INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

What do we mean by prehistoric cultural ecology and adaptation? Systems models that include
the natural ecosystem in which cultures exist and how the social systems relate to the natural
components. Cultural adaptation to natural conditions can change when the environment
changes, or not. Often change comes NOT because people wanted to do something different all
of a sudden (since culture is inherently conservative or resistant to change), but because they
want to keep doing what they are doing in the face of external change. When will we find an
energy source that is not finite but renewable? Right now, when we know there will soon be no
oil left in the earth? No, probably when it is mostly gone and people still want to keep driving
and using the electricity, so we will finally throw lots of money at solar and wind and other
power sources.
All cultural systems are not necessarily adaptive. Many are NOT, and this is part of the reason
why cultures become extinct. Others maintain an identity while changing radically. Besides the
natural environment, cultures must deal with the social environment: who else is living nearby,
where are potential mates and family, what are the total pressures on the resources, and other
demographic variables.
What about ideological variables connected with adaptation? Cultural materialists often think
that ideology too is structured by technoenvironmental conditions. The sacred cows of India are
a classic example. An emic explanation of why beef is not eaten and cows can roam the street at
will is that they are sacred in the belief system. An etic, materialist view might be that they are
more economically valuable alive, to provide labor pulling plows, dung for fuel, milk, and other
resources that otherwise would be missing in this poor country. Another example we can use,
from the past, is the ideological explanation for the location of the Aztec state in ancient Mexico,
that an eagle appearing on a cactus plant led the people to settle where they did, in the middle of
an apparently unhealthy, marshy lake. Today you can see the eagle and cactus on the Mexican
flag, and when you fly into Mexico City you land on the solidified, gelled remains of the filled-in
lake. A materialist explanation of the location for the prehistoric capital is that it shows strategic
genius. Connected only by easily defendable causeways to the surrounding land, and situated in
the center of the central valley of the country, this native capitol’s location was part of the
military and political strategy ideal for the founding of an empire.
Does cultural materialism explain all human adaptations, even ideological? No. Often they are
criticized for being too functional, too capitalist and efficient. Humans do many things that are
inefficient. There are many belief systems that seem completely maladaptive. The Shakers, for
example, were a Protestant, millennial-type sect of the eighteenth century who had some beliefs
that led them to become extinct: they did not believe in sex!
Postprocessual archaeologists like to point out that more than economic and environmental
factors influence human behavior and that some are not efficient or rational. An important area
of inquiry lately is to recognize the individual human actors in the past, to look for specific
human agency and decision-making by persons who are not just facelessly grouped within the
systems model boxes, but real people choosing to do this or believe that. However, it is very
difficult to do this in prehistory, but easier when there are historic records to document things.
Many of the hypotheses deriving from postprocessual models are untestable.