T HE S TRUCTURE OF A RCHAEOLOGICAL I NQUIRY Archaeology, 6 th edition

This chapter will enable you to answer these questions: 1. What is an anthropological approach? 2. What two paradigms do anthropologists use to study culture, and how are these different ways of thinking reflected in archaeology? 3. What is science and how does it explain things? 4. What three levels of theory does a scientific approach in archaeology entail? How do these relate to paradigms?

Chapter Outline  What’s An Anthropological Approach?  What’s a Scientific Approach?  The Structure of Archaeological Inquiry  How Archaeological Inquiry Works

What’s An Anthropological Approach?  Anthropologists believe the best understanding of the human condition arises from a global, comparative, and holistic approach.  Anthropology, the study of all aspects of humankind – biological, cultural, and linguistic; extant and extinct– employing a holistic, comparative approach and the concept of culture.  Archaeologists are anthropologists who specialize in ancient societies, drawing upon each of the subfields of anthropology.

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: Kinds of Anthropologists Anthropology embraces four primary fields of study: Biological anthropology: views humans as biological organisms; also known as physical anthropology. Cultural anthropology: emphasizes nonbiological aspects: the learned social, linguistic, technological, and familial behaviors of humans.

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: Kinds of Anthropologists Anthropology embraces four primary fields of study: Linguistic anthropology: focuses on human language: its diversity in grammar, syntax, and lexicon; its historical development; and its relation to a culture’s perception of the world. Archaeology: the study of the past through the systematic recovery and analysis of material remains.

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: Kinds of Anthropologists  Participant observation, the primary strategy of cultural anthropology, in which data are gathered by questioning and observing people while the observer lives in their society.

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: Kinds of Anthropologists

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: The Culture Concept  Culture, an integrated system of beliefs, traditions, and customs that govern or influence a person’s behavior.  Culture is learned, shared by members of a group, and based on the ability to think in terms of symbols.

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: The Culture Concept  The concept of culture unites the subfields of anthropology.  Learned – from parents, peers, teachers, leaders, and others; not inherited  Shared – members of a human group share some basic ideas about the world and their place in it  Symbolic – meanings condition what we do, which in turn affects the material traces of those behaviors

What’s An Anthropological Approach?: How Do Anthropologists Study Culture  Ideational perspective, a research perspective that focuses on ideas, symbols, and mental structures as driving forces in shaping human behavior.  Adaptive perspective, a research perspective that emphasizes technology, ecology, demography, and economics as the key factors defining human behavior.

The Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch  Potlatch, among nineteenth-century Northwest Coast Native Americans, a ceremony involving the giving away or destruction of property in order to acquire prestige.

The Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch The term, potlatch, comes from Chinook, a Northwest Coast trade language, a language that develops among speakers of different languages to permit economic exchanges. Potlatch means “to give”

The Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch: Ideational Message The symbolic message was “This is how powerful I am. I can give all this away and it does me no harm. You can’t do that.” A successful potlatch was “doing a great thing.”

The Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch: Adaptive Strategy Allying themselves with the larger, more successful villages, villages could count on assistance in years of poor salmon runs. Large villages could forestall the possibility that smaller villages might attack. Helped shift population from less productive to more productive villages.

What’s a Scientific Approach? Science, the search for answers through a process that is objective, systematic, logical, predictive, and public.  Science is empirical, or objective, concerned with the observable, measurable world.

What’s a Scientific Approach? Questions are scientific a) if they are concerned with the detectable properties of things and b) if the result of observations designed to answer a question cannot be predetermined by the biases of the observer.

What’s A Scientific Approach?  Science is systematic and explicit, collecting data relevant to solving a problem and specifying procedures so that any trained observer under the same conditions would make the same observations.  Science is logical, working with data and ideas that link data to interpretations, and with ideas that link the ideas together; linkages are grounded in previously demonstrated principles.

What’s A Scientific Approach?  Science is explanatory and predictive, concerned with causes. It seeks theories – explanatory statements that predict what will happen under a specified set of conditions and why it will happen.  Science is self-critical and based on testing, acquiring understanding not through proof, but by showing that competing theories are wrong.  Science is public and available for scrutiny.

What’s A Scientific Approach?: How Science Explains Things The Moundbuilder Myth surrounding the mounds and earthworks, especially in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys.

