A dialogue on the meaning and use of analogy in ethnoarchaeological reasoning

JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 1, 355-381 (1982)

A Dialogue on the Meaning and Use of Analogy in Ethnoarchaeological Reasoning

RICHARD A. GOULD

Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912

AND

PATTY Jo WATSON’

Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130

Received April 13, 1982

Stiles (1977) expresses the widely held view that ethnoarchaeology means the explicit use of ethnographic data for purposes of archaeological interpretation. Ethnographic data, according to this view, may be derived from published or unpublished written accounts (archives, field notes, etc.), photographs, informants’ oral accounts, public or private collec- tions of artifacts; from experiments; or from observations deliberately made for archeological purposes in a living society (“action archaeology” or “living archaeology”). Ethnographic data have been variously employed by archaeologists since the birth of the discipline, but the development of ethnoarchaeology as it is now known began in the 1950s (Kleindienst and Watson 1956; Thompson 1958). Following Thompson’s pioneer study of Mayan pottery manufacture, full-fledged examples of “action” or “living archeology” began to appear in the 1960s (Ascher 1962; Gould 1968; Oswalt and Vanstone 1967; Stanislawski 1969) and 1970s (Binford 1978; Donnan and Clewlow 1974; Gould ed. 1978; Kramer ed. 1979; Watson 1979b; Yellen 1977). Closely related work in experimental archaeology (Coles 1973, 1979; Semenov 1964; Ingersoll, Yellen, and Macdonald, eds. 1977; Tringham et al. 1974) and in studies of modern material culture (e.g., Leone 1973; Gould and Schiffer eds. 1981; Rathje 1978) were also published in the 196Os, 197Os, and earliest 1980s.

In what sense, however, can we say that these activities, here collec-

1 Watson’s portion of this paper was prepared at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, which is partially supported by NSF Grant BNS 76-22943.

355 0278-4165/82 $2.00 Copyright 0 1982 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

356 GOULD AND WATSON

tively huddled under the intellectual umbrella of “ethnoarchaeology,” constitute an organized or scientifically convincing approach to the study of human behavior? This paper comprises a debate we think reflects differences that are widespread among ethnoarchaeologists. We agree that ethnoarchaeology, to achieve convincing results, must follow the rules of science, with all that this implies about public accessibility to research results, measurement and quantification, testing of alternative hypotheses, and the development and application of laws. But we differ over the meaning and use of analogy in ethnoarchaeological reasoning. By discussing this issue we hope to call attention to and clarify how ethnoarchaeologists-and, by extension, all archaeologists-go about using their present-day observations to explain past human behavior.

PJW I believe that all the research referred to above can be categorized

within a single logical structure as described below. (I consider ethnoarchaeology to include experimental archaeology because in it the archaeologist creates the situation to be observed rather than taking it where he or she finds it, the end result being the same: observations made of archaeologically relevant variables within a living context.)

Ethnoarchaeologists, like all other archaeologists, operate with the basic assumption that there is a real past, about which we can attain real knowledge by means of inferences based upon archaeological and historical records. Well over 99% of the human past is documented archaeologically only (or not at all). There are no written records anywhere before about 5000 years ago, whereas our oldest recognizable ancestors ap- peared between 3 and 4 million years ago.

Archaeologists interpret archaeological remains by drawing inferences from them, on the basis of observations made in the present, about the long-vanished people who left these materials. Ethnoarchaeology, for- mally or informally applied, is the source of all observations that enable archaeological interpretation. Although the specific information sought is of great variety, as are the techniques used to obtain it, there seem to be only two fundamental purposes fulfilled by use of such information.

(I) To generate explanatory hypotheses for specific items or patterns recovered archaeologically, i.e., to answer the questions What was this? and What was it used for? as applied to an artifact or artifact class, a fragmentary architectural form or a class of architectural features, or to an associational pattern.

(II) To derive theories and broad lawlike generalizations about relationships between human behavior on the one hand, and material culture resulting from that behavior on the other.

THE ANALOGY IN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL REASONING 357

Obviously these two purposes are closely related; in fact one cannot pursue one without simultaneously pursuing the other even though one’s immediate goal is (I) rather than (II), or vice versa.

Most of the presently available ethnoarchaeological studies are of the first kind noted above, many having been undertaken in parts of the world with artifactual and architectural traditions extending into prehistory. Such places include portions of Mesoamerica (Thompson 1958; Nelson 1981; Reina 1980), Australia (Gould 1971, 1978, 1981), Africa (David 1971, 1972; David and Hennig 1972; Yellen 1977), the Near East (Hole 1978; Horne 1982; Kramer 1982; Ochsenschlager 1974; Watson 1979b), the Arctic (Binford 1978b; Oswalt and Vanstone 1967; Oswalt 1974), and the U.S. Southwest (Stanislawski 1969, 1977, 1978; Stanislawski and Stanis- lawski 1978).

I. Use of Ethnoarchaeology in Explaining Specific Archaeological Cases: The Direct Historical Approach and the General Comparative Approach

Searching for hypothetical analogues to archaeological situations in geographical areas characterized by long-term cultural continuity is often referred to as the “folk-culture” or “direct historical approach,” and is contrasted with the “general comparative approach” by means of which one seeks appropriate analogues anywhere in time and space (Ascher 1961; Chang 1967; Oswalt 1974).

