| ARCHAEOLOGY, NATIONALISM, AND PROBLEMS
POSED BY SCIENCE/VALUES, EPISTEMOLOGY/ ONTOLOGY
DICHOTOMIES
Stephanie Koerner (University of Manchester,
UK)
Stephanie.Koerner@man.ac.uk
Let us not begin at the beginning or even
the archive...But rather at the word ‘archive’
- and with the archive of so familiar a
word. Archae, we recall, names at once a
commencement and the commandment. This name
apparently co-ordinates two principles in
one: the principle according to nature or
history, there where things commence - physical,
historical, or ontological principle - but
also the principle according to the law,
there where men and gods command, there
where authority, social order are exercised.
In this place from which order is given
- nomological principle...There, we said,
and in this place. How are we to think of
there? And this taking place or this having
a place of the archae?...We have there two
orders of order: sequential and jussive.
From this point on, a series of cleavages
will incessantly divide every atom of our
lexicon (Derrida 1995:1-2).
Introduction
What follows will:
1. describe
some of the ideas and goals motivating a
session organized by Stephanie Koerner and
Marek Zvelebil for this year’s meeting of
the European Association of Archaeologists
in Esslingen, Germany, (http://www.esslingen,de/eaa2001/e-a-a-d.html);
2. outline
issues posed in discussions of relations
between archaeology and political ideology,
and the usefulness of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic
identity’ as conceptual tools; and
3. offer
some suggestions concerning archaeology’s
relevance to the general critique of the
dualist ‘meta-narratives’ that have been
predominant in the human sciences and philosophy
for over 200 years.
Archaeology and nationalism in historical
perspective
It is difficult to find a more controversial
subject in the human sciences and philosophy
than relationships between archaeology and
nationalism. In their introduction
to a collection of studies entitled
Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of
Archaeology (Kohl and Fawcett eds. 1995:3),
the editors note that it might be argued
that “there is an almost unavoidable or
natural relationship between archaeology
and nationalism...and that this relationship
is not necessarily corrupt or intrinsically
suspect.” But it is clear to these
and many other authors that traditional
theories about divisions between “a non-political,
value free archaeology” and its sociohistorical
context do not offer satisfactory approaches
(Díaz-Andreu and Champion 1996). Some
researchers suggest that we should also
explore the sociohistorical preconditions
of these theories, and examples of the ways
in which they have been manipulated for
political purposes.
Kohl and Fawcett (1995) note that blatant
manipulation of archaeological materials
has long been particular acute in areas
of the world experiencing “ethnic wars”.
The complexity of the roles played by notions
of ‘national’ and ‘ethnic identity’ in problematic
nineteenth and twentieth century relationships
between archaeology and political conflict
is difficult to overstate. There are many
examples of projects that were motivated
by ideas that archaeological evidence could
support claims about ethnic superiority
and inferiority. In many cases, ‘culture’
was treated as the most definitive trait
of human beings and ‘race’ as the mechanism
for its biological transmission. In
ideologies that associated claims about
ethnic superiority with arguments concerning
who is to be included and who is to be excluded
from the moral community, these kinds of
generalizations have played key roles (for
an very influential example, see Rosenberg
1930).
Deeply ethical, and not just academic issues
are as stake (cf. Gaitta 2000). The misuse
of archaeology has accompanied (and continues
to occur alongside) crimes against humanity.
Studies of the circumstances which make
these kinds of relations between knowledge
and power possible are relevant to the wider
critique of racist, classist, and sexist
paradigms, and concerns to develop alternatives
to paradigms structured around traditional
science/values dichotomies (see, for examples,
Biagioli ed. 1999).
Much additional research is needed on the
ways in which ancient conceptions of ‘ethnicity,’
and of a ‘nation’ as a ‘people,’ were opened
to new interpretations in the course of
the Enlightenment and Romantic movements.
In the most influential pre-modern interpretations,
a ‘nation’ was a ‘people’ unified by common
ancestry and place of origins (‘homeland’);
and a set of shared cultural ‘traits’
(history’s ‘present witness’), including
language, laws and customs, beliefs, values
– i.e., tradition or sensus communis.
For late medieval, Renaissance and early
modern scholars, the most significant examples
were the Hebrews, the Greeks, Chadeans,
Sythians, Phoenecians, Egyptians, Romans,
and Germani (see, for instance, Valla [1540]
1962; Bacon’s [1561-1626] writings “On the
Wisdom of the Ancients” 1963; Giambattista
Vico’s [1668-1744] New Science of the
Common Nature of the Nations 1984, and,
on Newton’s [1642-1727] approach, Manuel
1959). Absent from these ideas (and
the social contexts in which they developed)
were modern notions of a nation-state and
its citizens, and the social circumstances
which made their ideological significance
possible.
