As promised, the following two posts will tell you more about the methodological and theoretical background of my PhD. At the risk of making for a tedious read, I nevertheless find it important to discuss the conceptual underpinnings of my research. Unfortunately, the existing literature on Bronze and Early Iron Age bird symbolism tends to rest on implicit assumptions of how material culture is ought to work within prehistoric communities, perhaps most notable in the simplistic argument that ‘weird’, that is non-functional, decorative elements must be religious (Kossack 1954; Sturm-Berger 2002). It is not so much the simplistic equation of technology with secularity, and conversely of non-technological material culture with religiosity that is the problem here (though, undoubtedly, a universalist assumption like this needs to be critiqued, but I’m afraid doing so would be far beyond the scope of this blog); what really needs to be critiqued is the implicit unquestionability with which such an argument is presented to reader. The archaeologist’s text becomes the ultimate authority: if you want to learn something about prehistory, read it, learn from it and digest it; but never question its objectivity, the holy grail of ‘truth’ it enshrines. If I were to take up this position for my own research, I could revel in bold statements, such as ‘ in the Bronze Age birds were mediators between this world and the afterlife’, ‘birds were deities within a shamanic cult’ and so on. However, this is exactly the path I don’t want to go down. There are two reasons for this: on the one hand, I’m wary of the idea that archaeology can objectively reconstruct the ‘truth’ about life in prehistoric societies. On the other hand, texts that claim to be able to do this are essentially anti-democratic. One can either accept or disprove of them, but one thing one cannot do – in fact, the most important ingredient of scientific reasoning – is discuss them. Essentially, they feed into well entrenched socio-economic power structures. Who writes archaeological texts, or rather, who writes the so called truth about human prehistory? For a sobering answer to this question you might want to check out Conkey and Spector’s (1984)classic work on gender, but also more recent discussions of archaeology’s identity in the context of global capitalism(e.g. Gilchrist 2005; Leone 1995; Shanks & McGuire 1996).
archaeological practice: an epistemological conundrum?
The problem I am dealing with in this post has been haunting archaeology for a while, now at least since the 1980s and the dawn of postprocessualsim sensu Hodder, Miller, Shanks and Tilley. In their 1987 volume ‘Re-Constructing Archaeology’ Shanks and Tilley (1987) made the challenging argument that archaeology operates as a “historically situated practice” (ibid.: 21). Hence, “we do not begin with the truth of the past, produced by the people in the past, and end with that truth revealed by the archaeologist in the archaeological text. We find our affinity with the past through our difference to it, through practice which links past and present. Truth is delivered by the interpreting archaeologist on a detour away from the past, a detour to truth.” (ibid.: 20). In other words, they openly attacked the alleged objectivity of archaeological research, in their eyes a treacherous phantom serving those in power, promulgating false consciousness par excellence. Subscribing to this view, means devoting oneself to relativism in its purest Feyerabendian manifestation, for “Truth is a mobile army of metaphors …, an incessant deciphering. It is a practice which reveals no primary truth of the past, no primary signified beneath the incrustations of interpretation, metaphor, metonym. Truth does not reside in a presentation of the past in-itself.” Thus, according to them an objective truth does not exist, and the results of scientific research are relative, that is, ideologically laden and embroiled in contrasting socio-economic interests. For archaeology this means that no matter how scientific and empirically sound its practitioners claim to be, it will never be able to produce objective information about the past. A number of primarily Marxist archaeologists have taken up this relativist position in albeit moderated form to promote particular socio-political agendas (Duke & Saitta 1998; Leone et al. 1987; Moser et al. 2002). The argument runs somewhat as follows: because archaeological practice does not take place within a contextual vacuum, removed from both the people that authoritatively exercise it as well as the contemporary interest groups of which it is part, it should have explicitly formulated socio-political aims, for Marxist archaeologists the fight against historically grounded social, racial and economical inequality. In this respect, some excellent work has been done under the label of community archaeology in North America, and the interested reader is referred to the following sources for more information (Colorado Coal Field War Project; Archaeology in Annapolis)
Now, why have I spent so many words writing about relativism, epistemology and the practice of archaeology? Well, thinking these issues through makes us aware of how we go about doing our research, by exposing both its implicit assumptions and inherent biases. Even if one isn’t an extreme relativist, one will still need to admit that archaeological practice is undertaken by people who work in particular socio-economic contexts, pursuing particular ideological and academic agendas. Hence, it becomes necessary to ask what those contexts and agendas are, and how they impinge on both the production and interpretation of archaeological data. It is transparency which, I believe, is the key to achieving relative objectivism (mind, the contradiction in terms) when producing archaeological knowledge.
However, to the same degree that I am wary of implicit objectivism, so am I dubious of extreme relativism as advocated by Tilley et al. in the early/mid-1980s. An ‘anything goes’ mindset stifles archaeological research. To overthrow old power structures in the production of archaeological knowledge, to make archaeological practice more democratic, has been (naively) mistaken with making it anarchistic. Fortunately, extreme relativism has not held sway in archaeology.
