaeological pursuits that focus on study of the spatial aspects of the archaeological record. These pursuits certainly
do not constitute a separable "field," but, rather, a set of
perspectives on studying ancient societies and cultures,
emphasizing position, arrangement, and orientation, and
examined at a range of scales: from individual buildings or
monuments, caches, and burials, to settlements, landscapes,
and regions. Architecture and the built environment, generally, are only a part of the whole, and discussion of them
here highlights their two-dimensional aspects or plan view.
As regards the social part of the equation, I offer no
single definition. Rather, as part of the review, I highlight

"Decisions and Dispositions"

1173

different meanings that have attached to social inference

and to the idea of a "social archaeology." As suggested before, such a shift is tied to trends in social theory underlying interpretation, to the explicitness of their acknowledgment, and, as increasingly recognized, to changes in
underlying social philosophy and economic conditions
(e.g., Sherratt 1996).
Certainly, interest in spatial patterns has suffused archaeological inquiry. Myriad scholars, in the United States
and elsewhere, have long sought to reconstruct social (or
societal) organization from the archaeological record, as
viewed through artifacts and features mapped across space
(e.g., Chang 1958; Childe 1951; Fox 1932). In the United
States before the mid-20th century, however, links between social and spatial were drawn, more often than not,
with speculative rather than systematic bridging arguments.
To set a jumping-off point for charting changes, I turn
to Walter Taylor. In 1948, building on earlier appeals, Taylor enjoined archaeologists to attend more to social inference than to the time-space descriptions of culture history
and to ground such inference more securely in a conjunctive, behavioral, and functionalist approach to the archaeological record. But, as we all know, his call went largely
unheeded. Explicitly in response to Taylor's injunction, in
fact, Christopher Hawkes detailed what he saw as great
difficulties in getting at social and political institutions archaeologically, placing them third of four domains in accessibility on his famous ladder, after "techniques" and
"subsistence-economics" but ahead of "religious institutions and spiritual life" (1954:161-162).
Turning specifically to space, Albert Spaulding codified the dimensions of archaeology as form, temporal locus, and spatial locus, specifically tagging these as dimensions for characterizing and analyzing artifacts and
assemblages (1960:438-439). His aim was avowedly methodological, "to describe clearly the fundamental operations of archaeology on its empirical data" (1960:437).
Note, however, that he went on immediately to clarify his
position, asserting that, although "behavioral inferences
may creep in, . . . they will be evidence of weak mindedness" (1960:437). Links to social matters were certainly attenuated.
Lewis Binford was far more optimistic about social interpretation than were Hawkes or, in the foregoing passage, Spaulding. Often likened in intent to Taylor's unheeded call, Binford's "Archeology as Anthropology" (1962)
successfully galvanized efforts toward a "New Archeology." In that manifesto, he asserted categorically that the
archaeological record held information on social as well as
technological and ideational domains of ancient life. Toward this end, social organization was a central theme of
multiple early applications of that "New" or "processual"
archaeology (e.g., Longacre 1966; Winters 1968), several
of which based key inferences on spatial distributions. Perhaps most directly relevant here, however, social dimensions have been an early and quite enduring focus of

1174

American Anthropologist Vol. 104, No. 4 December 2002

settlement archaeology, that cornerstone of both spatial

and processual archaeology (e.g., Chang 1968; Willey
1953). Indeed, settlement surveys long antedate the rise of
processualism (e.g., Parsons 1972), and settlement patterns have often been considered as mapping social organization fairly directly on the ground (e.g., Trigger 1967;
Willey 1953). Settlement archaeology has proven an extremely productive avenue for archaeological research, arguably the most widely practiced approach in spatial archaeology around the world (e.g., Billman and Feinman
1999; Knapp 1997; Sabloff and Ashmore 2001).
In the 1960s, of course, archaeological inquiry tended
to a strongly functionalist stance, often involving systems
theory and evolutionary approaches to both spatial and
social inference and, frequently, complementing qualitative
ethnographic analogy with quantitative pattern analyses.
Spatial concerns were common early on in these wellknown areas of processualism, especially in its American
heartland.
On the international stage, social and even ideational
factors had already gained prominent attention in spatial
analyses. In proceedings from one influential conference,
some 85 authors attached varied importance to these factors, as well as to economic and ecological ones, in interpreting human settlement and spatial order at diverse
scales (Ucko et al. 1972). In his concluding remarks, Stuart
Piggott lauded the conference for its productive "face-toface encounter between social anthropologists and archaeologists" (1972:947) but recalled Hawkes's 1950s pessimism about the susceptibility of archaeological evidence
to inferences on social structure and belief systems (1972:
950-951). Some contributors found recourse to social factors highly productive, as did Kent Flannery (1972) in his
comparison of village formsthat is, their spatial layoutin Mesoamerica and the Near East. Others, however,
were like Piggott, less sanguine, among them social anthropologist Mary Douglas (1972). She cautioned archaeologists about seeking to identify symbolic meaning in domestic spatial arrangements, because so little of the spatial
symbolism she noted in ethnographic sources was expressed in readily recognizable, interpretable material
form. Some authors wrote of strategies, decisions, and dispositions in the establishment and form of settlements,
but the tone overall was decidedly mixed.
The literature at large was also mixed. By the mid1970s, and despite processualist interests expressed in social
organization, some scholars were actively decrying archaeology as having become overly focused on the complexities and potentials of economic modeling to the perilous
exclusion of other domains of social life. Writing of North
American mounds and waterworks, for example, Robert
Hall (1977) advocated greater recognition of spatialized
symbolic expression and urged strongly the critical value
of local traditions, oral and written, for interpreting such
historically contingent material expressions. While acknowledging the impact of symbolic expression, Rosalind
Hunter-Anderson (1977) highlighted social factors to pro-

pose systematic positivist means of explaining variation in

house formspecifically, the number and diversity of inhabitants' roles and activities and preferences for round or
rectilinear houses (cf. Flannery 1972; Morgan 1965;
Rapoport 1969).
Also in the mid-1970s, The Early Mesoamerican Village
(Flannery 1976) marked a significant threshold for linking
social and spatial in archaeology, strongly promoting the
use of socially defined units to guide field and analytic
study. That is, in the Oaxaca Valley research on which the
book was founded, investigation was guided by attempts
to identify villages, households, and other social units.
Spatial correlates were proposed for the designated social
units, and while spatial relations alone do not confirm the
materialization of social units, the contents of this book
linked the two realms more explicitly than had commonly
been the case. While the research was based firmly in systems theory and other processualist approaches, Kent
Flannery, Joyce Marcus, and their colleagues also recognized the historical contingency of the Oaxaca case, and
the critical value of attention to specifically Zapotec worldview (e.g., Flannery and Marcus 1976; Marcus and Flannery 1996). Much renowned for Flannery's engaging allegories, the 1976 edited book has also served, for many (if
more often in principle than in practice), as a near bible
for how to think about the social and spatial organization
embodied in the archaeological record. It was also a prime
stimulus, though far from the only one, toward 1980s
emergence of what is now called "household archaeology"
(e.g., Wilk and Rathje 1982).
Let us stay in the mid-1970s for a moment more. In
1977, Clarke's Spatial Archaeology recognized a domain of
inquiry potentially more encompassing than settlement
pattern studies. Clarke defined spatial archaeology specifically as
the retrieval of information from archaeological spatial relationships and the study of the spatial consequences of
former hominid activity patterns within and between features and structures and their articulation within sites, site
systems and their environments: the study of the flow
and integration of activities within and between structures,
sites and resource spaces from the micro to the semi-micro
and macro scales of aggregation. [1977:9]
Clarke recognized that these scale levels were each suited
best to a different range of social activities and analyses
and certainly linked space more directly to behavior than
did Spaulding. Still, Clarke's emphases were places and
spatialized activities, more than people. Earlier discussions
of spatial scale in archaeology were decidedly more inclusive of social inference (e.g., Trigger 1968). Nonetheless,
Clarke's was a stance very much in keeping with the interpretive times. Shortly thereafter, in a critique of locational
models in archaeology, Carole Crumley quoted Clarke's
definition for spatial archaeology and then summarized it
concisely as "the special application of the universal study
of objects/points and the relationships among them,

