functional ones. Partly because radiocarbon dating seemed to have relieved archaeologists of any chronological responsibility beyond the collection of dating samples and partly because archaeological chronologies were seemingly well established in most areas, the functional approach was cast as an alternative to, not a supplement of, culture-history’s historicism.

Processualists handled epistemological problems (at least they recognized there were some—not an issue in U.S. archaeology for half a century at that point) by adopting a confirmationist rather than falsification strategy in hypothesis evaluation; analogy (ethnographic and otherwise) effectively replaced empirical testing (Binford 1966; Watson, LeBlanc, and Redman 1971). Deprived of empirical standards for hypothesis evaluation, a pretense of “scientific” rigor could be maintained only by focusing epistemological questions on methods. The correctness of a conclusion was to be judged not by how it worked in the empirical world but by how it was reached, which is a ritualistic view of science (e.g., compare Spaulding 1953 and Ford 1954). The processualist product did not replace culture-historical understandings of the past; those remain strongly in the culture camp (e.g., Fagan 2000; Wenke 1999), albeit with a functionalist-reconstructive overlay but still no better warranted (although infinitely more obscure) than before. In fact, the typical product was either an isolated, never-to-be-used-again demonstration of a method or an exemplary interpretation.

This revolution differed from the culture-historical one in another important respect. Culture-history emerged as a consensus from a natural history context. In fact, the key synthetic pieces (e.g., Ford 1954; Krieger 1944; Willey and Phillips 1958) occurred long after the consensus was in hand. Processualism had to contend with an extant program, and so it was, of necessity (Kuhn 1962), polemical. It had to start with programmatic assertion (Watson, LeBlanc, and Redman 1971). Culture-history was demonized (e.g., Binford 1966, 1968b; Flannery 1967) to make a space for processualism. And, importantly, processualist claims were explicit: science and anthropology. As a result, the failure of processualism to achieve its scientific objectives was equally apparent. With no product to show, the enormous burden—both intellectual (stuff you have to know) and empirical (data quality, quantity, and analytic methods)—imposed by adopting scientific procedure was too much to bear. Processualism was doomed from the outset.

The Modern Ennui: Isms and Schisms—Fatal Division?

One cannot be very analytical about contemporary U.S. archaeology; all analysts have vested interests. The foregoing does, however, provide something of a framework within which a few comments may give perspective. The death of processualism as a paradigm that can be defended in public (it, like culture-history, continues on in practice) is different from the preceding two revolutions. One saw the creation of a paradigm where there had been none; the other saw the replacement of one by the other. Both were rationalized by trying to become scientific and thus like the model of science prepared by the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in structure. But with the abandonment of this goal in some quarters, no discipline-wide epistemological basis for constructing a replacement exists. Three strands, some more tightly wound than others, have emerged.

One might be viewed as a continuation of the ideals of processualism but with a new methodology and explicit theory—evolutionary theory (e.g., Dunnell 1978, 1980, 1992c; O’Brien 1996; Teltser 1995). Although there is a growing literature, normal science is still some distance in the future. Use of an explicit theory makes it painfully obvious that facts are created by theories and that one has to start virtually from scratch in generating data that can be explained. After years of no product, this is too much for many who want to get on with the show. Many also have an almost hysterical reaction to the word evolution; regrettably, it is the only scientific theory that deals with change. Yet the basis for broad appeal exists. Evolution is undeniably science and can deliver testable hypotheses, allowing us to achieve our historical goal, to say nothing of the benefits that might accrue from knowing why we are the way we