Middle Range Approaches To Cultural Analysis

I've received your questions on "How did the New Archaeology move beyond Culture History approaches to archaeology? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the "middle-range" approaches? And how can middle-range theory be employed more effectively. Following, in the order listed previously, I will attempt to expound: First, I'd like to describe Culture History. Culture History takes the chronological approach. In fact, it's ironic the word that I innately chose was "describe" rather than "define" because "descriptive" is a good definition for Culture History. Culture History is more like a stating of "facts" (I do hesitate to use the term facts without some sort of hesitation because as we know, "History is written by the victors" and

An example would be that Americans drink coffee and the English drink tea. Johnson summarizes it this way: "We then make the equation between an archaeological culture and a human culture by making the assumption that artifacts are expressions of cultural ideals or norms." (P17-18) Thus enter frustrated "young Turks" who argued that this approach is not scientific enough. It is here that Johnson reminds us that "more data do not automatically equate to better ideas about the past." (P22) This is why theory is important! It goes back to the question of "isn't just hard data enough?" Well, no, not if you don't know how to categorize and apply it. New archaeology attempts to apply the scientific method to archaeology, as well as an anthropological approach. Archaeologist were looking to learn more about human agency, not just the treasure trove. It is important to note that New Archaeology is an umbrella term for these ideas because nary an archaeologist can agree on a theory that completes this to perfection. Though there isn't much agreement on which theory is best, there is, in general, a more optimistic sprint now that archaeologist believe we

(P51). With Middle Range theory it enables us to use our data o theorize about the past. The more data we find that corellres or is similar, the stronger our hypothesis or middle-range assumption becomes. However, if we do not test our theories we are just making implicit assumptions, not doing good field work. In his "Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking: The Use of Analogy in Archaeological Reasoning" Binford addresses this very concern. He calls out the weakness of middle range theory that is not explicit. He gives guidelines to how to use analogy in what he hopes would cause middle range to be a strength to archaeology. Binford points out that all assumed similarities aren't analogous. Yes, one is going to have to make a comparison, we only have a certain amount of data from the past and so we compare and contrast it to our present, or at least our present findings. However, you must be careful in analogy that you don't become like Karl Mauch and draw an analogy that since the wood looks like cedar, Lebanon had cedar, then the Great Zimbabwe must be the associated with the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Here, I think, is where the scientific method could compliment analogy. Can we only draw one analogy? Do we have more supporting