Ashmore "Decisions and Dispositions"

which characterizes chemistry as well as comparative literature" (Crumley 1979:142, emphasis added).
Clarke and Crumley went on, however, to evince
somewhat divergent attitudes toward archaeological prospects for spatial study, and its relation to social inferences.
While Clarke exhorted his colleagues and students to take
"greater interest in theories of anthropological spatial variability, [and in so doing, potentially] making a direct contribution to the elaboration of that theory" (1977:28), he
was pointedly skeptical of prospects for "determin[ing] all
the factors which governed individual decisions and dispositions [behind spatial order], especially prehistoric ones"
(1977:20). These are the "decisions and dispositions" of
my title, whose identification archaeologists have pursued
quite productively in subsequent years.1
That other views were already taking hold in the late
1970s is clear from a number of authors, including some
cited earlier, and, notably, Crumley. The subject of her
1979 essay on regional scale locational inference was archaeologists' prominent and, in her view, uncritical use of
gravity and central place models. She criticized overreliance on economic factors, and on models based in capitalist societies, for explaining archaeological patterns of ancient regional human settlement. She further criticized the
inflexibility of such models, their discouragement of considering options for organizational change (e.g., Crumley
1987). She argued that both the gravity and central place
models cited would be more effective if subsumed under
one positing regional heterarchy, in which ranking of settlement nodes could potentially shift with frame of reference from any one domain, including economics, to any
other, or with changes in society through time. Most important for this discussion is her insistence on the importance both of nonmaterial factors in modeling use of regional space, and of allowing more explicitly for flexibility
and change (Crumley 1979:145, 166). As expressed in her
long-term collaborative Burgundy research, and in her
writings on historical ecology more generally, choices in
occupation of the landscape change as people renegotiate
values and prioritiesthat is, decisions and dispositions,
whether free or constrainedconcerning environment
and space (e.g., Crumley 1995b). I revisit these notions later
in the article, with respect to larger fields of inquiry.
The late 1970s were also marked by an explicit call for
a social archaeology. By 1978, some felt that Binford's
(1962) assertion of the equal accessibility of technological,
social, and ideational domains had been lost amid burgeoning research on subsistence and technology. In response, Charles Redman and his colleagues urged pursuit
of a "social archeology," which they characterized as "a
glowing awareness of the critical importance of the application of careful and explicit methods to substantive problems of widespread interest" (Redman et al. 1978:6-7). In
their edited volume on Social Archeology, contributions
such as John M. Fritz's (1978) structuralist consideration
of Chaco Canyon attest to new perspectives on the social
organizational significance of spatial order. Even there,

1175

however, the message was couched as well in processualist

terms of "adaptation"; the thrust of that social archaeology volume, as a whole, was quite explicitly a call for enhanced methods, and a harbinger of exploring new ways of
thinking, including but not emphasizing social aspects of
space.
Colin Renfrew's research has long and prominently
involved spatial analyses toward social inference, and his
1986 volume of collected worksmost of which first appeared in the 1970sis aptly titled Approaches to Social Archaeology. Like Redman and his colleagues, Renfrew cast
"social archaeology" as "reconstruction of past social systems and relations" (1986:3) and offered his work as refining method and theory for grappling with such reconstruction. The first of five sections in the book refers to
space in the title: "Societies in Space: Landscapes of Power";
however, spatial approaches pervade the whole volume.
Particularly influential has been his examination of exchange models and of territory formation and labor organization in Wessex and elsewhere. His interpretation of
British megalithic monuments, for example, contrasts
strikingly with Glyn Daniel's (1980) treatment of Stonehenge only slightly earlier. With Hawkes-like interpretive
pessimism, Daniel had doubted we would ever comprehend the significance of this arrangement of stones. Taking
a social and spatial perspective, however, Renfrew offered
provocative views on the social and political function of
this and other places, especially their role in integrating labor and leadership across the surrounding countryside. Although notably central to Renfrew's social approach,
space remained, for him and for many at the time, a
largely passive field within which social interaction occurs.
By the early 1980s, of course, interpretive tides concerning social aspects of space were already turning dramatically, as hinted by works cited earlier. Some archaeologists, for example, had begun to examine the social
processes and decisions materialized in architectural design
(e.g., Lekson 1981; McGuire and Schiffer 1983). Among
the defining works of the decade, however, are structural
and symbolic analyses of space, emblematic of emerging
reaction against the theories and models central to processualism (e.g., Hodder 1984), Indeed, spatial analyses and
social inferences are the core of several contributions in
the bellwether-edited volume Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Hodder 1982b), Although the title aptly suits
the contents, Ian Hodder's (1982a) introduction is a pointed
critique not only of early processual and functional approaches to archaeology, spatial and otherwise, but also of
symbolic and structural approaches that failed to incorporate a theory of practice to enliven and socialize the static
portrayal of cultural rules and grammars.
By this time, of course, social anthropologists, geographers, architects, and other scholars beyond archaeology
had been exploring social, structural, symbolic, and practice aspects of space. For example, from at least the mid1960s, Edward T. Hall's writings demonstrate clearly the

1176

American Anthropologist Vol. 104, No, 4 December 2002

differential construal of space and spatial etiquette crossculturally, and more broadly, the reciprocal relation between spatial organization and social behavior, at varied
scales of interpersonal interaction. Hall quotes Sir Winston
Churchill, "We shape our buildings and they shape us"
(1966:106), a view embodied at more length in Anthony
Giddens's (e.g., 1984) oft-cited writings on structuration.
Space is not passive; it is socially constituted and constituting, materialized in architecture and also, if less tangibly, in customs of social interaction (e.g., Schortman 1986).
Returning to the 1980s, these were years marked for
many by more self-conscious and critical social and political awareness in archaeology, and by the foregrounding of
attention to social theory. Indeed, some authors have
equated archaeological theory with social theory (e.g.,
Shanks and Tilley 1988). The role of architectural space in
social control and in the exercise of social power gained
great attention (e.g., Leone 1984; Shanks and Tilley 1988).
Archaeologists of quite diverse theoretical backgrounds
identified political authority as mapped in civic architecture,
with social practices reinforcing the message, such as public ritual performance and periodic processions through
civic space (e.g., Ashmore 1989; Cowgill 1983; Fritz 1986;
O'Connor 1989). Again, space was not seen as passive: It
shapes and is shaped by social action.
Less overtly politically charged, household archaeology has been characterized often as focusing on a fundamental component of society (e.g., Kent 1990b; Steadman
1996). Spatial arrangements of the buildings, rooms, furnishings, and outdoor spaces of such domestic social units
have supported many sorts of inference as to their members' decisions and dispositions. Many looked to the arrangements of activities and functions in space to understand what households did (e.g., Ashmore and Wilk 1988;
Santley and Kneebone 1993). Alternatively, domestic
spaces channeled and constrained social relations, thereby
reinforcing established social order within the household
and with respect to outsiders (Donley 1982; Richards
1990). For other analysts, changes in house form and spatial arrangement bespoke tensions in the social order, and
sequential changes in spatial form recorded evidence of social change (e.g., Hodder 1984; Johnson 1989; Kent 1990a).
By the end of the 1980s, place had also emerged as an
important concept for archaeologists, who acknowledged
increasingly that particular locations took on variably significant roles within arenas of social, economic, and political action. In "The Archaeology of Place," Lewis Binford
argued that to understand "the organization of past cultural systems [archaeologists] must understand the organizational relations among places which were differentially
used during the operation of past systems" (1982:5). That
meant considering how the individual "places" were formed
through repeated human action, especially as marked tangibly in artifacts or construction. A space full of such places
was a key to understanding society. This might be understood as a settlement pattern perspective, but with an emphasis on time, on the creation or modification of each

