This
is the second of three posts on my view of a “scientific archaeology.” It
follows the post, “Science, social science, and archaeology: Where do westand?” The intervening post, on Pascal Boyer, is a kind of appendix to that
earlier post. The third will be, “Why is a scientific archaeology so hard to
achieve?”
So,
why is it important to strive for a more scientific archaeology?
Reason
1: To produce a more rigorous understanding of past human societies and their
changes through time.
The goals of archaeology, in my view,
are—first—to discover and document the nature of past human societies,
and—second—to explain social variation and change through time with causal
explanations. If this seems retrograde, impossible, or misguided, then you
probably do not work from a scientific epistemology. That is fine on an
individual level. I have no desire to tell individuals what they should believe
or do, or what kind of archaeology they should pursue. But on a disciplinary
level, the fact that large parts of the discipline do not follow a scientific
epistemology has certain consequences. It means that archaeologists will find
it difficult or impossible to integrate their work with the other social
sciences (Reason 2 below), and that it will be very difficult or impossible to
contribute useful knowledge about human societies that is relevant and useful
today (Reason 3 below).
Many archaeologists tuned out of
discussions of the philosophy of science back in the 1960s and 1970s, and many
younger archaeologists have never explored this terrain. If you think that
explanation consists of subsuming a particular case under a covering law, then
your philosophy of science is more than a half-century out of date. I’ll go
into this a bit more in my third post. For now, I want to emphasize that the
current model of explanation in the social and historical sciences is based on
causal mechanisms. In the words of Mario Bunge (Bunge
2004:182), “to explain a fact is to exhibit the mechanism(s) that makes
the system tick.” Or, here is how Charles Tilly (Tilly
2001:365) puts it:
“Explanation consists of identifying in particular social phenomena reliable causal mechanisms and processes of general scope. Causal mechanisms are events that alter relations among some set of elements. Processes are frequent (but not universal) combinations and sequences of causal mechanisms.”
In
a recent analysis of Charles Tilly’s ideas about mechanisms, processes, and
actors, Krinsky and Mische (2013:16) say:
· “Mechanisms allow for the direct identification of transactions, interactions, social ties, and conversations at a number of different scales without constant recourse to either “large structures” or inferences of actors’ states of mind. It involves a fairly simple epistemology: This approach accepts social categories as socially constructed, but argues that this should not impede our observation of the processes of social construction itself (implicitly including the academic constructions of social science)."
These
epistemological ideas are important if archaeologists are to achieve a more
rigorous understanding of past human societies. Perhaps it is useful to have a
richer, more nuanced interpretation of particular events or episodes or
settings in the past, as provided by postprocessualist archaeologists. But such
interpretations do not produce the kind of solid, cumulative knowledge that
allows us to build an increasingly more satisfying picture of the past. If we
want that picture to be explanatory, then we need to follow a scientific
epistemology. If you don’t care about explanation, that is fine. But as a
discipline, we need more attention to ways to achieve a scientific
epistemology.
Perhaps
the easiest way to think about this is to ask yourself the question “How would
you know if you are wrong?” (Smith 2015).
When you give some kind of explanation or interpretation to some data, do you
have some way to tell whether your ideas are right or wrong? Or, at a more
basic level, when you classify a sherd using a typology, when you label a soil
layer as a floor, or when you claim that a feature was a hearth or a temple or
a latrine—do you have a way to judge (and for others to judge) whether your
idea is correct or not? If not, then you may very well be guilty of confirmation
bias.
Confirmation
bias
is “the inappropriate bolstering of hypotheses or beliefs whose truth is in
question” (p.179). “There is an obvious difference between impartially
evaluating evidence in order to come to an unbiased conclusion and building a
case to justify a conclusion already drawn” (Nickerson
1998:179-180). I did a quick check today. Nickerson’s paper is the
classic account of confirmation bias. Of the several hundred papers citing this
work (in Google Scholar), none were by archaeologists. Hmmmmmmmmm. I’d say many
of us in archaeology are guilty of confirmation bias. I don’t excuse myself
here; in some of my earlier works I was trying hard to use evidence to support
a point, rather than using evidence to try to prove a point wrong.
Reason
2: To facilitate integration with other social and historical sciences.
One
of the more pleasant surprises of my increasing interaction with
non-anthropological social scientists in the past few years has been the
discovery that most of them would agree fully with my Reason #1 above (adapted
to their field, of course). That is, they are strongly devoted to creating
rigorous scientific knowledge about society, and they use a scientific
epistemology to pursue that goal. It has been interesting to see the reactions
of some of these colleagues when they read archaeological accounts that are not
very rigorous. They see this easily, and tend to discount or dismiss such
works. I will avoid giving specific examples here, to protect the guilty.
