It is evident in Binford's own publications that he started off with a theory of cultural systems fairly explicit and lucid, but did not arrive at a complete methodology all at one time, but built up to it in a series certain bold and distinctive steps. He developed in his very first and seminal publication an explanatory model of "cultural systems" that he considered to be scientifically valid.

Culture is clearly conceived in a mechanistic framework as something that "happens" in an historical sense in an objectifiably empirical reality. Within such a mechanistic paradigm, which frames all systems theory, culture is something that happens in a predictable manner and that results in pattern forming processes that enable us to study and explain culture in an empirically testable manner (i.e., scientifically). Both terms of "process" and "pattern recognition" have been applied to Binfordian archaeology. For Binford, "process" was inherent to the definition of culture as a system.

Implicit to this definition of the process of cultural systems is a structuralist model of culture as being ordered upon certain underlying if as yet unknown principles, and what can be called a functional means for understanding these principles. Thus, Binford sought within the ground the underlying structural patterning that was represented by the archaeological evidence within a larger contextual frame of reference. He saw the archaeological record and its many pieces within a complementary holistic and analytical framework that tended to be non-particularistic and to play down the problem of archaeological relativity of data interpretation. "Archaeological data are viewed particularistically and 'explanation' is offered in terms of specific events rather than in terms of process." (ibid., 217)

Implied in this model of cultural systems is the concept of systemic integration of such systems. Various patterns and processes of culture interfunction and are inter-relatable to achieve coherence. According to Binford's model, this coherence has primarily an adaptive function and therefore a materialist base, which emphasis was borrowed from Leslie Whites definition of culture as humankind's "extrasomatic means of adaptation" and from Julian Steward's framework of "cultural ecology" (or what can be called the ecological adaptation of culture.)

It is clear that Binford's model of a cultural system is clearly mechanistic in explanation, and as with any system, its parts interfunction to produce order from disorder. In other words, they work. Hence, in searching for evidence of cultural systems in the ground, Binford sought evidence of the function or work that the component pieces of the cultural system may have performed, based upon their relational significance within the archaeological and/or anthropological context. It is no wonder that Binford adopted therefore a conventional tripartite pyramid structure for his cultural systems model, careful to define this structure in terms of analytical archaeological data-types and named in "technical" terms.

Technomic artifacts Binford defines as "those artifacts having their primary functional context in coping directly with the physical environment." (ibid. 219) Variability of this type is seen therefore primarily within an ecological frame of reference. The other two types that he distinguishes are "socio-technic"--"the material elements having their primary functional context in the social sub-systems of the total cultural system" (ibid., 219) which subsystems function as the "extra-somatic means of articulating individuals one with another into cohesive groups capable of efficiently maintaining themselves and of manipulating the technology." (ibid., 219)--and "ideo-technic" artifacts that have their "primary functional context in the ideological component of the social system."(ibid., 219) "These are the items which signify and symbolize the ideological rationalizations for the social system and further provide the symbolic milieu in which individuals are enculturated, a necessity if they are to take their place as functional participants in the social system." (ibid., 219) These ideological components of archaeological systems are stylistics and formal characteristics providing a "symbolically diverse yet pervasive artifactual environment promoting group solidarity and serving as the basis for group awareness and identity. This pan-systemic set of symbols is the milieu of enculturation and a basis for the recognition of social distinctiveness." (ibid., 219)

This model of cultural systems can be seen as a standard structural-functionalist model that was articulated in various guises, and reflected the later development of even social-constructionist theories. It was employed effectively by Binford to fundamentally destroy the working model of Americanist culture history that was seen as theoretically and methodologically defective. "Change in the total cultural system must e viewed in an adaptive context both social and environmental, not whimsically viewed as the result of "influences," "stimuli" or even "migrations" between and among geographically defined units." (ibid., 217)

Binford therefore argued that cultural systems must be methodologically isolatable and studied thus in terms of their adaptive milieu in terms of physical, biological and social components. "As long as 'cultures' are defined in terms of stylistic similarity, and the question of possible differences in the material inventory of functional classes and in the internal structure of the assemblage is unanswered, there is little possibility of dealing realistically with questions of process. It is a system that is the seat of process." (Binford, 1964: 426)

Implicit to an emphasis upon the technological and the material was what might be called an "ergonomic" model that cultural systems, as systems, must function at some optimal efficiency in order to be effective in adaptation. Such systems cannot afford reduplication of effort or inefficient processes, especially upon a technological level of articulation.

Binford offers a more concise and somewhat more refined definition of his model of cultural systems in his work in 1964:

From this, we see that he derives a fairly explicit statement about the role of archaeological method in the explication and explanation of cultural systems.

He conceives of the archaeological context of cultural systems as representing therefore the "fossilized" remains of the total original cultural systems, the nature of which can be deduced from inferences derived from a clear analysis and understanding of the archaeological remains:

Binford thus claims that it is possible to recover the fossilized structure of the total cultural system, from the nature and spatial relationships of artifact populations, and which would reflect "all other structures, for example, kinship, economic and political."

In the early development of his arguments, Binford sought to refine his use both of direct historical or ethnographic analogy in a systematic manner, and his use of inductive inference in reasoning in a clear manner from the data. For the formal use of analogy, he distinguished systematically between strong or positive and weak or false analogy based upon the degree of componential similarity and covariation between things being compared. A false analogy would be one in which the inferred property would not account for the resemblance's. The use of analogy, in this case, ethnographic analogy derived from the anthropological record applied to the interpretation of archaeological evidence, formed a critical basis for Binford's reliance upon inductive inference to draw conclusions in a systematic way about his evidence. Strong analogy would be comprehensive and would lead to less comprehensive inferable properties that would more likely be true. He uses the following principles:

The more numerous the similarities between analogs, the greater the probability that inferred properties are similar. The corollary of this is: the more comprehensive the inferred properties, the less likely is the conclusion to be true. (Binford, 1967: 2)

Therefore, common sense would lead us to agree that the "more detailed the inference, the more specific must be one's ability to cite the determinants of the positive analogy." (ibid., 2) This becomes the basis for Binford's inferential methods and logic, or what he calls "arguments from example" that are generalizations derived from a large sample of arguments by analogy. Generalizations are probabilistically derived from the size and strength of the data set--the larger the population, the more likely the generalization is to be true, that is barring an demonstration of disproof our counterexamples. These rules are regarded as independent of the content of the argument, thus should be generally applicable to many kinds of data sets.

Binford takes this argument by example to be applicable to anthropological analogy, but in terms of its content rather than the form of the argument. Thus it rests upon generalized criteria that "the behavior observed in the ethnographic situation (unobserved in the archaeological situation) was also present in the past when the artifacts were in use."(ibid., 2). He establishes conditions of relevance for judging archaeological arguments from analogy based upon either: 1. Historical continuity between the archaeological past and the ethnographic present; 2. In lieu of such historical continuity, then demonstrating analogies in cultures "which manipulate similar environments in similar ways." (ibid., 3)

By the time of his attempt to analyze the Mousterian data using factor analysis, Binford had further refined his model of cultural systems with the consideration of multivariate causality of social phenomena "The phrase 'multivariate causation' implies that the determinants of any given situation are multiple and may be linked, and that some determinants may contribute in different ways to different situations."( ? 240:1)

Binford uses his definition of multivariate causation to link "the structure and content" of an archaeological assemblage directly to the "form, nature and spatial arrangement of human activities." Thus determining variables or factors may be used to define the range and form of human behavior as this occurs differentially at various locations, times and various behavioral settings. He separates inferable but differentiable "activities" as "units of causation" by which factor analysis may be used archaeologically in a meaningful manner.

Given Binford's single-minded promulgation of a system's approach to archaeological theory and method, it is almost predictable that he would have adopted a quantitative methodology for the organization and determination of archaeological data. It cannot be said whether his concern for systems led to his emphasis upon statistical description, or vice versa, but it may actually have been a hen and egg kind of relationship. His paper "A Consideration of Archaeological Research Design" (1964) must be considered as a masterful application of conventional descriptive statistics to archaeology in a manner that suddenly made statistics not only available to archaeologists, but in fact necessary to their research designs.

Binford saw the appropriate use of statistical methods as a solution to the problem of improving archaeological research design to enable archaeologists greater systematicity and greater screening and selective control over their regional locations of interest. Archaeological research resources are always by definition limit and restricted, and therefore necessary means for systematically applying these had to be developed. Again, Binford chose the use of descriptive statistics as a way to solve this logistical problem in archaeological research, through the use of sampling procedures, the definition of basic units of archaeological analysis, or "cultural items," and cultural "features," or the "bounded and qualitatively isolated units that exhibit a structural association between two or more cultural items and types of nonrecoverable or composite matrices."(ibid., 431) The site itself also became a meaningful statistical unit in Binford's statistical methodology, as the focus or loci of cultural activity, and he distinguishes sites on the basis of their depositional context, depositional history, culture history and functionality. Binford also identified the "ecofact" or "all culturally nonartifactual data" (ibid., 432) that may be associated or relevant to a site or a cultural system. He distinguished two sampling universes, the site that contained populations of cultural items and features, and the region, or a population of sites defined spatially. For Binford's new quantitative approach to Archaeological methodology, "probability sampling" was the name of the game:

At this stage, we are led to a closer examination of the methodology subsequently developed by Binford based upon such a quantitative approach. Binford had from almost the beginning of his career in anthropology defined for himself a theoretical framework for the articulation of scientific archaeology. Once having formulated his theory, he worked to refine it and to develop it teleologically via the design and application of new methods and a new methodology that was the logical outcome of his theoretical system. Binford thereby took, almost single-handedly, the entire tradition of American archaeology from a preoccupation with description and interpretation, to a concern with experimentation and analytical explanation. He distinguishes this difference early on in distinguishing the two purposes of Anthropological inquiry, explication and explanation. Archaeology before Binford had achieved explication, but lacked almost any explanatory frameworks of understanding.

Binford appeared almost from the beginning to know what he wanted to do, but he did not know exactly how he could do this. I believe the remainder of his career in Archaeology can be seen as having been spent in quest of this development of a new scientific methodology for the processual study of archaeology, which was accomplished partially but incompletely through a series of important steps he made and continued throughout his career.

The first real methodological application published by Binford was in reference to the introduction of factor analysis technique to the problem of organizing and interpreting the archaeological data of the Mousterian. Binford apparently chose this Mousterian problem to which to apply his system of quantitative analysis as a means of demonstrating the utility and potential value of this system of factor analysis to archaeological samples. (Binford & Binford, 240-243)

It is not the intention to rehash this method in detail, but to only mention its correlational basis and Binford's rationale for its utilization. For Binford, the structure and content of an archaeological assemblage is directly related to the form, nature and spatial arrangement of human activities that led to that assemblage. Invoking multi-variate causality as a fundamental feature of complex systems, the range and form of human activity could be expected to vary between locations or at any one location. A summary description of any given assemblage will therefore represent a blending of activity units (the "causation" of assemblage variability) and their determinants, requiring an organization of the assemblage data on the basis of their covariation. Binford was seeking what he referred to as a "unit of comparison between a single artifact type and the total assemblage" (ibid. 241) corresponding to the basic units responsible for the observable variation of the assemblages. He chose factor analysis as a method suitable for this purpose.

The basis of the factor analysis approach is the analysis of the correlation matrix generated by the inter-correlation of assemblage variation with one another. All sample points are correlated with every other point. The total variance squared of any variable is then subdivided into three types of variance--common variance that correlates with other variables, specific variance not correlated with other variables, and error variance that occurs as the result of error in measurement or sampling. Thus the basis of factor analysis is the assumption of common factors occurring in intercorrelated matrices and any individual variable may be represented in terms of these reference factors, measured in terms of the configuration of common variance demonstrable between many different variables.

For Binford, for any given activity, it would be expected to exhibit a high degree of common variance and be positively correlated with the pattern variability of the archaeological data. Each kind of activity would represent a unique factor that would be specific and shared by that common activity, exhibited by a high degree of common variance. The common variance of relationship between the two different factors (i.e., activities), based upon the presumed sharing of tools, would be less that the variance within each set of the two factors.

A key debate in Archaeological literature focused upon the problem of the interpretation of the Mousterian tool tradition that arose as a result of Binford's ground-breaking application of factor-analysis to this problem set. Factor analysis was the statistical-based method of choice that Binford had chosen in keeping with the refinement of his methodological concerns to archaeological systems theory, and I believe that ultimately the Mousterian represented a problem that was quite conveniently suitable for Binford's needs to demonstrate his new quantitative approach to archaeological interpretation. The key issue of this debate was that it brought to the foreground the basic and most critical issues concerning archaeological interpretation and associated archaeological relativity of its knowledge.

This problem set has an important precedence in an earlier debate between Albert Spaulding, a mentor of Lewis Binford, and James Ford, concerning specifically the use of statistics to the interpretation of archaeological evidence. It is therefore worthwhile to revisit once again this earlier debate in order to preface the understanding of what came afterward between Binford and a number of other archaeologists who were involved in the understanding of the Mousterian tool tradition.

The use of statistics in Archaeology first formally began with the almost flippant but germinal use of Alfred Kroeber's frequency seriation in the analysis of surface pot-sherds among the Zuni. Kroeber's approach was then more refined by Leslie Spier who provided a kind of regression analysis based upon a more thorough seriation. Alfred Kroeber (1940)followed this with a more detailed and serious application of statistics and the use of correlational tables to develop methods of statistical classification of artifacts. Brainerd's work (1951) in sophisticated topological mapping of variation in archaeological analysis should also be mentioned.

Lewis Binford directly inherited Albert Spaulding's statistical approach to the definition of artifact types, which he defined as "a group of artifacts exhibiting a consistent assemblage of attributes whose combined properties give a characteristic pattern."(in Lyman et. al, 356) Thus, classification is inherent to the type as this was produced by the maker of the artifact, and it is not arbitrarily attributed by the archaeologist. Such classificatory analysis must be exhaustive and independent to each archaeological context if its complete historical significance is to be gained. Spaulding argued centrally that statistics, if correctly used, were capable of discovering in "any meaningful archaeological assemblage" the measure of consistency of pattern obtaining in that assemblage and hence of inferring valid types to be associated with those types. This approach differs fundamentally from the traditionalist approach in which site-to-site comparisons were used exclusively to establish the consistency of identifying pattern, variation and historical relevance, primarily by the identification of index types. Between site comparison is obviated by statistical analytical techniques that can elucidate within site patterns of variation and relationship and thereby definitive characteristics of the type. From this form of typological analysis, historical relevance can be inferred or deduced "A properly established type is the result of sound inferences concerning the customary behavior the makers of the artifacts and cannot fail to have historical meaning."(ibid, 356). Spaulding proceeds to elucidate a nominal scale, four-square chi-square table, and to extend this to larger multi-celled matrices. These methods are used "to discover the cultural significance inherent in archaeological remains, and there is no other way in which such information can be obtained." (ibid., 364) The statement of probability may never be altogether clear, but it allows the "degree of uncertainty" to be put into objective form, which uncertainty invariably derives from the "sampling error" or the question of how much the available archaeological evidence being thus analyzed actually represents the true population of the original cultural context. "To add to this uncertainty, the dimensions of which can at least be estimated on the basis of statistical theory, there is the purely archaeological problem of the nature of the relationship of the sample to the living culture which produced the artifacts." (ibid., 364)