place in the settlement array. Somewhat later, and from

very different theoretical perspectives, scholars argued
similarly for examining sets of places, or systems of settings, and emphasized particularly the multiple and temporary roles that any given single place could serve at different points in a day, a year, or a lifetime (e.g., Ingold
1993; Rapoport 1990). In other words, they reminded us
that the qualities of place are complex and mutable, materially embodying sequential decisions and dispositions.
At the same time, a growing number of scholarsin
archaeology and elsewherepointed to the role of these
repeated actions in constructing social memory and,
thereby, inscribing social meaning on a place. Some have
called attention to enactment performance in socializing
space, and drawing on a range of epistemic bases, have
sought to examine consequences of movement through
"lived space," as ritual, procession, pilgrimage, or proxemics (e.g., Conkey 1997; Moore 1996; Schortman 1986;
Thomas 1993). Indeed, for Julian Thomas, landscape space
is intensely social in the foregoing ways:
a network of related places, which have gradually been revealed through people's habitual activities and interaction, through the closeness and affinity that they have developed for some locations, and through the important
events, festivals, calamities, and surprises which have
drawn other spots to their attention, causing them to be
remembered or incorporated into stories. [2001:173]

Some scholars also have pointed emphatically to the

cumulative and still enduring symbolic and political importance of places like Teotihuacan and Stonehenge (e.g.,
Bender 1998; Chippindale 1986; Fowler 1987), This concern merges archaeological considerations with social and
spatial dimensions of today. Active repositories and touchstones for social memory (e.g., Basso 1996), "places" could
and did, and dobecome orienting and potential rallying
points for social groups ranging from individual families
to whole nation-states.
By the 1990s, then, the ways archaeologists considered space had changed markedly from Clarke's characterization. Space and place were rife with evidence of decisions and dispositions from ancient times. That observation,
in itself, is hardly new. What's important here is recognizing the range of theoretical backgrounds archaeologists
had brought to bear on such spatial analyses, and convergences of concerns between archaeology and other fields.
Long before that time, of course, the collateral literature
on spatial theory had become vast, spanning as it does
multiple perspectives and myriad disciplines, including
geography, architecture, environmental psychology, sociology, art and architectural history, urban planning, and
philosophyas well as anthropology.2
Within archaeology, several further developments in
spatial and social concerns were rooted in the 1990s or
had reached acceptance by decade's end. One was the
opening up of spatial categories, beyond the micro-,
semimicro, and macro or other tripartite sets commonly
cited, and beyond the built environment usually studied

Ashmore

(e.g., Stone-Miller and McEwan 1990-91), The varied interpretive relevance of different spatial scales is well established (e.g., Binford 1964; Trigger 1968). Since the 1970s,
some scholars had been advocating attention to "siteless"
surveys, breaking down the boundaries between scales,
and, in particular, criticizing the artificiality of "sites" as
interpretive entities (e.g., Dunnell and Dancey 1983; Foley
1981; Rossignol and Wandsnider 1992; Thomas 1975). By
the 1990s, these as well as some of the social theoretical
trends just cited supported growing attention to landscape
studies, to incorporate consideration of areas between
"sites" and of land-use tracessuch as roads or agricultural fieldsthat defied ready categorization as sites (e.g.,
Fish et al. 1990; Trombold 1991). Attention to place likewise opened new spatial categories, as we have realized the
social importance of natural placesmountains, caves,
and endless other landmarksand the often subtle divide
between constructed places and those holding social significance in physically unmodified state (e.g., Ashmore
andKnapp 1999; Bradley 1998, 2000).
Archaeologists' conceptions of society have also opened
up with expanding implications for social space, as we recognize increasingly the internal heterogeneity of society.
Elizabeth Brumfiel (1992) argues strongly for the need to
consider gender, class, and factional components of societiesand the importance of the varied decisions and dispositions, often mutually competitive, that collectively
yielded the archaeological record we observe. Similarly
emergent, by the late 1990s, were contributions of feminist theories for disaggregating society, within and beyond
gender distinctions, although many feminist archaeologistsoften from different points within feminist thinkingdecry the profession's unhurried pace in taking full
account of societies' diversity (e.g., Conkey and Gero
1997), At whatever pace, studies of gender and other social
identities increasingly recognize spatial perspectives as
productive (e.g., Hendon 1997; Tringham 1994).
Similar slowness has bedeviled exploration of heterarchy, a concept introduced to archaeology by Crumley in
1979 but that received wide attention only in the 1990s.
Perhaps the intellectual times had caught up with the concept. The following passage suggests the utility and potency of the concept, in spatial and social study:
Power relations are predicated on systems of values that
are ranked and reranked in their importance by individuals, groups, and organizations as conditions change. By
studying the physical evidence of decisions (e.g., the
boundaries of a royal preserve), a hierarchy of values may
be seen to be enshrined at one social, spatial, or temporal
scale (elite aesthetics, regional biodiversity, the early Middle Ages). Inasmuch as it subsumes other opinion, every
decision provides the raw material for later change. New ap-

proaches to agency, conflict, and cooperation can be devised. [Crumley 1995 a:4, emphasis added]
Within the last decade, renewed calls for a social archaeology have been sounded, with at least potential reference to spatial archaeology. Some calls are explicit, as in
the Social Archaeology series from Blackwell publishers,

"Decisions and Dispositions"

