Bad revisonist history: The postprocessualists invented household archaeology!
I was quite surprised recently to read that postprocessualists were responsible for developing the household archaeology approach. This is so wrong that I'm not sure where to start. I was reading William Fowler's introduction to a special section of the journal Ancient Mesoamerica (vol 25, no. 2, 2014, pp. 367-68). The section is called "Households make history in ancient Mesoamerica. Some of the articles are pretty good, and some are pretty bad. After reviewing some aspects of postprocessual archaeology in an approving tone, Fowler states: "It should be clear by now why a true focus on households did not come into archaeology until the 1980's ushered in a concern with the individual, agency-structure, and practice. The emphasis on cultural evolution, complexity, and hierarchy in processual archaeology obscured the importance of the household and individual action." (p.368). Problem 1: Chronology; Household archaeology, with a "true focus on househol...