Epistemological change and a history of American Archaeology

"Your history, why it's a joke; Bygone times are a seven-sealed book. The thing you call the spirit of the past, what is it? Nothing but your own poor spirit with the past reflected in it. An it's pathetic, what's to be seen in your mirror!"  Faust, speaking to Wagner, in Faust: a Tragedy, by Von Goethe (trans. Martin Greenberg) (1992 Yale University Press, p. 19)

"Archaeology is the study of the past. The practice of archaeology is a reflection of the present." Sharman Russell, When the Land was Young: Reflections on American Archaeology (1995 Addison Wesley, p. 7)

What does this mean?

• We must separate out what archaeology is and does as a discipline (its practice), from what it does and how (its substance).

• In one sense, archaeology never changes. Its goals have always been the same -Who was where, when, with what, and why?

• How we go about answering those questions or achieving those goals is in constant flux

New theories, new technologies New political realities, ideologies  

These reflect the contemporary situation of the North American archaeologist

That archaeology is ‘political’ is sometimes difficult for us to accept because of our attachment to the ideas of objectivity in science.

Also difficult for us because of our ideas of cultural relativism. Anthros are not supposed to be biased toward their own culture.

Our archaeological epistemologies are derived from our own cultures, not some ‘natural’ or objective standard

The Willey and Sabloff Period Scheme from A History of American Archaeology

1. Speculative Period, 1492-1840

2. Classificatory-Descriptive Period, 1840-1914

3. Classificatory-Historical Period Concern with Chronology , 1914-1940 Concern with Context/Function, 1940-1960  4. Explanatory Period-1960-1980

5. A post-processual? 1980-present

Gordon WIlley

Jeremy Sabloff

Europe, Theological Models, and the Beginnings of Science

The Dominance of Theological Epistemologies

All is explained by the will of God

The Bible is the key to understanding the past

Challenges to Biblical authority were put down, or at least marginalized

Galileo, 1564 to 1642

Copernicus, 1473-1543

Christian Jürgensen

Thomsen, 1788-1865

Until the 1700s

James Hutton, 1726 - 1797

Charles Lyell 1797-1875

Evolution provides a mechanism for understanding biological (and cultural) change

Charles Darwin 1809-1882 Flinders Petrie 1853-1942

Scientific and systematic archaeological methods helped to break theological explanations of the past

The Speculative Period, 1492-1840

A prelude to real archaeology

•Filled with questions about the origin of Indians and speculation about the answers

•Three trends

•Latin American emphasis based on chronicles of the conquistadors, priests

•Explorer and traveler accounts of the interior of NA and Latin America

•An almost ephemeral trend that began the next period was a series of efforts to undertake excavation and survey of archaeological sites

The Speculative Period, 1492-1840

Dominance of speculation as a mode of thought was due to a number of

factors

1. Most important was the lack of reliable data

2. Acceptance of theological modes of explanation limited other possibilities

3. Non-existence of a tradition of scientific

thought

4. A continuing sense of wonder at the exotic nature of the New World .

What we are talking about really, then, is non-scientific conjecture

The Speculative Period, 1492-1840

The Moundbuilder Myth

1. Explorers who were used a natural scientific approach which is still reflected in the fact that Indians and archaeology tend to be in natural history museums instead of history museums

2. Most were not directly on the scene or as involved Armchair explorers using a literary approach

Why the Moundbuilders?

1. The need for an heroic past that would resemble that of Europe.

•The colonists were in one sense a "people without a history" •Those living in Europe thought that something must be wrong with the environment here to cause such revolutions •Needed a "white" history to claim the land - a precursor to Manifest Destiny

2. Second reason is the relative comparison of the mounds and earthworks to the pyramids of Mexico. How could the Indian people they saw have built such thing?

3. Little attention paid to the traditions of the people themselves. That would come later, and it  showed a long tradition of moundbuilding .

As part of the destruction of the Moundbuilder Myth, the discipline of anthropology developed.

John Wesley Powell

Cyrus Thomas

Frank Hamilton Cushing

Lewis Henry Morgan

Key elements behind the culture area concept:

Cultural ecology and adaptation (cultural evolution) Form, Function and Meaning

Diffusion Oral Tradition

Cultural Ecology & Adaptation

Out of their data gathering and that of those who followed, the culture area concept developed.

Cultural Ecology, Adaptation, and Cultural Evolution

Earlier notions of cultural evolution from the late 1800s, especially Unilinear Evolution, were discarded.

•In unilinear evolution, cultures evolved from savages to barbarians to civilized.

•The notion of progress was associated with it. Indians were savages.

•Association with Social Darwinism

•It became part of "Manifest Destiny."Progress & Unilinear Evolution

Julian Steward

Multilinear Evolution: A More Realistic Model

Cultures change at different rates based on adjustments to environments.

Cultural ecology :cultures adapt to the changes in the natural and social environments in which they live.

Cultural ecology: the dominant viewpoint of most anthropologists and many other social scientists.

Multilinear evolution and cultural ecology are related concepts that help us account for the extreme diversity  of   American Indian cultures.

Form, Function, and Meaning

Form—physical characteristics or attributes of an object or concept

Function—the role of the object or idea, what it does

Meaning—what the object or idea means to the people who have or use it

Diffusion and its processes

Stimulus diffusion—ideas, from simple contact

Single trait diffusion—a few things, from trade

Complex diffusion—whole cultural complexes, from colonization

Independent InventionIndependent Invention: roughly the same ideas , concepts or physical forms appear in different places without contact between the places

Just because things seem to be alike doesn’t mean they are so because of contact and diffusion!

Similar environmental and social conditions lead to similar adaptations.

Oral Tradition

Historicity―Just how historical is it?

Does it contain temporal information that we can use? Does it contain information about geography we can use?

Does it contain material "markers" that are archaeologically recoverable?

Oral tradition's advantage is its immediacy, but that causes you to think in terms of a "present" past

Alfred Kroeber

Organizing the information:

The functional prerequisites of culture

People

Language

Territory/Technology

Social Organization

Ideology (belief systems)

There was huge variation in languages.

Language VariationFor such a small population, Indian languages are extremely diverse.

57 families grouped into 9 macro-families or phyla

300 distinct languages

2000 dialects

California—at least 20 families

West of Rockies—17 more

Rest of the continent—20 more

Today English is the most commonly spoken language, and many native languages are gone or will soon be so.

Cultures Areas or Food Areas?

The Culture Area Concept

The Problem with Culture Areas

Actually, these categories have entered into the popular culture in a big way. They are now the main descriptors of Indian groups.

One needs to question whether it is still a useful concept:

It locks Indian groups in time, using descriptions of groups at the time of Contact.

Pan-Indian cultural activities and massive influences of media have "blended" lots of cultural traits.

Doesn't account for the ability of groups to adjust to white and other Indian influences.