Many archaeologists believe that the direct historical approach yields more reliable or stronger analogies than does the general comparative approach. This is perhaps true, but the matter deserves further attention because it is intertwined with some crucial points about the use of analogy in archaeological interpretation.2

Archaeologists, historians, geologists, and paleontologists all accept the same fundamental operating assumption: the past, although never directly observable, is nevertheless knowable. Archaeologists and historians, however, face far greater practical difficulties than do geologists and paleontologists because their focal subject matter-human behavior-is much more complex than the entities and events or processes studied by earth scientists. The latter have available a well- founded body of theory about the dynamics of the earth and its fauna1 and floral assemblages. This theory comprises an abundance of well- confirmed relationships (laws or lawlike propositions) that can be used to gain knowledge about the recent or remote past with great confidence because about 150 years ago geologists and paleontologists succeeded in

*The discussion that follows owes much to two papers by M. Alison Wylie (1978, 1980).


establishing a principle of generic uniformity between past and present earth systems. This means, for example, that when geologists see even a small portion of the geological record, such as that exposed in a road cut, they understand from the color, texture, and stratification observable there the processes that most probably took place at that spot during the time the materials were accumulating, however remote that time may be. The traces of fluvial activity, erosion, and so on are sufficiently obvious to the trained and experienced observer to be at least approximately trans- latable on sight. Because the uniformity in nature and rate of such ancient geological processes with modern ones is so well established, field geologists unhesitatingly equate fragmentary remnants of these processes that are hundreds of thousands of years old with presently observable examples.

Archaeologists cannot perform similar translations of ancient cultural debris unless and until they possess such a well worked out theory of cultural dynamics that they can establish a principle of generic uniformity for present and past cultural systems. (This is not to say that cultural systems-and indeed human beings themselves-are qualitatively different from other life forms and the natural systems within which they function. Human beings and their life ways are natural systems, as character- istic of this planet as the lifeways of any other animal. But the use of the two distinct words-cultural and natural-as an analytical device draws attention to the enormous complexity and intricacy of human behavior.) Establishing such a principle is the goal towards which anthropological and ethnoarchaeological research is directed, but it is a rather distant goal because of the enormous practical difficulties to be overcome. One such difficulty is the rudimentary level of our understanding of site-formation processes (Schiffer 1972, 1976). That is, we are not very well informed about the laws governing the accumulation, dispersal, weathering, erosion, and preservation of cultural materials; nor do we know very much about the way intangible human behavior patterns are reflected (or not) in variously preservable material residues.

Another difficulty is simply that of sampling. Only a few of the dozens of different kinds of human social systems that have existed are documented ethnographically. And, of course, the documentation is highly variable in quality and extent of coverage. Contrary to some earlier discussions of this general point, however, this does not mean that we are forever barred from knowledge of these extinct cultural systems. We can obtain information about them by comparison of their empirical remains as preserved in the archaeological record with accounts of cultural systems that are better known archaeologically and ethnographically.

But the most formidable problem of all is the complexity and vast scope


of the subject matter: human beings and their social behavior throughout three million years and over the entire globe.

Given the immensity of these difficulties, we should not be surprised at nor overly frustrated about the high uncertainty level in archaeologic~ interpretations. Nor should we be driven to a position of ultimate skepti- cism regarding knowledge of the real past such as Collingwood expresses (Collingwood 1946:228) when he says, “history is nothing but the reenactment of past thought in the historian’s mind.” We can achieve knowledge of the real past by applying empirically-based techniques within a general framework of argument by ethnographic analogy.

This last point brings us back to the two kinds of ethnographic analogy already noted-direct historical and general comparative-and to the belief most of us have that direct historical analogies are stronger than general comparative ones. It is difficult to justify that belief logically, and it certainly does not release us from the requirement of treating all possible analogies, whether direct historical or general comparative, as testable hypotheses or models rather than as immediately acceptable interpretations. However, Wylie (1978, 1980), in discussing a possible archaeological version of argument by analogy, as the latter concept is discussed in philosophy, asserts that the strength of an analogical argument is indeed increased the more fully it meets criteria of number and detailed nature of similarities in form, and range of occurrence across a variety of archaeological and ethnographic contexts (Wylie cites Curran (1977) as an example; compare also Ascher 1961; Bass 1967; Sumner 1979). This means that an archaeologist working in a geographic area where cultural continuity is marked has an advantage in acquiring testable and a priori strong analogies to use in final interpretations over the archaeologist who must rely solely on general comparative analogy. This is true because descrip- tions of the physical and cultural activities, institutions, and materials of the descendants of the people whose remains are being excavated are more likely to be analogous to the past activities, institutions, and materials in multiple (often linked) ways than are analogies derived from anywhere else. Nevertheless, although they may possess some higher degree of prior probability than general comparative analogies, the two kinds of analogy are on the same logical footing as testable hypotheses; they are acceptable interpretations only after they have been confirmed.

By definition, meeting the other criterion (range across a variety of contexts) necessitates search for plausible parallels in other ethnographic and archaeological situations, hence requiring use of the general comparative method. As Ascher (1961) notes, general comparative analogies are usually believed to be strongest when taken from situations as similar to the archaeological one under interpretation as possible. However, as in


the matter of prior probability with respect to direct historical analogies, this is not at all a straightforward issue. For any specific case, much depends upon the nature and extent of the alleged contextual similarities. Once again the general conclusion must be that all such analogies are more or less plausible models or hypotheses. Their confirmation or disconfirmation depends on their being tested by use of the archaeological record being investigated. In fact, a case can be made that one must be especially cautious of direct historical analogies because the temptation is so great to accept the contemporary populations as living prehistoric peoples in every mode of their behavior (Watson 1979a).

To sum up the discussion so far: (1) Because of the difficulties briefly indicated above, archaeologists

cannot use the principle of generic uniformity at all as extensively as geologists do to move from present to past and past to present, from knowledge of ethnographically described data to interpretations of archaeologically recovered data.

(2) All archaeological interpretation is ampliative (based ultimately on induction), i.e., it necessitates the bringing in of assumptions (on possible site-formation processes, for example, or on possible behavioral correlates for certain kinds and associations of material remains) not present in the archeological context under study. Therefore, the archaeologist’s conclusions rely on information and suppositions not included in the premises of the interpretive argument.

(3) This imported information derives from a wide spectrum of arguments by analogy, the raw material for which comes from various forms of ethnoarcheology.

(4) “Argument by analogy” as used here means a systematic and empirical testing of crucial interpretive hypotheses based on analogy to confirm or disconfirm them. It is recognized that no hypotheses can be confirmed (proven) with deductive certainty. There are a number of reasons why this is the case (see Salmon 1975, 1976; Wylie 1978, 1980), the most basic being that noted in (1) above-the lack of a detailed theory of cultural dynamics powerful enough to subsume all human cultural systems, past and present.