Sorensøn (1996) and others emphasize that
in order to understand archaeology’s relations
to nationalist political ideologies (and
the ideological roles of ‘ethnicity’ [Anderson
1983; Just 1989; Llobera 1989]) one needs
to take historical factors into consideration.
Sorensøn (1996:27) says that “nationalism’...is
a bonding relationship created between the
nation-state and the individual aimed at
creating a desired sense of belonging, attachment,
of being an insider. Through this, individuals
become members or citizens...of a nation
in such a way that this belonging in principle
cross-cuts other social groupings such as
gender, class, and ethnicity.” These
‘bonding relations’ are historically contingent.
It is a long way indeed from Thomas Hobbes’
(1588-1679) abstract notion of a nation-state
and its citizens (the Leviathan
[1651] 1978) to nineteenth and twentieth
century nation-states (Blumenberg 1983;
Elias [1939] 1994; Foucault 1974) . Enlightenment
and Romantic (1) ideas about an individual
subject and its relation to the object world;
(2) theories about human nature, history,
knowledge; and (3) new interpretations of
ancient notions of a ‘nation’ as a ‘people’
played important roles in the development
of modern ideas about nation-states and
citizens. But the political efficacy of
these ideas cannot be understood apart from
the profound sociocultural transformations
(of fundamental relations of thought and
practice, and of knowledge to power) they
became involved with.
There are significant differences between
Enlightenment and Romantic interpretations
of such concepts as ‘nations,’ ‘peoples,’
‘ethnic groups,’ ‘culture’, ‘tradition,’
and others which have been involved
in relations between archaeology and nationalism.
Although a detailed discussion lies beyond
the scope of this article, one point can
be emphasized. Although the ‘Leviathan’
has taken a great variety of forms, we can
discern two general groups in relation to
the traits which distinguish two ancient
models of political leadership and pedagogy,
namely: (1) the ‘rational philosopher king’
and (2) the ‘poet orator chief.’
For our present purposes, I call our attention
to the relevance of opposing interpretations
of ancient conceptions of ‘nations’ as ‘peoples’
to an appreciation of Trigger’s (1995) argument
against restricting studies of nationalism
and archaeology to programs structured around
notions of ‘ethnic identity’ rooted in Romantic
political philosophy. In “Alternative
Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist,
Imperialist” (1984), Trigger compares three
types of relationships between political
ideology and paradigms for research.
His comparison makes clear that such relationships
have not been restricted to contexts in
which archaeology was used to support claims
about the historical significance of supposed
ancestors of modern ethnic groups/nations.
Archaeology has also been associated with
colonialist and imperialist meta-narratives
concerning European and/or Western culture’s
contributions to the expansion of Christian
Revelation; the ‘triumph’ of Reason; and
the supposed level of ‘social progress’
which had been achieved in the ‘course’
of human history. Claims about cultural
(and, oftentimes, racial) superiority figured
essentially in these meta-narratives.
Since the 1980s, ‘ethnicity’ has become
an increasingly popular conceptual tool
in archaeology (as well as in several other
human sciences) especially for characterizing
the diverse dynamic nature of ‘cultural
identities’ (Tonkin et al. 1989;
Thomas 1996; Jones 1997; Geertz 2000). This,
not only in studies of the modern world,
but also of the ancient human past (Shennen
ed. 1989; Graves-Brown, Jones, and Gamble
eds. 1996). Responses have been diverse,
including debates over (1) whether notions
of ‘ethnic identity’ and ‘diversity’ are
suitable for studies of pre-state or pre-empire
societies (or even pre-modern societies);
(2) whether relations between archaeology
and political ideals and goals are necessarily
negative; and (3) what these relations imply
for archaeology’s ‘objectivity’. A
number of the papers that will be presented
in the EAA-2001 session have bearing on
these issues.
Despite the diversity of positions on the
first point, there seems to be an agreement
on the importance of avoiding (indeed of
challenging) notions of ‘ethnicity’ which
conflate biology, language, and cultural
history (Zvelebil 1996). In addition
to this difference between early 20th century
(in particular 1920-1945) and present day
conceptions of ‘ethnicity,’ the former were
highly deterministic, emphasizing the impact
on human thought and behavior of ideological
tradition and customs (oftentimes also of
‘race’, ‘blood and soil’, and other supposed
biological transmitters of culture).
In contrast, as Wolf (2001:410) pointed
out, the recent emphasis on “ethnicity has
fastened on the ways in which such groups
and entities arise and define themselves
as against others also engaged in the process
of self definition. There is hardly
a study now that does not describe how locals
use ‘agency’ to ‘construct themselves’ in
relation to power and interest.”
