JOURNAL

OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL

ARCHAEOLOGY

8,

250-269 (1989)

This Is Not an Article about Material Culture as Text

IAN HODDER
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 302, England, United Kingdom Received February 3, 1988 Archaeological attempts to see material culture as meaningfully constituted have often used an analogy with language as a structured system of signs separate from practical and expedient activity. This separation of meaning from the context of action has generated the split between normative and processual archaeology. Rather than being compared with language, material culture can be considered as a text. A text is a specific and concrete product, written to have effects in the world. It makes use of linguistic codes, aspects of which may be universal, but a text can only be adequately interpreted in relation to the historical meanings which it manipulates and in relation to the nonarbitrary social and practical context in which it is written. Material culture is recognized as a particularly material form of text, and some examples are given of the archaeological implications of the view that meaning and practice are closely tied in material culture.
0 1989 Academic Press. Inc.

INTRODUCTION

I begin exploring the meaning of the title of this paper by arguing that over the last 100 years archaeology has tolerated a particular confusion which has led to polarized perspectives within the discipline. The confusion results from a lack of clarity within the idea that material culture can be seen as a language. Archaeologists have long made a link between material culture and language. There are close ties between the studies of typology, classification, categorization, and language. Pitt-Rivers early made these relationships explicit when he argued (1874:12) for a science of the material arts modeled on the science of language. It was possible, he thought, to transfer analytical methods from one science to the other. For example, every material form marks its own place in sequence by its relative complexity or affinity to other allied forms, in the same manner that every word in the science of language has a place assigned to it in the order of development or phonetic decay. In much of the period since 1874, archaeologists have accepted that material culture expressed ideas in some form or another. The language model was usually implicit, although it was
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stated, for example, in Jacobsthals (1944) attempt to define a grammar of Celtic ornament (cf. Deetz 1967; Glassie 1975; Preziosi 1979). But throughout the period up to the mid-twentieth century, a distinction was at times made between two ways in which material culture acted as language. Pitt-Rivers (1874) perhaps made the case most clearly, setting the script for later writers. He distinguished an intellectual mind capable of reasoning upon unfamiliar circumstances from an automaton mind capable of acting intuitively. On the one hand are found conscious reason and will, and on the other hand unconscious but still meaningful habits. As examples, Pitt-Rivers describes the child striving with the intellectual mind to learn how to walk or read or write, and suggeststhat this knowledge can then be transferred to the automaton mind. Thus the adult can walk, read, or write while being unconscious of the rules being used and while being able to engage the intellectual mind in other matters. Also important is the association that Pitt-Rivers makes between the unconscious and writing. It is certainly implied that one would have to talk directly to a subject in order to understand the conscious will, whereas writing and much material cultural production are organized by the unconscious mind. Indeed, Pitt-Rivers appears to have thought that archaeologists have little ability to reach to past conscious worlds. All the generalizations and interpretations of archaeological and ethnographic material that he suggests are focused on rules that organize unconscious actions. Thus grandual sequences of material forms come about because artifact production becomes routinized within the automaton mind. The intellectual mind makes only minor adjustments leading to gradual stylistic progress. The decay of forms similarly comes about through, for example, the intellectual desire to save time or effort. Despite the fact that the overall sequence of forms is produced by the automaton mind, the intellectual mind is always present but unseen, guiding the automaton mind to progress or decay. The conscious mind is clearly privileged but it is distanced from habitual abilities. The intellectual mind is given primary importance, yet it is not assailable archaeologically. It is divorced from the practical world of writing and walking and doing. The same distinction between conscious meanings and the unconscious was made by later writers. For example, in identifying the underlying structure of early Celtic art, Jacobsthal (1944) describes the art as anticonic (because it generally lacks human images) or flowery, growing, fleshy. It is clear, however, that he did not assume that one could obtain the conscious thoughts of the artists. These artists thought little of flowers and twigs, they had vaguely floral rhythms in their minds (Jacobsthal 1944). Jacobsthals descriptions were not intended to coincide with the descriptions that the artists would have made them-

