Current Anthropology Volume 53, Number 5, October 2012 1 Monday Aug 27 2012 05:10 PM/CA301466/2012/53/5/kfoster2/mnh2///editing complete, in review/1002/use-graphics/narrow/default/ Desperately Seeking Walter Taylor Ian Hodder Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, California 94305, U.S.A. (ihodder@stanford.edu). 10 VII 12 Prophet, Pariah, and Pioneer: Walter W. Taylor and Dissension in American Archaeology. Edited by Allan Maca, Jonathan Reyman, and William Folan. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010. This is a fascinating book about a complex person. Walter Taylor, refracted through multiple authors who knew or read him in different ways, ends up as richly diverse—a gun-toting, duck-hunting orchid grower who liked music and fine wines, European philosophy, and abstract theory as much as exca- vating in the dirt of the Southwest. He is described as a privileged (Schoenwetter, p. 146) gentleman scholar (William Folan, p. 149) without sufficient funds to prevent having to sell his library (Kennedy, p. 93), as well as an abrasive and antagonistic advisor and commentator on the work of others, while yet a private person most at home fishing, hunting, gardening, or cooking. There seems always to have been some uncertainty and ambiguity about how Taylor fits into the history of archae- ology in the United States. What exactly was he saying and what was his program? This edited volume does not aim to close down the debate. Rather, it identifies the many currents and subtleties in his writings, and in particular in “A Study of Archaeology” (Taylor 1948). It is notable that Taylor is claimed by the contributors to this new book as ancestor to both processual and postprocessual archaeologies. As Allan Maca notes in chapter 1, Taylor clearly had a notion of hypothesis testing in that he wanted archaeological statements to be open to scrutiny and evaluation. “A Study of Archaeology” (Taylor 1948) grew out of frustration felt by several in the postwar era at mere chronology and taxonomy. Instead, Taylor wanted to focus on a broader, more explan- atory culture process model. An important influence was Kluckhohn, but in his 1948 work, Taylor also cites Gordon Childe and Grahame Clark (Taylor 1948). Other contributions to Taylor’s thinking came from Croce, Quine, Peirce, and Sapir, all authors who would have taken him down a non- positivist line. There was a clear idealist, relativist, and his- torical particularist strain in his thinking that caused him to argue forcibly for a constructivist position and to emphasize historiography rather than reconstruction. These aspects of Taylor’s work are well and strongly argued for by Maca. The conjunctive approach involves establishing correlations be-  2012 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact journalpermissions@press .uchicago.edu. tween different types of data within specific historical and cultural contexts. Of course, Taylor’s aim was to move from historical particulars to anthropological generalities, but his methodology involved balancing hypothesis testing with the analysis of internal patterning. His main focus was on detailed contextual studies that would allow general ideas to be adapted to specific data. He recognized that, along with hy- pothesis testing, archaeology was situated in the present so that critical reflection was needed (Maca, p. 284). Given the strong argument made by several authors in this volume that Taylor’s approach differed substantively from sev- eral of the major claims of the New Archaeology, it is perhaps surprising and confusing that Taylor (1948) claimed that “A Study of Archaeology” foreshadowed New Archaeology (Ken- nedy, p. 96). As Maca notes (p. 40), Taylor challenged Binford, saying that hypothesis testing and systems perspectives were already present in his conjunctive approach. And his focus on the archaeologist as technician seems to conjure up a separation of theory and data in ways championed by posi- tivism and processual archaeology. On the other hand, Riley (p. 126) reports that Taylor ex- pressed dissatisfaction with some aspects of processual ar- chaeology. There are undoubted differences such as Taylor’s focus on culture as ideational and his conviction of the im- portance of history and historiography. The most significant difference, however, was his repeated claim that archaeologists construct the past. While in some respects the archaeology advocated by Taylor had similarities with what later became postprocessual archaeology, especially the emphases on con- struction, context, and history, and while many of the influ- ences on Taylor also contributed to early postprocessual ar- chaeology, there are also differences. In particular, culture came to be seen in postprocessual archaeology as tied to ma- terial practice, in contrast to Taylor’s insistence that there can be no such thing as material culture (because artifacts are just objectifications of ideational culture). Taylor’s writings are often difficult and complex, so cate- gorizing his position is not easy. He took a nuanced stance that recognized the strengths and weaknesses of what ar- chaeologists often see as incompatible positions. And it is difficult to work out what his archaeology would have been like by example because he never managed to produce a major substantive demonstration of his conjunctive approach, and he never published his report on his Coahuila excavations. It thus remains possible to read him in different ways, as is well brought out by the diverse contributions to this volume, which is the first to provide a thorough and informed account that contextualizes Taylor’s work and habilitates him within later and contemporary currents in archaeology. Why has it taken so long for Taylor’s perspective to be fully evaluated and recognized in the discipline in the United States? In a thoughtful contribution, Leone asks what the anger was that confronted Taylor after the publication of “A Study of Archaeology” (Taylor 1948). Leone (pp. 316–319) q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6 q7