1.1 The Themes
1.1.1 A Dual Definition of Archaeology
Central to the argument of this book are the two themes reflected in the dual definition of archaeology (2.2).
The first is restrictive, and relates specifically to archaeology as field work: it considers as properly archaeological only the moment when the excavator identifies a contact in the ground, and dissolves that very contact by virtue of observing and recording it (see Carver Reference Carver2011). The inferential reasoning as to how things came to be where they are, giving origin to the contact being observed, is the second moment that is properly archaeological. In both cases, “properly archaeological” means that no other discipline faces this particular set of circumstances. This gives rise to significant epistemological concerns, and it is in this regard that this theme may be seen as dealing specifically with a full-fledged and exclusive theory of excavation.
The second definition is derivative, and uses the first as a metaphor for going beyond the immediacy of field work. Just as the physical remains buried in the ground have been severed from the living contexts within which they functioned in their pristine state, so we are led to consider in a special way a culture for which there are no living persons who can claim native competence in that same culture. These broken traditions present therefore a very special interpretive problem, one that is quite similar to that faced by a linguist who deals with a so-called “dead” language, which only means the natively competent speakers of that language are dead, while the language as such can be seen at all times as a living organism.
From this dual definition derive two important corollaries that can be seen as themes in their own right – one describes the way in which the two definitions can be applied structurally to the data, through grammar and hermeneutics (1.1.2); the other focuses on what the two definitions have in common, namely archaeological reason (1.1.4).
1.1.2 Referentiality: Grammar and Hermeneutics
The notion of referentiality plays a major role in my whole argument. It is described in detail in the latter part of the book (see sections 14.7 and 14.8), but its essential core is simple: a system may be analyzed either in its own internal structural integrity or as relating to an external referent. A grammar describes the system structurally from the first point of view, while hermeneutics seeks to define its relationship (always in structural terms) to the outer referent.
The notion of a “grammatical” understanding recurs frequently in the book, and it reflects a use that is more complex than may appear at first. On the surface, the term “grammar” may in fact evoke a straightjacket approach to reality, where rules are imposed externally without consideration for the inner life of the object of study. Instead, grammar is seen here as the sensitive articulation of the filaments that hold an organism together: instead of suffocating the spirit, it brings out, in reasoned and arguable ways, its constitutive elements and their profound relationship.
Hermeneutics can be viewed as building on grammar since it places the structured whole described by grammar in relation to an outside referent. Presupposing that the living organism is grammatically conceptualized, it seeks to find the hidden motor that gives the organism its thrust to life. This is the outside referent, the hidden motor or the inner spring that sets everything in motion and holds it together. The role of inference looms large, and introduces a stronger element of risk than in a grammatical argument: it is the hermeneutic risk, of which our archaeological discourse will help highlight the power where one might otherwise see it instead as a weakness.
1.1.3 The Value and Limits of Positivism
The grammar that defines and describes the archaeological record brings out forcefully the very special status of properly archaeological “data,” which is understood as “non-data” (8.5). Ultimately, if paradoxically, we may say that we do not have empirical archaeological evidence, even at the very moment when archaeology seems to deal instead with that which is most fully tangible – bricks and stones and clay and metal. The restrictiveness of the first definition plays a role here, because it is the lability of the contact in the ground that claims the status of proper archaeological evidence. This in itself has a rather diminished positivist dimension, and all the more so as we envisage the effort of hermeneutics, so tightly bound with inference.
But archaeological grammar and hermeneutics are solidly anchored in a reasoned argument. And this may in turn be regarded as the deeper answer to a positivist urge: We can positively follow the argumentative trail, and trace both the observational itinerary of the excavator and the inferential conclusions that are drawn from it (see also Shanks and Tilley Reference Shanks and Tilley1992: especially ch. 2).
