Interpretive archaeology and new importation

The other broad reaction to the vacuum left by positivist philosophy, incorporating the relativist implications of post-Kuhnian science, moved toward the emerging influences of Critical and Social Theories in the social sciences (Leone 1984, 1987, McGuire 1992, Miller 1989, Miller 1984b, Shanks 1987, 1992). With the eclipsing of Analytic Philosophy as the dominant philosophy of Anglo-American departments (Lycan 2000, Rajchman 1985, Rorty 1979, Stroll 2000:ch.9), interest resurged in Continental philosophers and theorists’ ideas . Foremost amongst such thinkers ‘rediscovered’ by archaeology included Hermeneuticians such as Gadamer (1975), Ricoeur (1981) and Heidegger (1962), as well as Husserl (esp. Husserl 1973[1930]) inspired phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty (1962). This re-opening of the thought of Continental thinkers naturally extended to more contemporary authors such as Derrida (1974), Bachelard (1964), Foucault (1990) and Althusser (1977). In its earliest formulations, post-processual archaeology (Hodder 1982a, 1982b, 1984) explicitly distanced itself from the core assumptions of functionalism and the concept of culture as an extra-somatic means of adaptation to past environmental conditions inherent in the ‘new archaeology’. Re-establishing a sympathy to pre-‘new archaeological’ notions of culture as best understood within a historical lens attentive to humanistic, even individualistic, compositional characteristics (esp. Hodder 1982), post-processualists by consequence advocated explanatory procedures which could attend to the intricacies of individual behaviour and its expression in material culture. Rather than epiphenomenal appendages of core adaptive functions, past individuals were re-cast as the central concern of the study of the past. Consequently, these early articles served as a general manifesto for the greater resolution of archaeological methods to attend to the complexities and non-predictable tendencies of ‘real’ individual agency (ibid:5). In a sense, the criticism was to call-out the failings of previous archaeologists for subsuming the discipline too far under alternate banners of social science (such as biology, economics, geography and physics) and re-establish, in David Clarke’s reminder, ‘archaeology as archaeology as archaeology’.

Tandem with such a revamping of the concept of culture, one which moved away from Durkheimian sui generis notions of organic society towards methodological individualism and idiosyncratic agency, the deductive methodology geared toward establishing Hempelian covering laws was rejected as consequently ineffectual for the new focus. Instead, aligning more with history and its consideration of particular lives and events, Hodder pushed for the (ironic) fulfillment of Binford’s ‘archaeology as anthropology’ by urging the attendance to the particular and contextual conditions under which individuals behave and give meaning to their lives (1984:13).

In conjunction with the new goals of post-processual archaeology and the ‘opening’ of the social sciences to alternate (i.e. avowedly non-scientistic) models of explanation, new concepts for representing the contextualized past were necessary. Text became the primary analogy for culture (Hodder 1990:21, Hodder 2003b:166-9, overview by Olsen 2005, contributions to Tilley 1990, Tilley 1991, Tilley 1993a:6,11-25, 1993b). Engaged with the larger Literary Criticism tradition, especially that prominent in the social sciences (esp. Clifford 1986, Geertz 2000[1973]), as well as predominantly French derived Structuralist, Post-structuralist and Deconstructive (Culler 2001, Derrida 1974, Dews 1987) accounts of textual meaning, such a conception of text as was to be polysemous, context-dependent and underdetermined (Ricoeur 1981, 1984). Extending this conception of culture as text to archaeological concerns, the recovery of past culture was re-configured as a pursuit of meaning analogous to textual interpretation, or a ‘poetics of the past’ (cf. Tilley 1993b:11).

Such a nuanced and complex conception of culture dovetailed with the rejection of previous, largely functionalist and generalized notions of past culture to create a new procedural equation for post-processual archaeology. Past individuals actively negotiated the socio-economic, political and ideological constraints upon their lives, giving meaning to their existence irreducible to generalized patterns of functional adaptation to the environment. Therefore, a truly ‘anthropological archaeology’ must attend to such context-specific meaning-giving activities in hope of recovering the meaning which gives existential sense to human life. For a discipline of the past, meanings objectified in archaeological remains needed to be ‘read’ in order to hermeneutically extract such multifarious and specific significance for an understanding of past lives and societies.

Naturally, the long-standing discipline of textual interpretation or hermeneutics (originally concerned with Biblical exegesis) was drawn upon as a new methodology for such a revamped archaeological pursuit. Originally of Diltheyan derivation (Johnsen 1992), the opening of archaeology to ideas outside of the narrow confines of philosophy of science and anthropology (perhaps the fulfillment of Clarke’s ‘loss of innocence’ as an immature or at least insulated discipline, cf. Shanks 1987:forward) brought heuristic tools for deciphering meaning-bearing material culture. As noted above, these included initially Structuralist inspired investigations of meaning producing binary oppositions and contrasts (contributions to Hodder 1982b, Tilley 1991) evident in the archaeological record. Soon, after the importation of non-Levi-Straussian models, Saussure (1960) inspired post-structuralist theories of arbitrary and polysemous signification were drawn from Barthes (1972, 1977) and Derrida (esp. 1974).

