Response.

Johnson, Matthew

First let me thank Professor Leo Klein for his kind comments on my work, and for his review of Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. His comments are thoughtful and serious, even where I disagree profoundly, though his account of the book is in many respects a misleading one. I will respond only to a few aspects of Klejn's arguments.

Both the definitions of theory cited by Klejn (Binford and Chang) are positivist ones. There is nothing wrong with this, but if Klejn and I agree that any objective introduction to theory must acknowledge both positivist and non-positivist approaches, it follows that neither definition is satisfactory as an initial statement. To agree with Klejn's implicit definition of theory would be to rule post-positivist approaches immediately out of court, hardly a balanced or objective position for an account of theory to take. I do not reject positivist definitions as Klejn claims, but rather give them as one possible definition out of several (Johnson 1999: 176). My hesitation in offering a tight, packaged definition of theory is shared by others: Renfrew & Bahn's Archaeology: The Key Concepts (2005), for example, does not list 'theory' as a discrete topic.

Klejn and I hold different views of what students need. He views it as threatening that students be encouraged to make their own choice between different theoretical positions: I view it as essential. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to encourage rather than shut down debate. Klejn's position seems to me to be directly contradictory to the role and responsibilities of science, particularly if one believes that science could or should have a reflexive and critical role. The reasons why many students dislike theory are complex. At the heart of student impatience with theory, I suggest, is a Romantic view: feel the mud on your boots and the wind on your face and you just know (discussed in Johnson forthcoming). Klein cites my account of how, as a student, I came to see that such a position was not tenable. It is disingenuous to construe this as a rejection of the importance of empirical research.

We also hold different views of the relationship between theory and epistemology. Klejn misreads my position: what I wrote, after a discussion including reference to Wylie, Brumfiel, Trigger, Kohl and others, was that epistemology was 'essential' though it was boring (p. 185). Klejn's account offers little clue that I endorse a realist or weak social constructivist position. I am not and have never been a relativist. Epistemology is clearly an essential part of theory, but I sense that Klein wishes to make epistemology and theory coterminous. There are other issues in theory, most obviously social theory and the relationship between politics and archaeology.

My statement that 'Klejn ... does not seem to have read the literature' was unduly acerbic. However, it was made in agreement with Tim Murray that much of the reasoning to be found in Klein 1993 had a nineteenth century feel to it. For example, remarks like 'I am sorry for [the Aborigines], and I would like to see them bear the benefits and trials of European civilisation ... as a researcher, however, I am absolutely indifferent to what aborigines may think about my approach to their culture', do appear out of touch, and fully deserve the robust response Murray gives (Klejn 1993: 510; Murray 1995: 292). In reply, Klejn's observation that I do not discuss theoretical traditions outside the English-speaking world is valid (though I had read his 1970s and 80s articles; a conversation between the 1970s Klein and the more narrowly empiricist author of Metaarchaeology would be a fascinating one). The omission will be rectified in the second edition of the book, currently in preparation, and I hope due out in 2009.

Murray, of course, is hardly a rampant postprocessualist, and the Yoffee & Sherratt volume is anything but a postprocessual rant: and here lies the kernel of Klejn's issues. What he characterises as a postprocessual party line personified by myself (I was intrigued to read, for example, that I was the person responsible for formulating a theory of agency for archaeology) is better characterised as a much looser set of concerns. These concerns are shared as much by what Michelle Hegmon calls 'processual-plus' (Hegmon 2003) as they are by postprocessual writing. Klein seems to regard a disturbingly wide range of theorists as relativists: as Murray notes, he 'tars all the contributors [to the Yoffee & Sherratt volume] with the same broad relativist brush' (Murray 1995:291).

I was mistaken in one important respect in the comments I made in 1999: I felt then that the case for an emergent consensus was over-stated. Seven years later, Anglo-American theory is hardly dominated by postprocessualism as Klejn claims. It shies away from narrowly relativist or positivist epistemologies; it subscribes to academic objectivity, but accepts that a political position is unavoidable; it seeks to account for the past, but does so using a series of concepts (materialisation, agency, gender, context) that are not narrowly tied to one particular -ism. I am happy to position myself within this consensus, perhaps more so than I was in 1999, and I suspect the majority of readers of Antiquity, whatever their specialism or intellectual origins, are also.

I sense that Klejn's impatience with arguments he finds in my book is actually a broader impatience with the way Anglo-American theory is going; and behind this is an unease with the changing nature of knowledge and intellectual life in the twenty-first century. I share much of Klejn's unease, and welcome the chance to debate the situation with him, though I disagree over his diagnosis and his proposed remedy. In my view, it would rule out of court not just postprocessualism, but the majority of theoretically informed work in archaeology across the globe.

References

HEGMON, M. 2003. Setting theoretical egos aside: issues and theory in North American archaeology. American Antiquity 68:213-43.

KLEJN, L. 1993. It's difficult to be a god. Current Anthropology 34:508-11.

JOHNSON, M.H. 1999. Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

--forthcoming. Ideas of Landscape. Oxford: Blackwell.

MURRAY, T. 1995. On Klejn's agenda for theoretical archaeology. Current Anthropology 36:2: 290-2.

RENFREW, C. & P. BAHN (ed.). 2005. Archaeology: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge.

Matthew Johnson, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK