This anti-pattern justifies all decisions through historical precedent—“we’ve always done it this way”—rather than current context and trade-off analysis. Core problems include:
- Loss of original reasoning - Without documented Architecture Decision Records, the “why” disappears; only “what” remains
- Ignoring contextual change - Decisions made under different constraints (small team, different tech landscape) persist unchanged
- Resistance to evolution - New architectural approaches are rejected simply because they differ from historical practice
- Accumulating technical debt - Rather than evolving the architecture, organizations layer workarounds over aging foundations
Connection to Frozen Caveman
Frequently co-occur with the Frozen Caveman Anti-Pattern:
- Ivory Tower + Frozen Caveman - An isolated architect with stale expertise uses isolation to avoid being challenged on outdated thinking
- Architecture by Archaeology + Frozen Caveman - An architect frozen in the past naturally justifies current decisions through that historical lens
- All three represent failure to evolve - in isolation, in knowledge, and in architectural reasoning
The antidote to all three is collaborative, iterative architecture with transparent decision-making and continuous re-evaluation of assumptions.
Related Concepts
- Frozen Caveman Anti-pattern
- Ivory Tower Architect
- Fundamentals of Software Architecture - Mark Richards & Neal Ford
Source: Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Mark Richards & Neal Ford (O’Reilly, 2020)
Note
This content was drafted with assistance from AI tools for research, organization, and initial content generation. All final content has been reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author to ensure accuracy and alignment with the author’s intentions and perspective.