What’s A Scientific Approach?: How Science Explains Things  Moundbuilders were thought to be anyone, except the ancestors of Native Americans who destroyed the people thought to be a superior race.  Thomas Jefferson did not take sides in the debate, for lack of the necessary information.

What’s A Scientific Approach?: How Science Explains Things Ephraim Squier, Edwin Davis distinguished between Moundbuilders and American Indians; They supported hypothesis that Moundbuilders were related to nations of Mexico and Central America.

What’s A Scientific Approach?: How Science Explains Things Cyrus Thomas objectively concluded there was no lost race of Moundbuilders. They were not destroyed by Native Americans, and there was no reason for Europeans to take revenge. An etched slate from Moundville, Alabama. Artifacts such as these convinced nineteenth-century scholars that the Moundbuilders were a superior culture.

The Scientific Method The following are accepted principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of secure knowledge. 1. Define a relevant problem. 2. Establish one or more hypotheses. 3. Determine the empirical implications of the hypotheses. 4. Collect appropriate data. 5. Test the hypothesis by comparing these data with the expected implications. 6. Reject, revise, and/or retest hypotheses as necessary.

The Scientific Method Hypothesis, a proposition proposed as an explanation of some phenomena. Inductive reasoning, working from specific observations to more general hypotheses.

The Scientific Method Deductive reasoning, reasoning from theory to account for specific observational or experimental results. Testability, the degree to which one’s observations and experiments can be reproduced. Theory, an explanation for observed, empirical phenomena, seeking to explain the relationships between variables; it is an answer to a “why” question.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Low-Level Theory  The observations and interpretations that emerge from hands-on archaeological field and lab work  Begins with archaeological objects and generates relevant facts or data about those objects  Data, relevant observations made on objects that then serve as the basis for study and discussion.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Low-Level Theory  Gatecliff shelter, a Nevada rockshelter.  Rockshelter, a common type of archaeological site, consisting of a rock overhang that is deep enough to provide shelter but not deep enough to be called a cave

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Low-Level Theory  Ecofacts, plant or animal remains found at an archeological site.  Feature, nonportable archaeological evidence such as fire pits, architectural elements, artifact clusters, garbage pits, and soil stains.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Middle-Level Theory  Middle Level Theory, links archaeological observations with the human behavior or natural processes that produced them.  Moves past observable to invisible, or relevant, human behaviors or natural processes of the past

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Middle-Level Theory  These are situations that require  observations of ongoing human behavior or natural processes, or  evidence of the material results of that behavior or those processes.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: High-Level Theory  High-Level Theory, seeks to answer large “why” questions.  Applies to inquiry about the human condition.  Paradigms, overarching frameworks, often unstated, for understanding a research problem.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms  Processual paradigm, explains social, economic, and cultural change as primarily the result of adaptation to material conditions;  external conditions (i.e. environment) are assumed to take causal priority over ideational factors in explaining change.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms  General systems theory, an effort to describe the properties by which all systems, including human societies, allegedly operate.  Popular in processual archaeology of the late 1960s and 1970s.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms Postprocessual paradigm, focuses on humanistic approaches and rejects scientific objectivity; concerned with interpreting the past, more than with testing hypotheses Change arises largely from interactions between individuals operating within a symbolic and/or competitive system.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms Deconstruction, efforts to expose the assumptions behind the alleged objective and systematic search for knowledge. A primary tool of postmodernism.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms  Postprocessual archaeology rejects the processual search for universal laws and emphasizes the role of the individual.  Postprocessual archaeology rejects the systemic view of culture and focuses on the ideational approach to culture.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms  Postprocessual archaeology sees knowledge as “historically situated” and not as objective as processual archaeologists argue.  Postprocessual archaeology argues that all archaeology is political.

The Structure of Archaeological Theory: Paradigms  Processual-Plus, a middle ground that believes material factors play critical roles in how human societies have changed, but does not seek universals;  seeks generalities, viewing history as the combined results of the actions of individuals.

How Archaeological Inquiry Works

1. Hypotheses must be constructed to test competing propositions. 2. Hypothesis testing requires that we reconstruct the past. 3. The archaeological narrative goes public.

Summary Questions 1. What is an anthropological approach? 2. What two paradigms do anthropologists use to study culture, and how are these different ways of thinking reflected in archaeology? 3. What is science and how does it explain things? 4. What three levels of theory does a scientific approach in archaeology entail? How do these relate to paradigms?