(5) Given the situation outlined in points (1) through (4), I understand systematic and empirical testing of proposed analogies to include a procedure by which the proposed analogies are first evaluated with respect to criteria of number and nature of similarities in form between the archaeologically and the ethnographically known trait (or complex) through a series of archaeological and/or ethnographic contexts independent of the archaeological context under investigation and the ethnographic context furnishing the hypothetical analogy.

Second, a proposed analogy that emerges from the preceding evalua-


tion as relatively strong is nevertheless further tested by checking its implications for the archaeological record in question (as in Hill 1968). The goal is to confirm or disconfirm the specific analogy as an adequate explanation of the specific remains being interpreted. Gould, by stressing what he calls “argument by anomaly” (Gould 1980: 138), is cautioning us not to become so obsessed with confirming interpretations that we miss important discrepancies between the observed and the expected. The central notion is testing, not confirming. As Gould makes clear, some of the most illuminating information about the real past we can hope to obtain is revealed by unanticipated discrepancies between our models and the empirical details of the archaeological record.

II. Use of Ethnoarchaeology in Deriving Theories and Lawlike Generalizations

In this negative stand against argument by analogy, I think Gould is aligning himself with a number of other theorists (L. Binford 1968: 12- 14; 1978a; S. Binford 1968; Dunnell 1980a:467-471; Freeman 1968; Schiffer 1978) who are worried about two things:

(1) The biasing or distorting effect of forcing prehistoric materials into categories derived from modern ethnography.

(2) Paying so much attention to particularistic collection of data for parochial problems of archaeological interpretation (especially in the contexts of direct historical analogies) that little or no progress is made in advancing knowledge about the general dynamics of material culture systems (goal (II) of ethnoarchaeological research).

Point (1) is the focus of much of my present discussion so far, and has been argued elsewhere as well (Watson 1979b: Introduction; 1979a, 1982; Wylie 1980), so I will say no more about it here.

Point (2) is well taken and very important. I do not believe that archaeologists (like Gould and myself) who work in world areas and time periods where cultural continuity is great should stop documenting the present-day versions of technological and economic systems that began to develop in prehistory and are now rapidly disappearing (some examples are coursed-mud architecture, the details of creating yam and textiles out of wool and cotton using only hand-spindles and the simplest of loom frames, crop yields for nonindustrialized dry-farming of wheat and barley, manufacture and use of adzes by contemporary Western Desert Aborigines, butchering and processing of game by the same people, and so on). As Gould points out in this paper, “the clock [is] running” for this information; if we do not get it quickly we will not get it at all. But I certainly agree that it would be quite undesirable for the entire field to be dominated by such parochial and particularistic pursuits except in the


service of broader theoretical issues. By the latter, I mean everything from continuing efforts to assess, refine, and use Naroll’s Rule (Naroll 1962; Kramer 1980; Schacht 1981: 126- 128; Fletcher 1981), to development of theories about site-formation processes (Gifford 1981) or about the diachronic patterning of stylistic traits and trait-complexes (Dee& and Dethlefsen 1965; Dethlefsen and Deetz 1966; Dunnell 1978; Marquardt 1977), to sustained endeavors at applying evolutionary theory ~en~u strict0 to the archaeological record (Dunnell 1980b).

It seems that the archaeologists most likely to press hardest towards the generalizing goal of ethnoarchaeology (goal (II) above) are those who work in areas, time periods, or topics where the direct historical approach is not applicable. In some ways, being forced to rely always on general comparative analogy is a disadvantage because direct historical contexts provide many more plausible analogies of all kinds at multiple levels of specificity than do general comparative contexts. Ethnoarchaeologicai returns are immediate and intuitively satisfying. But research in such areas also directs the archaeologists into highly particularistic channels, as just discussed. Hence, these archaeologists are much more likely to be preoccupied with parochial concerns than are archaeologists operating in time ranges and periods for which only the general comparative analogy is appropriate.

In conclusion, I think the similarities and differences between Gould’s position and mine can be summarized as follows:

(1) We agree that the principle of generic uniformity (Gould uses the word “uniformitarianism”) cannot be used to provide detailed understanding of past cultural systems on the basis of their archaeological remains. Hence we cannot operate as efficiently as geologists do, for example, in interpreting the behavior of paleofluvial systems from study of their distinctive remains in the geological record.

(2) Therefore (we are still agreeing), we must build interpretive bridges as best we can from the present (what we can observe and learn now) to the past (what we want to learn about prehistoric people, societies, or cultures). Because of (l), the only way to do this is to build models based on such data, generalizations, and theories as are available and relevant in the social sciences, incorporating natural science principles as much as possible because other natural systems are so much better un- derstood than is the very complex natural system we call “cultural.” That is, we can use the principle of generic similarity in detail for the noncultural, natural (eco-utilitarian in Gould’s terminology) phenomena that intersect the cultural ones we want to investigate. Here I am referring to such interpretive endeavors as Jochim’s (1976, 1979), Binford’s (1978b), and Gould’s (1980: Chaps. 5 and 6) where models, potentially explanatory of portions of the archaeological record and of aspects of the


human condition in generalizable circumstances (hunting-gathering societies in cold temperate and arctic environments relying heavily on large herds of migratory game, and so on), are constructed from a combi- nation of ethnographic data and natural scientific principles. The emphasis is on the biological characteristics of human beings and human societies, but the process is still argument by analogy in which presently observable processes and events are imputed to past situations as respon- sible for (and detectable by means of) distinctive patterning in the archaeological record (the archaeological signatures to which Gould refers).

(3) We disagree on the role of analogy in the bridge-building process because Gould uses the word to mean a rather mechanical form-function trait matching between ethnographic and archaeological materials. I view analogical reasoning as the conceptual basis of all archaeological interpretation. I would even insist that carefully handled form-function matching is essential to a significant amount of what we do (although it should not be the focus of all we do), because no archaeologist can or should comprehensively test every component of the interpretation for a site. But every archaeologist should be aware that every component of the interpretation is a knowledge claim, and is potentially vulnerable to disconfirmation by such testing.

(4) Gould stresses alertness to anomalies in the process of checking the fit of interpretive models to archaeological data (and gives an example in this paper of the way in which such anomalies can lead one to hypothetical explanations that are not obviously eco-utilitarian). I stress use of a procedure that centers on testing to confirm or disconfirm the fit between hypothesized relationships (based ultimately on analogy with living systems) and the empirical reality of the archaeological record. Many archaeological interpretations are empirically underdetermined, but few are undetermined. Here there seems to be basic agreement between Gould and myself in spite of differences in vocabulary.

(5) Although both Gould and I have worked in areas of the world where cultural continuity is marked (Australia and the Near East, respectively) and have capitalized on that fact, Gould (1980) has come out more strong- ly to date for a generalizing emphasis in ethnoarchaeology (goal (II)) than I have. I agree with him (and with Dunnell 1980a and Schiffer 1978) that the subdiscipline of ethnoarchaeology is presently dominated by a particularistic emphasis rather than by a generalizing one, and that this asymmetry should be redressed.

(RAG)

Watson has presented a case for analogy in ethnoarchaeology that contains many points on which we can agree, yet essential differences


remain and will be treated here. I present a case against analogy in ethnoarchaeology and offer an alternative that involves no scientifically unacceptable assumptions about uniformities of human behavior.

One of the most rampant and pervasive errors in archaeology is the assumption that what looks like science is science. Beginning students and amateurs are especially susceptible to this view, since they are often unduly impressed by the way in which archaeologists have made use of scientific techniques like radiocarbon dating, neutron activation analysis, palynology, taphonomy, and a myriad of other methods for dating and analyzing excavated materials. This error is not unknown among experienced archaeologists either. In the domain of ethnoarchaeology we face a similar problem. As more ethnoarchaeological studies appear containing detailed measurements and quantitative analyses, we need to ask our- selves, what is it about this kind of approach that makes it scientitically convincing?

This is not a plea for less accurate measurement or fewer controlled observations of contemporary human behavior in relation to our attempts to explain variability in the archaeological record. The present trend is a good one and should be encouraged as long as it points clearly toward scientifically convincing explanations. But despite a declared commit- ment to a scientific approach, ethnoarchaeologists differ in what they assume a scientific use of ethnographic materials in relation to archeology is or ought to be.

As Watson has already noted, ethnoarchaeology and its various cog- nates (“action archaeology,” “living archaeology,” and so on) have been around long enough for a considerable literature of archaeologically relevant information about contemporary societies to accumulate. Although the term ethnoarchaeology was first coined by J. W. Fewkes in 1900, the growth of a theoretically self-conscious body of literature based upon ethnoarchaeological observations has occurred only within the last 25 years or so. Now we face the problem of what to do with all of this information, along with the further problem of priorities with respect to further information we may want to collect.

Early efforts at ethnoarchaeology tended to be concerned with observations of traditional or tradition-oriented societies in situations where these traditions were perceived as threatened in some fashion by the encroachment of Western economic and social pressures. In short, the clock was running. Our interest in such phenomena as lithic technology, hunting/gathering behavior, fauna1 remains, ceramic technology, rock and cave art, the physical by-products of camp behavior, and other orthodox archaeological matters was served by an attempt to record such kinds of behavior in traditional situations which were expected to change. More recently, however, ethnoarchaeologists have found it useful to study both


traditional societies in acculturative situations (Binford’s Nunamiut Es- kimo, for example, as well as studies by O’Connell on the Alyawara Aborigines of Central Australia, and by Meehan among the Anbara Aborigines of Arnhem Land) and recent historical and contemporary societies in more familiar surroundings-that is, modern, complex societies. This latter interest is exemplified by such efforts as Rathje’s “Project du Garbage,” Ascher’s concept of “Tin Can Archaeology,” and recent efforts toward “The Archaeology of Us” (Rathje 1974, 1978; Ascher 1974; Gould and Schiffer 1981).

Is Uniformitarianism Necessary?3

I shall argue that the essence of ethnoarchaeology rests not with the collection of scientific data, no matter how controlled or quantified it may be, but with the nature of the scientific reasoning by which such observations are applied to explanations of why human behavior varies and changes as it does. The key to this kind of reasoning in ethnoarchaeology is the concept of uniformitarianism. Watson has argued that we lack any principle of generic uniformity for present and past cultural systems. Elsewhere, she restates this view by noting that we lack a detailed theory of cultural systems, past and present.

Watson is probably correct in claiming that there is no principle of generic uniformity for cultural systems. Although various Iawlike state- ments have been proposed in anthropology, like White’s (1959:33-57) law of cultural evolution based upon the human species’ increasing ability to harness energy efficiently, these have not achieved anything like the degree of confidence normally attributed to laws in the physical and natural sciences. I am not prepared to argue that

archaeologists as anthropologists are concerned with the problems of discovering those fundamental, underlying properties of cultural systems . . . Archaeologists must assume that, other things being equal, those processes which structure the ethnographic record have also structured the archaeological record (Wilmsen 1970: 1)

because Wilmsen’s uniformitarianism is ambiguous about just what it is that uniformly acts to structure past and present cultural processes.

All of these gropings toward cultural uniformitarianism are effectively dealt with when we ask, as Binford has recently done, What it is that holds true for past and present-day human behavior? Binford has asked questions of this kind in the context of circumstantial explanations of variability in human behavior.

3 This subheading is shamelessly adopted from S. J. Gould’s (1965) paper of the same title.


We must . proceed along the research path forged quite eloquently by our sister discipline geology in its adoption of the principle of uniformitarianism. Is the formation of archaeological remains as a by-product of adaptive behavior a process that is operative in the contemporary world? Can we experience this process relative to a domain of facts that are observable in the archaeological remains from the past? (1978b: 12)

In seeking uniformitarian linkages between past and present-day human behavior, Binford has invoked the biological concept of adaptation as a potential source of uniformities, and he goes on to construct a detailed model of human behavioral adaptations in relation to immediate circumstantial facts (seasonality, terrain and distance, modes of transport, movements of game species, and so on). Whatever variability in Nunamiut meat use and fauna1 residues occurs is seen by Binford as arising from human adaptive behavior in relation to differences in situa- tional and circumstantial factors under which animal products were pro- cured, transported, stored, consumed, and ultimately discarded, rather than being due to mental templates or any other kind of normative cultural category shared by these Eskimos. For Binford, it is circumstance rather than culture that determines human behavior in relation to meat procure- ment and fauna1 remains.

To use the principle of uniformitarianism effectively in ethnoarchaeology, we must not only ask the right questions but also ask them in the right order. What about hunter-gatherer societies which procure, transport, consume, and discard meat products in a manner patterned altogether differently from the Nunamiut? On over 70 observed occasions in 1966- 1970, the Western Desert Aborigines of Australia, both as traditional desert-dwellers and while living on stations, reserves, and settlements in close proximity to Europeans, invariably divided macropods (mainly red kangaroo, Megalaeia rufa) into the same initial nine pieces, regardless of how many people participated in the hunt or who they were, how far they traveled or the kind of terrain they covered to and from the kill, the numbers of animals killed, the time of year, the relative abundance or scarcity of game in general at the time of the hunt, or the number of people waiting back in camp (Gould 1967). Clearly some kind of normative principle was at work in the Aborigine case. I bring this up not to refute Binford’s argument but to show how both the Nunamiut and West- ern Desert Aborigine cases can be viewed within the same unified scientific approach to ethnoarchaeology if we ask our questions in the right order.

Like Binford, I approached the Western Desert Aborigine hunting from an eco-utilitarian point of view, looking first at possible circumstantial explanations for the observed behavior. The only difference was that, in this case, eco-utilitarian explanations accounted for other aspects of


butchering and consumption of meat, such as the degree of bone reduction in the final round of sharing and consumption, far better than they did this initial division. The strict adherence to a fixed pattern of initial division of meat was explained more parsimoniously with reference to social relations based upon kin-based sharing of food and access to resources (which in turn can be seen as adaptive for hunter-gatherers coping with the uncertainities of living in arid Australia) than to the direct influence of the immediate circumstances under which hunting occurs (Gould 1982). While the “extra step” involved in this initial butchering and sharing of meat is ultimately adaptive, it would be hard to explain if one adhered to a simple deterministic notion of how human behavior relates to circumstances. In other words, one must look jirst at the eco-utilitarian relationships that occur in the situation one observes and see to what extent variation in the observed behavior can be accounted for by these immediate circumstances. If one has exhausted this level of explanation without totally satisfactory results, then one is entitled to go on to the next higher level of explanation, namely the ideational realm of shared traditions. Binford has achieved a satisfactory explanation of his observed facts at this initial level of analysis-so he can stop there. However, the Aboriginal case required that I go beyond this initial level of explanation, but not before exhausting all the possibilities it contained. Dissonance between anticipated and actual behavior observed and analyzed within an eco-utilitarian adaptive framework arises only when the totality of observed behavior cannot be accounted for at this initial circumstantial level. In the Aboriginal case, I discovered that factors other than immediate circumstances made a measurable difference in the observed behavior, and, according to the rules of this approach, I could then turn to possible ideational factors for an explanation. Elsewhere (Gould 1980: 138- 141) I have referred to this inferential line of reasoning as “argument by anomaly” and have shown how it arises from scientific prac- tices of long standing.

As anthropologists, one of our greatest difficulties has been to get a good handle on measuring the degree to which ideational and symbolic factors affect or determine human behavior. When and under what conditions are ideational factors decisive? Often, anthropologists leap directly to the ideational realm before exhausting low-level, eco-utilitarian kinds of explanations for the behavior they observe. Since we always begin at the level of material relations, this is an error ethnoarchaeologists cannot afford to make. Philosophically, I can regard Binford’s analysis of his Nunamiut data as similar to the approach I am advocating here except for the fact that he has not made any explicit effort to incorporate possible ideational factors into his overall argument. Perhaps the Nunamiut really are as “simple” as he suggests, in the sense that one can account simply for their behavior in relation to meat products on a circumstantial basis


without recourse to more complex explanations involving ideas and sym- bols. But the Western Desert Aborigine case contains anomalies that cannot be fully accounted for at this level of reasoning and must be referred to the ideational domain to achieve a satisfactory explanation of all the behavior that was observed.

This is not cultural uniformitarianism. Rather, it consists of the extension and testing of uniformitarian principles already widely accepted in the natural sciences. It is a kind of derived uniformitarianism that is indistinguishable from that which already operates in those sciences that require historical as well as general or processual explanations, namely evolutionary biology and geology. Like these sciences, “our problem is extrapolating from observed to unobservable causes, not the enumeration of a totally observable sequence” (S. J. Gould 1965:226). So we may ask, To what extent can unformitarian principles derived from biology and the earth sciences be used to explain variability in human behavior? Asking this question in no way assumes that such principles will, in fact, account for all of the human behavior being observed. It is merely the first question one asks. So, for example, one could investigate the degree to which the predator-prey relationship between Nunamiut Eskimos and the caribou they hunt accounts for their behavior on different hunts. Or one could measure the effects of specific limiting factors, such as water availability, on the behavior of desert hunter-gatherers like the Western Desert Aborigines. Optimal foraging theory, succession theory, energy- flow models, and other such “middle level” approaches offer a wide range of uniformitarian principles for testing in this manner. Such an approach requires us to control for all of the relevant eco-utilitarian variables in each case and to evaluate the uniformitarian assumptions of the principles we are applying.

Sometimes the controls in this kind of transference are not easy to apply. For example, a limiting factor in biology is usually defined as follows:

The success of a population or community depends on a complex of conditions; any condition that approaches or exceeds the limit of tolerance for the organism or group in question may be said to be a limiting factor (Odum 1975: 108).

What is usually meant by “success” in the biological sense is the long- term reproductive survival of the species or group in question, and limiting factors characteristically regulate biological populations at the level set by the weakest link in their ecological chain. That is, one looks at the largest population that can survive the period of maximum stress (as imposed by either too much or too little of whatever the limiting factor happens to be). However, the assumption that this applies in every case to human beings depends upon one’s definition of “success,” which may


extend beyond simple reproductive survival to encompass other aspects of performance, such as the maintenance of certain traditions. Once we have done this, we can reasonably evaluate cultural traditions in relation to this yardstick of demands imposed by a limiting factor and inquire about the extent to which this or that traditional behavior is adaptive under the particular circumstances of the case.

If a particular kind of observed behavior cannot be parsimoniously and completely explained by such uniformitarian propositions, then we have an anomaly that will require a different order of explanation, It is almost axiomatic of science that small anomalies or dissonances between predicted and observed behavior of all sorts of phenomena may require completely different explanations. Even if one can explain 99% of the observed behavior with a uniformitarian theory, that remaining 1% may require a radical and completely different explanation before it can be fitted into the rest of the observations. For example, minute differences in spectrographic readings and other data on planetary moons from those that were initially predicted have led astronomers to consider altogether different theories to account for their chemical composition and physical properties (Hartmann 1975). It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the same thing happens in scientific archaeology.

Uniformitarianism is thus a bridge between past and present. It fur- nishes assumptions about those relationships in nature which hold true in both the past and present, and it permits us to test these assumptions in cases of human behavior to see how much of the behavior we observe in human societies today must also have occurred in past human societies living under similar conditions.

The “payoff in this approach comes in the form of archaeological signatures consisting of material by-products of the adaptive behavior that produced them and led to their discard or abandonment. Ethnoar- chaeological observations permit us to posit uniformitarian linkages between certain kinds of adaptive behavior and the unique characteristics of the material residues produced by that behavior. These linkages are both predictive and testable, and they represent a goal that Watson and I both agree upon. Given accurate paleoenvironmental and geographical recon- structions, we can predict when and where these signatures ought to occur in prehistoric contexts and carry out our excavations to make these tests. These linkages are also testable cross-culturally, in all kinds of contemporary and historic contexts.

Elsewhere, for example, I have argued that the relative degree of bone reduction of certain game species (in this case, the much battered and abused red kangaroo again) can, if ecological variables affecting both the distribution of game and human predation are adequately controlled, serve as an archaeological signature of hunting stress in different situa-


tions (Gould 1980: 188- 195). The more difficult it is for an Aboriginal desert group to hunt this species, as determined by the operation of whatever main constraint acts as a limiting factor (in this case, limited avail ability of water for human groups, which, unlike the kangaroo, must drink regularly and thus have ready access to waterholes of some kind), the greater their efforts to economize on the limited supply of meat available to them. The archaeological signature resulting from this adaptive behavior under extreme hunting stress was greater reduction of kangaroo bones in places where meat was consumed, as Aborigines smashed these bones into smaller and smaller bits to extract as much edible material as possible. Less extreme bone reduction for this species thus can be predicted for those times and places where water was more widely available over the landscape and Aborigine hunters could gain easier access to macropods like Megalaiea rufa.

Work is proceeding on the testing of this proposition archaeologically in arid Australia, but it is also possible to test it cross-culturally among any human societies where meat is consumed. For example, archaeologists can look at dietary remains in forts and castles where conditions of siege have occurred in historic or recent times to see to what extent bone reduction of whatever animals were eaten exceeded that of more normal times. This same reasoning can be applied to accounting for shifts in the variety of animal species consumed (assuming, of course, that besieged victims in medieval European castles did not ordinarily eat rats or cock- roaches for breakfast). If such extreme reduction of fauna1 remains occurs in the absence of clear evidence for dietary stress, then we can turn to a higher-level, ideational explanation for possible answers. This I shall call the “lobster dinner effect,” since it depends more upon normative values of dietary preferences and their economic correlates. But, as ethnoarchaeologists, we cannot approach dietary remains in general or degrees of bone reduction in particular by looking initially at factors like ethnicity or taste without risking embarrassment later on when a more parsimonious eco-utilitarian explanation for the same materials is offered.

S. J. Gould points out that the concept of uniformitarianism arose in the geological sciences during the nineteenth century as a response to oppo- sition from clerics like Buckland who argued for a catastrophist view based upon divine intervention in earth history. Gould distinguishes between substantive uniformitarianism (a theory of geological change pos- tulating uniform rates of conditions) and methodological uniformitarianism (a principle involving spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws) and notes that substantive uniformitarianism as a geological argument for universal gradualism of earth processes is discredited today (1965:225- 226). He then goes on to assert that methodological uniformitarianism is really nothing more than a synonym for the definition of empirical science


in general; hence it is redundant and unnecessary. Historically, he argues, it may have been a useful term for refuting the catastrophists, but it is an anachronism today, “for we need no longer take special pains to aflirm the scientific nature of our discipline” (1965227). Part of me agrees with this view and would like to see the term done away with altogether, but another part of me wonders if we should not retain it a while longer until ethnoarchaeologists have more fully accepted and applied the general principles of empirical science. For now, my answer to the question Is Uniformitarianism necessary? is a qualified yes.

Is Analogy Necessary?

Although I agree with Watson’s emphasis on the need for generating and testing alternative hypotheses as a scientific approach to ethnoarchaeology, I am suggesting here that such hypotheses must be generated by uniformitarian principles developed in relation to allied sciences rather than from ethnographic analogues. One might be tempted at this point to argue that this is only a kind of “natural science analogy.” But that would be stretching the concept of analogy far beyond its logical or commonly accepted meaning. Webster’s dictionary defines analogy, in logic, as “the inference that certain admitted resemblances imply further similarity,” and further defines resemblance as “similarity of appearance.” Watson notes that ethnoarchaeologists have relied heavily on ethnographic analogies for their interpretations of past human behavior, and she joins with earlier scholars in distinguishing between analogies based upon the “direct historical approach” and the “general comparative approach.”