1.1.4 Archaeological Reason
This brings us to a question that represents a core theme of this book; indeed, one that is enshrined in the book’s very title : is there an archaeological reason, and if so how can it be precisely defined? My answer is clearly positive, and the whole issue has a deeper valence than it may seem at first. Precisely because of the lability of the initial “data,” and even more because of the effort at bridging the yawning gap between us and broken traditions, archaeological reason can be seen as a very special dimension of pure human reason. In fact, (1) it rests on data whose empirical status is highly filtered, and (2) it proceeds in the interpretive effort of human experience without the benefit of a living self-interpreting tradition relating to that very experience. As such, it poses a challenge not only to historical thought, but also to philosophical hermeneutics and hermeneutic philosophy (Gadamer Reference Gadamer and Linge1976; Davey Reference Davey2006; Figal Reference Figal2006).
It is in this respect that archaeology may be seen as providing a substantial new contribution to philosophy. A serious confrontation with Kant’s thought lies at its basis (Kant Reference Kant1781; Reference Kant1788; Reference Kant1790), but it goes beyond it too, as the notion of archaeological reason opens a different dialog with a number of modern trends of thought, from structuralism to hermeneutics. In this book I have developed some thoughts along these lines, and to these topics ample space is given in the companion website (1.3).
1.1.5 Structure
The direct confrontation with Kant was enlightening, especially because it fostered a deeper understanding of the great relevance of the concept of structure (see especially Part V). It is a notion not generally associated with Kant’s name, but I think that it opens a wide window to aspects of his thoughts that can be seen more vividly in this perspective.
While structuralism has faded as a fashion, its intellectual import remains more than valid. I argue this throughout the book: the identification of structural cohesiveness is in fact at the basis of both the grammatical and the hermeneutic approach I am proposing. It is in this regard that the use of linguistics as a heuristic model is particularly productive.
1.1.6 Archaeological Theory and Method
While the book is devoted specifically to theory and method, it does not reflect the mainstream of the discipline in this regard (see Cooney Reference Cooney2009). In the discipline, little if any attention is paid to the topics I am raising here, and conversely I do not deal explicitly with the major trends in the field. I also do not take up a confrontation with the few attempts that have been made to link directly philosophy with archaeology. Such an apparent neglect is not due to a lack of interest on my part, but only to what I perceive as the need to focus more explicitly on the central core of archaeological theory and method, a core that is not in the sight of the field.
A comprehensive approach to these other trends in the field is found in the companion website (1.3), where in addition to an extensive annotated bibliography one will find a number of different excursuses that cover precisely these parallel views on theory and method. Since the website will remain open and active, it will continue to develop further insights on these issues, thus representing a broad, collaborative effort.
1.1.7 Digitality
As with archaeological theory and method, my approach to the digital dimension in archaeology is also non-standard. This is so not so much because I do not take up the implementation aspect that is generally associated with the notion of digital archaeology, but also because, when dealing with the theoretical dimension, I emphasize aspects that are not in the forefront of current literature. Significantly, an interest in these aspects is suggested by the very effort at dealing with the archaeological record. In other words, I look at digitality from the perspective of what archeology contributes to it, rather than the other way around. What I have called (in Part IV) the “privileged venue” is not meant in the sense that digital publication is privileged over other publications, but in the sense that the archaeological record extends a benefit to digitality by virtue of the uniqueness of its nature. Thus I will propose, paradoxically as it may seem at first, the notion that archaeological thought is natively digital (13.1).
A special aspect of digitality that is tightly linked to my effort is the implementation of websites that expand in a properly digital manner the argument proposed in this book. This points to the intellectual dimension of a web-and-browser-oriented venue for the development of a scholarly argument – with an emphasis, once again, not on the technical aspect of the implementation, but rather on its methodological dimension.
1.1.8 Critique
I have taken seriously the term “critique” that appears in the title of this work. Far from catering to catchy terminology or providing a simple historical detour, the concern for a critical approach is rooted in what I perceive to be the need to establish a more solid frame of reference for the field. Qua Critique, the book is therefore propaedeutic in its attempt to provide a venue for a systemic accounting of the excavator’s observations in their totality, thereby offering the primary tool we need to achieve an adequate degree of objectivity.
