Introduction to Archaeology: Class 3

ã Copyright Bruce Owen 2002

• A little more on what archaeology is
• Archaeology is generally defined either by its data or by its goals
• Defined by data: Archaeology is the study of the material remains of, and related to, past human activities.
• artifacts, buildings, food garbage, burials, etc.
• One of the main things that distinguishes this view of archaeology from antiquarianism and art history is that archaeologists emphasize studying these material remains in context
• Context or association: the relationships between objects, and between objects and their surroundings
• Thomas emphasized this on the first page of Chapter 1.
• Many types of context: stratigraphic, spatial or geographic distribution, chronological, statistical association, etc.
• Defined by goals: Archaeology is the extension of anthropology into the past, using mostly material remains as evidence.
• (some kinds of non-material evidence that help include glottochronology, ethnohistory, mythology, etc.; ancient written texts are both material and not...)
• This begs the question of what anthropology is: a subject hotly disputed right now by anthropologists.
• literally, anthropology is the study of humankind
• this is part of the thrust of Thomas's chapter 2: to understand Americanist archaeology, you have to understand a little about anthropology's approach to the world
• The anthropological approach
• Thomas's examples of anthropologists: Richard Leakey, Jane Goodall, Don Johanson, maybe Steven Jay Gould. Who are these people?
• 4 generally recognized subfields of anthropology:
• biological (or physical)
• cultural
• linguistic
• archaeological
• shared anthropological outlook
• holistic: to understand humans and society, you must consider biology, ecology, culture (what's that??), language, politics...
• especially "culture"
• everyone disagrees about what culture is (but we all "know it when we see it")
• a very rough gloss: knowledge, beliefs, myths, aesthetics, technology, language, social rules, etc. that people learn and that structure their lives
• emic vs. etic approaches to studying people:
• emic
• from "phonemic" in linguistics: phonemes are the minimal units of sound that speakers recognize
• people who speak different languages discern different phonemes
• English speakers hear "v" and "b" as different; Spanish speakers have a hard time distinguishing them
• Chinese speakers distinguish different phonemes by pitch; English speakers don't
• but the speakers are aware of and can explain the differences between their phonemes
• so the "emic" approach is that which emphasizes the speaker's (or culture member's) understanding
• how they explain what they are doing and why
• etic
• from "phonetic" in linguistics: phonetics is the study of language sounds based on detailed knowledge of how they are produced, using complex notations and specialized techniques
• most language speakers are not aware of the phonetic details of their languages
• this is an outside, "scientific" view
• it explains differences between sounds in ways that would baffle most speakers
• so the "etic" approach is that which emphasizes a the outside observer's interpretation of things
• example: views of exchanging gifts at Christmas
• an "emic" view:
• we do this to commemorate a religious event
• we do this to show our love and friendship for others
• even, we do this because of social obligations
• an "etic" view:
• they do this to maintain solidarity within and among family and other groups
• they do this because values have become increasingly materialistic in the last century
• they do this to relieve tensions arising from disparities in wealth and prestige between generations and social categories
• both have their uses
• adaptive vs. ideational approaches to studying people
• adaptive
• explains things in terms of how they affect the success of the society in its ecosystem
• broadly defined, this may include not only food production, but political means of redistribution, warfare, colonization, etc.
• ideational
• explains things in terms of what people think
• religious ideals, notions about equality or special rights of certain families, the desire for power, etc.
• again, both have their uses
• generalism vs. particularism (my gloss on this current debate)
• generalism
• there are regularities in societies and cultural change that are useful in understanding them, and we should look for these regularities
• often associated with a "scientific", western, not-very-PC approach -- but not for any good reason, as far as I can see.
• particularism
• societies and cultural changes are so complex and diverse that each has to be studied as a special case, taking into account the historical path that led to them
• in the last couple of decades, often associated with a "humanistic", "postmodern", liberal, pro-indigenous/minority/oppressed people approach -- but not for any good reason, as far as I can see.
• guess what? both have their uses.
• scientific vs. humanistic approach
• science is basically a way of establishing knowledge, based on the "scientific method"
• objective, in that the data and arguments are placed out there for everyone to inspect, criticize, and reanalyze (as much as possible)
• testable (or "falsifiable"): conclusions are only acceptable if there is some imaginable way to show that they are wrong if they are - but the evidence does not do so
• "The sea is blue because it contains many tiny particles of turquoise" is falsifiable: you could test it
• "The sea is blue because it reflects blue light from the sky" is also falsifiable: you could test it, but in this case the test would not come out "false"
• "Occam's razor": all other things being equal, a more simple explanation is preferable to a more complex one
• a rule of thumb, not always true!