The former emphasizes continuities between the past and present. This kind of analogy is based upon the assumption that if one can identify continuous historic/prehistoric sequences that linked past physical remains with present-day cultures, and if the resemblances between these materials were close, one could reasonably infer that the same kinds of behavior that produced these material remains in the present also produced them in the past. One of the best examples of this approach grew out of the work of Julian Steward, an early advocate of the “direct historical” method (1942). His ethnographic studies of Paiute Indians of the Great Basin (1938) served as the chronological end point of a continuous, 11 ,OOO-year-long archaeological sequence arrived at through excavations by J. D. Jennings at Danger Cave, Utah. The extreme cultural conser- vatism evident throughout this long archaeological sequence led Jennings to propose a series of reformulations of the desert culture concept, by which he finally meant a uniform nomadic hunter-gatherer adaptation to relatively stable post-Pleistocene conditions throughout the region (Jen- nings 1957; 1974: 156- 174).


The latter kind of analogy described by Watson is discontinuous in nature, meaning that the archaeologist seeks to apply ethnographic find- ings from one area to the archaeological inferences about another without the benefit of any chronological sequence to link the past and present. In such cases, as Ascher exhorts, “seek analogies in cultures which manip- ulate similar environments in similar ways” (1961:319). Unfortunately, there have been numerous instances where this assumption was based simply upon similarities of appearance between ethnographic and archaeological materials, without regard for the natural or cultural processes by which those similarities may have arisen. Analogies in general are subject to three principal objections.

1. The fallacy of affirming the consequent. (For a good discussion of this problem in archaeology see Stanislawski (1975).) All ethnographic analogues are self-limiting by their very nature and are based entirely upon known or existing kinds of behavior as observed ethnographically. They cannot inform us objectively about past behavior that may have no known historic or ethnographic counterpart, nor can they provide all the possible alternatives that might apply even in cases where contemporary analogues do exist. For example, what modern analogues can tell us, in any direct way, how the pedestrian big-game hunters of the late Pleis- tocene lived? And what counterparts are there among modern-day or historic hunters-gatherers to tell us how Australopithecines and early representatives of the genus Homo in East and South Africa may have protected their home bases against predation in the absence of fire? This use of analogy represents a kind of logical ethnocentrism that is more insidious than the more usual kind because it appears to be cross-cultural but is in fact limited only to those cases that are known to us.

Watson rightly points out that because we can never actually see what caused the patterns we dig up, there will always be a chance that some other event or process was the cause. Therefore, she argues, we can never exhaust all the possibilities for explanation and are always denied deductive certainty. But, in reply, I would argue that even direct observations of contemporary behavior do not assure that we can see what is causing the patterns we are interested in. This, too, is a matter of inference. Such inferences, both in the past and the present, are based upon testing hypotheses derived from uniformitarian principles. These principles are-or at least the scientist assumes for purposes of testing and inference-timeless, even though we can preceive their operation only in the present. One must not mistake resemblances (i.e., analogies) that may or may not be due to the operation of general principles for regularities that must be related to the operation of such principles (i.e., laws). The major difficulty in ethnoarchaeology has been one of ambiguity arising from a failure to distinguish more compelling uniformitarianist explana-


tions from less compelling ones based upon analogy. It is not incumbent upon ethnoarchaeologists to exhaust all the possible alternative explanations for a particular pattern, but it is essential that they be aware of what it is about certain kinds of explanations based upon uniformitarian reasoning that makes those kinds of explanations more convincing than those which rely upon resemblances which do not necessarily involve such principles. Arguments by analogy, in other words, beg the question of what it is that structures the resemblances one is attempting to explain.

The case of the post-Pleistocene archaeology of the Oenpelli region of Arnhem Land (White and Peterson 1969) demonstrates this difficulty. Here, the excavators compared their prehistoric materials with a model of seasonal transhumance proposed by the ethnographer, Donald Thomson, for Aborigines of the Cape York peninsula of Australia. Cape York lies in tropical Australia and has the same extreme alternation of wet and dry seasons as Arnhem Land, even though it is over 600 miles away. Thom- son (1939) noted that the toolkits of these Aborigines varied so much from one season to the other that archaeologists, looking only at their material artifacts, might be tempted to regard these as evidence of different cultures when, in fact, they were the by-products of contrasting seasonal hunting and gathering activities. White and Peterson concluded that Thomson’s ethnographic model from Cape York fitted their archaeological evidence from Arnhem Land better than the alternative hypothesis of distinct subcultures. That is, the ancient inhabitants of the Oenpelli area were seen as nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved seasonally between the interior uplands and coastal plain, alternating their subsistence toolkits according to the seasonal requirements.

This argument by ethnographic analogy is reasonable as far as it goes, but it does not eliminate the subculture hypothesis. Archaeological evidence cited in this case is just as supportive of an interpretation involving two or more cognate but distinct groups supporting themselves within these different ecological zones but also relying upon varying amounts of exchange between these zones (either regularly or during widely spaced periods of stress). Closer examination of the particular ecological circumstances and appropriate adaptive responses in this part of Arnhem Land are needed to settle this matter. The seasonal transhumant model offered in this case only seems to be the most parsimonious because it resembles a known case occurring in a broadly similar (but not identical) situation, and because it has not considered other, possibly more parsimonious alternatives not reported ethnographically for monsoonal Au- stralia. Until we are shown how one of these alternatives conforms more closely to the adaptive requirements of this region than the other, and the archaeological evidence for these alternatives can be rendered less ambiguous, it remains a fallacy of affirming the consequent.


