Trigger's 'moderate relativism as unification: pragmatic justification

Trigger’s (1998, 1989b) avuncular advice for archaeology is the adoption of his construal of a ‘moderate relativism’. Worrying about a discipline strung along the spectrum from idealism to realism to positivism, Trigger sketched a very matter-of-fact parable to umbrella the various archaeologies under an existential realism. Drawing from Darwinian common-sense, Trigger suggested that the contemporary divergent epistemological frameworks and the methodologies and research interests they give rise to may be unified as valid and indeed complementary – so long as they assume at root a materialist-realist basis of human existence (Trigger 2003[1989]:144-154). That is, “the requirements of having to live a real world, whether we wish to or not, validates many of the perspectives offered by a realist epistemology” (ibid:144). These requirements, as stipulated by Trigger, are at base the use of knowledge for survival of the human species. For Trigger, we must fundamentally accept, behind the wishful adornment of humans as creative, symbolic, intentional or whatever, that knowledge is practically oriented to survival. His ‘evolutionary approach to epistemology’ vaguely confirms whatever orientation or theoretical outlook so long as the resultant knowledge of human behavior abides by the requirement that it denotes practical effects for the survival of the species (ibid:147). This was his ‘reconciliation’ of the discrepant approaches in archaeology. The discipline may continue working under various labels, but there is no need for worry of ‘incommensurability’ or fragmentation as, consciously or unconsciously, species survival unifies our various claims of knowledge to the past and our epistemology in the present. Knowledge is practically-oriented or it is nothing.

Teasing apart Trigger’s broad-scale, unifying settlement, I think there is something of great value in his depiction of knowledge as being measured in terms of practical effect. This insight, however, from his characteristically edifying and trans-disciplinarian intervention, comes from outside epistemology proper. It is does not establish linkages between subject and object, archaeologist and archaeological material. Neither does it propose explicit, logical criteria of coherence, convergence or correspondence with which to steer our claims by or evaluate their status. But this is precisely the strength of his intervention. Ostensibly discussing ‘archaeology and epistemology’, Trigger really brings in a (universal) human value with which to judge theoretical platforms and their output in archaeology: survival. The only problem is that his non-epistemological project over-emphasizes a Darwinian, historically Western value, when I believe it could be more productively pushed by easing off of the materialist-realist assumptions and streamlining this value-criterion. Simply put, without the rancorous detours through epistemology in archaeology that, as I have hoped to present fairly, perpetually lodge the various settlements in irresolvable difficulties, a pragmatic criterion of knowledge as practical use, disinvesting itself of the failed epistemologies of modernism, would be more sanguine for archaeology’s contemporary internal and external circumstances.

In diagnosing what he thought to be a perennial ‘problem’ with the interchange between archaeology and philosophy, Trigger (2003[1989]:138) suggested that the two discipline lack an “extensive, common ground” due fundamentally to, in his opinion, the lack of interest in evolution by philosophers. While socio-cultural evolution has historically constituted an organizing concern for archaeologists, “modern philosophers display at best only a lukewarm interest in sociocultural evolution…”(ibid.). If the purpose of Trigger’s essay is “…to help bridge the serious divide in outlook between these two disciplines”, then the oversight of pragmatism is indeed unfortunate. For the influence of Darwin and his ideas of biological evolution were the cornerstone of the most central classical pragmatist and one of the most influential and ‘public’ of American Philosophers of the late 19th to mid 20th-century: John Dewey. The impact of Darwin explicitly figures in Dewey’s work (esp. 1925, 1957[1920], Hickman 1998) in essays such as “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy” from 1909[1998]). And as a successor to Dewey’s pragmatist thought, Richard Rorty (1979, 1982, 1999a) has taken on board the consequences of evolution for philosophical projects - to radical effect in proposing the complete reconfiguration of the very nature of Western philosophy since it Platonic roots. The oversight on Trigger’s point is not a criticism but simply instantiates a pattern of ‘par for the course’ (see also Preucel 1991a). Despite Marilee Salmon’s (1982:x) worry that archaeologists are too well read and “. . . one can find a ‘philosopher-authority’ to cite in support of almost any position on any topic”, such ‘misses’ are in fact endemic to Anglo-American archaeology. There has been little explicit dialogue between pragmatist thought and archaeology, even in, as Chippindale (1993) facetiously remarks, the contemporary age of the ‘hypermarket’ consumption of philosophical thought.