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selves. Rather they were convenient descriptions in the modern world of the structure of an ancient material art form. Crawford, too, in his discussion (1957) of the interpretation of eye motifs found on prehistoric pottery and tombs in Europe, realized that the meanings he assigned to the motifs may not have been verbally discussed by the actors involved. To make his point he used an ethnographic analogy (Crawford 1957:68) of an instance commonly met with by ethnoarchaeologists today. When Hutton was among the Nagas of Assam, one day he observed a man chipping a pattern on the stone of a monument. Hutton enquired as to the patterns meaning, and the man replied he did not know. The patterns were customary. Crawford concludes from this example that material forms can have meanings which are only dimly present in the culture that produced them. In other words, conscious knowledge of the meanings of artifacts may become lost, and yet the artifacts retain a meaning at the everyday, practical level. Wherever similar ideas are found, there is a concomitant assumption that the conscious world of speech is in some sense primary and independent such that it is difficult to approach through archaeological evidence, For example, Piggott (1959) showed that it was possible to describe and make theories about the organization of burial rituals, but suggested that it was impossible to get at the beliefs and language behind that organization. From these examples, three points can be stressed. First, it is assumed that there is an arena of meaning (practical consciousness) with its own rules, separate from conscious abstract thought. My use of the term practical consciousness is taken from Giddens (1979) distinction between discursive and practical consciousness. The former refers to that which can be brought to and held in consciousness-knowledge which can be expressed. This is equivalent to Pitt-Rivers intellectual mind. Practical consciousness refers to tacit stocks of knowledge which actors skillfully apply in conduct. It concerns knowledge about the use of rules, even if those rules cannot be formulated clearly in speech, and it is equivalent to Pitt-Rivers automaton mind. Second, conscious meanings, best approached through speech, are more important than practical consciousness. There is no suggestion by the archaeological authors that habits, writing, or practical consciousness may structure or determine conscious thought, or that the beliefs underlying burial rituals may themselves only be coded practices. The conscious will is primary. Third, because thought is separate from writing, and consciousness is independent of practical activity and material production, the relationship between thought and material culture is arbitrary. It is thus difficult for archaeologists to understand the full meaning of material culture. Only the meanings of the practical consciousness can be assessed.

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The difficulties are increased among the many authors who further confused the distinctions that were made by Pitt-Rivers, Jacobsthal, and Crawford. Most archaeologists made a simple opposition between thoughts, beliefs, and speech on the one hand, and the material world on the other. If the intellectual and automaton minds were not distinguished, it was still less possible to argue that the rules for the production of material culture meanings could be identified. The privileging of conscious speech resulted in an acute skepticism about accessing any material culture symbolic meanings at all. For example, Clark (1939), Daniel (1982), Childe (1925), Wheeler (1933), Rouse (1972), and Willey (1953) all cited cases in which past symbolic meanings could be reasonably reconstructed. In general they referred to artifacts as projections of ideas, and in detail they interpreted Cretan Bronze Age art as naturalistic (Childe 1925), pre-Roman defences as the works of men with power and arrogance (Wheeler 1933), small objects as ritual, and rich objects deposited in bogs or springs as votive (Clark 1939). And yet, as Hawkes (1954) ladder of inference clearly shows, the discussion of these symbolic meanings was always seen as difficult and dangerous, to be strongly constrained by the material evidence. The underlying language model encouraged the conclusion that archaeologists without access to verbal accounts would have difficulty understanding the arbitrary meanings of symbolic practices. Similar assumptions underlay the critical rejection of these normative pursuits. For example, in claiming that cognitive systems of extinct peoples were not useful for explaining the archaeological past, Binford (1967:234) used the term palaeopsychologist. In fact, little of the symbolic archaeology carried out by earlier archaeologists was concerned with psychology. But Binford clearly equated such work with attempts to reach the psyche of past peoples, and to touch the inner thoughts and meanings of individuals. Since we could not talk to people in the past, and since the inner meanings were historically conventional and arbitrary, they needed to be excluded from the objective, comparative science of archaeology. The emphasis shifted to the functions of artifacts. Binfords (1972) idea of cultural drift perhaps continues some of the components of PittRivers automaton mind. But for the most part, the rejection of work on symbolic meanings assumed that material meanings were organized in ways comparable to linguistic meanings and that the spoken words had primary significance. For example, in most of the work testing the notion that archaeological taxonomies corresponded to indigenous taxonomies, the latter were defined through language. For example, White and Thomas (1972) compared tool production in Papua New Guinea with the verbal classifications of the Duna-speaking peoples. Arnold (1971) com-

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pared the etic mineralogy of clays used in potting with the emit verbal categorizations of the clays. Hardin (1979) compared linguistic terms for parts of pots with the decorated zones created in practice on the pots. Indeed, the whole discussion in archaeology about the opposition between emit and etic tended to oppose an inner thought, best approached through speech, and an outer behavior. For example, in attempting to show the futility of searching for cognitive systems in archaeology, Eggert (1977) emphasized that the lack of written sources in prehistory was a major stumbling block. The emit was associated with the intentional, the conceptual, and language. It could not therefore be reached archaeologically. The etic was associated with unintentional behavior. The parallels between this distinction and Pitt-Rivers older contrast between the intellectual and automaton minds are clear, except that for Eggert the automatic behavior is not seen as providing significant information about mind. The overarching assumption that emit meanings were closely tied to thought, best approached through speech and language, limited the range of ethnotaxonomic work that was done in relation to archaeological questions. In the examples of such work referred to above, little attempt was made to compare clay, pottery, or stone-tool categories with other categories (for example in the use of space). The primary reference was always to the verbal linguistic categories. No attempt was made to see if systems of categories might exist beyond or in contradiction to the verbal, although Baines (1985) has demonstrated a clear case in relation to color categories in which language and material culture categorical systems do not coincide. The logical result of the privileging of speech was that archaeologists assumed that this lack of evidence of speech excluded them from any discussion of emit meanings. Whatever the intellectual endeavor involved in human adaptation, the measures of success were seen as functional, long-term, and universal. Speech and emit symbolic meanings as a whole were distanced from practical etic behavior. The subjective was associated with inner thoughts expressed in language. The objective was associated with the external world-the constraints and results of decision-making. Even in contemporary debates the same distinction is made. For example, Barrett (1987:471) prefers a contextual archaeology which attempts to preserve the context of social reproduction over time and space but does not depend on discovering ideas in peoples heads. It is unnecessary therefore to refer to contemporary semiotic research on material culture to show that the language model has had profound influence, often behind the scenes, in archaeology. Material culture meanings, apart from functional meanings, have been assumed ultimately to reside in the thoughts of humans. It has been supposed that these

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primary, distant thoughts are best accessed through language. The emic/etic opposition was confused with the language/behavior contrast and it was therefore assumed that archaeologists could not discuss emit meanings. There is little idea in the recent work discussed so far that etic material culture might contribute to emit meanings or that the meaning of language might be situationally adaptive. The dominance of speech in relation to symbolic meaning is everywhere apparent, even in criticisms of symbolic archaeology. Because of an underlying assumption which privileged speech, archaeologists attempted to avoid the emit by grasping a wholly materialist position. An emphasis was placed on functional and adaptive meanings which were thought to determine or be independent of thought and symbolic meanings. Symbolic archaeology was thought to be difficult if not impossible.
FROM LANGUAGE TO TEXT

Magrittes painting in which a pipe is shown almost as if an archaeological exhibit, with the words underneath ceci nest pas une pipe, can be interpreted at many levels (Foucault 1983). For the moment I wish to examine the distance the painting opens up between the conceptual world on the one hand, and the world of objects (in this case a pipe, or a painting of a pipe, or the word pipe) on the other. There is a distance between the signifier (the objective word, sound of pipe) and the signified (the concept of a pipe). Similarly we separate my concepts about this article from the words on the page. These oppositions are equivalent to the opposition I have been examining between an inner true meaning (the signified thought) and an outer material world (the signifiers). The existence of an independent realm of thought, best approached through speech, has been the focus of examination by Derrida (1976). His discussion places the archaeological debate within a wider framework. Central to the Western tradition of thought since Plato is the idea that meaning originates in the thinking subject, and that speech gives the most direct and least distorted access to this meaning. Derrida suggests that speech has always been contrasted with writing, the meanings of which are unreliable since they are normally inferred in the absence of the writer. Only the writer can have accessto what is assumed to be the true, fixed meaning. In the same way, archaeologists have assumed that material culture is equivalent to a writing and that it is the mind of the author (the maker, the Indian, etc.) that contains the real meaning. In contrast, Derrida claims that everything is already written in the sense that the subjective thoughts of the actor can take place only within systems of differences. For Denida there is no ultimate signified which gives final meaning to spoken, written, or material culture signifiers.