• induction: inferring an idea, rule, etc. from some data
• a creative process
• leads to hypotheses to be tested
• deduction: figuring out the logical outcomes of ideas (often hypotheses)
• if "x" idea is true, then we should find "y"
• testing the hypotheses by checking to see if the deduced "test implications" or "material correlates" of the hypothesis are actually true
• confirming the implications does NOT prove the hypothesis
• because maybe other hypotheses we have not yet thought of could also fit the evidence
• it only shows that it MIGHT be right by showing that it has not yet been proven wrong
• we can eliminate the clearly wrong ideas, and keep moving closer (we hope!) to "truth"
• humanistic approaches
• emphasize subjectivity, intuition, emotion, attitudes
• give less value to strict testability, falsifiability, hypotheses, etc.
• avoid the "objective", outsider's view that scientific approaches strive for
• Thomas says that scientists think there is a real world out there to observe objectively
• while humanists say that archaeology is subjective, that observer and observed cannot be separated
• are these really mutually exclusive???
• What kind of discipline is archaeology?
• I see it as a historical science, like geology
• Archaeologists collect data about moment or series of events
• invent a scenario consistent with it
• predict what further evidence should be found if the scenario is right
• and check for it, either by further analysis of existing data or by gathering more.
• Hypotheses are tested against, and constrained by, evidence
• This is "historical" in the sense that archaeologists (and to some extent geologists) cannot perform experiments
• We can't create a state society in the lab and observe it
• geologists can't collide continents, erupt volcanoes, etc. in controlled conditions
• although we and they can do some limited "replication" experiments
• The evidence and events were are explaining are unique; they happened once and can never be exactly repeated.
• So we can't come up with "predictive laws" as in physics or chemistry
• although there might be generalizations that seem to apply to many or all cases
• Sometimes archaeologists say they "retrodict" something
• meaning that their hypothesis implies that some specific bit of data will be found if someone looks for it
• Unlike a prediction, the data "retrodicted" already exists, and the archaeologist obviously cannot control all the variables involved in its formation.
• Hypotheses can be disproved if the evidence conflicts with them, but can rarely be "proven", only shown to be consistent with data at hand.
• But at least the evidence can constrain the conclusions, eliminating some incorrect ones.
• The result is a series of successive approximations, we hope getting closer to the truth, but inevitably also reflecting intellectual biases of the individual researchers and their times.
• "We don't know much, but now we know that much"
• that is, archaeology does tell us something about the past; without it we would know nothing.
• So what are the goals of archaeology? Depends on who you talk to, and what stage of research they are at.
• Most archaeologists would say that the following are all valid goals, and that they have to be addressed more or less in this order:
• Reconstruct past ways of life
• This is analogous to ethnography: figure out as much as possible about all aspects of life, from getting food and making houses, to marriage patterns and social structure, to religious beliefs.
• This is called a synchronic view: looking at the whole social system as it functions at a given moment
• Reconstruct the sequence of changes over time
• Analogous to history or historical ethnography
• this reconstructed sequence of events is called culture history, although some people avoid this term as being too old-fashioned
• This is called a diachronic view: looking at the changes that occur over time.
• A diachronic view is essentially a series of synchronic views over time
• Explain the processes of change in each culture history
• Also analogous to history
• How and why did the changes occur, leading from one moment to the next?
• There are many approaches to this, as we will see
• emphasizing the primacy of material factors like climate, subsistence, technological innovations, etc.
• emphasizing the primacy of ideological factors like religion, political ideals, social norms
• emphasizing the agency of individuals and groups advancing their own interests, resisting others, etc.
• Generalize about societies and the processes of change in them
• What causes certain kinds of developments in society?
• adoption of agriculture, rise of states, collapse of empires...
• What universal laws (if any!) describe the nature and development of human societies?
• What processes are important in the function and change of societies?
• are class relations important or not?
• are gender relations universal, or flexible?
• is there generally a trend towards greater hierarchy, or towards democracy, or...?
• What is the process of archaeology? How do archaeologists proceed?
• Archaeologists form hypotheses, often multiple hypotheses, based on theories or models about the past and the issues they find interesting.