Reflecting upon the various developments in theoretical archaeology during his long career, Trigger enumerated what he took to be the dominant ‘schools’ in philosophy: “positivism, idealism and realism”(2003:134) . Pragmatism does not make it on the list. Why should this be? Or more importantly, why should the pragmatist tradition make it on any archaeologist’s list of relevant thought? What is it about pragmatism that archaeologists may find helpful to be aware of?

First, for the very reason that pragmatist thinking routinely does not make it on any list it may be seen as internal to the existing practices of a transdisciplinary and even non-academic set of fields. It hasn’t been put on the list for the party because such thought is already working in the kitchen preparing the banquet. I will argue that a pragmatic sensibility already exists within contemporary archaeology in terms of overall disciplinarian structure and in the particular content of several key research programs. Drawing these out I hope to ease anxiety about the 4-p’s addressed last chapter: the ‘processual and postprocessual perennial philosophizing’. Instead of another (mal?)adroit importation, much in pragmatic thought already exists in inchoate form in the discipline. Yet due to the lack of attention given to the 3rd major ‘school’ of philosophy it has not been articulated. Attention instead has been focused on commitments to the external poles of philosophical thought represented generally by the Analytic (read processual) and Continental (read postprocessual) traditions and the ensuing estrangement amongst archaeologists. Pragmatist thinkers, especially their neo-pragmatist representatives, draw useful lessons from both traditions while campaigning for a ‘3rd way’.

Second, the ‘external’ socio-political climate which archaeology must increasingly accommodate questions the received notion of the discipline operating insulated and dispensing knowledge of the past “from the top down and center out” (cf. Preucel 1996b: 519). As argued in Chapter 1, the ‘external mandate’ from stakeholder groups to participate actively in global heritage has already fostered within the discipline a large literature revolving around the development of democratic models for inclusion. As the summation in that chapter concluded, these participatory models vary along the scale from absolute participation in both formulation of research goals and tuning of methodology (‘indigenous archaeologies’) to accommodate locally variable beliefs of the past, to the still reliance upon disciplinarian traditions of theory and methodology while involving stakeholders more readily in consultation of objectives and divulgation of research results. Yet, while the ethical push to include non-archaeologists in inquiry advances well-founded upon developments in sister disciplines (esp. anthropology) and from within as an overall attempt to mitigate the ineliminable power-knowledge equation of a branch of science rooted in colonial, national and imperial pursuits (Trigger 1984), the impediment to resolution remains an epistemological pull to retain archaeological credibility as an objective enterprise. Endemic doubts concerning the authority of the science that have risen throughout the social sciences have not, except in radical quarters (eg. Feyerabend 1993), nagged to the point of questioning scientific method and reasoning as the model for assembling knowledge. ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’ seems to be the common-sense reaction to the recognition of personal, political and social bias in theory and method. Pragmatic thought affirms scientific practice, as it affirms realism, but it does so without the handicap of the traditional epistemic settlements. Moreover, its proponents, especially Dewey, see the general inquiry to be best modeled upon democratic principles. Essentially, the more perspectives and values taking active part, the more socially beneficial will the resulting knowledge be. Thus pragmatic thought provides a manner of bypassing the current epistemological blockade to full participation in archaeology by non-archaeological stakeholders.

Third, much like Trigger incipient moves toward a justification of knowledge by practical utility (though he frames it in Darwinian terms), pragmatists justify knowledge claims not by recourse to the deeply troubled accounts of correspondence or coherence, but my more common sensical appraisal of their usefulness. Such an alternate manner of evaluation bypasses the stagnation of current epistemic settlements and their endless controversies.

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