James Ford's critique of Spaulding's approach above, who argued that "cultural types" (as represented by pottery patterns) were not preexisting units in culture history that could be discovered in the ground. Ford defines "culture" as a "classificatory device which offers its bearers pattered ways of meeting problems of existence." This patterning becomes reflected in the archaeological remains of a culture, and it varies widely from one culture to another. For Ford, Spaulding's technique would reveal cultural patterning specific to a single time and place, but it was useless to the larger problem of addressing culture history, which would be reflected in style change of pattern due to time. For Ford, Spaulding's approach was therefore ahistorical as culture historians conceived of chronological time as a sequence of pattern variation. For Ford, archaeological culture patterning is not "the central problem of typology, rather it is the framework in which the problem of setting up measures of time-change and geographical space-change of each unit of the pattern have to be solved." Change would be due to discrete historical processes and events. Chronology must be brought under control before archaeological or cultural types can be associated with tribal cultural units. "To set up historically type units in a tradition such as is represented by cordmarked pottery, I can see no way to avoid detailed comparisons made site to site and through time." (Lyman et. al, 366)

Spaulding retorted Ford's critique of his analytical approach by bringing to question Ford's presuppositions that techniques constitute a denial of continuous variation in culture in space and time and that artifact type have implicit definitions that makes its use a specific prerogative by the archaeologist in the ranking and comparison between sites and the construction of chronology. Spaulding proceeds to outline three stratified levels of analytical typology: Level 1 type, called attribute combinations, "is a group of artifacts linked by the possession of a specific attribute combination which someone chooses to call a type"; Level 2 type, called attribute clusters, based on level 1 type, is an elaboration of the information provided by the level 1 classification, based on the frequencies and the relationship of these frequencies to the various combination counts; Level 3, called functional types, is based in turn on level 2 and consists "of a group of artifacts exhibiting a cluster of distinctive attributes and having a distinctive function."(ibid., 367) Spaulding was concerned primarily with inferring types from level 2 analysis, which clusters corresponded to the general word "type." Types thus defined included by inference information about the behavior of those who produced the artifact. "The attribute clusters are 'natural' units in the sense that they represent a special effort to infer the behavior patterns of the makers, not the particular needs of an archaeologist working on a particular problem." (ibid., 367)

For Spaulding, adequacy of sample was the critical issue, not its "occurrence at 2 or 20 or 200 sites." Spaulding thus attacks Ford's use of arbitrarily defined "traditional types" that were based simple Level 1 attribute clusters and that were used in developing regional typologies and relative chronologies.

Ford finally launched a polemical attack against Spaulding's paradigm in his famous article "The Type Concept Revisited" in which he questions the reality of cultural "types": "To state it clearly, the question may be put this way: "Do cultural types exist in the phenomena so that they may be discovered by the capable typologist?" (Ford, in Lyman, 42) For Ford, Spaulding holds forth a statistical methodology for the discovery of cultural types, taking for granted the notion that types exist in culture to be discovered by methodological means. This, Ford doubts. He then proceeds to set of a hypothetical ethnographic culture by which to demonstrate his views that culture patterning and organization that takes a synchronic framework and permits the compartmentalization of this pattern. Ford emphasizes the role of the individual culture bearer in the reworking the forms that culture provides for him, introducing infinite variations of the pattern: "As the ethnologist studies the pottery, and other aspects of the culture, he will observe that the variation in actual artifact tends to cluster about a mean, which he can then visualize as the central theme of the type."(ibid, 372)

Ford illustrates this diagram with an emphasis on the continuous variation of the trait characteristics of the artifact. The unit of analysis can thus be broken down into elements each of which may vary in relation to the whole--thus cultural concepts or "types" of artifacts "may quite legitimately be considered as a cultural complex rather than as a unit."(ibid., 374) Thus, for Ford, "cultural types" become abstracted upon different levels of apparent complexity by the observer--one level is no less or more real than the other--and the criterion for selection are the purposes to which the classifications may be put. Ford then goes on to demonstrate how the mean and range of "types" will vary between locations, and, more important, through time. If an archaeologist only has one site from which to draw his data, his concept of type will be defined by the statistical variables characterizing that site, but possibly not applicable to any other. If he had two different sites that each demonstrated a different set of statistical variables, then he is likely to come up with two different culture types, even if these were in reality part of the same cultural pattern. For Ford, therefore, "The type is abstracted by the observer at a point in time" (ibid., 378) and is based upon: 1) the inherent cultural organization; 2) the appropriate level of abstraction from the patterning of culture; 3) the cultural type encompasses spatial variation due to normal cultural drift; 4) the cultural type must account for temporal variation due to normal processes of cultural change. For Ford, the cultural type therefore is only a classificatory device that is important to the culture historical method for the reconstruction of culture history in time and space--its function is purely utilitarian and should be treated that way. (ibid., 52)

Binford's arguments with Bordes et. al. in relation to the interpretation of the Mousterian tradition in particular can be seen as an extension of this earlier debate of the basic kinds of archaeological or cultural types, the former defined functionally and described statistically, the latter defined traditionally and described qualitatively by means of formal traits associated with the Mousterian tradition. Binford used the Mousterian evidence as the basis for the introduction of his quantitative methods (Cluster Analysis) as a way of getting at the correlational patterns intrinsic to the data. This he uses to analyze the varying patens of distribution of different functionally defined tool types over space and time, with the implication being that he is thereby able to discern from this distributional patterning.

Francois Bordes systematized Mousterian typology, associated with Neanderthal culture, defining the complexity of occurrences of different kinds of Mousterian assemblages, having introduced high standards of description and systematic comparison. From Bordes analysis, four types of Mousterian assemblages were recognized quantitatively and objectively defined (Bordes, 1953, 1961) These types consisted of: 1) Acheulian tradition with two subtypes (Wurm I & II) characterized by handaxes, side-scrappers, denticulates and backed knives; 2) Typical Mousterian with reduced frequencies of handaxes and knives; 3) Denticulate Mousterian with up to 80% denticulates and notched tools, and without handaxes or backed knives, with the remainder of the assemblage composed of scrapers, burins, borers, etc.; 4) Charentian Mousterian, divided in two types (Quina and Ferrasie) without handaxes or knives but high frequencies of end-scrapers, side-scrapers with scalar retouch, and in the latter type the presence of the Levallois core preparation technique. Various tool types and the Levallois technique cross-cuts assemblages across Europe and the Near East in complex ways, leading to complex patterns of alternation of types in various assemblages. Different hypothesis were invoked to explain these variations of pattern in the Mousterian: 1) different seasonal patterns resulting in different pattern distributions; 2) environmental variations through time and space accounting for variations in tool distributions; 3) different ethnic or cultural groupings of the Mousterian left-behind differential patterns of tool type distribution. Bordes amassed evidence that refuted the first two hypothesis, and therefore concluded that the different Mousterian assemblages represented different "tribes" of Neanderthals.

It is with this conclusion of Bordes that Binford takes issue, stating that variation of tool types is not consistent with known Homo sapien patterns, and that clustering of stylistic variation, presumably associated with cultural patterning, does not occur distinction in the heterogeneous and mixed Mousterian assemblages.