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There is only the play of signillers, each artifact, word, or event being explained in terms of other artifacts, words, or events in an endless series of similarities and oppositions. The subject is decentered in this free play of signifiers, in this process of substitutive reference. While I would reject the absolute priority given by Derrida to the decentering of the subject as well as his inadequate consideration of the pragmatic and material, his critique allows us to consider the archaeological assumption that material culture symbolic meanings are always elsewhere, in the consciousness of artisans. We have tended to privilege speech. But we could argue that the etic material culture itself constituted a text through which thought occurred and occurs. A number of writers, including Foucault and Derrida referred to above, as well as Barthes (1977) and Ricoeur (1971), have contributed in different ways to the contemporary discussion concerning texts. It is particularly the work of Ricoeur, very different from that of Derrida, that will be described here as relevant to the archaeological debate. Ricoeurs account allows a distinction between the model of text as language (within structuralism) and the model of text as work (within certain forms of post-structuralism)-a distinction frequently ignored in archaeology (e.g. Patrik 1985). According to Ricoeur, a text is a work of discourse, the latter to be distinguished from language in four main ways (1971530-531). First, discourse is temporal and in a present, whereas language is general and outside of time. Second, the question who is speaking? does not apply to language, whereas discourse refers back to its speaker. Discourse has a subject. Third, language consists of structured sets of differences which are abstracted from the world, whereas discourse refers to that world. Discourse is about something. Fourth, language is the condition for communication, while discourse communicates to someone. In sum, discourse might be described as situated communication. There is an overall shift from language as a system of signs to the sentence as utterance (Thompson 1981:49). We actually change levels when we pass from the units of a language to the new unit constituted by the sentence or the utterance. This is no longer the unit of a language, but of speech or discourse. By changing the unit, one also changes the function, or rather, one passes from structure to function (Ricoeur 1974:86). One moves from sense to reference and from the signified to the intended. An expression has reference, according to Ricoeur, only in its use. There is a contextual dependency of meaning, incorporating strategy and intentionality. Structuralist analysis is thus only a necessary first stage, a surface interpretation which must be followed by a depth interpretation of contextual meanings (Thompson 198154; Ricoeur 1976:87). A text is a production of discourse. To understand a text is to follow its movement from sense to reference, from what it says to what it talks

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about (1971:558). But a text is distinct from other modes of discourse (such as speech) in that it becomes distanced from the author. What the text says ends up being more important than what the author meant to say. The text can be read in new contexts, and is thus open to reinterpretation. The world to which the text is referred comes to be that of the reader, and the text is opened to a process of argument and debate (Thompson 1981:53). It is of particular interest to archaeologists that Ricoeur goes on to argue (1971) that human action might also be conceived as having the properties of discourse and text. Thus any material action, such as the forming of a pot or the discarding of an artifact, has a propositional content which can be identified and reidentified as the same (Ricoeur 1971:538). Thus the event of doing is eclipsed by the significance of what is done. Just as a written text becomes divorced from its author, so too an action may have consequences of its own separate from the intentions of the actor. Text and action are distanced in similar ways from the author, actor, or producer. The meanings of the texts and actions become linked to the intentions and practical contexts of the reader, user, or viewer. The movement from language to text within post-structuralism is an important one for archaeology. Rather than placing an emphasis on the abstract thoughts that lie behind material culture, the archaeologist can accept the material world as itself contributing to the structuring and constituting of thought. The text (or material culture) derives its meaning from its specific role within the context of practical action. Not everyone can write a text or give it a specific meaning. The notion of text associates power and social strategy with symbolic meaning. Not everyone can make a tool, and the context of production is part of the meaning of the tool. The practical logic of the economic and the technological, these etic realms, contributes to the meanings of the text. MATERIAL MEANINGS

There is an immediate suspicion of a lack of equivalence between language and material culture whenever one tries to transfer the signifier/ signified distinction to material culture. The primary signified of the word tree (the signifier) is the concept of a tree (the signified). And the relationship between the signifier tree and the concept of a tree is clearly arbitrary in that other words could have been used. But if we are interested in material culture signifiers, what is the primary signified of the object tree? One could argue that the signified is again the concept of a tree. But it is not clear that the relationship remains arbitrary. The material world seems to impinge on the conceptual categories. If we move on beyond the primary meanings to the secondary meanings

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connoted by objects a similar result is found. The use of an actual tree or the symbol of a tree to represent life or an ecology movement is hardly arbitrary. Further, most material culture symbols are not built to represent at all. It is difficult to argue that a table represents anything beyond itself. It can of course be read to represent eating or sitting, or stability, but these meanings come about through use, although the use of the table is itself an interpretive act. It is suggested that material culture meanings come about partly through experience rather than solely through an arbitrary system of categories. Our concept of, for example, pain does not derive solely from a system of arbitrary oppositions, already written, which we absorb. It can be argued that the hurtful experience of pain itself creates a set of appropriate, nonarbitrary oppositions. Some further examples may help to clarify the views that (a) material culture meanings are not entirely separate from their social contexts of use and that (b) they are not entirely arbitrary. The material, external world impinges on symbolic structures in a number of ways. The first concerns natural characteristics of the environment which affect symbolic structures. For example, in a region in which there is a strong genetic tendency for people to be right-handed, it is likely, but not necessary, that right will be associated with strength and dominance. And since we have only two hands which are opposed to each other on our bodies, it is likely that left will be associated with opposite characteristics. Individual cultures may disregard right/left symbolism and others may invert the meanings. But there is liable to be a tendency to incorporate characteristics of the environment in which we live into the fabric of our cultural framework of meanings. There are many other possible examples. In many environments wet is likely to be associated with life-giving properties and its opposite, dry with death. Events and patterns formed by the sun, moon, winds, and the world of plants and animals provide ready hooks on which to hang social-symbolic schemes. High might often be associated with high status partly because of the greater physical ability to see, and be seen, from higher vantage points. It is important to emphasize that these nonarbitrary linkages are neither determining nor necessary. Rather, there is a full dependence between symbolic scheme and the experience of environmental events. For example, blood is red and blood when visible, flowing free, implies danger, hurt, death. A natural link thus exists between red, danger, and negative qualities. But on the other hand, red blood gives life and this other natural aspect could be emphasized in order to link red with life and positive qualities. It behooves the archaeologist to demonstrate, rather than assume, using methods I have described elsewhere (Hodder 1986), a symbolic structure in any particular context, and to examine how the