1177

and the newly established Journal of Social Archaeology,

Both place central emphasis on the importance of social
theory, whether emphasizing "meaning, structure, text,
power and ideology" (in Blackwell's case) or a more general foregrounding invocation of social theory in archaeological inquiry (in the case of the journal). Other calls for
a social archaeology are more implicit in new emphases
on the social creation and occupancy of space rooted often
in forms of practice theory.
One new thrust is exemplified by The Archaeology of
Communities (Canuto and Yaeger 2000). The contributions
in this book extend works like The Early Mesoamerican Village, and household archaeology at large, to examine this
important form of social integration whose study they see
as having stagnated. Following social anthropologist John
Watanabe, the editors characterize a community as "the
conjunction of 'people, place, and premise,' " advocating
a "modified i n t e r a c t i o n a l " perspective to examine "the
relationship between the [social] interactions that occur in
a given space and the sense of shared identity that both fosters and is fostered by these interactions" (Yaeger and
Canuto 2000:6; emphasis added). Space is important, its
social aspects most decidedly paramount; decisions and
dispositions are recognized in spatial terms.
Another recent direction taken emphasizes the social
and temporal fluidity of space. In part echoing Rapoport's
notion of systems of spaces and Ingold's rhythmic substitution of people and activities within taskscapes in the
landscape, Robin and Rothschild (2002) and Meskell (1998)
ask us to consider the practices of everyday life that move
people and their actions acrossand, thereby, make socially meaningful sense ofdomestic and community
spaces, both interiors and outdoors (compare Low 2000).
Once again, space is important in social terms, its significance derived from social constitution.
Continuities of place continue to be a key theme in
spatial archaeology. Indeed, the importance of archaeological places in the modern world has been recognized
emphatically in a number of well-developed casesfrom
Stonehenge to the Aztec Templo Mayorand these socialize
spatial archaeology in a quite distinctive manner. These
cases bring me to the examination life histories of place.
LIFE HISTORIES OF PLACE

Decisions and dispositions vary widely as to the attraction

and staying power of particular places, in the present as in
the past. Sarah Schlanger writes of "persistent places" to
highlight loci that are "used repeatedly during the longterm occupation of a region" (Schlanger 1992:92). But, of
course, not all places are persistent in human recognition,
and even those that are often have complex trajectories of
occupancy, marking, abandonment, desecration, or avoidance (Cameron 1993). It is these variable histories and
place biographies that I highlight here, and the sequences
of social decisions and dispositions attested in such life
histories of place.

1178

American Anthropologist Vol. 104, No. 4 December 2002

By life history of place, I mean examining evidence for

human recognition, use, and modification of a particular
position, locality, or area over the full time span of its existence. Others have used this or similar phrases to consider
similar ranges of issues (e.g., Barrett et al. 1991; Bradley
1987), and I wish here to draw attention to two interpretive themes. Although each has antecedents in earlier literature, both have received noticeably expanded attention
in recent years. The pair of related and somewhat overlapping themes reflect different aspects of the life trajectory:
(1) establishment and affirmation, and (2) what happens
beyond such affirmation, including "inhabitation" in
John Barrett's (1999) usage, and the "afterlife of monuments"
per Richard Bradley (1993). These life histories seem to me
to illustrate emergent themes in spatial archaeology. They
extend significantly beyond stratigraphy and dating, and
similar kinds of mechanical, but necessary and useful,
chronicles. In so doing, they exemplify current recognition of social archaeologies of space, and the importance
and identifiability of decisions and dispositions in the archaeological record.
Places marked by individual buildings and other discrete architectural features acquire histories as they are
built, occupied, maintained, modified, partly or wholly
dismantled, or allowed to fall to ruin. Each of these diverse
acts can carry profound, potent social and symbolic meaning. Interment of the dead is frequently recognized as a
powerful means for claiming land tenure and identity
with a place (e.g., Buikstra and Charles 1999; McAnany
1998). In a similar manner, repeated construction on a
spot, especially involving direct superimposition of buildings, is often taken by archaeologists as defining an axis
mundi (Eliade 1959); examples from Mesoamerica include
successive rebuildings of the Aztec Templo Mayor (Matos
Moctezuma 1988), or among the Classic Maya, the fourcentury sequence of superimposed royal tombs and their
encompassing buildings in the acropolis at Copan (Sharer
et al. 1999). In both cases, sacred mountains were built
and rebuilt. While the landscape architectural metaphor is
well known (e.g., Benson 1985), at least as important are
the social implications of its material reiteration in place,
emphatically re-creating the sacred mountain that centers
the world. Whether or not reflecting the willing disposition of the construction crews, the act of rebuilding reflects at least leaders' decisions and dispositions to reproduce the social, political, and moral order.
Repetitively rebuilt houses have been attributed similar implications, re-creating the world by commemorating
place and social continuity on a domestic scale. Drawing
on structural and practice analyses, this kind of social reproduction within domestic space and place has been inferred for many societies around the world, by both ethnographers and archaeologists (e.g., Joyce and Gillespie
2000).
Safeguarding an established place, whether a building
or open space, amid other rising construction may also
signal a disposition of reverence, commemorating histori-

cal or mythical events and people associated with that

place. Such decisions and dispositions seem to pertain for
Str. 1B-2 at the Classic Maya civic center at Quirigua*, Guatemala (Sharer 1978), as well as for Str. 5D-46 at Tikal
(Schele and Mathews 1998), Both buildings antedate surrounding structures significantly, and each has been identified on other evidence as the residence of a king critical
to the history of the local reigning dynasty. The precise social meaning of such treatment may not always be clear to
us, but, at minimum, it plausibly marks decisions and dispositions to commemorate a place important in local history and worldview.
In all cases, of course, materialized decisions may obscure struggle among particular social dispositions. The
point is clearer from cases where contest and struggle are
manifest in the life history of place. A well-known example is the obliteration of the capital of the heretic pharaoh,
Akhenaten, shortly after his death. Other illustrations come
from civic planning among the ancient Maya. In brief,
and like many cases elsewhere, these civic plans use location and orientation of buildings and spaces to transform
the "place" as a microcosm. Within the spatially complex
place, the king's authority gains supernatural sanction, in
part, from where his portrait, residence, and public performances are situated (Ashmore 1989). In some Maya
civic centers this mapped worldview is apparent fairly
readily. At centers with more turbulent political history,
marked by upheavals in royal succession and sometimes
by conquest, the layouts are harder initially to read because we observe an unsorted palimpsest of decisions.
When sorted by building program, evidence emerges for
distinct decisions about place, some of which seem tied to
shifts between competing dynastic lines (Ashmore and
Sabloff2002).
Although it is more challenging to trace life histories
of places not marked by formal construction, the social
principles involved are the same. A place is recognized and
becomes part of a socially cognized landscape. Current
study of landscapes highlights this recognition, and archaeologists representing quite diverse theoretical backgrounds are engaged actively in such study (e.g., Ashmore
and Knapp 1999; Bradley 1998; Fisher and Thurston 1999;
Ucko and Layton 1999). As Paul Tacon remarks concerning sacred landscapes of Australia and elsewhere, the places
recognized are often:
where concepts of an upper world, a lower world and the
earth plain come together visually in a striking manner.
These are places where the center of the world may be experienced, where an axis mundi is located . . . for it is at
these places that it is claimed a powerful connection between different levels and states of existence can be encountered. [Tacon 1999:37]
Memories about these and other kinds of places accrue, as
people visit repeatedly across the seasons or the years, imbuing places like Ayers Rock or Lascaux Cave with layered
meanings, if not necessarily stratified physical markings.
The markings materialize decisions and dispositions in

Ashmore

social space, but the absence of formal markings cannot be

taken to imply lack of meaningonly uncertainty as to its
presence and nature.
Of course, the meanings attached to a place may
change within its life history.3 John Barrett's and Richard
Bradley's concepts of "inhabitation" and "afterlife of monuments/' both mentioned earlier, draw attention in part to
this larger point, concerning the longevity of places and
the mutability of their meanings.
In examining British landscapes of the Neolithic, Bronze,
and Iron Ages, Barrett argues the following:
Traditionally archaeologists studying the Iron Age in
southern Britain have operated as if [mounds created in
earlier times] were simply lost at this point; they do not
for example appear on the distribution maps which we so
often produce of Iron Age monuments. However, it is my
case that these monuments remained a crucial and integrated component of the Iron Age landscape, and that their
lack of further modification holds a key to understanding how
the inhabitation of that landscape accommodated them. [Bar-

rett 1999:258, emphasis added]