The notion of archaeological reason, which is the logical counterpart of the notion of critique, is justified precisely because it arises from a “critical” awareness. Conversely, it is the confrontation with archaeology that has given rise to a deeper understanding of the central role that a critique, in the narrow sense of the term, can still play in modern thought.
1.2 The Argument
The main themes I have just described are woven into a coherent “long argument” which proceeds from a review of the basic principles and presuppositions, through a consideration of the ways in which they affect the “data” and the question of their digital embodiment, to conclude with the philosophical context within which the argument can best be situated. Below I show how the argument develops through the various parts of the book.
The formal dimension of the grammar is constitutive of the very notion of archaeology as I envisage it. In other words, grammar is by no means a mere frame for the orderly presentation of the material, but it is rather an epistemological construct that defines the very nature of the archaeological universe. This is the argument developed in the Part I of the book, which focusses on Fundamentals. The process of stratigraphic excavation entails that data are not in fact given (paradoxically, the data are not “data”! – see Hodder and Hutson Reference Hodder and Hutson2003: 146); They are the construct of the excavator’s observational itinerary (8.5). The grammar is the charter that guides this itinerary, and it is in this sense that it is constitutive of the “data.” What is “found” is really not a jar or a floor, but the spatial link between the jar and the floor – and this is not visible (hence it is not “given”) before the two are disengaged from the matrix in which they are placed, nor is it any longer visible after they have been so disengaged. Their “emplacement” is far from self-evident: it does not declare itself, but it emerges as a phenomenon (literally, something visible) only because it is so declared by the excavator. And for this declaration to be epistemologically valid (to be subject to arguable canons of knowledge, to be “scientific”) it has not only to be constructed, but to be traceable. On this rests any further claim to objectivity and meaning.
How this differs from the application of standard methods of Analysis to archaeology is discussed in Part II. The primary task of archaeology in a strict sense is the study of elements in contact in the ground, direct and indirect. At first blush, this appears to be the only task of archaeology, in the sense that it is the one that is not the purview of any other discipline. The archaeological paradox is that the data are not given as such (15.10.2); they are rather made into data at the moment they are first observed. A jar is obviously identifiable as an object with its own independent status (typologically), but it is not an archaeological object. That it becomes only when it is observed in its immediate contact with other items. Nor is the contact immediately self-evident: it is reified; i.e., made into a part of the data at the moment of the observation, a moment that is then just as immediately lost. The crux of emplacement analysis is therefore to show how to keep track of the observational itinerary in ways that are clearly defined and demonstrable. On this builds the process of depositional analysis, the two together constituting the process of stratigraphic analysis, and then in turn typological and integrative analysis, which are based on a progressively greater distance from the initial emplacement analysis.
Once the “data” have been identified (“declared”), they have to be communicated, made public, “published.” I place the term in quotes because, while it elicits primarily the notion of a presentation on paper or a digital medium, a full archaeological “publication” must entail other aspects as well, which are not usually considered under this heading. This complex of avenues through which the “data” are shared, the topic of Part III, I call the Reassembled Construct: it is an organic whole of seemingly disparate functions, that must, however, all be taken into account and declared; i.e., “published.” In this book I do not address the operational aspect (I deal with this in the companion website (1.3)). Rather I aim to show the theoretical dimension of each of these venues: how does one dispose of the elements, from discarding to storing them; how should one care for their physical preservation in function not only of a social and ethical responsibility, but also of a theoretical commitment to understanding; how should one, finally, insert the “data” so preserved in a descriptive frame that presents the viewer with an interpretive framework?
Still, it is the transfer onto a different medium that constitutes the Privileged Venue through which “data” are “published.” Typically, an archaeological report is conceived as the publication of the excavator’s understanding of a site, with the inclusion of the “data” that support that understanding. No matter how vast the repertory of data, it is not in principle a publication of the totality of the observations made. In Part IV I will develop the theoretical base as to why such a publication can only be digital – not so much in a technical sense (an electronic platform), but rather as a matter of method: a publication that is truly born digital proposes a wholly different approach to developing an argument, from its conception to its final presentation. While the Urkesh Global Record will serve as the case study that documents the realization of these goals, this book will lay out in full detail the theoretical reasoning that lies behind it.
