Charles Perreault
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226630823
- eISBN:
- 9780226631011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226631011.001.0001
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology
Archaeologists routinely interpret the archaeological record in terms of microscale processes – individual-level processes that operate within the human lifespan. In embracing this goal, ...
More
Archaeologists routinely interpret the archaeological record in terms of microscale processes – individual-level processes that operate within the human lifespan. In embracing this goal, archaeologists have borrowed an agenda designed by, and for, disciplines that study humans in the present-time and use data with a quality that is orders of magnitude different than archaeological data. By forcing such an agenda on the record, archaeologists are offering explanations for the human past that are merely consistent with the record, instead of being supported beyond a reasonable doubt by a smoking gun. As a result, their research suffers from an inordinate equifinality. This book addresses this problem by developing a theory of the various pathways leading to equifinality and underdetermination, that links them to various aspects of the quality of the archaeological record, and that articulates how these different aspects are shaped by various forces such as site formation processes. Using published literature, archaeological data are found to be dominated with sampling intervals and resolutions in the order of 102-3 years – too long for the study of microscale processes. The history of archaeology, archaeologists’ view of uniformitarianism, and the way they are trained to confirm hypotheses have allowed archaeologists to ignore the underdetermination problem that plagues their research. I argue that archaeologists should recalibrate their research program to the quality of the archaeological record by focusing primarily on cultural historical reconstruction and macroarchaeology, i.e. the search for macroscale patterns and processes in the global archaeological record.Less
Archaeologists routinely interpret the archaeological record in terms of microscale processes – individual-level processes that operate within the human lifespan. In embracing this goal, archaeologists have borrowed an agenda designed by, and for, disciplines that study humans in the present-time and use data with a quality that is orders of magnitude different than archaeological data. By forcing such an agenda on the record, archaeologists are offering explanations for the human past that are merely consistent with the record, instead of being supported beyond a reasonable doubt by a smoking gun. As a result, their research suffers from an inordinate equifinality. This book addresses this problem by developing a theory of the various pathways leading to equifinality and underdetermination, that links them to various aspects of the quality of the archaeological record, and that articulates how these different aspects are shaped by various forces such as site formation processes. Using published literature, archaeological data are found to be dominated with sampling intervals and resolutions in the order of 102-3 years – too long for the study of microscale processes. The history of archaeology, archaeologists’ view of uniformitarianism, and the way they are trained to confirm hypotheses have allowed archaeologists to ignore the underdetermination problem that plagues their research. I argue that archaeologists should recalibrate their research program to the quality of the archaeological record by focusing primarily on cultural historical reconstruction and macroarchaeology, i.e. the search for macroscale patterns and processes in the global archaeological record.
Charles Perreault
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226630823
- eISBN:
- 9780226631011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226631011.003.0006
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology
This chapter examines whether the current research program of the discipline matches the quality of the archaeological record and argues that most processes studied by archaeologists operate over a ...
More
This chapter examines whether the current research program of the discipline matches the quality of the archaeological record and argues that most processes studied by archaeologists operate over a decade or less. This is 2–3 orders of magnitude faster than the sampling interval and the resolution of archaeological data. This has three consequences. First, most archaeological results are wrong. The chance that an archaeological interpretation, picked among dozens of equifinal alternatives, is valid is vanishingly small. Second, most archaeological research is also unneeded. The short-scale processes studied by archaeologists are borrowed from other disciplines, such as cultural anthropology. These disciplines do not need archaeology to confirm or disprove their ideas. Third, archaeological theory is balkanized. The archaeological literature is crowded with a daunting number of theories and claims that are mutually exclusive. New theories and processes are added to the literature faster than old ones are eliminated. Archaeologists are ignoring the equifinality problem for historical reasons that are outlined here. This was further amplified by the way archaeologists understood uniformitarianism, a human-centric view of the world, and the way archaeologists test hypothesis. Paleontologists, faced a similar problem years ago and solved it by changing their research problem.Less
This chapter examines whether the current research program of the discipline matches the quality of the archaeological record and argues that most processes studied by archaeologists operate over a decade or less. This is 2–3 orders of magnitude faster than the sampling interval and the resolution of archaeological data. This has three consequences. First, most archaeological results are wrong. The chance that an archaeological interpretation, picked among dozens of equifinal alternatives, is valid is vanishingly small. Second, most archaeological research is also unneeded. The short-scale processes studied by archaeologists are borrowed from other disciplines, such as cultural anthropology. These disciplines do not need archaeology to confirm or disprove their ideas. Third, archaeological theory is balkanized. The archaeological literature is crowded with a daunting number of theories and claims that are mutually exclusive. New theories and processes are added to the literature faster than old ones are eliminated. Archaeologists are ignoring the equifinality problem for historical reasons that are outlined here. This was further amplified by the way archaeologists understood uniformitarianism, a human-centric view of the world, and the way archaeologists test hypothesis. Paleontologists, faced a similar problem years ago and solved it by changing their research problem.
