Abstract
Leach asks, what would Collingwood have thought of archaeological theory, a sub-discipline of archaeology that has developed since the 1960s? He argues that Collingwood would have welcomed it for it has developed out of respect for the principle that in any investigation, in examining the evidence, one must always have some question in mind. Nonetheless, although Collingwood would have welcomed recent developments in archaeological theory, and would have urged metaphysicians to take notice of such developments, he is not himself an archaeological theorist: he is, primarily, a metaphysician.
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See, for example, The New York Times, 12 January 1943, ‘Dr. Collingwood, Oxford Professor: Noted Authority on Life in Britain under Romans Dies at Age of 53’.
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Sometimes referred to as theoretical archaeology .
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According to Caroline Barron (Hogarth’s grand-daughter) (personal comment). There is something mischievous about Collingwood’s description of Haverfield and Hogarth as revolutionaries.
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Minute in the sense of small. The term was used by Cicero to describe philosophers who denied the immortality of the soul. It was taken up in Berkeley’s Alciphron (or the Minute Philosopher) and it also occurs in Reynolds’ Discourses.
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See also (IH: 258–9) and (PH: 14).
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In (Leach 2017) I have explicated a distinction between archaeology and history that may be compatible with Collingwood’s views. I there defend the views of the Russian archaeological theorist Leo S. Klejn. Klejn argues that archaeology is closely related to detective work (which he argues is neither one of humanities nor a natural science but an autonomous branch of knowledge ) and that it is focussed upon such questions of ‘what?’ ‘when?’ and ‘where?’ whereas history is a humanistic discipline focussed upon the question ‘why?’ Archaeologists feed the results of their inquiries to historians for further processing. However, that is not to say that either discipline is ultimately superior or inferior to the other. As Klejn points out, archaeology might equally well be described as the servant of history or as its mother. The two disciplines have close ‘business relations’. However, although the same person may be both an historian and an archaeologist, and even though the archaeologist may be stimulated by the historian’s questions, the two disciplines remain conceptually distinct. I argue that this model is not at odds with Collingwood’s philosophy of history . Indeed, Klejn agrees with Collingwood’s view of historical explanation.
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From the prescriptive aspect to Collingwood’s work it follows that if Collingwood were to have been a consistently bad field archaeologist this might cast doubt on his work as a theorist. Largely on the basis of Collingwood’s excavations of the Cumbrian henge monument, King Arthur’s Round Table, Richmond (1943) and Hodder (1995) suggest that Collingwood was weak in this area. However, this verdict is by no means generally accepted. See Simpson (1998).
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Another more recent field that awaits exploration by the metaphysician without ontology is the discipline of material culture studies. It has developed as an academic discipline since the 1990s. According to the Journal of Material Culture: “It is concerned with the relationship between artefacts and social relations irrespective of time and place and aims to systematically explore the relationship between the construction of social identities and the production and use of culture.” http://journals.sagepub.com/home/mcu [accessed 23.12.17]. If archaeology is most closely related to detective work, then perhaps material culture studies (less focused on the specifics of ‘what happened?’ ‘when?’ and ‘where?) is related to forensic science?
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‘For the most part’ because there is one conspicuous exception: his chapter on ‘Art’ in Roman Britain and the English Settlements. In his Autobiography Collingwood refers to this as “a chapter which I would gladly leave as the sole memorial of my Romano-British studies, and the best example I can give to posterity of how to solve a much-debated problem in history , not by discovering fresh evidence, but by reconsidering questions of principle.” (1939: 144–45). Collingwood’s other insights as an archaeologist and historian have been incorporated into subsequent work, although sometimes with a degree of modification, or else they are discussed but still held in abeyance. By contrast, his work on the revival of Celtic art has been largely, and in my view rightly, ignored. Whereas Collingwood usually worked as a critical, or analytical philosopher of history , concerned with the logical structure of historian’s explanations, in ‘Art’ he worked as a speculative philosopher, viewing the unfolding of events as itself an essentially logical process.
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My thanks to Aaran Burns.
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Thanks to Karim Dharamsi and Giuseppina D’Oro for their helpful suggestions on this chapter.
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Leach, S. (2018). Collingwood and Archaeological Theory. In: Dharamsi, K., D'Oro, G., Leach, S. (eds) Collingwood on Philosophical Methodology. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02432-1_11
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