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natural world, incorporated into symbolic schemes,is used in social strategies. The notion that material culture meanings partly come about through use can also be examined in relation to social processes. For example, the sexual division of labor in a particular society may have the result that women tend to spend more of their time in the home, carrying out most of their tasks, including the feeding of milk to children, in the domestic arena. In the same society men may be more closely associated with outside, nondomestic tasks such as the killing of wild animals. In such a social context there would be natural potential for inside, domestic, and milk to signify women and for outside, wild, and blood to signify men. A binary opposition might be posited in the symbolic code which is in fact linked to patterns of use resulting from the social division of labor. Any object used in association with a set of pragmatic activities can come to mean those activities and the contexts in which they are carried out. Once again, there is no necessary determinism being suggested here. The associations in practical activity can become codified into abstract conceptions. These structured systems of meaning affect the uses to which objects are put. Ultimately it becomes difficult to disentangle whether the sexual division of labor comes before or after the symbolic division between inside and outside. Rather, meaning and use are inextricably linked so that one cannot be studied without the other. Another way to make the same point about the relationship between the meaning and use of material culture, and hence the nonarbitrary nature of the material sign, is to concentrate less on how the meanings of signs come about and more on how signs are implemented. Some signs (in language and material culture) are properly symbolic in the sense that they are arbitrary. But much material culture is iconic in that there are some points of likeness between the signs. For example, a photograph is an iconic sign since it has direct points of similarity with that which is represented. The same can be said for much representation in art. In many parts of European prehistory pots have faces, breasts, arms, or feet indicating that pots signify people in a direct iconic sense. Welbourn (1984) gives a clear ethnographic example in which the orientation of the bead and metal decoration on male and female ears is represented iconically in the angle of the lugs (handles-ears) on two types of pot (male and female). In addition, many material culture signs are indices. They contain some association with that which is signified. Thus a piece of cloth may be an index for the garment from which it is taken. A pot can be an index of the general categories from which it is made, such as clay, earth, or fire. Such a potential to signify exists in all pots. Whether that potential is brought into play, and how it is used in any particular instance cannot be

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determined a priori. But on the other hand, material culture cannot be claimed always to take on arbitrary meanings. In various ways, therefore, material culture lungue is closely linked to material culture parole and to the real world in which activity is carried out. Functional or natural associations, for example, between blood and the color red can be used such that red becomes an iconic representation of blood. Further abstractions can then be built. For example red can come to signify danger and death. Equally, however, these abstract levels are organized by the mind in concrete social contexts. To some extent then, material culture meanings come about through use rather than from an abstract linguistic code. I have noted that much the same has been argued in relation to texts and Ricoeur has considered meaningful action as text. But it is possible to go further and suggest that the differences between material culture and written texts indicate that material meanings are even more constrained by the material world than are written texts. Three points of difference might be noted. First, while texts are written in relation to concrete social contexts, the words themselves remain largely arbitrary in relation to their meanings except in cases such as onomatopoeia. As we have seen, many material culture signs are indexes or icons or are otherwise materially and socially constrained. Second, texts are read in linear sequence so that ordering of the words helps the reader to understand. Faced with a room or settlement full of material culture there are few natural starting points, no clear sequences in which to read the scene. In some cases spatial or temporal ordering may help to lead the eye through the meanings of, for example, settlement space, tool production, or ritual practices. But even in such cases there is much for the senses to absorb concurrently. As a result material culture often is not a good mechanism for expressing complex and clear messages. It is not a good medium for developing complex abstract arguments. On the other hand, much material culture has obvious functional significance. It is these contexts of use, rather than abstract communication codes, which inform its meanings most immediately. Third, texts are read by only two senses, sight and sound. But understanding of material culture may also involve touch, smell, and taste. There is thus again greater uncertainty in understanding much material culture than there is in reading or listening to a text. Thus, rather than talk of reading the past it might be better to talk of sensing or seeing the past. In phrases such as dress sense, or a sense of place or she has a good feel for the work, we acknowledge the ability of the human body to make sense of the world through concrete sensual perceptions. In sayings such as I see what you mean, we recognize the ability to go beyond the reading of a text to use the senses to place abstract generalized meanings into context.

