What Were We Thinking? What Do I Think? Assessing Michael B. Schiffer and his Behavioral Archaeology

Abstract

The coordinators of this special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory initially invited some of us to provide a critical review of Michael Schiffer's Behavioral Archaeology for the 75th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in St. Louis on April 17, 2010. Rather than write a critical review of the more than 35 years of development of Behavioral Archaeology or of Mike Schiffer's many accomplishments and contributions to archaeology, science, and history, I offer a brief personal perspective on the nature of discourse in a sector of American academic archaeology in the early 1980s. I then comment, again briefly, on achievements in archaeology that I attribute to Behavioral Archaeology as developed by Mike Schiffer, Jeff Reid, Bill Rathje, and their many students and colleagues. Finally, I conclude by returning to personal reactions to recent directions in Mike Schiffer's research. A number of professionals in the audience of that 2010 SAA symposium, addressed me after the session, commenting positively on my presentation, and thanking me because it reminded them how exciting the late 1970s and early 1980s were in American archaeology for them. In 1987, I (Cordell et al. 1987) published an uncalled for attack on Behavioral Archaeology, interpretations of the mortuary assemblage from Grasshopper Pueblo and Mike Schiffer. Walker, Skibo, and Nielsen (1995: 2) refer to that paper as one that reflects misunderstanding of the explicit program of Behavioral Archaeology as articulated by Reid et al. (1974). A response