As Crumley captures the point, "while [elements of previous landscapes] may be differently interpreted, [they] always modify current thinking" (Crumley 1999:272). Different theoretical wellsprings inspired parallel lines of
research (e.g., Buikstra and Charles 1999; Crumley 1995b),
but, in all, the composite placethe local landscape and
its constituent natural and accumulated cultural elements
remained a critical arena and set of referents for mapping
social and political change.
Inhabitation, in the foregoing sense, extends life histories of place and, whether pertaining to landscapes or
more discrete places within them, ties into what Bradley
calls the "afterlife" of monuments, continuing into the
present day. I focus here, however, on place rather than
monument, per se, to emphasize the role of the place itself, however complex in composition, rather than any
constructed monuments that mark it. Moving toward and
into present times often reveals dramatic decisions and
dispositions about place.
Writing of Stonehenge, Barbara Bender (e.g., 1998)
and Christopher Chippindale (e.g., 1986) contribute to
one of the best-known instances of a life chronicle of place
extending to today. They set archaeologists' interpretations of the ancient construction and use record within a
longer-term history, reaching to present-day political
struggles over control of access and interpretation about
the place. Decisions and dispositions of the ruling class in
recent times are most obtrusive, expressed tangibly in
fences, roads, and other modern features that will leave
traces in the archaeological record.
Indeed, struggle for control surrounds many places,
ancient and modern. In the Americas, 16th-century Spanish invaders promptly and deliberately obliterated vibrant
cities such as Tenochtitlan and Tihoo, usurping the places
of consummate native authority, and transforming indigenous capitals into colonial ones on the spot, as today's
Mexico City and Merida (e.g., Low 1995). The life histories

"Decisions and Dispositions"

1179

of many socially significant places in the Balkans were

abruptly truncated as part of interethnic strife in the recent wars there (e.g., Chapman 1994). Struggle for control
of interpretation of a place can also be heated; particularly
well-documented instances are Great Zimbabwe (Kuklick
1991) andas already mentionedStonehenge.
In other cases, the life history of place has inspired
stewardship and preservation. Examples include historic
preservation of architecture and UNESCO's steps toward
protecting cultural landscapes of varying age (Cleere
1995). That these steps and other decisions about place are
sometimes born of struggle is clear. Writing of archaeological research in the U.S. Southwest, Maria Nieves Zedeno
describes the current "compliance-driven" milieu as "a
golden field of untapped possibilities for theoretical and
methodological advance" (2000:102), including what she
sees as new ways of examining landscapes, from place-oriented Native American perspectives rather than expanseoriented Western views (see also Snead and Preucel 1999).
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Where are we now with respect to spatial archaeology?

Can spatial inquiry be considered "socialized"? How do
these matters contribute to understandings beyond archaeology?
Unquestionably, archaeologists of multiple theoretical persuasions actively and productively pursue spatial
analyses and, particularly, the social implications of evidence about space and place. These are informed by quite
variable notions of what constitutes social theory and of
how central such theories are to archaeological inquiry.
Sometimes this diversity within archaeology generally has
actively impeded communication, within and beyond the
discipline: the interpretive message stops at the dooioi
the ear or the eyeof potential collegial audiences.
For example, Michael Schiffer views current archaeology
as characterized by "near-debilitating fragmentation" (2000a:
vii) and offers several explanations for why archaeologists
are either unable or unwilling to try to reintegrate across
these fractures. Although varied theoretical programs are
often cast as irrevocably incompatible epistemically (e.g.,
Meskell 1999; Patterson 1990), a considerable number of
archaeologists have found fruitful complementarity in
reading across the different approaches (e.g., Paddayya
1990; Preucel 1991; Trigger 1991), or in attempting to
"build bridges" of social theory to facilitate communication among them (Schiffer 2000b). Others seek to enhance
communication across fields, between archaeology and
other domains of inquiry (e.g., Joyce and Gillespie 2000;
Meskell et al. 2001).
I suggest here that a socialized spatial archaeology embodies areas where this kind of discussion is possible, and
that there is perhaps a growing readiness to embrace such
an opportunity. Landscape studies have been offered as
one fruitful domain, as has been argued recently by several scholars, themselves of mutually distinct theoretical

1180

American Anthropologist

Vol. 104, No. 4

backgrounds (Crumley 1999; Feinman 1999). Attempts expressed in symposia, edited volumes, or journal issues do
not resolve or homogenize the differences, of course.
However, in introducing a set of landscape studies for a
special section of Antiquity, Bender (1999) simultaneously
acknowledged the quite marked theoretical, methodological, and reading-list differences between contributions of
American and British authors and concluded that "together,
[the articles] present [ed] an exciting set of potentials"
(1999:632, emphasis added).
I propose that "life histories of place" constitute another promising arena, where multiple distinct approaches
offer complementary approaches and insights. This arena,
at least as emphatically as landscape, also articulates ancient spaces and places with their social roles today, embedding them within ongoing sets of political and moral
decisions and dispositions. At the same time, this kind of
study meshes with and complements consideration of disruption in such life histories, both in antiquity and in today's .social struggles of transnationalism, migration, and
political exile, all of which involve spatial dimensions of
displacement and dislocation (e.g., Bender 2001). Perhaps
transcendently, biographies of place ground us with respect to ethical issues of human experience, even as they
augment social dimensions of archaeology.
Theoretical and methodological decisions and dispositions undeniably differentiate archaeologists, from one
another and from other scholars. These differences are real
and important, and they will not be resolved easily, soon,
or, perhaps, ever. In the realms discussed in this article as
in others, we can perhaps look beyond our differences to
explore more of the gamut of spatialized contributions toward understanding human lives, ancient and modern. A
significant part of this involves recognizing the decisions
and dispositions writ in the evidence of spatial archaeology.
WENDY ASHMORE Department of Anthropology, University
of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0418
NOTES
Acknowledgments. I am grateful to Rosemary Joyce, Deb Nichols,
and the Archeology Division of the AAA, for honoring me with the
invitation to prepare this essay. The original version was presented
at the 99th Annual Meeting of the AAA, in November 2000. My
thinking on the issues raised here has benefited from years of discussion with many people, relatively few of whom are cited formally in this article. During preparation of the talk, Meg Conkey
and Gil Stein generously shared unpublished works with me, and
Tom Patterson and Bob Preucel offered encouragement and critique. Many colleagues provided critical comments toward revising
this article, including Jane Buikstra, David Freidel, Rebecca HussAshmore, Sue Kent, Bernard Knapp, Carol Kramer, David Kronenfeld, Setha Low, Cynthia Robin, Nan Rothschild, Jerry Sabloff,
Bruce Trigger, Gordon Willey, as well as AA Editors-in-Chief Fran
Mascia-Lees and Susan Lees, Tara J. Pearson, and an anonymous reviewer. I am grateful for their thoughtful remarks, although I have
not always heeded their suggestions. Through it all, Tom Patterson
has helped me stay moderately sane, in a period when both of us
were changing jobs and moving cross-country, radically modifying
the space and place of our lives.