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The categorical systems and the frameworks of thought which we develop are closely tied to the social and material world. As a further example, the cutting of a ribbon can have the meaning this motorway or other construction is open. But such a meaning depends on relations of power such that the ribbon cutter is of high status, he or she has been invited to perform the act by the motorway company, the motorway company has been able to finance the project and mobilize the necessary labor, and so on. The meaning of cutting a ribbon is quite different in more domestic contexts. Thus we can say that there is not necessarily an a priori other (the referent, signified) to which material culture refers. There is not an absent true meaning of the material culture event on analogy with the thought that lies behind speech. Rather there is a practical social context. The ribbon cutting is a concrete text, written to do something. The secondary meanings which a text connotes do not lie behind the text but in the reading of the text. Any material production is itself a reading of the world in that decisions have to be made about how to act. Thus the opening of a motorway is staged. But the onlooker also reads the event in that he or she can put the event in relation to different signifiers. Ultimately it would be possible to poke fun at the motorway ribbon-cutting event and read it in relation to domestic dress-making activities. Since any event is open to many readings, attempts are normally made in writing texts to use strategies to limit the ambiguity and multivalence of a text. Thus the construction company may use subsidiary texts (advertisements, signs, an invited audience, etc.) to control the meaning of the ribbon-cutting event. The reading is controlled in the practices of the event. Equally, readings made by the onlooker will be closely tied to his or her practical interests. The perception of meaning involves creating a context in which meaning can be transferred from one event (past experience) to the new event (such as the ribbon-cutting). The context into which an event is placed is ego-centered and relates to the practical experience and interests of the subject. Thus reading is as much practical and material as it is abstract thought. Much of our understanding of the material world comes from our material experience in that world (Bourdieu 1977). A child grows up noticing that men and women do different things in different contexts. Ultimately a man may say he does not feel right in the kitchen, and the term dress sense implies that we may know what to wear even if we cannot articulate the rules very well in speech. In these cases the conscious thoughts and the language seem to follow the practical knowledge. Thus we have returned to the distinction made long ago by Pitt-Rivers, but now the practical world (organized by Pitt-Rivers automaton mind) is seen as potentially primary in relation to Pitt-Rivers conscious intellectual mind. Also unlike Pitt-Rivers, I would argue that the practical consciousness

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can be socially active in that it can create agendas and goals and it can incorporate interests.
SOME IMPLICATIONS

There is a need, therefore, to develop theories about the meaningful organization of material culture in relation to practical consciousness. In redressing the balance between thought and practice I do not mean to argue that thought is entirely determined by practice. I certainly would not accept the type of determinism advocated by Childe (1949) in which thought appears determined by technology. Neither do I accept Derridas (1976) view that there is nothing outside the text. I have argued (1986), following Giddens (1979) and Bourdieu (1977), that a role for human agency must be retained. Rather, it is suggested here that thought and practice cannot be satisfactorily separated. Even individual agency may often be worked through a practical consciousness. While the intention of this article is largely theoretical, it may be helpful briefly to suggest some implications of the position outlined. The primary implication of the standpoint for archaeology is that the material world and its practical organization are not more or less meaningful than spoken or written language. What people might or might not have said or thought about material actions in the past would be only their readings of the events in their terms. These thoughts are themselves practical and strategic. It does archaeologists and prehistorians in particular little harm that they cannot talk to or read the words of people in the past. Rather, it is the concern of archaeologists to come to their own readings of the material acts, constrained by the contextual evidence. The contextual approach that I have outlined elsewhere (Hodder 1986, 1987a, 1987b) is concerned with placing objects in their contexts of use (houses, pits, floors, sites, regions, etc.). This concrete world in all its materiality constrains what we can say about the past. The meanings in these practical associations and contrasts are not given by a separate world of speech, but are (a) constrained by material properties, and are (b) partly constitutive of past and present worlds of thought and speech. In other words, the contextual patterning identified in contextual archaeology is a world of meanings which is of interest in its own right, and which can be read in various but not unlimited ways. It is not the intention here to repeat the procedures of contextual archaeology. But a major implication of the discussion here is that material contextual relationships allow hypotheses to be evaluated concerning