It is at this stage in the development of his argument that L. Binford once again invokes the general framework of systems theory relative to ecology and field theory, and he introduces as well the central explanatory model of multivariate causality in the explanation of social phenomena, such that "the determinants of any given situation are multiple and may be linked, and that some determinants may contribute in different ways to different situations." (ibid., 240-241) This explanatory model then is used to rationalize the application of cluster analysis or multivariate analysis techniques to archaeological problems sets such as that represented by the Mousterian. The variation of human activities will result in the variation of structure and content of archaeological assemblages, and this becomes the basis for explaining assemblage patterns of variation. The factors determining human activity in any location at a given point in time may be multivariate, consisting of general factors such as seasons, environment, cultural composition, group structure, as well as more particular variables relating to the situation of the group in terms of food, shelter, tools, etc. "In short, the units of 'causation' of assemblage variability are separate activities, each of which may be related to both the physical and social environment, as well as interrelated in different ways." (ibid., 241) This requires a problem of partitioning mixed assemblages into groups of covarying artifacts that reflect similar activities. Binford sought a way of analytically isolating artifact groups based upon their functional activities they represented. He sought therefore a unit of comparison between the single artifact type and the total assemblage. Thus, Binford states his main methodological problem as being the isolation of these "units" by means of factor analysis using correlational coefficients. It is evident at this stage that Binford is taking the methodology implied directly by Spaulding and applying it in a more sophisticated manner to the Mousterian data, seeking especially configurations of common variance between alternative variables. The factors inherent to assemblage variability therefore are independent of our interpretative frameworks for the function that those factors represented. These functions would be inferred from ethnographic analogies of similar tool types. "Our identification of the function of a factor depends on analogy with the tools of living peoples, tool wear and associations in refuse. Whether or not our interpretation of a factor in terms of function is correct, this does not affect the demonstrable relationship between the variables analyzed." (ibid., 243)

Binford thus applied factor analysis to two sites from the Near East and Northern France, and used a total of 40 variables, to which he assigned various functional interpretations. His method of analysis made an attempt to formally distinguish between stylistic and functional variations of pattern by analyzing: 1) formal content of a factor; 2) relative value of paired factor scores (covariation of different factors); 3 relative intrasite assemblage significance of factors and temporal-spatial distributions. Binford then demonstrates four alternative patterns of scatter on a Cartesian plot representing different assumptions about functional or stylistic variation, and then analyzes key diagnostic factors that have tight correlations and that vary consistently with other groups, and thus represent functionally related sets of tools. The differences between different factors can then be described on the basis of different functional activities associated with each factor grouping. Analysis of various factor groupings yields a cumulative graph of expected frequencies of various factors relative to one another.

The cumulative graph generated by the comparison of the five isolated factor groupings was compared by Binford to a similar conventional Bordean graph representing the basic differences of frequency occurrence of his Mousterian typology. By the functional groupings, Binford claims to be able to recognize patterns of animal and hide processing from hunting, from extractive food processing activities, including plant food processing, which is suggests demonstrates a sexual division of labor. Flint-working, the knapping of flints from cores, was taken to be a non-diagnostic factor that represented broadly the logistics of tool production, conditioned by variables of availability of raw material, loci of tool use, and the problems of transportation between various locations of tool production and tool use. Binford's interest in flint-working was its use as an index of economizing behavior and as a clue to variable site-utilization by Neanderthal populations, and in order to do this he uses ratios of cores to Levallois blanks and tools. These ratios were then compared to the five factors analyzed previously, showing relative correlations of flint-working to various kinds of associated activities.

At this point, Binford interpreted the results of his analysis within a general framework of hunter-gatherer societies, showing geographical distribution and temporal-seasonal variation of pattern of land use, distribution and encampment. In analyzing the data from the Mousterian sites, Binford concludes that the significant patterns obtained at the sites in question were due to multivariate patterning of several determining factors as he had isolated these through factor analysis--the three factors representing hunting and butchering; and the procurement and processing of plants.

In general, Binford found that Bordes typologies as analyzed at several different sites did not correspond to the patterns revealed by factor analysis, such that Mousterian site formation was generally governed my multiple factors, and the types of Mousterian assemblages determined by Bordes did not correspond in a significant manner to the same combinations of factors. Whereas Bordes methods of univariate statistics conflated multiple variations of factors at sites, it also disguised the presence of common factors in assemblages that by classification were thought to be different. He concludes as well that there is regularity in the form and composition of assemblages that can be consistently interpreted in terms of previous human behavior, and that there is evidence of regular change through time indicating changes in the activities of the people occupying the sites.

Binford concludes his landmark paper by stating that "the form and composition of assemblages recovered from geologically undisturbed context are directly related to the form and composition of human activities at a given location"(ibid., 291) and that "the minimal social processes and organizational principles exhibited by human groups today were operative in the past." (ibid., 291) He further distinguishes between maintenance and extractive types of activities exemplified by factor analysis, which should be able to distinguish between base camps and work camps as two settlement types within a system.

Bordes and others responded to Binford & Binford's provocative paper by addressing the range of Mousterian data based upon his typology and the cumulative graphs associated with these ranges, and reasserting the "different cultures" hypothesis, suggesting that different cultural patterns could have been very long lasting. Therefore, according to Bordes, there was no evolution of one culture type into another form. At the same time, he also dismisses Binford's "different activities" hypothesis that the Mousterian was occupied by "only one Mousterian culture existed in one region at one time, and the different assemblages found in different places or layers represent different specialized activities, reflecting either seasonal activities or different specialized activities." (66) Bordes takes Binford's initial interpretations of functions assigned to tool groups to task, seeing such interpretation as inherently problematic without further experimental evidence. He also finds problematic Binford's definition of a site as something fixed in both time and space, and also the use of ethnographic analogies without taking other factors such as environment into full account. "South-west France never was the Kalahari, the Australian desert, or Labrador." (ibid, 67). Bordes also recognizes specialized tool kits found within a single site but relating to different specialized activities. Bordes musters a detailed expertise of the full range of Mousterian assemblages and sites in his argument with the Binford conclusions. Bordes returns to the problem of stylistic variation in tool assemblages as indicative primarily of different cultural patterns that reflected different traditions that "lasted a very long time." Very similar kinds of arguments were advanced by Paul Mellars against the Binfordian conclusions.

Binford offered two rebuttals to these criticisms in which he defended both his methods, their rationale, and the conclusions he derived from them in regard to the Mousterian. In his contribution to Colin Renfrew's collected edition The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory (1973) Binford makes his statement about the perspective of culture as this is different between an ethnologist and an archaeologist, in which the latter is limited to "observation of the byproducts of behaviour itself." (1973: 228)

Binford's take on the Mousterian was directed to finding a solution to this problem: "It was argued that if similar or identical patterns of co-variation among similar tool classes could be shown to cross-cut recognizably different assemblage 'types,' then the probability would be high that the assemblage types derive their consistent associational patterning from the organized distribution of stimuli, and not from the differential distribution of distinct cultural repertoires among population segments." (ibid., 228)

These organizational properties consisted of consistent patterns of mutual co-variation of different groupings of tools showing high inter-correlation.

Though Binford takes to task several papers criticizing his method, his main concern was with the Bordes argument, primarily because Bordes had a mastery of the knowledge relating to the Mousterian and understood Binford's arguments clearly. (ibid., 237)

Binford remarks that the inference of Mousterian types reflecting culture groupings did not reflect any known patterns of sapiens behavior characterized by acculturation and borrowing. Bordes answered this problem by claiming that the Mousterian cultures were very long lived, very conservative and, though genetically exchanging mates, may not have exchanged customs. Bordes, according to Binford, assumes that contemporaneous variability and assumed stability reflects ethnic differences, while Binford does not make such an assumption. Binford makes a claim for the necessary mobility of the people of the Mousterian to achieve adaptive flexibility to their environment--Bordes rejects this depiction of life of this period of time, pointing out evidence of year-round occupation of sites in the Mousterian. Binford therefore carefully analysis the evidence for this conclusion of perennial occupation, based upon reindeer teeth, and rejects this argument.