December 2002
1. My comments here should not be construed as critique of
Clarke, by any means. A brilliantly innovative archaeologist,
Clarke did not survive to develop his own ideas further; some of
his students, however, have been among those contributilig centrally to these very themes. Indeed, some have characterized many
aspects of current archaeological theory as playing out themes embodied in Clarke's works (e.g., Malone and Stoddart 1998). Rather,
I take his 1977 expression of skepticism as reflecting thinking common at the time, a stock taking stated succinctly by an eminent
theorist (cf. Hawkes 1954).
2. For anthropology alone, Denise Lawrence and Setha Low (1990)
reviewed publications on the built environment for the 1990 Annual Review of Anthropology. To keep their article within manageable bounds, they explicitly excluded archaeological literature,
urging a comparable treatment by archaeologists. By emphasizing
the built environment, as well as by dint of their publication date,
that extremely valuable review also necessarily omitted the voluminous literature of the decade since.
3. Alternatively, the meaning may remain while its localization
changes, as in Tollan of Mesoamerica (e.g., Carrasco et al. 2000;
Tedlock 1985) or the White House of the Puebloan Southwest (e.g.,
Lekson 1999).
REFERENCES CITED
Ashmore, Wendy
1989 Construction and Cosmology: Politics and Ideology in Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns. In Word and Image in Maya Culture. William F. Hanks and Don S. Rice, eds. Pp. 272-286. Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Ashmore, Wendy, and A. Bernard Knapp, eds.
1999 Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Approaches. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ashmore, Wendy, and Jeremy A. Sabloff
2002 Spatial Order in Maya Civic Plans. Latin American Antiquity
13:201-215.
Ashmore, Wendy, and Richard R. Wilk
1988 Household and Community in the Mesoamerican Past. In
Household and Community in the Mesoamerican Past Richard
R. Wilk and Wendy Ashmore, eds. Pp. 1-27. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Barrett, John
1999 The Mythical Landscapes of the British Iron Age. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Approaches. Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, eds. Pp. 253-265. Oxford: Blackwell.
Barrett, John, Richard Bradley, and Martin Green
1991 Landscape, Monuments and Society: The Prehistory of Cranborne Chase. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Basso, Keith H.
1996 Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape. In Senses of Place, Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso, eds. Pp.
53-90. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
Bender, Barbara
1998 Stonehenge: Making Space. Oxford: Berg.
1999 Introductory Comments. Antiquity 73:632-634.
2001 Landscapes on-the-Move. Journal of Social Archaeology
1:75-89.
Benson, Elizabeth P.
1985 Architecture as Metaphor. In Fifth Palenque Round Table,
1983. Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields, eds. Pp.
183-188. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute.
Billman, Brian R., and Gary M. Feinman, eds.
1999 Settlement Pattern Studies in the Americas: Fifty Years since
Viru, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Binford, Lewis R.
19 62 Archaeology as Anthropology. American Antiquity
28:217-225.
1964 A Consideration of Archaeological Research Design. American Antiquity 29:425-441.
1982 The Archaeology of Place. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1:5-31,
Bradley, Richard
1987 Time Regained: The Creation of Continuity. Journal of the
British Archaeological Association 140:1-17.

Ashmore "Decisions and Dispositions"

1993 Altering the Earth: The Origins of Monuments in Britain and
Continental Europe. The Rhind Lectures 1991-92. Monograph
Series, 8. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
1998 Ruined Buildings, Ruined Stones: Enclosures, Tombs and
Natural Places in the Neolithic of South-West England. World Archaeology 30:13-22.
2000 An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge.
Brumfiel, Elizabeth M.
1992 Breaking and Entering the EcosystemGender, Class and
Faction Steal the Show. American Anthropologist 94:551-567.
Buikstra, Jane E., and Douglas K. Charles
1999 Centering the Ancestors: Cemeteries, Mounds, and Sacred
Landscapes in the Ancient North American Midcontinent. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives. Wendy
Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, eds. Pp. 201-228. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cameron, Catherine M.
1993 Abandonment and Archaeological Interpretation. In Abandonment of Settlements and Regions: Ethnoarchaeological and
Archaeological Approaches. Catherine M. Cameron and Steve A.
Tomka, eds. Pp. 3-7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Canuto, Marcello A., and Jason Yaeger, eds.
2000 The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective. London: Routledge.
Carrasco, David, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions, eds.
2000 Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Chang, Kwang-Chih
1958 Study of the Neolithic Social Grouping: Examples from the
New World. American Anthropologist 60:208-235.
Chang, Kwang-Chih, ed.
1968 Settlement Archaeology. Palo Alto, CA: National Press Books.
Chapman, John
1994 Destruction of a Common Heritage: The Archaeology of War
in Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina. Antiquity 68:120-126.
Childe, V. Gordon
1951 Social Evolution. London: Fontana.
Chippindale, Christopher
1986 Stoned Henge: Events and Issues at the Summer Solstice,
1985. World Archaeology 18:38-58.
Clarke, David L.
1977 Spatial Information in Archaeology. In Spatial Archaeology.
David L. Clarke, ed. Pp. 1-32. London: Academic Press.
Cleere, Henry
1995 Cultural Landscapes as World Heritage. Conservation and
Management of Archaeological Sites 1:63-68.
Conkey, Margaret W.
199 7 Beyond Art and Between the Caves: Thinking about Context
in the Interpretive Process. In Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and
Symbol. Margaret W. Conkey, Olga Softer, Deborah Stratmann,
and Nina G. Jablonski, eds. Pp. 343-367. Memoirs, 23. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences.
Conkey, Margaret W., and Joan M. Gero
1997 Programme to Practice: Gender and Feminism in Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:411-437.
Cowgill, George F.
1983 Rulership and the Ciudadela: Political Inferences from Teotihuacan Architecture. In Civilization in the Ancient Americas: Essays in Honor of Gordon R. Willey. Richard M. Leventhal and
Alan L. Kolata, eds. Pp. 313-343. Albuquerque, NM: University of
New Mexico Press and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.
Crumley, Carole L.
1979 Three Locational Models: An Epistemological Assessment for
Anthropology and Archaeology. In Advances in Archaeological
Method and Theory, vol. 2. Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp. 171-173.
New York: Academic Press.
1987 A Dialectical Critique of Hierarchy. In Power Relations and
State Formation. Thomas C. Patterson and Christine Ward
Gailey, eds. Pp. 155-169. Washington, DC: Archeology Section,
American Anthropological Association.
1995a Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies. In Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies. Robert Ehrenreich,
Carole L. Crumley, and Janet E. Levy, eds. Pp. 1-5. Archeological
Papers, 6. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.

1181

1995b Building an Historical Ecology of Gaulish Polities. In Celtic

Chiefdom, Celtic State. Bettina Arnold and D. Blair Gibson, eds.
Pp. 26-33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1999 Sacred Landscapes: Constructed and Conceptualized. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Approaches. Wendy
Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, eds. Pp. 269-276. Oxford: Blackwell.
Daniel, Glyn
1980 Megalithic Monuments. Scientific American 243Quly 1):
78-90.
Donley, Linda Wiley
1982 House Power: Swahili Space and Symbolic Markers. In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Ian Hodder, ed. Pp. 63-73.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Douglas, Mary
19 72 Symbolic Orders in the Use of Domestic Space. In Man, Settlement and Urbanism. Peter J. Ucko, Ruth Tringham, and Geoffrey
W. Dimbleby, eds. Pp. 513-521. London: Duckworth.
Dunnell, Robert C, and William S. Dancey
1983 The Siteless Survey: A Regional Scale Data Collection Strategy. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 6.
Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp. 267-287. New York: Academic Press.
Eliade, Mircea
1959 The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New
York: Harvest Books.
Feinman, Gary M.
1999 Defining a Contemporary Landscape Approach: Concluding
Thoughts. Antiquity 73:684-685.
Fish, Suzanne K., Paul R. Fish, and John H. Madsen
1990 Analyzing Regional Agriculture: A Hohokam Example. In
The Archaeology of Regions: A Case for Full-Coverage Survey.
Suzanne K. Fish and Stephen A. Kowalewski, eds. Pp. 189-218.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fisher, Christopher, and Tina L. Thurston, eds.
1999 Special Section: Dynamic Landscapes and Socio-Political
Process: The Topography of Anthropogenic Environments in
Global Perspective. Antiquity 73:630-685.
Flannery, Kent V.
1972 The Origins of the Village as a Settlement Type in
Mesoamerica and the Near East: A Comparative Study. In Man,
Settlement and Urbanism. Peter J. Ucko, Ruth Tringham, and
Geoffrey W. Dimbleby, eds. Pp. 23-53. London: Duckworth.
Flannery, Kent V., ed.
1976 The Early Mesoamerican Village. New York: Academic Press.
Flannery, Kent V., and Joyce Marcus
1976 Formative Oaxaca and the Zapotec Cosmos. American Scientist 64:374-383.
Foley, Robert
1981 Off-Site Archaeology: An Alternative Approach for the ShortSited. In Pattern of the Past: Studies in Honour of David Clarke,
Ian Hodder, Glynn Isaac, and Norman Hammond, eds. Pp.
157-183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fowler, Don
1987 Uses of the Past: Archaeology in the Service of the State.
American Antiquity 52:229-248.
Fox, Cyril
1932 The Personality of Britain. Cardiff: National Museum of
Wales.
Fritz,JohnM.
1978 Paleopsychology Today: Ideational Systems and Adaptation
in Prehistory. In Social Archeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating. Charles L. Redman, Mary Jane Berman, Edward V. Curtin,
William T. Langhomejr., Nina M. Versaggi, andjeffery C. Wanser, eds. Pp. 37-59. New York: Academic Press.
1986 Vijayanagara: Authority and Meaning of a South Indian Imperial Capital. American Anthropologist 88:44-55.
Giddens, Anthony
1984 The Constitution of Society: An Outline of the Theory of
Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hall, Edward T.
1966 The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Hall, Robert
1977 Ghosts, Water Barriers, Corn, and Sacred Enclosures in the
Eastern Woodlands. American Antiquity 41:360-364.

1182

American Anthropologist Vol. 104, No. 4 December 2002

Hawkes, Christopher
1954 Archaeological Theory and Method: Some Suggestions from
the Old World. American Anthropologist 56:155-168.
Hendon,JuliaA.
1997 Women's Work, Women's Space, and Women's Status
among the Classic-Period Maya Elite of the Copan Valley, Honduras. In Women in Prehistory: North America and
Mesoamerica. Cheryl Claassen and Rosemary A.Joyce, eds. Pp.
33^i6. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hodder, Ian
1982a Theoretical Archaeology: A Reactionary View. In Symbolic
and Structural Archaeology. Ian Hodder, ed. Pp. 1-16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1984 Burials, Houses, Women and Men in the European Neolithic. In Ideology, Power and Prehistory. Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley, eds. Pp. 51-68. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hodder, Ian, ed.
1982b Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hunter-Anderson, Rosalind L.
1977 A Theoretical Approach to the Study of House Form. In For
Theory-Building in Archaeology. Essays on Faunal Remains,
Aquatic Resources, Spatial Analysis, and Systemic Modeling. Lewis R. Binford, ed. Pp. 287-315. New York: Academic Press.
Ingold, Tim
1993 The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology
25:152-174.
Johnson, Matthew H.
1989 Conceptions of Agency in Archaeological Interpretation.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8:189-211.
Joyce, Rosemary A., and Susan D. Gillespie, eds.
2000 Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House
Societies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kent, Susan
1990a A Cross-Cultural Study of Segmentation, Architecture, and
the Use of Space. In Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space:
An Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Study. Susan Kent, ed.
Pp. 127-152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kent, Susan, ed.
1990b Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Knapp, A. Bernard
1997 The Archaeology of Late Bronze Age Cypriot Society: The
Study of Settlement, Survey and Landscape. Occasional Paper, 4.
Glasgow: University of Glasgow, Department of Archaeology.
Kuklick, Henrika
1991 Contested Monuments: The Politics of Archaeology in
Southern Africa. In Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contexrualization of Ethnographic Knowledge. George W. Stocking, ed.
Pp. 135-169. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Lawrence, Denise S., and Setha M. Low
1990 The Built Environment and Spatial Form. Annual Review of
Anthropology 19:453-505.
Lekson, Stephen H.
1981 Cognitive Frameworks and Chacoan Architecture. New Mexico Journal of Science 21:27-36.
1999 The Chaco Meridian: Cycles of Power in the Ancient Southwest. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Leone, Mark P.
1984 Interpreting Ideology in Historical Archaeology: The William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland. In Ideology, Power
and Prehistory. Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley, eds. Pp.
25-35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Longacre, William A.
1966 Archaeology as Anthropology: A Case Study. Anthropological Papers, 14. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Low, Setha M.
1995 Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish-American Plaza in
Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. American Anthropologist
97:748-762.
2000 On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture.
Austin: University of Texas Press.

Malone, Caroline, and Simon Stoddart, eds.

1998 Special Section: David Clarke's "Archaeology: The Loss of Innocence" (1973) 25 Years After. Antiquity 72:676-702.
Marcus, Joyce, and Kent V. Flannery
'
1996 Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo
1988 The Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenodititkn.
London: Thames and Hudson.
McAnany, Patricia
1998 Ancestors and the Classic Maya Built Environment. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture. Stephen D. Houston, ed. Pp. 271-298. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks.
McGuire, Randall H., and Michael B. Schiffer
1983 A Theory of Architectural Design. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2:277-303.
Meskell, Lynn
1998 An Archaeology of Social Relations in an Egyptian Village.
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 5:209-243.
1999 Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class etcetera in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell.
Meskell, Lynn, Chris Gosden, Ian Hodder, Rosemary Joyce, and
Robert Preucel
2001 Editorial Statement. Journal of Social Archaeology 1:5-12.
Moore, Jerry D.
1996 The Archaeology of Plazas and the Proxemics of Ritual: Three
Andean Traditions. American Anthropologist 98:789-802.
Morgan, Lewis Henry
1965 [1881] Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
O'Connor, David
1989 City and Palace in New Kingdom Egypt. Cahiers de Recherches de l'lnstitut de Papyrologie et d'Egyptologie de Lille. Societes
Urbaines en Egypteetau Soudan, 11:73-87.
Paddayya, K.
1990 The New Archaeology and Aftermath: A View from Outside
the Anglo-American World. Pune, India: Ravish Publishers.
Parsons, Jeffrey R.
19 72 Archaeological Settlement Patterns. Annual Review of Anthropology 1:127-150.
Patterson, Thomas C.
1990 Some Theoretical Tensions within and between the Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9:189-200.
Piggott, Stuart
19 72 Conclusion. In Man, Settlement and Urbanism. Peter J.
Ucko, Ruth Tringham, and Geoffrey W. Dimbleby, eds. Pp.
947-953. London: Duckworth.
Preucel, Robert W.
1991 The Philosophy of Archaeology. In Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past. Robert
W. Preucel, ed. Pp. 17-29. Occasional Paper 10. Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University.
Rapoport, Amos
1969 House Form and Culture. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall.
1990 Systems of Activities and Systems of Settings. In Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary and CrossCultural Study. Susan Kent, ed. Pp. 9-20. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Redman, Charles L., Edward Curtin, Nina Versaggi, and
Jeffery Wanser
1978 Social Archeology: The Future of the Past. In Social Archeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating. Charles L. Redman, Mary
Jane Berman, Edward V. Curtin, William T. Langhorne Jr., Nina
M. Versaggi, and Jeffery C. Wanser, eds. Pp. 1-17. New York: Academic Press.
Renfrew, Colin
1986 Approaches to Social Archaeology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Richards, Colin
1990 The Late Neolithic House in Orkney. In The Social Archaeology of Houses. Ross Sampson, ed. Pp. 111-124. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Ashmore "Decisions and Dispositions"