This new orientation has bearing upon debates
over whether relations between archaeology
and nationalist political ideals are necessarily
negative. Trigger says that they do not
need not be, and cites as an example nineteenth
and early twentieth century culture-historical
paradigms. According to Trigger (1995:269),
“[n]ationalism had a positive effect on
archaeology insomuch as it encouraged archaeologists
to trace spatial variations in the archaeological
record more systematically than they had
done previously. Such variations had
generally been ignored by unilinear evolutionists.”
More broadly, Trigger (1995:277) argues
for an appreciation of the diversity of
forms relations between political interests
and archaeology have taken, noting that
“nationalism, by promoting groups identity
has played many different roles during the
last 250 years.”
The main impact of nationalism has been
to influence the questions about the past
that archaeologists are prepared to ask
or not ask and the amount of evidence that
is required to sustain a particular position.
On the positive side, nationalist archaeology
has stimulated asking questions about local
cultural configurations and ethnicity that
evolutionary and colonially oriented archaeologists
did not consider worthwhile. On the negative
side, it has encouraged the misinterpretation
of archaeological data for political purposes
and ignoring equally important aspects of
human history. While it is possible
to identify some of the conditions that
are favorable to the development of nationalist
archaeology, the relations between archaeology
and nationalism are complex and unpredictable
(Trigger 1995:212).
One of the issues posed is that of the
usefulness of combining ideas about ‘ethnicity’
with discourse concerning ‘agency’ and construal
of ‘group identity’. This, for example,
in order to throw light on aspects of the
past which have been obscured (or ‘rendered
invisible’) by both strongly materialist
(‘neo-evolutionary’) and idealist (culture
history) paradigms. While many researchers
find this combination productive, others
have reservations. For example, Wolf
(2001), felt that a key problem is that
it is
unduly volunteristic, like a ‘little engine
that could’ of American children’s literature
- the little locomotive that can accomplish
feats of strength through the application
of willpower. To quote an older anthropologist,
‘men make their own history, but they do
not make it in they please.’ There is too
much talk about agency and resistance and
too little talk about how groups mobilize,
shape and reshape cultural repertoires and
are shaped by them in turn; how groups shape
and reshape their self images to elicit
participation and commitment and are themselves
shaped by these representations; how groups
mobilize and deploy resources but do not
do this ‘just as they please,’ either in
the course of mobilization or in the wake
of the effects they so create (Wolf 2001:411).
Wolf’s comment raises, in my view, interesting
questions: (1) Can we expect to find promising
solutions to problems created by one set
of predominant 20th century dualist paradigms
among the key conceptual tools of their
opposites? (2) Does combining in the
name of a new lexical gestalt what were
hitherto antithetical vocabularies force
studies to remain (one way to put this is)
‘on the surface’ of the discourse and subject
matter? (3) Would our studies be more
useful if they challenged the premisses
on which these vocabularies hinge?
Trigger’s observation is instructive.
European thought has been dominated for
over 200 years by a pervasive dichotomy
between rationalism, universalism and positivism
on the one hand and romanticism, particularism
(or ‘alterity’), and idealism on the other.
The first of the philosophical packages
was initially associated with French liberalism,
the second with German reaction [Dumont
1991]. Both ethnic nationalism and post-modernism
(which is the essence of post-processualism)
are products of the romantic side of the
polarity” (Trigger 1995:263).
At the very least, Trigger’s comment is
useful for understanding why initial discussions
of archaeology and nationalist political
ideologies led so often to interminable
disputes over opposing positions on ‘objectivity.’
They also suggest points of articulation
between discussions of archaeology and nationalism
and the widening range of issues posed by
the critique of dualist meta-narratives
which have been predominant in the human
sciences and philosophy for well over 200
years. In the discussion period of the EAA-2001
session we will consider this subject in
light of (1) the ways in which dualist epistemologies
and essentialist ontologies obscure the
diversity not just of past, but also present
day ways of life and future conditions of
possibility; (2) the question of how to
best re-conceptualize objectivity in light
of implausible divisions between science
and values; (3) the bearing current perspectives
on unity and disunity models of science
may have upon archaeology and nationalism
debates; (4) archaeology’s relevance to
the challenges facing attempts to carry
forward promising constructive implications
of the critique of meta-narratives.
Alternatives to subject/object, science/values,
epistemology/ontology dichotomies
During the second half of the twentieth
century western intellectual culture began
to undergo very fundamental change. An wide
range of factors have been involved, including
sociohistorical and ecological developments
motivating public debates over such themes
as globalization, multiculturalism, sustainable
development - as well as our discussions
of archaeology and nationalism. Throughout
the human sciences and philosophy there
is much interest in examining (or deconstructing)
the epistemological and ontological premisses
(meta-narratives, metaphysical principles)
underpinning the modern notion of a transcendental,
timeless, and placeless human nature (Subject)
which functioned for many scholars as a
universally valid foundation for understanding
all human thought and behavior (cf. Descartes
[1596-1650] 1995). These concerns have powerful
ethical and sociopolitical implications.
