ABSTRACT
Ian Hodder, founder and chief advocate for postprocessualism, could have framed his new program as a refurbished processualism, but did not. Rather, he stridently argued for the overthrow of processualism, whose epistemology, theory, and methods he perceived as inimical to a humanistic archaeology. However, around 2005, William Walker and the author collaborated on a behavioral formulation of social power that employed a life-history model to focus on the effects of acquisition processes. William Walker, employing a life-history framework, took up the study of ritual in Expanding Archaeology. One of his foundational claims was that scholars who study religion place inordinate emphasis on belief systems, almost entirely ignoring the artifact-rich rituals whose performances in fact constitute religious practice. Melding ideas of Kopytoff and behavioral archaeology, he argued as well that artifacts used in ritual activities have singularized post-use histories, which should be reflected in their modes of deposition.
