Editing Post-processual archaeology (section)

=== Precedents ===
Although it would not be actually termed "post-processual archaeology" until 1985 (by one of its most prominent proponents, [[Ian Hodder]]), an archaeological alternative to processual archaeology had begun to develop during the 1970s. Some had already anticipated the theory's emergence, with the social anthropologist Edmund Leach informing the assembled archaeologists at a 1971 discussion on the topic of "The Explanation of Culture Change" held at the [[Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield|University of Sheffield]] that [[Structural anthropology|cultural structuralism]], which was then popular among social anthropologists, would soon make its way into the archaeological community.{{sfn|Leach|1973|p=763}}

[[Bruce Trigger]], a Canadian archaeologist who produced a seminal study of archaeological theory, identified the existence of three main influences upon post-processualism. The first of these was "the [[Marxism|Marxist]]-inspired social anthropology that had developed in France during the 1960s and already had influenced British social anthropology." This, Trigger noted, "had its roots not in orthodox Marxism but in efforts to combine Marxism and [[structuralism]] by anthropologists such as Maurice Godelier, Emmanuel Terray, and Pierre-Phillipe Rey".{{sfn|Trigger|2007|p=44}} The second main influence was [[postmodernism]], which "emphasized the subjective nature of knowledge and embraced extreme relativism and idealism". Having originated among the disciplines of [[comparative literature]], [[literary criticism]] and [[cultural studies]], postmodernist thinking had begun to develop within archaeology.{{sfn|Trigger|2007|pp=446–448}} The third influence identified by Trigger was the New cultural anthropology movement within the cultural anthropological discipline, which had arisen after the collapse of [[Boasian anthropology]]. The new cultural anthropologists "denounced studies of cultural evolution as being ethnocentric and intellectually and morally untenable in a multicultural, postcolonial environment."{{sfn|Trigger|2007|pp=448–449}}