Heritage: epistemology not ethics

A recent article in American Antiquity, the primary forum for the pro- and anti-repatriation exchange, brings this fundamental problem to the forefront of attention. Ronald Mason (2000) presents an exhaustive case-by-case analysis of attempts to merge oral tradition with archaeological interpretation of heritage. While it may be easy to object to the tone of the argument, as it is certainly vituperative and didactic (and perhaps redundant) in asserting the ‘global legitimacy’ of the ‘power of science’ over the ‘entertainment’ quality of oral tradition (ibid.:263,261), I believe Mason addresses the central problem in multivocal archaeology responsible for the current stasis (of dialogue) in a most clear and candid manner. ‘The philosophies of knowledge underlying them [science and oral tradition] are in principle and practice incompatible’ (ibid.:262). In embattled defense of verifiable scientific procedures, Mason’s argument for the universal epistemological status of scientific inquiry because it is ‘rational’, ‘open to verification’, and represents a ‘search for order via reductionism’ (ibid.:240) may be criticized for ‘ethnocentrism’, the very charge which he levels against ‘particularistic’, ‘fantastic’ oral tradition (ibid.:240,261). Moreover, this very angry and threatened plea to the ‘rigor’ of ‘science’ belies the very premise for why he is making this ‘defensive reaction’ (ibid.:247): the scientific framework for understanding the past has been legislatively relativized as but one amongst others (viz. 1990 25 U.S.C.A. §7(a)4). He is indeed correct in pointing out that the ‘irreconcilabilities [of the two sources of information] must be faced and not fudged’ (ibid.:260). But his conclusion that the binarism which he reifies can only be resolved by subsuming the ‘mystical feelings’ or ‘niggardliness’ of oral tradition under the universal framework of ‘reasoned logic’ (ibid.) is both problematic and, I believe, indicative of the potential of denaturing multivocal efforts through their insertion in archaeological science (see below). There are other egregious problems with Mason’s argument which could be addressed, but I think that the article best serves as an ‘oral testament’ elucidating the attitude that if archaeologists are going to utilize oral tradition, then it has to be treated within the strictures of a scientific process, and so is relevant only if it can withstand the verifiable tests of ‘secular data’ (ibid.). To wit: oral tradition is nothing if it is not science.

Such a singular criticism of oral tradition by an avowed scientist should not be built up as a ‘straw man’ argument to support, via contestation, literal multivocal attempts in archaeology. Mason’s position, however, interlaces with those recent attempts at collaborative archaeology, whether involving oral tradition or collaborative field projects. The initial push to respond to the mandate of incorporating indigenous frameworks beyond what I have described as the initial expose phase, has included allowing stake-holder representatives to set research questions felt to be of relevance to the invested participants (e.g. Dongoske 2000; Dowdall 2003; Anyon 1995; Fuller 1997; Green 2003; McDavid 1997; Stanish 2003), imposing restrictions upon research programs and excavations based upon indigenous belief and proscriptions (e.g. Begay 1997, Dowdall 2003), or, more wide-sweeping, the very removal and repatriation of ‘artifacts’ in national (or nationally funded) museums (e.g. Ferguson 2000, Mihesuah 2000, Mulvaney 1991, Watkins 2000:ch.7-8) – per 25 U.S.C.A. §7. It may be said that differential power relations between archaeologists and stake-holders are being mitigated in these nascent attempts. And such ‘empowerment’, or loss of authorial control on the part of archaeologists (see Marshall 2002), intersects more broadly with the concomitantly expanding field of ‘identity politics’ and subaltern constitution through recourse to archaeological data (for general discussion Chatterjee 1995, Diaz-Andreu 1996, Meskell 2002b, Rowlands 1994).

Yet Mason’s criticism of oral history lurks in the background, and should be borne in mind with other general caveats put forward regarding the move to include non-specialists in cultural heritage. Such ‘collaborations’ must still take place within an overarching and controlling ‘authoritative discourse’; viz. the epistemological and ontological assumptions of a scientific viewpoint and the infusing of such assumptions in representation of archaeological knowledge. To my mind, irrespective of how active the collaborative process may ostensibly be – to the degree of prohibiting excavation or setting research questions – the de-centering of authorial control, one of Marshall’s (2002) defining traits of ‘community archaeology’, nonetheless deflects attention away from more pervasive and thoroughly determining structural relations between archaeologists and their communities: within what conceptual and explanatory framework are ‘local contributions’ inserted? Such a presupposition of scientific narrative as ‘universal’ and unanimous renders it the obvious working framework within which to insert (‘co-opt’?) local and ‘partial’ knowledges. As I interpret the current predicament, this framework is intractably controlled by specific beliefs and assumptions. That is, the positivist (scientific) philosophy, which Mason feels to be so threatened. Such ‘collaborations’ may delimit the usage of scientific theory and method of archaeological science in projects (cf. Dowdall 2003; Begay 1997), but is this addressing of ‘legiethics’ which mandates integration of stake-holder frameworks for understanding the past in archaeological practice? Though certain archaeologists (Zimmerman 2000: 301-5; Watkins 2000:170, 2003:277,282) engaged in the issue speak of ‘hybridizing’ archaeological knowledge and non-disciplinarian knowledge in constituting a ‘new and different archaeology’ (Zimmerman 2000), I would argue that such a program has not been realized. Rather, what persists is a distanced rapprochement between what is characterized as a matter of ‘science and religion’ (Meighan 1992:707).