2. No amount or number of resemblances can confirm a single case. To what extent does the multiplication of purported UFO sightings con- vince us that UFOs really exist? As the Condon Project (Boffey 1968) showed, what is actually required is only a single sighting or contact that satisfies all of the requirements of empirical science for the idea to be accepted. In ethnoarchaeology, a single hypothesis that economically posits necessary relationships between the various kinds of observed evidence is worth far more than any number of resemblances, none of which is convincing. Ethnoarchaeological observations can provide a basis for positing such necessary relationships, but they can do so only when there exists the reasonable assumption that something about that relationship holds true in time and space. Until some kind of uniformitarian principle is applied to such resemblances, they remain only interesting coincidences. What we are concerned with here is the interconnectedness of things, not merely their correlation.4

Part of the difficulty here arises from the strong tendency to apply ethnographic observations directly to explain archaeological patterning. The use of uniformitarian assumptions (laws) implies an indirect approach that argues that whatever necessary relationships we observe between human behavior and material residues in the present also hold true for the past. Ethnoarchaeology should not be seen as an attempt directly to achieve a close “fit” between larger and larger numbers of resemblances occurring in both past and present-day cases. For example, detailed similarities of form in a class of historic and prehistoric artifacts, like ground and polished stone axes, may turn out to have been produced by widely differing lithic reduction and shaping processes, and vice versa. Lithic studies today emphasize by-product experimentation to establish a uniform basis for understanding how different physical forces affect different kinds of lithic raw materials (Tringham 1978), and this approach is being joined with increasing research into lithic sourcing. These studies enable us to appreciate the necessary relationships that act as both opportunities and constraints in various toolmaking and tool use processes, and to recognize at what points normative or ideational factors may contradict or override these relationships. The formal typological approach in archaeology dies hard, but it is ultimately destined to suffer the same fate as the

’ Watson notes that this is part of the problem of induction in science, as discussed by Hume. Hume (1888: 155- 172) argued that one can never prove that anything causes anything else, because all one observes are correlations (i.e., one billiard ball touches a second, stops, and the second one moves-but there is no way to isolate and view a cause in that sequence of events). Earlier, I argued along the same lines by noting how observations of present-day behavior require inference just as do our conclusions about the past. Those inferences, which allow us to impute relationships instead of mere correlations, are possible only when based on uniformitarian assumptions that hold true equally for past and present.


Great Auk as it is supplanted by controlled technological studies into uniformitarian relationships that govern and direct variability in the human use of lithic materials. Such indirect approaches, that look first at predictable relationships between lithic raw materials and human behavior, are proving more fruitful than direct approaches based upon su- perficial resemblances of form.

3. Resemblances cannot account for variability. Analogues, based as they are on resemblances, are self-fulfilling, whether they arise in a comparative or a direct historical context. This is just another way of saying that we “afftrm the consequent.” It is an axiom in archaeology that it is easier to explain the persistence of whatever behavior we observe then to account for how it got that way in the first place or how it might be expected to change. Resemblances between Steward’s model of ethnographic Paiute Indian behavior and prehistoric materials contained in Great Basin archaeological sites provide a reasonable explanation for the status quo that lasted there for 11,000 years, but do not account for the appearance of semisubterranean earth lodge settlements in Surprise Val- ley between 4500 and 6500 years ago (O’Connell 1975). As O’Connell points out, any view of Great Basin prehistory that depends on detailed similarities of form with Steward’s model-such elements as house and settlement types, artifacts, and subsistence techniques-is “. . . clearly incorrect.” It would assume there was little or no variability in human behavior within this region of North America throughout the entire post- Pleistocene period. If, on the other hand, one views the desert culture concept

as a generalizing scheme which serves to define the essential similarities in human ecology throughout the Great Basin, then there can be little argument with it (1975:52).

This is because the “essential similarities” referred to by the analyst are based on discerning uniformitarian processes rather than collecting and adding up resemblances. They provide a framework for explaining variability when it does occur, as in the case of the Surprise Valley pit houses, and make it easier for us to assimilate this new evidence into the totality of human adaptive behavior we can recognize for this region. Behavioral similarities based upon uniformitarian principles derived ultimately from the natural sciences are of an order different from similarities of artifact form, and they do not require that we assume some kind of cultural uniformitarianism to lie behind the regularities of their occurrence.

Ethnographic analogies may be plausible and potentially testable, but they are often unscientific and are sometimes hard to distinguish from wishful thinking. Only when we try to explain anomalies in human behavior as viewed in the context of uniformitarian relationships in nature


can we posit the widest possible range of alternative behaviors to account for the material residues we deal with and proceed to test them in a scientifically acceptable manner. The answer to the question Is analogy necessary? is thus no-or only sometimes, as long as we do not mistake it for cultural uniformitarianism or use it as a substitute for the kind of uniformitarianism S. J. Gould regards simply as good science.

Watson has argued in this paper and elsewhere that analogy is science, by expanding the concept of analogy to mean “hypothesis-to-be-tested.” Yet I find it hard to think of laws like Bernoulli’s Principle as analogies (i. e., as a “hypothesis-to-be-tested”) every time I am about to take off in an airplane. Provided certain conditions are met, I am confident that the wings will develop lift and the aircraft will fly. It is this same sort of confidence that allows us to accept the idea that uniformitarian principles operated in the past, provided, of course, the requisite conditions were met. Viewed this way, for example, the behavior and effects of Pleis- tocene glaciers can confidently be explained in relation to the principles that determine the behavior of modern glaciers. Hume’s arguments against causality notwithstanding, we are entitled to explore the extent to which uniformitarian principles that state invariable relationships can explain human behavior, both past and present, before going on to see if a structure of similar uniformities exists in the normative or cultural domain of human behavior. In short, ethnoarchaeologists must be careful not to confuse the use of uniformitarian principles in science with the use of analogy, which, as it is commonly defined and used, is much less than that.

(PJW AND RAG)

To conclude, although we agree quite closely in stressing a materialist, eco-utilitarian approach to the archaeological record and on the desirabil- ity of adhering to the rules of scientific procedure, we disagree on our understanding of what “argument by analogy” means or ought to mean. We have found the dialogue engendered in sorting out the source of the disagreement to be very useful, and hope readers of this journal will also profit from the exchange.

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Documents

A dialogue on the meaning and use of analogy in ethnoarchaeological reasoning