They challenge claims about the existence
of an a-historical standpoint from which
it is possible to make ‘objective’ judgements
about reason, knowledge, appropriate action,
and what is definitive (the essence) of
being human.
The issues posed have become the focus of
much debate throughout the human sciences
and philosophy. Unfortunately, until quite
recently, little attention was given to
constructive implications. Discussion
has been recurrently locked into polemical
disputes over absolutism versus relativism,
foundationalism versus fragmentationism.
The situation has begun to change - giving
rise to the numerous recent publications
structured around the idea of ‘going beyond’
meta-narratives, and polemical debates over
objectivism and relativism. An important
factor has been awareness of the assumptions
and consequences these positions share in
common. For over two centuries, the
predominant paradigms for human sciences
and philosophy have been structured around
a series of dualist categories, including
those of subject/object, nature/culture,
philosophy/history, symbol/function, individual/social
system, science/values, epistemology/ontology,
Western/Non-Western. Some of these
terms are of great antiquity. But
the ways in which they are defined today
differ in fundamental respects from the
ways in which they were interpreted, for
example, in antiquity, the Middle Ages,
Renaissance and in early modern times.
Today’s most influential definitions are
rooted in Enlightenment and Romantic ideal
views of the Scientific Revolution and Birth
of Modernity. For over two centuries,
the dichotomies on which these meta-narratives
are based have figured essentially in the
ways in which many human scientists and
philosophers conceptualize contrasts between
(1) human and physical sciences; (2) opposing
theories about human nature, history, and
knowledge; and (3) between modern Western
culture and both its premodern past and
all so called ‘Other’ cultures. The
most influential nineteenth and twentieth
century paradigms for archaeological research
have hinged on Enlightenment and Romantic
interpretations of these narratives and
dichotomies. Opposing theories about human
nature, history, and the conditions of archaeological
knowledge (the nature of the archaeological
‘record’) play key roles in nationalist,
colonialist, and imperialist archaeologies.
Not surprisingly, programs structured around
“rationalism, universalism and positivism”
and on “romanticism, particularism,...and
idealism” (Trigger 1984) have had comparable
consequences.
Another factor has been the development
of new perspectives on the opposition between
unity and fragmentationist models of science
(Galison and Stump 1994). Current
studies indicate that it is not possible
to articulate strongly fragmentationist
positions without a metaphysical conception
of unity (Elkana 1978; Dupré 1993). Importantly,
the notion that these are the only available
positions is being called into question
(Bernstein 1983, Wylie 1994; Longino 1990,
1998; McGuire and Tushanska 2001).
Positivism and relativism take contrasting
perspectives on one model of the task of
a philosophically salient science, and corresponding
perspectives on science and values.
There have long been alternatives.
In Cosmopolis. The Hidden Agenda of Modernity
(1990:192), Stephen Toulmin explains that
the history of western intellectual culture
has seen a series of oscillations between
at least two very different agendas.
In one, the task is to explain all subjects
in as general abstract terms as possible.
Critical to this agenda is the division
of epistemology from ontology, and the idea
of an essential ontological distinction
between science and values. This view is
shared by strongly objectivist and fragmentationist
positions. Major differences among
the former follow from contrasting theories
about how this task is to be realized, while
the latter deny that it can be realized
and disagree on reasons why not. In addition,
the former insist that the objectivity of
science hinges on its separation from values
and social interests, while the later claim
that science is nothing but these all the
way down.
In the alternative agenda, the task of a
philosophically salient science is to develop
methods and interpretive principles which
are as general as is appropriate to the
nature of the subject matter studied (Toulmin
1990:192). This challenges notions of an
a-historical scientific unity and essentialist
divisions between science and values.
But it does not claim that no socially constituted
and historically contingent unifying patterns
exist. These patterns develop in relation
to the subjects being investigated, which
have (as Bohr 1963 put it) a concrete phenomenal
reality (Bohr 1963a:117; 1963b:59-60; Barad
1999). This approach makes no absolutist
claims about whether the study of such phenomenal
realities can or cannot be divided ontologically
from social values and interests.
Within a community of practitioners it is
possible to reach a consensus about criteria
for making such distinctions. The
approach grants that making such distinctions
involves values, but emphasizes the
epistemological, cognitive and ethical advantages
of accepting this instead of denying it
on the basis of metaphysical ideal models
of objectivity (cf. Koerner and Gassón 2000;
Koerner forthcoming).
It is worthwhile to emphasize that this
approach involves not only alternative theories
of knowledge to those on which opposing
positivist and fragmentationist positions
depend (epistemologies structured around
such dualist dichotomies as those listed
above). It abandons at one and the
same time essentialist ontologies and the
epistemology/ontology, and science/values
dichotomies on which metaphysics hinges.