Robin, Cynthia, and Nan Rothschild, eds.
2002 Archaeological Ethnographies: Social Dynamics of Outdoor
Space. Journal of Social Archaeology 2(2).
Rossignol, Jacqueline, and LuAnn Wandsnider, eds.
1992 Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes. New York: Plenum Press.
Sabloff, Jeremy A., and Wendy Ashmore
2001 An Aspect of Archaeology's Recent Past and Its Relevance in
the New Millennium. In Archaeology at the Millennium: A Sourcebook. Gary M. Feinman and T. Douglas Price, eds. Pp. 11-32.
New York: Plenum.
Santley, Robert, and Ronald Kneebone
1993 Craft Specialization, Refuse Disposal, and the Creation of
Spatial Archaeological Records in Prehispanic Mesoamerica. In
Prehispanic Domestic Units in Western Mesoamerica: Studies of
the Household, Compound, and Residence. Robert S. Santley and
Kenneth G. Hirth, eds. Pp. 37-63. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Schele, Linda, and Peter Ma thews
1998 The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Maya Temples and Tombs. New York: Scribner.
Schiffer, Michael B.
2000a Social Theory in Archaeology: Building Bridges. In Social
Theory in Archaeology. Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp. 1-13. Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Schiffer, Michael B., ed.
2000b Social Theory in Archaeology. Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press.
Schlanger, Sarah
1992 Recognizing Persistent Places in Anasazi Settlement Systems.
In Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes. Jacqueline Rossignol and LuAnn Wandsnider, eds. Pp. 91-112. New York: Plenum Press.
Schortman, Edward M.
1986 Interaction between the Maya and Non-Maya along the Late
Classic Southeast Maya Periphery: The Viewfromthe Lower Motagua Valley, Guatemala. In The Southeast Maya Periphery. Patricia A. Urban and Edward M. Schortman, eds. Pp. 114-137.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Shanks, Michael, and Christopher Tilley
1988 Social Theory and Archaeology. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press.
Sharer, Robert J.
1978 Archaeology and History at Quirigua, Guatemala. Journal of
Field Archaeology 5:51-70.
Sharer, Robert J., William L. Fash, David W. Sedat, Loa P. Traxler,
and Richard Williamson
1999 Continuities and Contrasts in Early Classic Architecture of
Central Copan. In Mesoamerican Architecture as a Cultural Symbol. Jeff Karl Kowalski, ed. Pp. 220-249. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sherratt, Andrew
1996 "Settlement Patterns" or "Landscape Studies"? Reconciling
Reason and Romance. Archaeological Dialogues 3:140-159.
Snead, James E., and Robert W. Preucel
1999 The Ideology of Settlement: Ancestral Keres Landscapes in
the Northern Rio Grande. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives. Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp,
eds. Pp. 169-197. Oxford: Blackwell.
Spaulding, Albert C.
1960 The Dimensions of Archaeology. In Essays in the Science of
Culture in Honor of Leslie A. White. Gertrude Dole and Robert
Carneiro, eds. Pp. 437-456. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

1183

Steadman, Sharon R.
1996 Recent Research in the Archaeology of Architecture: Beyond
the Foundations. Journal of Archaeological Research 4:51-93.
Stone-Miller, Rebecca, and Gordon F. McEwan
1990-91 The Representation of the Wari State in Stone and
Thread: A Comparison of Architecture and Tapestry Tunics. Res
19-20:53-80.
Tacon, Paul S. C.
1999 Identifying Ancient Sacred Landscapes in Australia: From
Physical to Social. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary
Perspectives. Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, eds. Pp.
33-57. Oxford: Blackwell.
Taylor, Walter W.
1948 A Study of Archeology. Memoir, 69. Menasha, WI: American
Anthropological Association.
Tedlock, Dennis E.
1985 Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Thomas, David Hurst
19 75 Non-Site Sampling: Up the Creek without a Site? In Sampling
in Archaeology. James Mueller, ed. Pp. 61-81. Tucson: University
of Arizona Press.
Thomas, Julian
1993 The Politics of Vision and the Archaeologies of Landscape. In
Landscape: Politics and Perspective. Barbara Bender, ed. Pp.
19-48. Oxford: Berg.
2001 Archaeologies of Place and Landscape. In Archaeological Theory Today. Ian Hodder, ed. Pp. 165-186. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Trigger, Bruce G.
1967 Settlement ArchaeologyIts Goals and Promise. American
Antiquity 32:149-160.
1968 The Determinants of Settlement Patterns. In Settlement Archaeology. K. C. Chang, ed. Pp. 53-78. Palo Alto, CA: National
Press Books.
1991 Distinguished Lecture in Archeology: Constraint and Freedom. American Anthropologist 93:551-569.
Tringham, Ruth
1994 Engendered Spaces in Prehistory. Gender, Place and Culture
1:169-203.
Trombold, Charles D., ed.
1991 Ancient Road Networks and Settlement Hierarchies in the
New World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ucko, Peter, and Robert Layton, eds.
1999 The Anthropology and Archaeology of Landscapes: Shaping
Your Landscape. London: Routledge.
Ucko, Peter, Ruth Tringham, and Geoffrey W. Dimbleby, eds.
1972 Man, Settlement and Urbanism. London: Duckworth.
Wilk, Richard R., and William L. Rathje, eds.
1982 Archaeology of the Household: Building a Prehistory of Domestic Life. American Behavioral Scientist 25(6).
Willey, Gordon R.
1953 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru. Bulletin 155. Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology.
Winters, Howard D.
1968 The Riverton Culture. Springfield: Illinois State Museum.
Yaeger, Jason, and Marcello A. Canuto
2000 Introducing an Archaeology of Communities. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective. Marcello A.
Canuto and Jason Yaeger, eds. Pp. 1-15. London: Routledge.
Zedeno, Maria Nieves
2000 On What People Make of Places: A Behavioral Cartography.
In Social Theory in Archaeology. Michael B. Schiffer, ed. Pp.
97-111. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.