The democratisation of archaeological knowledge is a more complex and challenging endeavour than to simply hand the word over to lunatics. Contrary to what early 1980s postprocessualism proclaimed, it is not the uncompromising abolition of disciplinary boundaries and their inherent authority that makes archaeology democratic; on the contrary, at a time when Stonehenge is appropriated by self-acclaimed neo-pagans and one of the world’s oldest calendrical systems has been commodified for the purposes of a Hollywood blockbuster the question of who belongs to the archaeological community has become as important as ever. Of course, as yet there is no unambiguous answer to this question. However, there appears to be a general consensus amongst those engaged in academic (that is, institutionally bound) archaeology that their work is framed by what Alison Wylie (1993) has called ‘mitigated objectivism’. That is to say, there is a general belief that archaeology can produce objective knowledge about the past, but such knowledge is mitigated in the sense of being entangled in various socio-ideological and economic contexts. As such, mitigated objectivists – archaeologists believing in the contingency of archaeological knowledge and the resultant need to make its production as transparent as possible – distinguish themselves from fringe archaeologists methodologically, namely by drawing on the scientific method, the dialectic negotiation of objective data and high-level conceptual inferences.
In a sense, most of what I have pointed out so far is already part of the everyday practice of archaeology. Visit a lab and you will find archaeologists analysing soil samples, isotopes and DNA according to these principles. The same holds true for excavations : you wouldn’t argue that the pyramids were built by aliens unless you’d actually dig up extraterrestrial artefacts in the same context. So in sum, the production of archaeological knowledge today is defined within a objectivist paradigm which to a greater or lesser degree has been critiqued and amended by a moderated relativist position. It is the significance of the latter which I wanted to address in this section, as it not only challenges us to review the chaîne opératoire of our reasoning, but is also at the centre of an enterprise that can make archaeology more democratic, tolerant and self- reflective.
looking for the missing middle range
However, the critical observation that the production of archaeological knowledge is contingent upon a whole range of extra-academic factors, doesn’t tell us a lot about the interpretive process itself. This continues to be a problem in archaeology. The key term here is middle range theory, the kind of theory that transforms objective data into archaeological knowledge, materialised in site reports, journals, books, websites, etc. Strangely enough, while most archaeologists – even the most assertive proponents of the radical postprocessualism sensu Miller et al. – hypocritically embraced the scientific methods of the New Archaeology, its explicit engagement with middle range theory got swept under the intellectual carpet. It was in the 1960s and 1970s that archaeologists experimented with ways of linking up data and theoretical inferences. Back then the main objective was to prove and produce universal assumptions about human (pre-)history. Adhering to the maxim that data don’t speak for themselves, archaeology saw a trend of looking for ways to link up data and theory. The only way of achieving this is through analogical reasoning, and it is here that middle range theory came into play. In essence, middle range theory describes an analogical methodology that forges interpretive links between archaeological data, representing the past, and our interpretation thereof, representing the present. As such it is a way of lending authority to the latter, by making interpretations empirically verifiable. Importantly, it can only operate within a general objectivist framework in which empirical verifiability is synonymous with scholarly authority. In the preceding section I have made the point that it is particularly this empirical verifiability – the oscillation between data and interpretation – from which archaeology draws its disciplinary cohesion. Why then is it that we have lost touch with middle range theory, assuming it’s at the heart of archaeology’s identity? Well, perhaps I should rephrase the question into ‘why is it that there is no ‘good’ middle range theory out there?’ Take, for instance, the postprocessualist credo that material culture is active. It tells us absolutely nothing about how exactly material culture is active. In other words, middle range theory as we encounter it nowadays has lost the intellectual rigour that characterised its processual manifestations (e.g. cross-cultural ethnographic comparisons, computer simulations) all of which meticulously sought to answer to one important question: how exactly is material culture active? The current theoretical landscape is inundated in abstract high-level theories that might work well in sociology and philosophy, but which have yet to be reformulated to make sense in terms of how material culture works. To say that governmental authority is materially enforced through the installation of speed bumps (Latour 1994), obviously doesn’t answer the question why the latter rather than barriers or even more radical means are used to achieve the same ends. What kind of affordances render speed bumps the desired choice? Thus my personal answer to the question as to why we lack ‘good’ middle range theories is as follows: I reserve the predicate ‘good’ for middle range theories that help me understand how and why people used material culture in particular ways. To gain such understanding, archaeological research needs to refine our understanding of the different ways, or ‘channels’, that inform the production, use and consumption of material culture. The well-regurgitated maxim that material culture is active only makes sense if we ask ‘how’ in the same breath – that is, how is it active, how does it work. Unfortunately, archaeologists nowadays rarely ask these questions; instead, what we are seeing is a trend to complicate archaeology by indulging in a whole battery of high-level theories, none of which is able to convincingly answer the above questions. It is a rather tragic paradox we’re struggling with – epistemologically, we call ourselves mitigated objectivists, yet it is objectivism – or rather how we deal with it – that makes today’s archaeology a Sisyphean task; once we’ve pushed the latest theory on the mountain of disciplinary acceptance, we realise it doesn’t tell us anything, and so it rolls down again.
a new middle range
Against this background, I have deliberately modelled my research around the question of how bird symbolism was an active agent in Bronze and Early Iron Age material culture. In other words, how was it made to work? A useful source of inspiration in this respect was Henare et al.’s (2007) edited volume ‘Thinking Through Things’. The contributors to this volume set out from the notion that material culture needs to be studied in its own right, thus not degrading it to a mere gap filler, that is, supportive evidence in the construction of a grand narrative of how material culture is ought to work. Notably, this position hinges on the universalist assumption that material culture is active in that, as externalised culture, it recursively feeds back into the negotiation of social relationships and cultural life. However, in placing the emphasis on thinking through things, Henare et al. take the argument beyond the anthropological dogma that material is active by asking how it is active. What does it do, how does it work?
Whilst reading this volume has been a useful source of inspiration for my own research, I had to realise that its use for archaeology is limited. Its exclusive focus on the ethnographic present means that informants could be consulted as an additional source of information. Such information could then be used reflectively to investigate how artefacts are active. Obviously, as archaeologists we do not have the luxury of informants, meaning that if we are to follow this approach we need a different point of reference. And this is where my research enters somewhat unchartered land. I have the idea that material culture is produced and designed through different channels of intentionality. For example, just take a minute and have a look at this online IKEA catalogue. You will notice that the design of the faked rooms is perfectly tuned, there’s nothing out of order, it all chimes well. The design emphasis, or intentionality in the set-up of the room is one of homogeneity, achieved through the use of similar colour patterns. Design here is ‘flat’, nothing stands out. By contrast, have a look at this room advertised by the Propeller Island City Lodge, a Berlin based hotel. Here nothing seems to match, everything is out of order. Materially, this is achieved through inhomogeneous colours, as well as the different shapes and sizes of the furniture. What is relevant to archaeology here is that the design of material culture is in tune with the wider socio-cultural concepts represented by IKEA and the hotel respectively. While IKEA through its homogeneous rooms presents itself as orderly, Propeller Island City Lodge evokes the impression of disorder and chaos. Underlying these concepts are more general (doxatic) schemes (Bourdieu 1977), IKEA producing family culture, synonymous with order and stability, the hotel rooms feeding into the counter-culture movement of material chaos and disorderly consumption. In choosing this example, however, I have cheated by citing material culture, part of whose intended meaning is obvious in written form (IKEA’s website, for instance, is full of references to family culture, whilst the Propeller Island City Lodge website heralds itself as “a magnet for creative individuals, those weary of consumption, those who see things differently, philosophers and seekers of perspective and vision”). In archaeology, these information need to be gained from contextual analysis. For the purposes of my research, the latter may take two tiers: first, a closer engagement with the archaeological context of bird representations; 2) ethnographic analogies. The context in which bird representations were deposited tells us something about their socio-material constitution, that is the kinds of social personae they created in association with other types of material culture. John Robb (2004) coined the term ‘extended artefact’ to approach this type of contextual analysis. The agency of an artefact is situated in its relationship with social agents, including people, animals and other artefacts; material agency is thus relational and not some ominous spirit-like entity inherent in an artefact itself. Thus, a closer look at the contextual relationships of bird representations may help us learn more about how they were active. Were bird representations with a flat (i.e. subtle, homogeneous) design treated differently upon deposition compared to bird representations with a more flamboyant design? Questions like this will shed light on how bird representations were constituted as active agents in Bronze and Early Iron Age societies. Ethnographic analogies, on the other hand, provide a complimentary source of information on this matter. Here, however, it is important not to succumb to the ‘tyranny of the ethnographic present’ (Wobst 1978) by uncritically forging interpretive links between prehistoric and contemporary communities. The emphasis here is on complimentary source of information, providing a set of useful tools for thinking about the cultural meaning of bird representations.
The overall analytical methodology of this interpretive process is summarised in Figure 1. Essentially, the meaning of bird representations in Bronze and Early Iron Age societies is conceptualised as the amalgamated result of different design strategies activated across different (depositional) contexts.
Figure 1: provisional methodology
The critical reader will have noticed that much of what I have said so far goes without saying. Archaeologists have always analysed and interpreted artefacts in relation to their depositional context and with reference to ethnographic analogies. Moreover, up to the present day there continues to be a strong interest in the design features of artefacts, typology and seriation being the pinnacles of this long-lasting trend. Likewise, the notion that material culture is active has been regurgitated to a point of becoming paradigmatic. However, where my research parts, or rather goes beyond these approaches, is in bringing them all together. For me the driving question is ‘how is material culture active?‘. When dealing with this question seriously it becomes necessary to look at the intended design of material culture, its use and actualisation in different socio-cultural settings (partly accessible through an analysis of depositional contexts), and to complement and contextualise the inferred significance ethnographically. Essentially, what I have been arguing for is a new middle range theory, a way of linking archaeological data with ideas of how society and material culture interrelate. In my next entry I will talk more about the socio-anthropological theories that frame this middle range theory. Until then you can follow my research on Twitter. Thanks if you were patient enough to read this post, and I’m looking forward to comments and discussions.
References
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