Binford systematically argues against Bordes criticisms, on a point by point basis.

In conclusion, Binford summaries the "functional argument" represented by the Mousterian debate. He dismisses the linkage between cultural pattern and tradition and the discrete differences of tool design as indicative of evidence of different cultural traditions. He regards this assumption as unrealistic given the degree of intra- and interassemblage variability of tool pattern and form, and refutes the argument of tool distributions as stylistic variability of social significance. Binford concludes: "I never opposed a 'functional' interpretation against a 'cultural' interpretation. I have been attempting to develop and oppose an explanatory against an interpretation strategy as to the significance of variability observed in the archaeological record."(ibid., 253)

In a second paper published in 1983, Binford reviewed the Mousterian debate, and recognizes what he refereed to as the "generation gap" in interpretive models represented by an earlier culture historical approach ("conventionalists" or "traditionalists") and a functional or processual attempt at explanation. Binford argued that traditional archaeologists argued from the "facts" of the archaeological record, but the validity of arguments about dynamics could not be tested by appeal to statics "in the absence of a prior understanding of the causes of the static."(1983: 157) The Mousterian debate set in motion during the 1970's a larger debate over functionalist approaches. "Many conventionalists were uninterested, as they perceived my arguments to be light-years away from their data. For them it was simple: Artifacts reflect culture; differences in artifacts therefore reflect differences in culture, and similarities in artifacts reflect similarities in culture. This was thought to be an unassailable truth and statements about the past made in these terms were rooted in the data."(ibid., 160) On the other side, strict empiricists saw the kind of inductive inferences that Binford made to be risky business. Artifacts and assemblages could be handled and grouped statistically without a concern for "what they originally were, exactly how they were used, or just what they meant to the ancients."(Wauchope, 1966: 19, in Binford, 1981: 160)

Binford argued from the problem of relevance, not whether his explanations were correct or accurate, but whether they were appropriate: "For in hypothesis testing we must always be able to justify our observations as relevant measures of the variable identified in the propositions we have formulated." (ibid, 160) Traditional Americanist archaeologists saw the problem of history as standing in the way of the use of analogy between the past and the present. Relevance of facts cited or failed to be cited were the primary means of judging the strength of the argument. This was seen as an "old fashioned" form of archaeological debate.

The critique of Binford's "new archaeological" approach was that the initial presuppositions underlying pattern recognition and inference to past behavior and even social organization were "false" to begin with. It was, again, impossible to argue across different histories and the use of such dynamic models to explain statics in the archaeological record was deemed traditionally as "inappropriate" (and not as incorrect or necessarily inaccurate, which question was not even asked.) In response to this, Binford emphasizes that "central to my ideas was the proposition that cultural systems were internally differentiated. By virtue of this we would expected different things to occur at different places and at different times as a function of the degree and character of the organizational differentiations within the system. In turn, I expect there to be archaeological consequences of such a past reality." (ibid, 162) Referring to the criticism by Schiffer (1976: 11), Binford summarizes the traditionalist argument against functionalism:

Once Binford changed the character of arguments advanced to explain archaeological patterning, new contexts of relevance became established, and the old arguments of relevance became themselves simply irrelevant. Binford's "new archaeology" represented an entirely new approach to the archaeological record. Binford describes his approach:

Binford's work and papers in archaeology in the 1960's spawned a whole new generation of archaeologists in the 1970's that took the problems of archaeology in new directions and considerations, not all of which Binford himself has agreed with, but he has recognized that the true nature of archaeological research is dynamic and that there is no "right" way for doing it, only that the methodological framework adopted depends upon the goals one wants to achieve from the research.

Binfordian Archaeology caught on and developed as systems archaeology, behavioral or formation archaeology, analytical archaeology, processual archaeology or pattern-recognition archaeology, or scientific archaeology, or functional archaeology, in both the New World and in the Old. Thus, Binford, by his challenge of the previous relativistic culture historical paradigm, offered a structuralist approach to archaeology that was operationally systematic and theoretically well founded. It conferred upon modern archaeologists a new sense of science and legitimacy that they had lacked under the old traditionalist paradigm, and I believe that it led to a new phase of doing archaeology that created new insight and new information about our collective past. It is natural therefore that Binfordian archaeology would come to be extended and further elaborated by many different scholars in the subsequent decades following the 1960's. I do not think that any archaeology is taught or practiced in the field today, with possible exceptions relating to what can be called "post-structural" archaeology, that does not adopt in some form or fashion as central tenets the paradigm first set forth by Binford.

Even Binford himself has come to first mollify and then modify his original "strong" structuralist stance with a more refined and comprehensive approach as represented by his most recent works. He has extended and elaborated his initial thesis about archaeological systems in a number of different directions and perspectives.

Some of Binford's most significant contributions are found in his later conceptual and methodological developments, which follows a clear logical and even stadial progression from his earlier work. One of Binford's most important papers was his piece "Willow Smoke and Dogs' Tails" (1980) that dealt with hunter-gatherer settlement patterns as evidenced by the ethnological and ethnoarchaeological record, how one could distinguish between forager and collector patterns based upon differential processes of ethnoarchaeological site formation relative to each kind of pattern, and how this difference could be understood ecologically, particularly in relationship to key ecological determinants such as effective temperature and its correlation to patterns of storage of food that is a key variable in distinguishing between collecting and foraging systems. In this single paper, Binford sets the stage for his later work, as well as redefining for an entire generation of archaeologists the priorities of research in archaeology. He established the basis for using ethnographic analogy, particularly within a framework of hunter-gatherers, in relation to important ecological variables conditioning the social behavior of groups particularly in food-getting strategies.

To summarize this argument, which represents as well a direct extension of his conclusions regarding the Mousterian tradition:

Binford further distinguishes between residential mobility and logistical mobility, as two basic principles of hunter-gatherer social organization in subsistence patterning--moving consumers to resources or resources to consumers. These two sets of differences will be reflected in differences of intersite variability. Relatively increasing coarseness of sites, reflecting the degrees of mobility between sites, would result in reducing inter-assemblage variability between sites of a single or related system, while also resulting in increasing complexity and scale of assemblage content within any particular site during one single occupation period, reflecting in turn responsiveness of assemblage content to event differentiations.

This important paper of Binford's sets the groundwork for his latest book, Constructing Frames of Reference (2001) his tour de force, in which he fully elaborates a systems model based upon an ecological perspective relative to hunter-gather modes of existence. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully review or elucidate in detail this content and implications of this enormous book. It is a relatively new book and its reception is still within a gestation period in which its possible significance is still being questioned and explored by different archaeologists.

In this latest work, Binford takes into exhaustive account climatological and ecological data, and references this against a worldwide survey of ethnographically documented hunter-gatherer groups. In his adoption of a general ecological frame of reference, the analytical distinction between niche, habitat and population is important in understanding hunter-gatherer adaptations to a larger range of ecological settings. Furthermore, human behavior and activity is regarded primarily as rationalizing and goal seeking behavior, with the generalized aims of reducing uncertainty and of being able to accurately and realistically assess risks associated with any decision made or project undertaken. Binford makes a generalization that "a constant characteristic of human actors is that they attempt to maximize their vital security in any habitat, limited only by their capacities and means." (2001: 41) which links human populations to niche constraints, reflected in the general lack of optimum adaptive conditions and in the limits of the laws of tolerance--the minimal limiting factors conditioning human survival and adaptation in any given environmental setting.