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practical consciousness. The past construction of contexts through the repetition of similarities and differences (Hodder 1986, 1987a) allows a present reconstruction of practical meanings, through the assumption that symbolic meanings are universally created through oppositional structures. However, a major limitation of this approach is that it depends on data-rich contexts in which the networks of similarities and differences can be followed. Zf material meanings derive not only from abstract codes, but also from practical considerations, then the work of the prehistoric symbolic archaeologist is greatly eased. Archaeologists tend to make a distinction between function and meaning and it is part of my argument here that this opposition is not helpful. If we can show, for example through use wear analysis, that an axe was probably used to cut down trees or that an arrowhead was used to kill animals or people, then it must be the case that in the past the axe was perceived as an object for cutting down trees and the arrowhead was perceived as an object for killing. These immediate functional meanings might be termed the primary or denotative meanings of the objects. I have argued here that the secondary or connotative meanings will not be unrelated to these primary meanings. For example the axe and arrowhead might both be seen as dangerous or powerful. The secondary and primary meanings are often appropriate in relation to each other. As already noted, there is no necessary or deterministic relation from the primary to the secondary meanings. In historical or temporal terms, secondary meanings may indeed be primary. And yet the constraints and potentials in these nonarbitrary relationships facilitate the role of the archaeologist since the primary meanings can often be identified with relative ease using cross-cultural analogy. For example, archaeologists often argue that monuments which have taken more effort to build, or objects which involve greater energy to make or which have traveled greater distances, are of higher value or prestige. A contextual checking of such universal assumptions is always necessary, using the assumption that meanings involve similarities and differences. But the real material factors enter into the consideration of secondary symbolic meanings and facilitate interpretation. As a further example, calculation of the amount of earth and weight of stones used in the construction of Neolithic megalithic tombs suggests a cooperative endeavor. Such a tomb is not simply an arbitrary symbol of social relations. Rather it creates those relations in its very construction (Kristiansen 1984). There is a general potential for examining the ways in which the organization of material culture itself can create not only strategies of domination (as for example in the control of space) but also strategies of subordination. But perhaps the most significant contribution of rethinking the relationship between thought and practice concerns evolutionary pro-

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cesses. Archaeologists who have not accepted the rather diflicult argument that all cultural products somehow become selected because of some reproductive adaptive advantage, have tended to impute purpose to material change in prehistory. For example, increased symboling behavior has been linked to the need to signal group identity or enhance social solidarity (e.g., Gamble 1982; Sherratt 1982; Wobst 1977). As another example, the construction of big burial monuments in Europe has been interpreted in terms of the purposes of the larger and more stable lineage groups, which appear in the early and middle Neolithic, to mark social territories (Renfrew 1976), legitimate access to the restricted resources of lineage groups (Chapman 1981), or represent houses (Hodder 1984). While the material objects may have been read in the past to have such purposes, where does the idea of constructing these objects come from? In the archaeological accounts, the objects appear to have been created out of a preexisting intention, leaving untackled the problem of the origin of the thought. The social groupings that produced the tombs had to have been conceived in thought prior to their existence. Or else somehow the larger social groupings of the Neolithic created themselves first in order to have the thought of building the tombs. However one looks at it, such arguments seem to fit well into a tradition which gives primacy to thought. A different procedure would be to argue that the megaliths themselves suggested the idea of larger social groupings. (I, in my turn, am grateful to Ian Bapty for suggesting this idea to me.) Megaliths occur extremely early in the Neolithic in many parts of Europe, such as Scandinavia, Ireland, and Brittany, and in some cases they have their origins in preagricultural societies (e.g., Pequart et al. 1937) or in societies with neither fully developed agriculture nor clear evidence of lineages (Madsen 1982). It could be argued that initially in Brittany or Scandinavia a stone chamber was simply a convenient repository for human bodies. Whatever may have been the initial reason for using the small stone dolmens of the S. Scandinavian Early Neolithic (EN) for burial, the consequence was produced that a stable, reusable structure was now available. EN settlement in S. Scandinavia is dispersed and small-scale (Madsen 1982) but in the later EN and following Middle Neolithic (MN), larger social groupings are evident both in larger tombs which in some cases contain many bodies and in larger settlements. The very practice of depositing bones through time in the initial small tomb creates an increasingly large social grouping linked through ties to those buried in the tomb. The tomb itself creates the idea of larger social units. And since it is constructed through cooperative labor and is used over a long period of time it creates the longer-term social dependencies which Woodbum (1980) has shown are necessary for the adoption and intensification of agriculture (see also Bender 1978).