At least since Descartes [1596-1650], all
dualist epistemologies depart from the Subject/Object
opposition, and then by occupying one of
the two sides (and using the above noted
dichotomies) enquire into the nature, limits
and validity of the other.
As McGuire and Tushanska (2001) have shown,
all dualist ontologies stretch between the
timeless permanence of Parmenidean Being
and the pure flux of Heraclitus. Within
this scheme, the problem is of course that
of explaining change; and one way in which
Aristotle approached the problem was in
terms of the question: If something can
be said to change, what is the essence of
that something? There are three possible
answers: (1) the unchanging aspect; (2)
the changing aspect; and (3) both, that
is the interaction of changing and unchanging
aspects (cf. van der Leeuw 1992).
In traditions based on the first of the
two above mentioned perspectives on the
task of a philosophically salient science
(a view Aristotle appears in many of his
works to have shared) the focus must be
on the first of these answers and, indeed,
the later two should be reducible to it.
Ontologies concern being (what is) and within
the universalizing perspective on the task
of science we are considering, the task
of ontology is to provide answers to such
questions as: “What items exist?,” “What
are the essences or underlying substances
that make these items what they are?,” “What
distinguishes these items from one another?”
“What are the timeless substances which
distinguish different categories or types
of items?” (McGuire and Tushanska 2001).
In essentialist (or substance) ontologies
items are bearers (instantiations) of pre-existing
timeless substances. In this view, history
is an especially problematic imperfection.
It is a form of change that takes place
only at the level of perception, not at
the level of what things are essentially
at all times.
Metaphysics (or meta-narratives) is one
of the consequences of this mode of reasoning,
since the search for essences requires the
analytic purification of entities by abstraction
and idealization. That is, they must
be deprived of all factual and empirical
properties (facticity) considered unnecessary
from the metaphysical point of view. Aristotle’s
models of form/matter and four causes are
examples, as are Descartes’ division between
the mind (a thinking thing) of the subject
and all of the rest the object world (an
extended thing) and model, cogito ergo
sum.
By contrast with all this, the view that
the task of a philosophically salient science
is to account for things in as general terms
as is appropriate to the subject at hand
can do without the divisions between epistemology
and ontology which impede the development
of dynamic relational ontologies. Such an
ontology is important to Bohr’s (1963a,
1963b) conception of concrete phenomenal
realities; and would seem to be relevant
to the issues posed by Wolf (2001) and Trigger
(1995) in passages from their work quoted
above. It would seem likewise relevant to
the broader critique of the ways in which
dualist meta-narrative obscure (render invisible)
the diversity of humanity. In the lights
of a dynamic relational ontology, McGuire
and Tushanska explain:
being cannot be considered in a substantialist
matter, as a substance, as a sum of given
(empirical) features, structures, or relations
- even if they are not treated statically
but as dialectically related. Being
is constituted in the course of being, existing,
and our understanding [interpretation] of
it is itself an act of being. From this
standpoint, ‘to be’ does not mean to be
‘this particular thing’ or ‘to belong to
a given category”; ‘to be’ means ‘to act
upon’ and ‘to be acted upon,’ or ‘to constitute
oneself/itself’ and ‘to be constituted.’
Being cannot be separated from acting and
from becoming this or that in the course
of acting. Any entity is constituted
by its ways of being, and the latter are
established in the course of its ongoing
activity (McGuire and Tuschanska
2001:96).
This perspective on the task of a philosophically
salient science (together with its epistemological
and ontological implications) is likely
to be relevant to the challenges facing
attempts to carry forward some of the promising
implications of the critique of meta-narratives.
It also relates to archaeology’s relevance
to these attempts. I need to add a point
here. Some comparisons can be made between
the dynamic relational ontological framework
I begin to outline here and the philosophical
approaches put forward by, for example,
Martin Heidegger ([1926] 1962). However,
instead of being structured around the “Being”
(Dasein) and “finitude” dichotomy,
the framework I am arguing for gives, for
instance, (1) the diversity of forms taken
by sociability of human agency, (2) the
roles of material culture in the constitution
of the thought-practice, knowledge-power
relations (which make the self-constitution
of agency possible), and (3) the historicity
of ecologies, technologies and embodied
skills and disciplines, and certainly of
human and nonhuman communities key ontological
roles (cf. Heidegger 1977).
Along with abandoning the division between
epistemology and ontology on which metaphysics
(and traditional relations between human
sciences and philosophy) hinge, the proposed
relational ontology emphasizes not a received
philosophy, but the philosophical significance
of human sciences - in particular, of archaeology.