It is beyond the scope of the immediate work to fully summarize or do justice to this latest contribution of Binford to archaeological theory and method, but it is fitting to summarize, I believe, Chapter 3 of this work because it gives the clearest elucidation of Binford's methodology as this has been developed thus far through his various works.

The archaeologist "selects for observation a specific number of properties of the event of interest and ignores all the rest" (ibid, 45). These properties or aspects of an event are the "facts" that have an existence independent of the observer. The recording of an observation of a fact becomes an archaeologist's "datum," and this process of transforming observed facts of data is important in pattern recognition studies and data analysis, and is called "data production."

The collection of data and observing and recording of facts is inherently framed by the dimensions that define the framework by which selective criteria for data collection are defined and labeled. Operational definitions are used to dimensionalize data in the organization of facts into units in terms of defining criteria that are relevant to our research goals. Binford goes on to distinguish between "first-order derivative patterning" that is conventional and relatively nonarbitrary, and "second-order derivative patterning" which involves a decision by the researcher as to the subsequent ordering of data for analysis.

At this stage, the definition of frames of reference, the title of the book, becomes important. "A frame of reference allows the researcher to juxtapose one domain of knowledge about which there is a history of productive learning with another, less well-known domain." (ibid, 48) The shifting of frames of reference in the evaluation of "second-order derivative patterning" results in the creation of third-order derivative patterning that is a result of shifted frames of reference in relation to original observations. Binford invokes the strategy of "projection" as the primary means that human beings use to anticipate future events, based upon the presupposition that the world is likely to remain unchanged in some future frame of time. According to Binford, Science relies upon the disciplined use of a projective strategy. He distinguishes between historical sciences and natural sciences in that with the former kind of knowledge experimental learning is no longer possible because the events are finished, compared to the latter in which projective strategies of learning are possible and can be tested against the reality of emergent events. Statistical description in science depends primarily upon projection. Thus, Binford defines science thus "good science consists of strategically using prior knowledge to make projections from better-known domains to less well-known domains." (ibid., 50) If subsequent observations are inconsistent with our projections, then this provides a critical clue as to the insufficiency of our conceptual models upon which our projections have been based.

For Binford, therefore, projection becomes the basis for pattern-recognition techniques. If applied to ethnographic data as the basis of deriving analogies to the archaeological record, then theories can be constructed accounting for observed pattern variability in the ethnographic data, and these can then be logically applied to the interpretation of archaeological evidence. Furthermore, if these variables can be linked through equations to environmental-ecological factors of determination, then these equations can be used to project properties onto any location for which there is environmental knowledge. In the systematic use of projection, Binford distinguishes relational projection that depends upon the significance of a linkage between variables, and proportional projection, about which there is less secure knowledge. Binford uses both methods in a complementary manner.

An understanding of Binford's significance within a larger framework of anthropological and archaeological inquiry stems from a critique of his systems approach from both an internal and an external reference point. First, his cultural systems approach appears from a structural-functionalist standpoint to be somewhat anthropologically naïve and overdeterministic. The naiveté of his model stems from the failure to take into account the relative symbolic independence of form and function when it comes to the articulation and integration of culture at its several levels of patterning. This is understandable from an archaeologist's standpoint that has for the most part only material artifacts to work with. But Binford clearly stated and believed that one could derive the total cultural system from the systematic evaluation of the relationships found in the material data itself, and this he attempted to demonstrate in several occasions with varying degrees of success. Thus the final success of Binford's "experiments" fell somewhat short of their own implicit (and often explicit) aims to the extent that inferences and interpretations he claimed for the patterning of his data were not, nor could they be, fully corroborated by any other direct evidence except analogically. At this stage, Binford's middle-range theories cease being entirely or carefully scientific and become something else instead.

What Binford held in check with his high-level theory was the entire problem of the archaeological relativity of the data. From this control, he was able to systematically derive low-level methodological theory, with the aim of eventually deriving by both inductive inference and deductive inference solid middle-range theory in archaeology concerning specific and general systems at different levels of integration and units of analysis.

He therefore imposed a model of a cultural system that was essentially a-historical and synchronic in its functioning. History and historical particularism were largely discounted in favor of deriving relationships and pattern through systematic comparison. The loss of history meant the reinterpretation of historical evidence within a functional and systems framework.

We must understand Binford's significance also from an external framework of the social construction of knowledge systems, and we must see the leading role of Binford as a polemicist in the advancement and argument of his approach to scientific archaeology. Thus Binford wrote for the most part in a clear and lucid style about matters that he was able to simplify both through explanation and exemplary demonstration.

While it can be argued that variables of personality should not be used in the critique of an individual's contributions, it is clear that Binford's strong personality played a major part in his success and the advancement of his scientific or functional paradigm in archaeology. I see Binford as a strong willed, strong-minded "alpha Archaeologist" who would not have been comfortable resting on his laurels on the side-lines or as a wall flower in academic forums. He definitely had a driving force that, when coupled with a critical and penetrating mind, enabled him to take command of almost the entire archaeological field single-handedly.

Binford early articles in reaction to the culture history paradigm precipitated for Archaeology, and I believe for Anthropology as well, a major shift of perspective away from the model of culture as a culture historical tradition that relied upon artifact typologies and classifications, toward a functional-structural model of archaeological culture as the depositional and "fossilized" remains of a cultural system that exhibited the qualities and quantities of both stasis and change over time.

Implied in this paradigm shift was the presupposition of structural order and patterning in cultural process that was by definition built into the empirical groundwork of archaeological methods and data, and cast out at this stage was a preoccupation with a concern over the culture-historical relativity of the interpretative "constructions" that the archaeologists brings to the site and to the artifact collections. Putting the divisive problem of archaeological relativity in check at this stage was the only means that could achieve forward and progressive momentum in the development of systematic archaeological methods that reached beyond problems of any one site or set of sites and embraced longer-range theoretical frameworks.

The concept of relativity was held in check by Binford's new paradigm in terms of establishing what can be called shifting and alternative "frameworks" for the contextualization of the data and its interpretation. The concept of multiple archaeological "frameworks," defined primarily in structural and functional terms of the activity and relational sequences that could account for depositional and artifact-trait patterning, was Binford's means for inserting control over the fundamental problem of the inherent uncertainty of the Archaeological ground. Frameworks provided multiple, alternate and even polythetic frames of reference by which different kinds of units of analysis could be defined and manipulated for deriving their inherent relational or associational information. The problem of inherent uncertainty involved with archaeological construction and interpretation could thus be rationally hedged to a receding background and chased by rigorous applications of methods of quantization and organization of the data. Part of the solution to this kind of problem, which I think Binford recognized, was to make as explicit as possible one's operational presuppositions and strategy, and to explicitly contextualize one's statements and results with the necessary contextual qualifications that restrict unnecessary over generalization.

On the other hand, it is quite clear as well that the basic model that Binford adopted from White's famous definition of extrasomatic culture and Steward's preoccupation with cultural ecology, was not without its own presuppositions and what has subsequently been called the functionalist fallacy of the ends being used to justify the means. Binford did on occasion overstep the boundaries and limitations of his own methodologies and risked fairly grand generalizations, as regards for instance the distributional patterning and use of tools during the long-lasting Mousterian tradition.

