Processualists

Processualists, also known as processual archaeologists, are scholars who advocate the processual (or New Archaeology) paradigm in archaeology and related social sciences. They aim to explain cultural change and variation through general, law-like processes, emphasizing objectivity, hypothesis testing, and the use of rigorous data and models. The approach emerged in the 1960s as a reformulation of earlier culture-history work and is most closely associated with Lewis Binford, though it built on earlier foundations and collaborators. Central to processualism is the shift from descriptive inventories of artifacts to explanations of why patterns appear, using ecological and sociocultural theory and middle-range theory to connect material remains to human behavior.

Key concepts include cultural ecology, adaptive strategies, and systems thinking. Processualists favor quantitative methods, standardized sampling, and statistical testing, and they often employ models and simulations to evaluate hypotheses about processes such as diffusion, migration, and resource management. The approach treats culture as a system of interrelated components and seeks generalizable explanations that can apply across cultures and time periods.

The legacy of processualism is substantial in reshaping archaeology toward a more scientific stance, expanding theory and method, and influencing related disciplines in anthropology. It also faced critique for prioritizing general laws over symbolic meaning, agency, and local context. In response, later scholars developed post-processual and hybrid approaches that emphasize interpretation and meaning while sometimes integrating processual methods. Processualists thus remain a foundational, though debated, current in the history of archaeological theory.