Ways ahead
We will return to this subject shortly
in order to focus attention on its implications
for understanding diversity among the forms
relations between nationalism and archaeology
have taken, and might take in the future.
First let us consider the ways in which
the presently-discussed approach to the
task of a philosophically-salient science
relates to arguments put forward by Alison
Wylie in a paper entitled, “A Proliferation
of New Archaeologies: Beyond Objectivism
and Relativism” (1994). Wylie (1994:22)
is an influential feminist critic of traditional
positivist philosophies, but in this paper
she focuses on the consequences of strongly
social constructivist arguments that since
‘facts’ are socially determined, all claims
about the past are equally speculative,
and so, “it would seem, are any of the criteria
of adequacy or grounds that might be used
to judge competing knowledge claims.”
These arguments hinge upon the fragmentationist
models of science outlined above and, in
the view they offer, all claims about the
past are equally valid. Within this
view, for instance, the claims about the
past made by (to use Trigger’s 1984 terms)
nationalist, imperialist, and colonist paradigms
are no less valid than any alternative interpretation
we might try to develop. Wylie says that
one of the problematic consequences is that
they prevent us from acknowledging that
theoretical commitments do not monolithically
control both the interpretation of archaeological
data as evidence and the generation of reconstructive
hypotheses which these data might be expected
to test. In any given reconstructive-evaluative
argument, it will be necessary to exploit
a range of different independent
sources to accomplish these diverse tasks.
It is the independence of sources, and therefore
the constituent arguments about evidential
significance, which ensures that the strands
of the resulting cables are not just mutually
reinforcing but are also, and crucially,
mutually constraining (Wylie 1994:25).
Wylie’s work draws insights from Richard
Bernstein’s book Beyond Objectivism and
Relativism (1983). The ideas most relevant
to our present concerns come from Carl Sanders
Peirce. Bernstein writes:
The philosopher who most carefully and
penetratingly distinguishes epistemological
skepticism from human fallibilism is Charles
Sanders Pierce. Pierce criticized
the picture of scientific reasoning that
represents it as linear movement from premisses
to conclusions or from individual facts
to generalizations. In its place,
Pierce proposed an approach that emphasized
the multiple strands and diverse types of
evidence, data, hunches and arguments used
to support a scientific hypothesis or theory.
Any one of these strands may be weak in
itself and insufficient to support the proposed
theory. But collectively they provide
a stronger warrant for rational belief than
any single line of argument--like a strong
cable that is made up of many weak strands.
This shift in characterization of scientific
argumentation related to Peirce’s emphasis
on the community of inquirers. For
it is only in and through such a critical
community that one can adequately test the
collective strength of multiple argumentation
(Berstein 1983:69).
Pierce’s (1931-1935, 1958) work figures
importantly in the history of alternatives
to universalizing conceptions of the task
of a philosophically salient science, and
has direct bearing upon concerns to go beyond
positivist and relativist archaeologies.
Instead of appealing to metaphysical divisions
of science from values, he offers a framework
for investigating the concrete historical
conditions under which a community of inquirers
might come to a consensus about criteria
for drawing such distinctions. Of course
this consensus involves values, as does
Pierce’s framework for illuminating their
conditions of possibility. In so doing
his work brings light to the cognitive and
ethical advantages of abandoning the traditional
science/values dichotomy (and the division
between epistemology and ontology on which
it depends). It points to the need
of change in relations between human sciences,
philosophy, and social affairs, and the
relevance to the problem of the philosophical
significance of human sciences.
Let us return to the suggestion that archaeology
may be have critical bearing upon challenges
facing attempts to pursue some of the most
promising implications of the critique of
meta-narratives. One of the problematic
areas of anomaly in the literature on archaeology
and nationalism is that which has emerged
out of how ill-equipped we are to relate
the specifics of the subject to the ways
in which we talk about the world we live
in today. Among the factors contributing
to the problem are the following: The roles
we considered earlier played by dualist
categories in the ways in which predominant
paradigms for the human sciences and philosophy
characterize contrasts between (1.1) human
and physical sciences (interpretation and
explanation); (1.2) opposing theories about
human nature and history (relating to models
of the ‘philosopher king’ or the ‘poet orator’);
(1.3) theories of knowledge (cf. Trigger
[1995:263] “rationalism, universalism and
positivism” versus “romanticism, particularism,...and
idealism”); and (1.4) between modern Western
culture and all pre-modern Western and ‘Other’
cultures. (2) Another factor is the
role played by the science/values dichotomy
in the ways in which we talk about archaeology/nationalism.
(3) And third, there are the ways in which
discourse on archaeology and nationalism
incorporates vocabularies traditionally
associated with the supposed problem (debated
since Plato and again in this century since
Weber [1946]) that successive attempts to
purge politics of myth - and philosophy
of Idols (as Bacon put it) - have failed.
