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Approaching Material Culture: a History of Changing Epistemologies Journal of Nordic Archaeological Science 14, pp. 79–87 (2004) Approaching material culture A history of changing epistemologies Terje Oestigaard Centre for Development Studies, Nygårdsgatan 5, NO-5015 Bergen, Norway ([email protected]) The relationship between archaeology and anthropology has been debated and it is still controversial. Materiality matters, but the role material culture plays in the construction and constitution of humans and societies is blurred in the current archaeological debate. Processual archaeology stressed a methodologi- cal collectivist approach representing vulgar materialism in which human be- haviour was more or less shaped by non-human constraints. The post- processual counter-reaction favoured a methodological individualism stressing the acting individual, from which evidence regarding society or social units could be deduced. Both these approaches are, in their extreme forms, mislead- ing, because the former advocates only determinism and the latter only free will. By defining archaeology as material culture studies one may incorporate the structuring principles which both create and restrain human agency. Ma- terial culture studies as a post-disciplinary science incorporate both methodo- logical collectivism and methodological individualism in their approaches, and as such bridge the processual and post-processual archaeologies, not on these paradigms’ own premises but as an acknowledgement of the role that materiality has in both constraining and creating human behaviour. Keywords: ethnoarchaeology, epistemology, material culture, methodological collectivism, methodological individualism Background and objectives ture. This includes Binford’s famous definition of cul- In the debate concerning the relationship between ture as man’s extrasomatic means of adaptation. archaeology and anthropology (see Gosden 1999), the The various positions will be analysed here in both a extreme positions are represented by, on the one hand, historical and a scientific perspective, by emphasising Binford’s well known characteristic of “archaeology as the different epistemological stances involved in the anthropology” (Binford 1962), and on the other hand, respective approaches. I thus have four objectives. Clarke’s equally well known statement that “archae- Firstly, I will give a short introduction to the relation ology is archaeology is archaeology” (Clarke 1968:13). between archaeology and anthropology and consider These two traditions have continued in various forms. the problems with ethnoarchaeology as a methodo- Another central topic in archaeology is the relation be- logical bridge between them. Secondly, I will analyse tween culture and nature (materiality), which includes the paradigms of archaeology from the perspectives the debate over methodological collectivism and meth- of methodological collectivism and individualism. odological individualism. Within post-modernism the Thirdly, I will explore the concept of material culture dogma of the superiority of mind over matter has been studies as a successor to ethnoarchaeology, transcend- forced to its extreme: there is nothing but language. ing the processual and post-processual archaeologies. When social scientists have acknowledged nature as a In defining archaeology as material culture studies re- relevant aspect in social constructions, it has most often gardless of any time dimensions, I will illuminate this been approached as a unified entity – as one thing – Na- approach with two case studies concerning death ritu- als in Nepal, which lead to the conclusion that, logi- The critics of ethnoarchaeology do not necessarily cally, the world as an artefact is the object of study for address the ethnographic study in itself (although the archaeology. Finally, I will synthesise the various inter- majority of traditional archaeologists prefer such stud- pretative frameworks and include current approaches ies to be conducted by anthropologists rather than be- to the past as a solution which bridges the past and the ing an integrated part of archaeology). The main con- present. troversies have been on which methodological criteria it is possible to transfer knowledge from one context to another. The past cannot be reconstructed by a process Ethnoarchaeology – bridging of sympathetic imagination without any kinds of con- anthropology and archaeology? trols, i.e. using interpretations which are based on Ethnoarchaeology gave rise to both the processual and loose analogies, blurred distinctions between argu- the post-processual paradigm in archaeology (Tilley ment and assumption and rampant use of untested 1989). In processual archaeology, “ethnoarchaeology” generalizations (Trigger 1995:455). was intended to be a fresh solution to archaeology’s methodological crisis. Paradoxically, it was the variation in the ethnographic record which gave rise to the notion Materiality and historical materialism of cross-cultural laws, which also undermined its own Daniel Miller has called for “an independent discipline basis, and gave rise to its counterpart – post-processual of material culture” (Miller 1987:112). Material cul- archaeology (Hodder 1982 a, b, c). “Ethno- ture studies is a discipline concerned with all aspects of archaeology” has traditionally been, on the one hand, the relationship between the material and the social. It the sub-discipline which has aimed to bridge archae- strives to overcome the logistic constraints of any disci- ology and anthropology, and on the other hand, a meth- pline (Miller 1998). The aim is to model the complex odological tool providing analogies and interpretations. nature of the interaction between social strategies, Despite the importance of ethnoarchaeology in the artefactual variability, and material culture (Miller early days of contextual or post-processual archae- 1985:4). According to Miller & Tilley; ology, its decline in the 1990s was a result of three par- “The study of material culture may be most broadly allel agendas: a rhetorical one, a theoretical one and a defined as the investigation of the relationship be- political one. Rhetorically, “there was no longer a need tween people and things irrespective of time and to draw upon such ethnoarchaeologcial and modern space. The perspective adopted may be global or lo- material culture studies”, because “those already con- cal, concerned with the past or present, or the me- vinced by the new approach did not need any further diation between the two.” (Miller & Tilley examples from the present, while those still sceptical 1996:5) wanted to see how such an alternative perspective might improve an understanding of the past itself” It is important that the most fruitful definition of arte- (Reybrouck 2000:44). Theoretically, post-processual fact in this sense is a very wide one. “Artefacts are a archaeology found its inspiration from hermeneutics means by which we give form to, and come to an un- and post-structuralism rather than anthropology, em- derstanding of, ourselves, others, or abstractions such phasising “reading of text” without drawing parallels as the nation or the modern” (Miller 1994:397). “The with contemporary case studies. Politically, post- concept of the artefact is best defined in the broadest structuralism claimed the absolute authority of the terms. There is little point in attempting to distinguish text – open to multiple readings – but nothing lay out- systematically between a natural world and an arte- side the text (Reybrouck 2000:45). factual one […]” (Miller 1994:398, my emphasis). The main characteristic of materiality is its physicality, and “Since ethnoarchaeology required a minimum of “to study material culture is to consider the implica- cross-cultural comparison and a certain belief in the tions of the materiality of form for the cultural pro- possibility of generalization, its place became in- cess” (Miller 1994:400). Defined broadly, the world is creasingly problematic in post-processual dis- an artefact and the object of investigation for archae- course…this new theoretical course limited the role ology. The world people live in must be included in of ethnoarchaeology: this could only show that ma- archaeological analysis because otherwise one would terial culture played an active role, not which one; not grasp the relevant variables for an understanding that it was socially constructed, not how exactly in of how material culture actively constitutes cultures particular cases.” (Reybrouck 2000) and human perceptions. The post-processual archaeologists’ emphasis on minism and free will, and tried to solve it by dialectic landscape analysis is an approach that incorporates the materialism, which approaches society as containing material world inhabited by people. Landscape, envi- both progressive and conservative variables. This re- ronment, nature, space or other words can be used to lates to the scientific debate regarding methodological designate the physical surroundings or the world hu- collectivism and methodological individualism – the mans live in, but different meanings and schools of difference between determinism and free will. thought are associated with the various terms. “Land- scape” is a black-box category, but it often refers to the meaning imputed by local people on their physical and Methodological collectivism or cultural surroundings. It was introduced into the Eng- individualism – an archaeological approach lish vocabulary in the late sixteenth century as a tech- Methodological collectivism and individualism
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