While such methods for meaning (in)determination posed the spectre of relativism, as any reading of the material record would ostensibly find some resonance with the evidence given the ambiguous parameters of post-structural meaning-determination, the overall post-processual agenda became solidified under the role-inspired epithet of interpretive (or ‘interpretative’) archaeology and with the systematic distinction of its platform from processual archaeology (Shanks 1995). Some (Tilley 1993b:3) have suggested that interpretive archaeology constitutes, in its actualization of Binford’s original anthropological goal, the real paradigm shift in the discipline. Focused upon the consequences of Kuhn’s contextualizing scheme for scientific inquiry, particularly the liberating phase of ‘revolutionary paradigmatic change’ wherein previous paradigms are diagnosed as ‘malfunctioning’ (Kuhn 1970:ch9), such a self-assessment may have been more for rhetorical bolstering against the ‘orthodoxy’ (Shanks 1995:3). As has been sketched already, much of the development of the discipline reflects periodic adjustments in two critical and inter-related areas: 1) re-conceptualization of the domain of archaeology, namely the model of (past) culture; and 2) the related re-assessment of methodological goals and mode(s) of inquiry proper to the new domain of effort.

Thus, with Boasian-type ideational and relativistic culture early twentieth-century, inductive reasoning from the accumulation of artifacts was adequate to represent distinct culture-types in space and time (culture-historical). The representational goal was comparatively simple, and so the methodologies and theoretical modeling brought to bear on artifact assemblages and features was commensurately limited to identifying (presumed culturally significant) distinctions. Following on the early ‘radical critics’ of ‘traditional archaeology’, more functional questions were raised as the concept of culture shifted to a more materialist model of adaptation. This trajectory was entrenched with the explicit re-conceptualization of culture as an extra-somatic means of survival for societies. And concurrently, with new systemic concepts of the domain of inquiry, came a rethinking of the use of theory and methodological procedures.

For interpretive archaeology, there played out a similar inter-related shift in both concept of culture and theoretical tools and methodologies appropriate thereof. Importing ideas from contemporary social theory, particularly that of Bourdieu (esp. 1972) and Giddens (1984), a structuration model of society was utilized that attended to the individual as an agentful and intentional being negotiating with structural constraints of a facet of realistic factors ranging from socio-economics to politics and ideology (Miller 1989, Miller 1984a). Within such a model, both individual and society were seen as dialectically engaged in actively constructing the other, rather than an anonymous and automaton individual subsumed within the superordinate functioning of society. Refocusing on the individual and her/his creative and reflexive potential, such social theory complimented the idea of interpretive archaeology attending to the no longer inconsequential actor of the past (cf. Hodder 1984).

Materially, past individual agency interacting ‘discursively’ and ‘non-discursively’ with structural relations of larger society was posited to be recoverable in the material culture utilized actively as well as reflecting passively the outcome of such processes. Such material sedimentation, as the consequence of meaningful action, was accessible via the method of hermeneutic interpretation. Thus, while drawing on a greatly expanded and disparate set of theoretical imports for revamping the notion of culture, methodologically interpretive archaeology folded such target goals within the congenially broad, extractive method of hermeneutics. This consolidation, which had somewhat formalized by 1995 (Hodder 1995), entailed several key consequences for the trajectory of archaeological reasoning and representation.

First, as both ‘traditional’ and ‘new archaeology’ had done before, interpretive archaeology certainly altered both the concept of past culture and the attendant methodological procedures necessary for investigating the new construct. Bringing us back to Kuhn’s criterion of paradigmatic shifts, the goals or questions of interest had indeed undergone a shift. But as has been adumbrated, such periodic shifts characterize the discipline rather than poising a complete break with previous alterations, leaving open the question (and criticism of Kuhn’s scheme (eg. Hacking 1987) of how different such topics of interest must be to constitute a paradigmatic break. More importantly, however, examined through Kuhn’s second major criterion, the question of explanation and reasoning may prove more interesting. Initially, the hermeneutic goal of understanding (verstehen) as explicitly opposed to explanation (erklärung) might in itself suggest a radical break with past archaeological reasoning. Moving from Dilthey to Gadamer’s (1975) description of inquiry (incorporating Heidegger’s dasein principle of interpretation as always-already embedded within particular existence), archaeologists outlined understanding the past as a fusion of horizons involving both the archaeologist-in-the-present and the object of inquiry in-the-past (Hodder 1991b, Johnsen 1992, Shanks 1995, Thomas 1996). The important corollary being that any account of the past cannot be divorced from the contemporary situatedness of the archaeologist – ranging from personal idiosyncrasy, to socio-economic position and institutional standing. This is the double-context of understanding underlying interpretive archaeology: attention to the particular context of the archaeological record and the contemporary context of the interpreter. In line with Gadamer’s ‘fusion of horizons’, any understanding only emerges through the ‘meeting’ of these ineluctable contexts – at trowel’s edge (Hodder 1999:92). (Giving rise to the importance of conscious, reflexive attention to the context of the archaeologist as integral to interpretation). Such interpretive reasoning, then, contrasts with previous, established evidential reasoning in archaeology identified by Wylie: analogical reasoning, ‘simple’ inference and inference-to-the-best-explanation, falsificationism and verificationism (2006:10-11). Moreover, such types of reasoning, associated with attempts at objective representation of the past, were consciously rejected by interpretive archaeologists as incompatible with the hermeneutic principle of interpreters themselves always comprising part of the interpretive process (eg. Hodder 1999, Shanks and Hodder 1995:3-5). In other terminology, such an embracing of the subjective positionalities of the archaeological interpreter translates to an expansion of the theory-ladennes of data debate, albeit on a now expanded, more inclusive scale incorporating considerations beyond solely theoretical perspectives.

Yet in practice, the casuistry of such a break with previous styles of reasoning becomes apparent. Outside of the narrow confines of positivist reasoning, assuming an absolute separation between theory-data or context-of-discovery and context-of-testing, post-Kuhnian philosophy of science accepted the inevitable biases of the researcher (Hacking 1983, Wylie 2002:ch.11-13). Except for initial and isolated relativist manifestos (eg. Hodder 1984, Shanks and Tilley 1987:111), interpretive archaeology operates in this hermeneutic spiral akin to a ‘tacking-back-and-forth’ between the evidence and interpreter assumptions to avoid vicious circularity (Wylie 2002:172, cf. Geertz 1979:239). This reinstatement of the constraining realism of the archaeological record pulls the hermeneutic equation of interpretive archaeology back towards ‘past facts’ (unconstructed) which cannot be interpreted in an ‘anything goes’ laissez faire manner; away from the contemporary biases of the archaeologist and towards a more moderate, middling position. Moving in-step with many post-positivist philosophers of science, both interpretive archaeologists and processualists, convinced of the inalienability of theory-ladenness in inquiry, advocate a system of checks-and-balances to insure credible interpretations of the archaeological record. While multiple strands of evidence have historically been presented for convergence accounts of explanation (Hacking 1983), the proposal for multiple perspectives (Binford 1989: 486) or multiple theoretical frameworks (cf. Hodder 2003, Preucel 1991) marks a novel effort in mitigating against the conclusions drawn from any single theoretical set of assumptions. Such a controlling strategy would insure that both source-side and subject-side of the investigative process were corroborated or militated by alternate, and so presumably differentially biased, accounts. With the effect that, much like a functioning political system, corruption or special interests in one segment of a more inclusive and plural body of evidence, theoretical perspectives and archaeological biases, might be off-set by other ‘participants’. This model of plural and mediating participants, or actants (cf. Latour 1999, 2004), applies as equally to archaeological ‘data’ as it does to archaeologists and their background biases, is only beginning to be explored in archaeology (Gero 1996, Webmoor forthcoming, Yarrow 2003); it will be more fully presented in the following chapter in conjunction with pragmatic thought.

The post-processual or interpretive challenge to processual archaeology, does not, therefore, constitute a Kuhnian break with previous forms of archaeological reasoning. While successfully challenging the (already out-dated) positivist premise of previous archaeological theory and method, largely through the complexification of the culture concept and the attendant importation of a vast array of theoretical re-characterizations of the limits, nature and scope of inquiry, the reasoning process stays partially fixed upon the capacity to accurately represent the past(s). Maneuvering to avoid charges of absolute relativism, which would ostensibly undermine archaeological efforts, particularly those geared towards a Critical Theory utilized in present struggles (Shanks and Tilley 1987:110), interpretive archaeologists re-affirm the archaeological ideal of objectively rendering the past. Such representations are, admittedly, vastly more nuanced, detailed and partial, given the remodeling of the concept of culture.

Partially fixed upon the representational compass must be stressed. For purposes of interpreting the archaeological record, accurate representation remains the focus. However, turning to hermeneutics as a primary model for inquiry, interpretive archaeology goes beyond the simple admission of theory-ladennes by broadening such a ‘bias’ beyond scientific and rational connotations. This successor ‘opening’ of archaeology, on the heels of the intellectual opening of the field to novel and sophisticated lines of influence, has important implications for the ethical debate concerning stakeholder participation discussed last chapter. These implications will be discussed in the following chapter as they link up with a pragmatic sensibility, one which is multiply constituted and non-representationally fixated.

Forward to Chapter 3: The archaeological sensibility as pragmatic sensibility: Mediation

Containments

Return to ‘New’ archaeology and explicit reasoning

Posted at April 17/2006 07:49PM:
Ian Hodder: The overall case you make in this chapter is a good one, but some of the claims/historical descriptions you make need work. Both because representation was not an issue, and because your account could foreground representation more - maybe with examples. The chapter reads more like a history of arch. theory in general than what it should read like, which is a foucs on representation within arch. theory trends. I also think it is incorrect that postprocessualism is primarily about accurate representation. It is about accuracy, but it is equally about social engagment, ethics, etc. - this shifts things away from pure representation accuracy.