In this sense, a post-structuralist shift or outcome can be seen as the reactional and self-critical outcome of structural-functional arguments carried to their logical extremes to the point that functional model builders become blind to the role that they themselves are playing in the construction process. The tonality and voice of Binford's claims regarding the conclusions of his research frequently bear the stamp of very strong claims to truth value without a hint of uncertainty. Of course, too much of going the other direction into post-structural critique and new post-modernism that claims that no archaeological construction is possible, goes from one functional extreme to the other end of archaeological dysfunctionalism.

I believe today that most archaeologists are reasonable people who carefully ply their trade primarily defined by the "frameworks" established by Binfordian methods, given a cautious ear also to the fundamental problem presented by the post-structuralists and constructionists who are preoccupied not with the problem of the data and the site, but with the archaeologist who is upon the site and dealing with the data. That mainstream Archaeology should emerge in the 21^st Century as a mixed bag of tricks, far more refined and sophisticated with new dating and analysis techniques than their culture historical predecessors, is a measure both of the progress that characterizes a paradigmatically unified science, and a measure of the degree to which paradigms in the social sciences in general remain fundamentally "open" and poly-paradigmatic in spite of frequent jockeying and bouts for position and prestige. Clearly, Binfordian archaeology has come to adopt the high middle ground in the archaeological arena, and this provides to current archaeology whatever scientific legitimacy and systematicity that it may claim for itself in the world.

I attempt to demonstrate, via my own means of research in Penang Island (1994-5) and in Henan Province, PRC (1998-9) what I would consider to be an application of a methodological approach largely like that of Binford to the problem of understanding in a finite manner patterns of cultural variation and differentiation in situ of its articulation in varying ethnographic contexts. I did not go to the field with the research design in any direct manner influenced by Binford. Largely, the Research design was arrived at in an entirely independent manner as the result of extensive preparation that cover the previous five years. Again, the relationship between this approach and that of Binford's archaeological approach is summarized very clearly and succinctly by a statement made by Binford concerning what he called the "limited" definition of culture as a methodological framework for organizing research.

This statement by Binford in the early 1970's paraphrases almost to the letter the rationalization of my symbolic framing research design as I implemented this in Penang Island in 1994. It is my desire therefore to explicate this research design, its results and extensions afterward in further research in China to demonstrate what I believe to be the validity and merit of Binford's thinking as this applied to Archaeology and its it may apply to ethnographic research. I offer this following design as only a single possible example of how Binford's model can be effectively turned to the analysis and understanding of culture at what can be considered "non-technomic" levels of integration and adaptation.

Furthermore, both research designs lead to the same kinds of analytical methodologies that are employed to interpret the patterning of the data in statistically meaningful ways. In this regard, to the extent that the structure of the archaeological remains of a cultural system can be isolated, this isolation is accomplished "by the demonstration of consistent between-class correlations and mutual co-variations among classes of artifacts and other phenomena."

A similar approach and rationale of inter-correlational analysis of factors has been employed in the isolation and evaluation of data derived through ethnosemantic task elicitation in cross-cultural contexts. It is perhaps not surprising that a similar rationale of research design should lead to broadly parallel methods of analysis in both archaeology and anthropological research.

Binford's next step was to find a suitable research framework for the demonstration of these correlational methods proposed in his research design paper that fully developed the use of statistics in archaeological analysis. Thus, he found in the reevaluation of the Mousterian tool tradition in Europe the basis for the demonstration and refinement of methods of factor analysis applied to the Mousterian and related data. Again, similarly broad methods of cross-correlational analysis, as well as more advanced forms of data analysis, have been employed in the understanding and representation of the ethnological evidence.

A great deal in anthropology and archaeology can be said to rest upon our definition of culture and the terms that we bring to such a definition or derive from it in a methodological sense. The definition of culture that I have started with in my research design is that culture is the total composite patterning associated with a given group of people within a given period of time. All that we see and usually assign as evidence of culture, institutions, art, attitudes, language, social organization, rituals, and the material artifacts that are produced and used by a culture, can be said to be in fact the by-products or the resulting manifestations of cultural process. It is a patterning that is developed through sharing of similar contexts and response patterns within these contexts. Sharing is as true of the vertical transmission of culture from parent to child or from one generation to the next, as it is of the horizontal transmission of culture from one neighbor to the next or from one city to another via a newspaper or a telephone line.

If we wish to get to the heart of culture, we must understand what is unique about the human being as a culture-making and culture bearing animal. We must in other words identify what can be said to be the core culture-trait complex of human beings that makes cultural patterning of the environment possible in the first place. To find this, we need a theory of anthropogenesis that is tied to the development of uniquely human trait complexes implicated in the production and articulation of cultural patterning. These include: 1. A large brain organized in a certain manner and capable of certain levels of abstraction and calculation; 2. Bipedalism; 3. Hand-eye coordination with an opposable thumb; 4. The capacity for human language; 5. Year round sexual receptivity; 6. Prolonged post-partum infant dependency and development. Other traits not necessarily species specific to human's, such as stereoscopic vision and audition, tie into this trait complex on various levels to reinforce the integration of pattern found in this basic anthropogenic complex. We may also recognize what can be called secondary anthropogenic traits that are also strongly associated and that take unique form in humans, though may not be particularly unique to the human species. These include human sociability and social dependency and an evolved capacity and dependency of human beings upon social organization and cultural development. In other words, it appeared that Human beings at some point in their evolutionary sequence evolved in a metabiotic sense of counteradaptation to the presence and influence of culture in its most basic forms. Another way of putting this is that those hominid groups with a greater capacity for cultural production, especially and presumably relating to tools and symbolic forms relating to their environment, had an adaptive advantage over other groups that did not have this cutting edge. Adaptation and natural selection thereby came to include, probably at the time of Australopithecus and Homo habilis, cultural selection patterns as well. Human beings then evolved in a unique direction towards greater dependency upon the cultural context, and the social group upon which the cultural context depended for its transmission and articulation.

Thus, all manifestations today of religion, art, science, or of social order, or human technology and material culture, are in a sense the epigenetic patterning of the evolutionary and historical development of cultural patterning that was rooted to these primary and secondary anthropogenic characteristics. If we want to find the "real culture" that lies behind the derivative manifestations and expressions of culture pattern, then we must seek this in terms of the primary and secondary trait characteristics that a group possess and that underlies the unique form of cultural integration that such a group achieves.

If we wish to find the core mechanism that drives all culture as well as all variability of pattern of culture, then we must seek it in the primarily and secondary trait complexes tied to anthropogenesis, and which become expressed now in terms of primary and secondary socialization-enculturation. Culture then becomes conceivable in terms of the psychic and anthropological unity of humankind, the same system that can account for the differences as well as the similarities between different people. All archaeological systems, all historical systems, all extant socio-cultural systems, are but derivative and somewhat underdetermined by-products of this basic process. It makes sense therefore to seek an empirical foundation of cultural patterning at its true source in the structure and function of human nature.

The framework for presenting a parallel ethnographic application to the kind of research design adopted by Lewis Binford came through doctoral research upon Penang Island during the years 1993-5. The society of Georgetown, the principle city of the island, is unique because it is the sister city of Singapore that has not undergone radical development and retains the traditional Overseas Chinese pattern. At the same time, there reside on the island significant Indian, Moslem and other minority populations, rendering the area a truly multi-cultural framework. It is not uncommon to meet people who can speak five or more different languages fluently, though the average is around three. The original object of the research design was to conduct "symbolic framing" analysis across the three major ethnic groups, Malay, Chinese and Indian. Political and other social factors interfered from gaining access to Malays at the same time as the Chinese, and therefore the study became focused upon clan organized Chinese on the poor side of town who lived over the Jetty near the old port facilities where ships of yesteryear would dock and unload their cargo. This ethnographic study was contextualized within a larger study of the city patterns in Georgetown in which this community was centered.