In Part V, at the end of the “long argument” developed in the book, we go back to the starting point, namely a consideration of how it all adds up to a Critique, understood in the sense of a foundational assessment of the means of knowing and the “what” that can in fact be known. What is “archaeological reason”? Reflecting back on the paradox of the nature of the “data-not-given,” of the “phenomena” that do not manifest themselves; and, at the same time, of the validity of “declaring” data as the “thing-in-itself” that we are after, I will highlight the philosophical dimension of the approach. This takes us further into the basic question of how we can ultimately claim to attribute meaning to a broken tradition, and, on that basis, how archaeology can more deeply impact the very core of modern thought, particularly with regard to hermeneutics.
My “long argument” (12.4.1) is multi-layered, and as a result there are many links across the boundaries of the internal subdivisions. It is in the nature of things, therefore, that the same concept may be viewed differently, depending on the particular frame of reference within which it is proposed. Both the internal cross-references and the detailed topical Index at the end will hopefully help in maintaining that sense of unity that has remained a central concern of mine in developing the argument itself.
1.3 The Companion Website
I have detached from the limits of the book the supporting evidence typically given by footnotes and bibliography, and I have placed it instead in a separate, extensive website (www.critique-of-Ar.net). The reasons for this choice are not only due to space constraints, but, more importantly, to considerations regarding the nature of the digital argument (12.6.7). The website is articulated in a fluid manner: a large amount of information, and an equally large amount of interpretive sections, blend in a number of different ways, in the manner of a digital discourse that is not conceivable in a paper publication.
This website will remain open and active, and will thus serve as an ongoing repository for future research. Some of the themes that are only touched upon in this book are already developed more fully in the website, and this will grow further as more research continues within the framework of the collaborative effort that has developed around this project.
1.4 The Public Impact
Archaeology provides an ideal perspective within which to see the practical impact of theory. In and of itself, an archaeological site appeals to even the most casual visitor, who is easily induced to reflect on issues that emerge naturally from the tangible nature of the evidence. The connection with underlying questions of theory arises spontaneously; more so, to be sure, than when visiting a laboratory of physics, chemistry or even medicine. It is more akin to a planetarium or a natural park, where the concrete and aesthetically appealing nature of the subject matter similarly evokes proper epistemological questions, even when not couched in philosophical terms: the “how do you know” question arises much more readily than in other sciences, where the experience of the result is more urgent than knowing how one got there.
A visitor to an archaeological site is immediately intrigued by the process of, we might say, cultural decipherment. How do we distinguish layers; how do we date them; how we can reconstruct the function of unknown objects? All of this leads the visitors to probe the intellectual paths that have brought us to the conclusions we offer. Even when the question remains rather inarticulate in its precise formulation, there is a fundamental perception of the basic value of theory and of how it serves as the indispensable scaffolding in our effort to attribute meaning to a remote past. In fact, it is not only the remoteness that evokes interest in visitors; it is specifically the sense of separation, that we are reaching beyond a brokenness to an experience that can no longer declare itself.
It is a fascinating moment when the most abstract touches the most concrete; when, in other words, the relevance of theory emerges in full light. Even the least educated of workmen, charged only with the removal of debris, develops at some point what we may truly call an epistemological awareness. The words “epistemology” or “critique” do not certainly have any meaning for them, but the deeper import of the concept does. Analogously, “grammar” and “hermeneutics” have no resonance as words, but the substance to which they give voice matters a great deal, to all.
While in this book I remain at the level of a theoretical archaeological reason, I am profoundly aware of its impact on the common perception of archaeology; and, indeed, profoundly committed to it. In this sense the present work may be seen as a prolegomenon to a critique of archaeological practical reason, and as the supporting theoretical statement for an archaeology that is intrinsically socially aware and socially responsible.