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Furthermore, as agricultural intensification increases within areas of limited resources in S. Scandinavia, it becomes competitive. But the tombs are already markers of the productive unit, clearly visible on the landscape. The tombs themselves create in-groups and out-groups. The very ideas of group competition and restricted resources are suggested by the material existence of the tombs. It could thus be suggestedthat the whole process of agricultural development, lineage formation, and competition were actions thought through an existing text-the tomb. Of course it would be wrong to push such an explanation too far. The tombs did not appear out of nowhere. The creation of a text is itself a meaningful action. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that the thoughts within action (such as lineage group formation) are themselves derived from a reading of material texts (in this case tombs). Such an approach gives a central role to the materiality in culture. And the approach gives a central role to historical enquiry since the construction of the text which leads to action is itself an action deriving from a prior text. Thus it would be necessary to look into the Mesolithic and perhaps earlier to examine the historical processes which led to the use of stone burial chambers. There are other ways in which the materiality of a text can create directions for action. Ritual can often be seen as a formalized performance which heightens emotions, raises and resolves ambiguities, creates a sense of communality, and so on (Turner 1986). There is some evidence that ritual practices often precede evolutionary change in social and economic processes. In other words, social action often seems to be a reading of a preexisting ritual text. For example, Cauvin (1972, 1978)has suggestedthat the domestication of cattle in the Near East is preceded by symbolic elaboration of and ritual concern with cattle. We have already seen that death rituals and formalized behavior surrounding megaliths may have anticipated group formation, agricultural intensification, and social dominance in Europe. In Scandinavia, the formation of villages at, for example, Sarup is preceded by causewayed camps which have clear evidence of ritual activity but little indication of domestic secular occupation (Madsen 1981; Anderson 1981). It has long been recognized in the European Bronze Age, that bronze is widely used for tools only after it has played a more symbolic and often formal role in weaponry and ornament (Coles and Harding 1979). In the Iron Age, Cunliffe (1974) has noted that the major hillforts that dominate the social and economic map of Britain may begin their lives in ritual activities. The full implications of these observations cannot be examined here (see Hodder 1988). For present purposes it is enough to note the potential in archaeology for examining the links between material practice and behavioral change once we are freed from the limitations of the view that

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thought or inner, original meanings are primary and arbitrary, separated from the material world. By way of contrast I have argued that there is a materiality to thought. As a result behavior can be seen as practically meaningful, involving relations between material-ideational contexts. Those material and ideational contexts consist of concrete texts (words, objects, burials, rituals, and their relations) which seem to create the potential for further action. In a sense, then, material culture provides elements of the text through which human and social evolutionary change are initiated and accomplished. This view differs from that in which evolutionary change produces material culture as a by-product. CONCLUSION It would be easy to take the argument in the direction of an extreme cultural determinism in which all actions are simply the writing out of texts which have always already been written. I would prefer to argue that there is sufficient openness in the reading of texts to allow an interpretive and contingent role for human action. But my position on this matter may itself be determined by the views concerning individuality within which I, as a member of contemporary Anglo-American society, work. Ultimately a great value of the archaeological record may be that it allows us to think new thoughts about the relationship between texts or discourses and agency. This is not to argue that our reading of the past can be independent of the modem world in which it takes place, or that a past original meaning can be discovered with certainty. But there is a potential for working on past material texts to create new actions, new present thoughts created within past materials. In this article I have suggested that it is necessary to break away from the established view that thought (most usually linked to conscious thought and assumed to be best accessed by talking to people) is separate from and arbitrary in relation to practice. Symbolic archaeologists may do themselves a disservice by emphasizing the language analogy. A central part of post-processual archaeology is to break down the dichotomies between normative and processual, subjective and objective approaches. These oppositions are closely linked to those between lungue and parole in the study of language. Once these divides have been identified as unhelpful in archaeology, an enormous potential is recognized for the study of the relationship between subjective ideas and practical objective behavior. Not only do past symbolic meanings come closer for study within a developing new theory, but a range of specific ways in which archaeological data can be used to think the present is realized. The title of any paper can be seen as a comment on the content of the paper itself. To some extent the meanings of an article, like the meanings

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of Magrittes painting of a pipe, exist on the page. The words have to be read and interpreted but they are organized in such a way as to limit the range of meanings that can be read into the text. For example, it would be difficult to argue that the words in this article meant the story of Hamlet! I have argued that in relation to many material objects, the meanings that can be derived from them are even more highly constrained and nonarbitrary than are meanings in language. It is easier to say this is not a pipe than it is to hold and smoke a pipe and argue that it is not similar to other similarly shaped objects that one has held, seen, and smoked. It is easier to say this is not an article about material culture as text than it is to argue that the text itself is not about itself.
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