• these overarching theories are (ideally) "high-level" theories, ones that try to explain society and change in some general way, often with specifics formulated for the particular case
• for example, a materialist approach to the rise of social hierarchy
• Hypotheses are often "test implications" or "material correlates" of a "high-level" theory, that is, if theory "x" is correct, then we should find evidence of "y"
• for example, say our high-level theory involves social change caused by high-status individuals trying to increase their power, in this case by redistributing food to followers
• if that occurred, we should find storage facilities for concentrating food for redistribution, probably near the home of some high-status person or near a public place
• Often, archaeologists have not yet gotten to the high-level theory, and simply form general questions they hope to address
• when was this site occupied? What was life like here at "x" time?
• They go out and survey, surface-collect, dig, or whatever, gathering "evidence"
• This evidence in itself is just objects; it has to be interpreted extensively, just to describe it.
• Is this a stone tool or a naturally broken rock? Are these rocks or postholes in a line, or just a chance or natural pattern? Was artifact "x" laying in contact with the floor, or just above it in later fill? Is this sherd an example of pottery style "a" or "b"?
• the ideas and arguments we use to create useful evidence from observations of the world constitute "low-level theory"
• Once the "evidence" is understood, they try to reconstruct past behavior from it
• rich people lived over here, while poor people lived over there; every family made their own stone tools behind their house...
• This reconstruction is based on "middle-range theory", which tries to link "evidence" to behavior
• in practice, middle-range theory may be explicitly discussed, based on ethnographic analogy or other arguments, or may be implicit and unexamined ("common sense" or "obvious" interpretations - which are often where false assumptions and poor logic slip in)
• The archeologist then evaluates the hypotheses in light of the interpreted evidence
• where the hypotheses disproved, supported, or is more data is needed?
• He or she probably also comes up with numerous additional hypotheses suggested by the new evidence, and tests them against other aspects of the new evidence
• Finally, the archaeologist uses the success or failure of the hypotheses to evaluate the high-level theory or model they were derived from.
• Is the theory still acceptable? How should it be changed?
• In practice, a lot of this is often far from explicit.
• Then the cycle starts all over again.
• Why do archaeology? What are we trying to accomplish?
• Also a debatable question
• The plain old curiosity answer
• What is "x" artifact/building/site? What happened here?
• Stonehenge, Giza, handaxes, potsherds...
• The intellectual curiosity answer
• We are trying to answer countless questions about humans and our past. Examples:
• How and why did human culture arise from our non-human, non-cultural origins?
• When and why did people shift from hunting and gathering to farming?
• When did the first people get to Australia and to North America, and how?
• How did people come to live in cities?
• What lead to the development of the first states?
• How and why were the Egyptian pyramids built?
• What was the economic basis of Greek democracy?
• Why did Maya civilization collapse?
• What role did Old World diseases play in the European conquest of the New World?
• What were conditions really like for black slaves in the colonial US?
• How was the first "mass production" factory of the industrial revolution organized?
• Archaeology is the only way to get at many of these questions, because
• it gives us access to an immense span of time
• it transcends the limits of the present time and recent past to which cultural anthropology is limited
• it transcends the limits of where and when history was written and preserved
• by doing so, it gives us access not only to longer runs of "historical" development, but also to societies that lived in conditions that no longer exist
• it gives us access to a much wider range of human behaviors and possibilities than history or ethnography could offer
• the very first attempts at things like farming, living in cities, having kings, etc.
• adaptations like specialized mammoth hunters or foragers in rich environments that have been controlled by farmers since before written history... etc.
• Archaeology is particularly good for answering questions about society because it is unaffected by certain kinds of bias that plague history and ethnography
• written history tends to focus on upper classes, certain kinds of events and places, and is generally ideologically biased, intentionally or not
• ethnography is necessarily influenced by what people want the ethnographer to know and think about them, intentionally or not
• "Garbage doesn't lie" - or at least, not in the same ways as history and ethnography
• Rathje's "Projet du Garbage"
• The practical utility answer
• National and ethnic identity and pride
• "El orgullo de ser Peruano"
• Political uses
• Israel's constant excavations justify modern Jewish presence
• Tourism and display, for economic reasons
• Teotihuacan, Tikal, Giza; Machu Picchu
• The personal answer
• Its fun.
• Intellectually stimulating, outdoors work with your hands, many different skills, constant variety, travel to interesting places, creative problem solving and writing
• The social value answer
• Adds richness to people's lives, however subtly, to know that people are studying and recovering the past; fires people's imaginations to see documentaries, museum displays, visit sites, read articles and books about archaeology, even if they don't bother with the details.
• This has all been very abstract. Most of the rest of the class will involve filling in how archaeologists actually do all this stuff