processualist

Ian did not, however, insist that everyone on the dig had to be a card-carrying post-processualist.

The Goddess and the Bull MICHAEL BALTER 2005

Also, while working in South America, she had increasingly shifted the focus of her research away from traditionally processualist questions, such as subsistence patterns and food technology, and concentrated more on plant use as a possible indicator of social relations among early peoples—including the relationships between men and women.

The Goddess and the Bull MICHAEL BALTER 2005

I came away from it quite depressed … I realize now that I am a positivist and a processualist, because I am interested in the processes of the past and I am not interested in understanding the subjective, culture-specific roots of my own standpoint, beyond being aware that they exist.

The Goddess and the Bull MICHAEL BALTER 2005

But she did launch a preemptive strike against anticipated criticisms from processualist archaeologists that evidence about the kind of social and cultural factors she was emphasizing would be difficult to dig up, quoting the respected University of Chicago Near Eastern expert Robert Adams on the dangers of a narrow approach to hypothesis testing: “We should not be constrained by what we conceive to be the limitations of our data in our formulation of hypotheses; frequently this simply sets up a vicious circle.”

The Goddess and the Bull MICHAEL BALTER 2005