The people of the clan jetty all shared the same surname. Lineage exogamy was the rule, but there were noteworthy exceptions to this rule. The population of the community appeared to be stable at about 960 people, though there was continuous fluctuation of people joining or leaving the Jetty, of people dying and new children being born there.

For the most part, these were poor working class Chinese. Women worked in factories or else did sweated labor sewing garments. Fishing, miscellaneous boat services, and serving as stevedores in the loading and unloading of ships were the main sources of employment for most of the men. This area was in the center of the clan complex of the city, and was notorious for its affiliations with Triads and lesser gangs. People there gambled routinely as a matter of habit, and smuggling of contraband, often achieved at night through hidden doors underneath the houses under the cover of darkness, proved to be a major source of revenue for these families.

I initiated a multi-phase study, collecting in a systematic manner information on as many levels and in as many areas as we could muster. We also regularly worked the larger city area at the same time, pursuing often parallel designs. The core of the research was based upon a design of symbolic framing. The basis of symbolic framing design was that cultural patterning of people led to distinctive behaviors and response patterns that could be called symbolic in terms of their organization and contextualization within a larger system. These patterns are adequately described with the framework of gestalt psychology. Symbols can be said to normally function not only upon a perceptual level as pattern-recognition devices, but upon a behavioral and functional level as pattern-ordering devices, or from a systems point of view, as control or feedback mechanisms. To put it clearly in Binford's own terms:

Cultural patterning by this study did not come in "whole" units that could be described typologically by ethnic labels or "aspects." Cultural patterning was presumed to be something that was real to the people that had real consequences. Different people of different cultural backgrounds would not only respond to the same stimulus situations in different ways, but there occurred a significant amount of common variance in response patterns that could not be accounted for on the basis of chance alone. This covariance recurred at multiple levels upon multiple tasks, and reappeared time and again across different tasks. This could be related through systematic content to derive what could be called a basic rule structure governing a family model of the Hokkien Chinese and that could be called inherent to the system as they had elaborated it on the Jetty.

Subsequent samples taken from British and then American subjects revealed the same within group consistence across multiple tasks, and the same kinds of differentials between groups. Further refined samples were taken in mainland China, and revealed among primarily Henanese Chinese even more remarkable profiles of response that was unlike the Hokkien Chinese of Malaysia, or unlike the British or the American pattern.

Symbolic framing tasks were essentially pattern recognition tasks that were adapted from a wide number of projective and ethnosemantic elicitation techniques. These tasks involved grids, open sentence completion frames, inventories, the MPDT and derivative versions, rod and frame tasks, memory tasks, pattern recognition tasks, several different inkblot tasks, numerous drawing tasks, color tasks, dichotomous tasks, ranking and grouping tasks, apperception tasks and ethnosemantic elicitations and pile sorts. All of these tasks were treated essentially as "symbolic framing devices" and little effort was spent in attempting to interpret the information derived from them in any classical psycho-analytic method. Instead what was sought were primarily ranges of variation and multi-level similarities between different groups and between different sets of tasks. Many of the tasks were revised and adapted while in the field, and several batteries of tasks were then collated and subsequently employed to provide greater systematicity. Many of the tasks had multiple aims, and were simultaneously both content-driven and response based. In the first couple of months, it was difficult to control who did what. A control group was eventually organized that allowed greater consistency of sample for comparative purposes.

At the same time, more conventional forms of study were conducted with the same sets of individuals in behavioral observations, interviews and participant-observation. The patterns of response elicited by various symbolic framing tasks could be construed as emanent from the same cultural contexts and background in which this patterning was situated and derived. A holistic ethnographic description of the Jetty was built up. Within the larger context of Penang Island, it was predicted that the same kind of differential variance of pattern could be found between Malay, Indian and Chinese samples, though we were not given permission to collect across the ethnic boundaries. At the same time, ethnographic observation of a range of behavioral settings that cross-cut these boundaries led to a parallel form of socio-grid analysis which predicted that for instance, variance between middle aged Chinese housewives might be greater or more different than their poorer Chinese counterparts, than with their middle-class, middle-aged Malay counterparts. This seemed to be the general pattern that emerged. Even focus of study upon the street-people in Penang revealed significant differences of behavioral pattern of these groups divided especially in terms of sex and ethnic identity.

A naturalistic behavioral setting can be used and interpreted in a similar manner as to the use and interpretation of symbolic framing devices, especially if similar behavioral settings are presented to individuals of different backgrounds, leading to differential response patterning. Experimental conditions can be set up, with controls, to achieve more pronounced and dramatic results in this manner.

The rationale behind this approach was that the presupposition of cultural sharing, which provided significance with relatively small sample sizes (30 or more). People with similar cultural backgrounds would tend to exhibit what Binford might refer to as common variance in response elicitations on various tasks. If you lay, for instance, 100 random objects on a table, and ask different people to pick out ten of the objects, chances are much better than average that people of similar cultural backgrounds and biographical histories will pick out the same sorts of things, often in the same order. We cannot explain exactly how this happens or why it is so, but we can invoke a model of culture that can be empirically tested. The tasks could be intercorrelated with one another, and the performance of different individuals upon different sets of tasks could also be systematically compared. We cannot now fully explain how the patterns elicited were formed by the brain. Much of the sharing was subsurface (perhaps unconscious or at least out of awareness may be a better set of terms) and not self-evident to the informants themselves. No great effort was spent on psychoanalytic or conventional interpretation of the data for "deep significances" though this might have been done as well. The content of special interest on the Inkblot tasks were mostly the kinds of responses that psychoanalysts tend to ignore as culturally based themata. The tasks were used as largely interchangeable devices for elicitation to judge differentials and variances of shared response patterning.

Culture from this standpoint is conceived as something that is real, and that leads to real behavioral differences occurring between different people. It is not something to be explained merely in terms of its objective or material manifestations, though many material patterns may be the by-product of its behavioral patterning, as Binford has so strongly, and I believe, correctly, asserted. This methodology provides anthropology a scientific and empirically based handle on the phenomenon of cultural patterning that is the result of behavioral response patterning in structured environments. It provides the anthropology of knowledge a critical theoretical solution to the fundamental worldview problem, by giving an empirical definition of human symbolization and its behavioral function in the cultural organization of behavior and experience. It thus bridges, for the first time, symbolic theory and cognitive theory, and provides a clear scientific answer as to exactly what a symbol is and how it works to produce order in our lives.

The ethnographic context of the Jetty, situated within a larger landscape, was treated in much the same way as Binford proposed to treat the archaeological site, and in a larger context, the region. It was treated as a total but underdetermined system that was functionally-symbolically organized. Cultural patterning was defined as the relational or correlational consistencies that occurred between people and across different situational contexts. Culture came to be defined as a process that people engaged in from day-to-day in a variety of behavioral settings, and articulated and recreated everyday within shared contexts. Culture from this standpoint can be viewed and treated clearly from a processualist perspective, as an on-going process of construction that preserved an inherent conservativism of tradition, and yet which continuously changed in its reproduction.

It is interesting as well that the analysis of the results of the tasks led to the development of cross-correlational analysis between sample sets at multiple levels and across a range of different types of tasks. Complex correlational matrices were thus be built up which provided a great deal of insight into the articulation of different cultural patterns and revealed hidden patterns of relationship between different types of contexts. This cross-correlational analysis is virtually the same as that proposed by Binford in the interpretation of the Mousterian tradition, namely factor analysis.