Since earliest antiquity this supposed problem
has figured centrally in debate between
‘ancients and the moderns’ (Funkenstein
1996). It figured centrally in debates
between early Renaissance humanists and
exponents of traditional Scholastic metaphysics,
Reformationists and Counter Reformationists,
and the modernists and anti-modernists of
the Enlightenment and Romantic movements.
During the nineteenth century and twentieth
it has been both blamed and applauded (depending
on sides of the rationalism versus romanticism
yardstick) for the failure of the world
to become ‘disenchanted.’ It is not
altogether surprising that we find some
of the most polemical debates over competing
late twentieth century paradigms for archaeological
research expressed in this idiom.
Most recently Latour has attempted to broach
a range of issues of even greater scale
in Pandora's Hope, Essays on the Reality
of Science Studies (2000). It suffices,
for our purposes here, to focus on his key
argument in earlier works. Latour (1993:56)
says that we could address many of the problems
summarized under the expression of the ‘Great
Divide’ differently if we realized that
“we never were modern” - we never met the
standards of dualist meta-narratives - nobody
ever has. We could address problems
in new ways if we discovered that no society
- and especially not our own - lives
in a world,
in which Nature can be separated from Society
and pure phenomena can be disembedded from
the things in themselves. All nature-cultures
are similar in that they simultaneously
construct humans, divinities, and non-humans
[‘actants’]. None of them lives in a world
of signs or symbols arbitrarily imposed
onto an external Nature known to us alone
(Latour 1993:106). None of them - and especially
not our own - lives in a world...in which
Nature can be separated from Society and
pure phenomena can be disembedded
from the things in themselves (Latour
1993:56).... All of them sort out what bears
signs and what will not. If there
is one thing we do, it is surely that we
construct both our human collectivities
and the nonhumans that surround them.
In constituting their collectivities, some
societies mobilize ancestors, lions, fixed
stars and the coagulated blood of sacrifice;
in ours, we mobilize genetics, zoology,
cosmology, and hematology (Latour 1993:106)....
The fact that one society needs ancestors
and fixed stars, while another one, more
eccentric, needs genes and quasars, relates
to the dimensions of the collective to be
held together. The relation of modern
scientific knowledge and power does not
differ in that by dividing Nature from Society
it has at last escaped the influences of
the latter, but in that it has demanded
increased numbers of nature-culture hybrids
to recompose its social networks and extend
their scale (Latour 1993:9).
One of the remarkable things about our discussions
of nationalism and archeology is how poorly
equipped we are to focus on the ‘material
culture’ at issue. Another remarkable
thing is how ill-suited our vocabularies
are for characterizing differences between
the roles of material culture in strikingly
different historical contexts. What vocabularies
do we have available for characterizing
differences between the roles material culture
plays under very circumstances in terms
of the sorts of thought/practice, knowledge/power
(cf. Foucault 1990) relations which constitute
human beings’ conditions of possibility.
The problem has significant consequences.
It impedes our ability to specify differences
between the roles of material culture in
Neolithic Europe and in, say, modern fascist
nation-states. It impedes our ability
to distinguish between the roles of material
culture in contexts in which (1) nationalist
archaeology “has stimulated asking questions
about local cultural configurations and
ethnicity that evolutionary and colonially
oriented archaeologists did not consider
worthwhile” and (2) in which nationalist
archaeology “has encouraged the misinterpretation
of archaeological data for political purposes”
(cf. Trigger 1995:212). The problem
would seem highly relevant to arguments
that archaeology’s relation to nationalism
takes many forms.
Let us look at an analogous issue in social
anthropology in order to appreciate something
of the scope of the difficulty before turning
to the question of how it is perpetuated
by the two main ways in which the archaeological
‘record’ has been conceptualized (cf. Patrik
1985; Barrett 1994). Today there is much
discussion of ‘globalization and multi-culturalism,’
and a number of issues posed relate to our
considerations of the critique of meta-narratives
(see, for instance, Anderson 1983; Geertz
2000). In a collection of studies
entitled Worlds Apart. Modernity Through
the Prism of the Local (Miller ed. 1995),
two contrasting approaches to are represented,
which compare interestingly with issues
in the literature on archaeology and nationalism.
These are the approaches of Jonathan Friedman
(1992) and Kajsa Ekholm and Friedman (1995)
and of Richard Wilk (1995). Wilk explains
that
[i]n several important papers, Jonathan
Friedman has discussed a variety of ways
that local cultural systems have interacted
with hegemonic Western modernism in a ‘global
arena of potential identity formation’ [1992:832].
He equates hegemony and homogeneity, and
sees the recent increase in the number and
vitality of local cultural phenomena as
a product of the breakdown of that pervasive
powerful modernism. The master narrative
is passing, and so are the subaltern dialogues
with which it was engaged (Wilk 1995:118).
