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Empiricist and Experimental Trends in Eastern Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

John W. Bennett
John W. Bennett*
Affiliation:
Dept. of SociologyOhio State University, ColumbusOhio
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Extract

Several exceptions have been taken recently to the use of “guess dates,“ assumptions, hypothetical sequences, the theory of cultural continuity, and other concepts in eastern and middlewestern archaeology.1 These criticisms lay bare a division of opinion on several fundamental issues of method and theory, and it is the purpose of this communication to shed some light on the conflicting views. We may at the outset indulge in some labelling, not for purposes of name-calling, but to provide handles for verbal manipulation. It is the opinion of the writer that two trends in method and theory can be distinguished: one we may call “empiricist,” the other, “experimental.” Reasons for the choice of these rather mouth-filling terms will subsequently become clearer. Also note we do not use the word “school” this term implies a company of individuals, all subscribing to a special dogma, whereas the contemporary trends actually crosscut several “schools” in archaeological thought. In many cases, individual archaeologists exemplify both of these trends in their own work.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , January 1946 , pp. 198 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1946 

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References

1 E. g.: W. Wedel, “On the Illinois Confederacy and Middle Mississippi Culture in Illinois,” American Antiquity, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1945,and A. J. Waring, Jr., “The De Luna Expedition and Southeastern Ceremonial,” American Antiquity Vol. 11, No. 1, 1945.

2 Wedel, op. cit., p. 386.

3 Cf. C. Kluckhohn, “The Conceptual Structure in Middle American Studies,” The Maya and Their Neighbors, N. Y., 1940.

4 Empiricists sometimes object that “guess dates” “get into the literature” and become fixed. This is an indictment of the lack of perspective among archaeologists in viewing their concepts as immutable, and is not an accusation of inferential dating as a poor method. Science, like the rest of culture, changes, and, as individuals, we must be more willing to recognize change. Current views only reflect certain structures in our socio-psychological makeup (prestige, etc.), and are not necessarily inherent in scientific activity.

5 Waring, op. cit., p. 57.

6 Wedel, op. cit., p. 386.

7 The history of science shows beyond doubt that the vital factor in the growth of any science is not the Baconian passive observation but the active questioning of nature, which is furthered by the multiplication of hypotheses as hypotheses.” Morris Cohen, A Preface to Logic(N. Y., 1945), p. 7.

8 Colton's “analogous types,” Rouse's constructed chronologies and “modes,” Willey's ceramic “traditions,” and the levels within the Midwest Taxonomic system are all examples.

9 Cf. Bennett, J. W., “The Development of Ethnological Theory as Illustrated by Studies of the Plains Indian Sun Dance,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 46, No. 2, 1944, pp. 176-179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar