Abstract
The explanation-understanding controversy has been a main topic of archaeological methodology since the mid 19th century. The arguments for explanation were dominant throughout much of the 20th century within the empiricist and post-empiricist approaches. However, towards the end, understanding approaches were widely adopted by archaeologists, due to the prevalence gained by the interpretive turn in both hermeneutics and post-modern radical version. The aim of this paper is to review the less radical positions within the interpretive turn, that is, the hermeneutical thesis about understanding, and to examine the possibility of convergence between them and post-empiricist approaches on explanation.
This paper has been written thanks to the support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation research project FFI2009-09483. I am very grateful to Wenceslao J. Gonzalez for his insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.
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- 1.
Alison Wylie, Thinking from Things, Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Berkeley: University of California Press 2002, p. XII.
- 2.
See Lewis Binford, “Archaeology as Anthropology”, in: American Antiquity 28, 1962, pp. 217-225. Lewis Binford and Sally R. Binford (Eds.), New Perspectives in Archaeology. Chicago: Aldine 1968.
- 3.
See Binford, An Archaeological Perspective. New York: Seminar Press 1972.
- 4.
Binford, Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. New York: Academic Press 1978, p. I.
- 5.
Lewis Binford and Jeremy Sabloff, “Paradigms, Systematics and Archaeology”, in: Journal of Anthropological Research 38, 1982, pp. 138-139. (mine).
- 6.
Many are the authors in each tendency; some of the most prominent are: in hermeneutics particularly Ian Hodder, Reading the Past: Currents Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986. Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, in: American Antiquity 56, 1991, pp. 7-18; in structuralism, André Leroi-Gourhan, L’art parietal: langage de la préhistoire. Paris: Éditions Jérôme Millon 2009. Robert W. Preucel, “The Postprocessual Condition”, in: Journal of Archaeological Research 3, 1995, pp. 147-175; in Neo-Marxism, Mark P. Leone (Ed.), Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. New York: Kluwer 1999. Brucer Trigger, “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility, and the Social Sciences”, in: Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 26, 1989, pp. 776-797; and in post-modern archaeology, Christopher Tilley, Material Culture and the Texts: The Art of Ambiguity. London: Routledge 1991 or John Bintliff, “Postmodernism, Rhetoric and Scholasticism at TAG: The Current State of British Archaeology”, in: Antiquity 65, 1995, pp. 274-278.
- 7.
Julian Thomas, “Introduction: The Polarities of Post-processual Archaeology”, in: Julian Thomas (Ed.), Interpretative Archaeology. A Reader. London: Continuum International Publishing Group 2002, p. 3.
- 8.
Hodder, Reading the Past: Currents Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, op. cit., p. 79.
- 9.
Hodder, The Domestication of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell 1990, p. 21.
- 10.
Harald Johnsen and Bjørnar Olsen, “Hermeneutics and Archaeology. On the Philosophy of Contextual Archaeology”, in: American Antiquity 57, 3, 1992, p. 109.
- 11.
Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, in: American Antiquity 56, 1991, p. 12.
- 12.
Hodder, Ibid. p. 10.
- 13.
Ibid. p. 12.
- 14.
Hodder, Ibid., p. 12.
- 15.
Ibid., p. 12 (his italics).
- 16.
In the same, Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, pp. 7-18, and in: Hodder, “The Post-processual Reaction”, in: Hodder, Theory and Practice in Archaeology. London: Routledge 1992, pp. 160-168.
- 17.
See, Leone, “Liberation not Replication: ‘Archaeology in Annapolis’ Analyzed”, in: Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 76, 1986, pp. 97-195. Trigger, “Marxism in Contemporary Western Archaeology”, in: Archaeological Method and Theory 5, 1993, pp. 159-200. Russell C. Handsman, “Early Capitalism and the Center Village of Canaan, Connecticut: A Study of Transformations and Separations”, in: Artifacts 9, 1981, pp. 1-2.
- 18.
See Leroi-Gourhan, Lárt parietal: language de la préhistoir, op. cit., and Preucel, “The Postprocessual Condition”, pp. 147-175.
- 19.
See for example: Christopher Tilley, “Interpretation and a Poetics of the Past”, in: Tilley (Ed.), Interpretative Archaeology. London: Berg 1993, pp. 1-26, and Bintliff, “Postmodernism, Rhetoric and Scholasticism at TAG: The Current State of British Archaeology”, pp. 274-278.
- 20.
In their articles, Christine S. VanPool and Todd L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, in: American Antiquity 64, 1999, pp. 33-53; and, T. L. VanPool and C. S. VanPool, “Postprocessualism and the Nature of Science: A Response to Comments by Hutson and Arnold and Wilkens”, in: American Antiquity 66, 2001, pp. 367-375.
- 21.
C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, in: American Antiquity 64, 1, 1999, p. 34.
- 22.
See Scott R. Hutson, “Synergy through Disunity, Science as Social Practice: Comments on VanPool and VanPool”, in: American Antiquity 66, 2001, pp. 349-369. Wylie, Thinking from Things, Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology, op. cit.
- 23.
Lars Fogelin, “Inference to the Best Explanation: A Common and Effective form of Archaeological Reasoning”, in: American Antiquity 72, 2007, p. 604.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 604.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 604.
- 26.
Binford, “Archaeological Perspectives”, in: L. R. Binford, and S. R. Binford (Eds.), New Perspectives in Archaeology, op. cit., p. 13. Hodder later admits that “both processual and hermeneutic approaches accept that every assertion can be understood in relation to a question”, Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, op. cit., p. 12.
- 27.
Meanings can be from individuals or contextual elements; as C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool note, “Social meaning can be given to material objects, people, societies, and places through interpretation”. C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, op. cit., p. 38.
- 28.
For example, Ericka Engelstad, “Images of Power and Contradiction: Feminist Theory and Potprocessual Archaeology”, in: Antiquity 65, 1991, pp. 502-514. Leone, “Liberation not Replication: ‘Archaeology in Annapolis’ Analyzed”, op. cit., pp. 97-195. Hodder, Reading the Past: Currents Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, op. cit. Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, op. cit., pp. 7-18.
- 29.
C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, op.cit., p. 42. Hodder, as has been seen above, holds the same thesis; see Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, op. cit., p. 12.
- 30.
Hodder, Reading the Past: Currents Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, op. cit., p. 16.
- 31.
Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, op. cit., pp. 7-18. Preucel, “The Postprocessual Condition”, pp. 147-175. C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, op. cit., pp. 33-53. Wylie, Thinking from Things, Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology, op. cit.
- 32.
The first one in Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, op. cit., pp. 7-18, for example. The second one in Fogelin, “Inference to the Best Explanation: A Common and Effective form of Archaeological Reasoning”, op. cit., pp. 603-625.
- 33.
C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, op. cit., pp. 44-45. Preucel, “The Postprocessual Condition”, pp. 161-162. (Italics in quote are mine).
- 34.
C. S. VanPool and T. L. VanPool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, op. cit., p. 44.
- 35.
Hodder, “Interpretative Archaeology and Its Role”, op. cit., p. 12.
- 36.
Hodder, Ibid., p. 13.
- 37.
Fogelin, “Inference to the Best Explanation: A Common and Effective form of Archaeological Reasoning”, p. 613.
- 38.
Philip J. Arnold III and Brian S. Wilkens, “On the Van Pools “Scientific” Postprocessualism”, in: American Antiquity 66, 2001, p. 363; (their italics).
- 39.
T. L. VanPool and C. S. VanPool, “Postprocessualism and the Nature of Science: A Response to Comments by Hutson and Arnold and Wilkens”, op. cit., p. 369.
- 40.
Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, “Sobre la predicción en Ciencias Sociales: Análisis de la propuesta de Merrilee Salmon”, in: Enrahonar 37, 2005, p. 193.
- 41.
Amparo Gómez, “Mechanisms, Tendencies and Capacities”, in: Peruvian Journal of Epistemology, v. 2, forthcoming.
- 42.
Gonzalez, “Sobre la predicción en Ciencias Sociales: Análisis de la propuesta de Merrilee Salmon”, p. 188.
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Gómez, A. (2013). Archaeology and Scientific Explanation: Naturalism, Interpretivism and “A Third Way”. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_19
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