Friedman’s approach relates to Trigger’s
(1995:212) argument that “nationalist archaeology
has stimulated asking questions about local
cultural configurations...that evolutionary
and colonially oriented archaeologists did
not consider worthwhile.”
Wilk’s perspective differs from Friedman’s.
Wilk agrees that the nature of cultural
hegemony is changing. But he does not believe
that it is disappearing, or that the consequences
of change are either homogenization or fragmentation.
Wilk argues that
[th]e new global cultural system promotes
difference instead of suppressing it,
but differences of a particular kind. Its
hegemony is not of content but of form....
Another way to say this is that while different
cultures continue to be quite distinct and
varied, they are becoming different in very
uniform ways. The dimensions across
which they vary are becoming more limited,
and therefore mutually intelligible.
In this way the societies competing for
global economic and cultural dominance build
their hegemony not through direct imposition,
but by presenting universal categories and
standards by which cultural differences
can be defined (Wilk 1995:119).
The implications of contrasts between Friedman
and Wilk’s points of view for evaluating
the current state of the research on archaeology
and nationalism are significant. It
would seem that focusing on material culture
(in the sense implied by Latour [1993] above)
would have advantages not only for evaluating
Wilk and Friedman’s arguments, but also
contrasting positions in the literature
on archaeology and nationalism, which have
been motivated by concerns with globalization
and multi-culturalism. But our considerations
indicate why it is open to question whether
the dichotomies on which Friedman and Wilk’s
arguments hinge will offer much help (universalism
versus fragmentationism, form versus content).
We face similar difficulties when we try
to distinguish the roles of material culture
in very different sociohistorical contexts
on the basis of dualist paradigms for the
conditions of archaeological knowledge.
This is harsh. But it is worth putting
this way in order to appreciate the ways
in which these kinds of problems are perpetuated
by the two main ways in which the nature
of the so called archaeological ‘record’
has been conceptualized. Linda Patrik, in
a paper entitled, “Is There an Archaeological
Record?” (1985) proposes two models for
characterizing treatments of archaeological
evidence as a ‘record.’ In the first, the
evidence is treated as a fossilized material
imprint of past events - as if a direct
relationship exited between patterns observed
in the record today and events in the past.
In her second model, the archaeological
record is treated as a ‘text’. While the
former approach has motivated ideas that
the ‘record’ documents the operations of
past social systems, the latter has underpinned
the idea that this ‘text’ documents the
operations of past symbolic systems (‘collective
representations’). The notion of the ‘individual’
has been introduced into both approaches,
but not with much change in results (Barrett
1994; Koerner and Gassón 2000). Now
the ‘individual’ functions as a node through
which social systems or collective representations
operate. Neither approach is likely to offer
much help in evaluating Friedman and Wilk’s
arguments, or in addressing the challenges
facing attempts to explore multiculturalism
and globalization from the perspectives
offered by the diversity of forms archaeology’s
relation to nationalism have taken.
At the beginning of this article we considered
the recent emphasis on the historical contingency
of notions of ‘nationalism’ and ‘ethnic
identity,’ and of relations between archaeology
and nationalism. This emphasis relates
to the growing interest in the variety of
forms relations between archaeology and
politics have taken. In recent perspectives,
we are not likely to find archaeology being
manipulated in service of nationalist ideologies
if modern notions of nation-states and citizens
are absent. So too we will not find
associations of nationalist archaeologies
with crimes against humanity in the absence
of the kinds of relations between knowledge
and power which make such associations possible.
I have attempted in this article to integrate
a variety of themes in order to illustrate
something of the range of issues posed by
current discussion of archaeology, nationalism,
and ethnicity. A framework for addressing
problems created by science/values, epistemology/ontology,
and related dichotomies has been sketched,
which must be filled in with more detail
elsewhere. It is hoped that this alternative
to these meta-narratives can contribute
to understanding in new ways the diversity
of roles played by so-called ‘material culture’
in the articulation of thought/practice,
power/knowledge relations. This might
give us fresh perspectives on the political
roles of archaeology, and on archeology’s
relevance to the broader critique of meta-narratives.
Marek Zvelebil and I are very much looking
forward to hearing the papers which will
be presented in the EAA-2001 session, and
their discussion by Professor John Bintliff,
Professor Jarl Nordbladh and other people
who plan to attend. We are beginning work
on a volume consisting of these and other
relevant papers, and your comments and suggestions
are most welcome.
Acknowledgements
Warm thanks to Ian Lilley for inviting
this article and our correspondences. Great
debts to friends, colleagues, and collaborators
- John Barrett, Bruno Latour, Ted
McGuire and Barbara Tushanska - and those
whose writings fills these pages.
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