After Quine (1994), I want to offer a conceptual model to visualize what impedes such an integrated archaeological program of co-creative cultural heritage (Figure 1.1). In his groundbreaking 1953 essay, ‘Two dogmas of empiricism' from his From a Logical Point of View, published during height of Popper and Hempel's logical-empiricism (cf. Machamer 2002), Quine posits the constitution of knowledge as intrinsically 'holistic' and envisions a ‘sphere of knowledge’ as a visual metaphor for this constitution. He suggests that empiricism and its varieties untenably hold a direct correlation between experience and language statements, i.e. ‘knowledge claims’. In reality, all claims are radically underdetermined by sense experience, so that only the most rudimentary systems of knowledge that relate directly to experience (on the periphery of Quine's metaphor of the sphere) are credible; the vast remainder of 'science' is built up/abstracted-from these experiential edges, and so in reality consists of the systematic building of knowledge upon prior knowledge. This forms the semblance of a coherent system of understanding, yet only so due to the internal consistency of the creation .

For the current predicament of archaeology, Quine’s argument may be modified rather straightforwardly to illustrate what operates at the intersections of increasing insistence by stake-holders for participation in constitutions of ‘the past’ and the discipline of archaeology as grounded in verifiable statements about the past – statements structured by a disciplinarian engagement with scientific explanation. Admittedly, such a ‘sphere’ simplifies the complexities of networks of ideas, literature and experiences which both archaeologists and stake-holder communities draw upon. Yet the model astutely suggests the non-binary nature of a concern with ‘things’ of the past, while maintaining a negotiated boundary between external mandates and a disciplinarian sense of self. As it is, in fact, this non-archaeological/archaeological which fosters the (sometimes tense) recent exchange on issues such as NAGPRA, ‘Kennewick Man’, ‘universal heritage’ and the non-scientific status of stakeholder interpretations more generally.

Figure 1.1: Ethics⇔Knowledge Networked Sphere (after Quine 1994: ‘Sphere of Knowledge’).

For my purposes, the sphere highlights the manner in which the boundaries between archaeology and science and the external mandate interact. The ‘legiethics’ of professional codes, national and international heritage management plans, and particularly the binding, ‘hard laws’ of national legislation (such as NAGPRA) impose themselves at a level of ‘ethics’ and human rights. As stated already, these claims on the past present themselves judiciously in a the form of an argument which cannot be easily dismissed: framed within a legality and ethics which even the majority of neo-liberal archaeologists affirm – equality of treatment, Constitutional rights, and especially property rights – such claims must be ‘incorporated’ in ethical practice. In such discurvise scaffolding, archaeologists are remiss if they do not consider non-archaeological concerns. The explosion of ethical discussions and literature outlined above appears to corroborate this concession. There is ‘compromise’, ‘inclusion’ and consideration of the external mandate as it is ‘our’ ethics which are at stake. Not inconsequentially, ‘collaborative archaeology’ may appeal to a sense of ethical introspection – as it is the ‘right’ course of action if, as scholars, we are to avoid hypocrisy in our ethical values.

This admittance of participation, however, only delves so deep in archaeological practice. For beyond the ‘surface’ of Quine’s sphere, that portion which, akin to Quine’s empirical observation which interfaces with the phenomena of ‘reality’ and so is perpetually in-flux to remain squared with the vagaries of existence, there are more conservative, non-directly empirical assumptions and general orientations toward existence. A ‘war of worldviews’, so to speak. So if the ethical debates represent the empirical observation of Quine’s logical empiricism, periodically shifting in order to negotiate the empirical realities of a world archaeology increasingly engaging alternate valuations of the past, the underlying, underdetermined realm of fundamental frameworks, which are not directly verifiable, is homologous to archaeology’s general presuppositions. A subject-object divide, the derived reality ‘out-there’ (‘record’) to verify ‘internal’ intuition and subjective ideas (hypotheses), historical progression(/evolution), past-present-future divisions (Webmoor 2007a, b). Again, heady stuff, and others within archaeology have already ruminated over such topics from a variety of perspectives (e.g. Bindord 1982, Embree 1992, Hodder 1982, 1999, Kosso 2001, Rowlands 1984, Salmon 1982, Shanks 1987, 1989, Thomas 1996, Watson 1971, Wylie 1989, 2002). These fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions, which form the matrix from which, most directly, a positivist archaeology and its emphasis on independent objects providing the fulcrum from which to test hypotheses against, projects interpretation back from the present to the past, are there. However, this conflict of ‘epistemologies’ is not restricted to processual or more avowedly scientific archaeology. It directly confronts practitioners with the old (and tiresome) debate of relativism and objectivism. As such, the various, more recent ‘epistemic settlements’ developed to avoid these ‘horns’ of the epistemological dilemma are discussed more extensively in Chapter 3.

These underdetermined assumptions, perhaps because of their very fragility when exposed to circumspection, are generally more conservative in accommodating external mandates which, though they may also be surficially guised under ‘universal rights’ and ‘ethics’, represent more fundamental challenges to the entire sphere of archaeological knowledge. This, I would assert, is the very perspicacity of Mason’s defensive reaction. He, along with an increasing number of other pro-repatriation archaeologists such as Watkins (2000:176, 2001, 2003), when he mentions the ‘conflict in philosophical traditions’, or Smith (2003:185) acknowledging that the conflict is not over ‘ethics…but between scientific and indigenous philosophy’, understand the implications of accommodating ‘legiethics’ at the surface of this ‘Ethics⇔Knowledge Networked Sphere’. Ethics and knowledge assumptions inextricably link together (cf. Rawls 1999 'Reflective Equilibrium', and Scheffler 1953 'Maximization of Commitments'), and an alteration at the more flexible and engaged ‘surface’ of this network will, however lugubriously, trigger a ‘trickle-down’ effect.

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