If
you haven’t read much in the other social sciences, you may be surprised at how
much attention is devoted to epistemology and methods, topics like evidence and
argument, explanation and causality, models and data. Check out some of these
textbooks; you might be surprised at how relevant they are for archaeology: (6 and Bellamy 2012; Gerring 2007, 2012; Luker 2008; Ragin
and Amoroso 2011). Postmodernism hit disciplines like sociology and
political science, like it hit anthropology and archaeology. But these other
disciplines weathered the storm, and soon got back to (scientific) work,
whereas anthropology and archaeology are still wallowing in the mire of
post-postmodernism. Yes there are few poststructuralist sociologists out there,
but they are much rarer than mainstream scientific sociologists.
If
we want to integrate archaeological knowledge with comparative findings from
history, social history, historical sociology, comparative political science,
economic history, and the like, they we need to follow a scientific
epistemology. This is needed both to produce rigorous findings that can be
compared and analyzed with other social-science findings, and to enable us to
talk with, and exchange ideas with, other social scientists.
Those
of us who study topics like ancient urbanism, inequality, economies, or
resilience should all be concerned with relating our findings to those from the
social sciences. We should be reading in these fields, and we should be publishing
our archaeological research in journals in these fields. I have been pursuing
that strategy since 2007, and it has paid off in many ways. Here are a few
examples: (Harris and Smith 2011; Smith 2007, 2009a,
2009b). Of course this cross-disciplinary strategy has its drawbacks:
these papers are less likely to be read by archaeologists than if they had been
published in archaeological journals. My point here is that archaeologists
should relate to other social scientists, in person and in print, and this is
greatly facilitated if we adopt a scientific approach.
Reason
3: To contribute knowledge about human societies that is relevant and useful
today.
Here
is a thought experiment. Imagine two contrasting scenarios. For both, we start
with the situation where an archaeological team has learned something
interesting about ancient social inequality at a series of urban sites in a
region. Perhaps they have found parallel patterns of trimodal distributions in
house-size wealth and in burial goods. They interpret their results as
indicating a pattern of three social classes ranked by wealth and status (yes,
this is an imaginary example; trimodal wealth distributions are pretty rare.
But we continue to search....).
Scenario 1. The archaeologists
avoid scholars in other disciplines. The think that sociologists only care
about contemporary mass society in capitalist nations, and thus sociologists
probably don’t have anything useful to say about burials and artifacts at
ancient cities. These archaeologists publish their findings in the journals Ancient Mesoamerica and the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
They claim—in the archaeology journals—that their results provide important new
insights on social inequality and that they have relevance for contemporary
society. Ok, maybe so, but if no one but archaeologists sees them, how relevant
can they really be?
Secnario 2. The
archaeologists actively seek out colleagues in other social science
disciplines, they read some of the literature outside of archaeology on
inequality and social classes, and they get feedback from, say, some
sociologists on their model of three social classes. These archaeologists also
publish in Ancient Mesoamerica and
the Jr. Anthropological Archaeology,
but they also co-author a paper on class organization in ancient and modern
societies with a sociologist, and publish it in a comparative social science
journal, or perhaps a sociology journal.
Which
of these scenarios is more likely to result in archaeological results becoming
known outside of archaeology? Which is more likely to lead to archaeology
making an impact on thinking about modern society? Now think about our
imaginary archaeological team here. What if their epistemology is
non-scientific and they avoid the testing of their results, and report their
findings as their personal and contingent interpretations, not as
scientifically-supported inferences? Would the other social scientists be
likely to pay attention? I doubt it.
What
are the social sciences all about? This is a big issue with a big literature,
but consider just one account. Daniel Little is a philosopher of science who
focuses on social science. His work is interesting, insightful, and very
relevant to archaeology. His blog, Understanding Society, is incredibly
good. When I taught a class on theory in archaeology, I had students read a
bunch of his posts. So here is a quote from one post, called “Social scienceand social problems” Feb 16, 2008):
“The social sciences ought to be directed towards addressing important social problems, and that the research agenda for social science ought to be influenced or shaped by the constituencies in society who are most affected by these social problems. At bottom – the social sciences ought to be engaged in a serious way in improving the quality of life for the people of the globe. They can best do this, it would seem, by discovering some of the causes of persistent social problems and providing a sound basis for designing policies that have a chance of ameliorating them. And they can focus their research agendas by working closely with practitioners and the ordinary people who experience these social problems.”
Does
archaeology have a role to play here? I’d argue that discovering the “causes of
persistent social problems” can benefit from our knowledge of ancient
societies. I agree with the literature on transdisciplinary research that holds
that “many, if not all, of the traditional approaches, as well as many
heterodox tactics, fail to answer the most pressing issues plaguing the world” (Polimeni 2006:2); see also Baerwald (2010) or Wallerstein (2003). That is, most of the major social problems today need the
insights, methods, and results of a number of scholarly disciplines, with
scholars working together, to understand and solve. The deep time perspective
of archaeology should put us into the mix, but only if we follow a scientific
epistemology. I explore these issues, with respect to the topic of cities and urbanism,
in Smith (2012).
So,
if it is important to strive for a more scientific archaeology, then why is it
so hard to achieve in practice? That will be my third post in this series.
References
6,
Perri and Christine Bellamy
2012 Principles of Methodology: Research Design
in Social Science. Sage, New York.
Baerwald,
Thomas J.
2010 Presidential
Address: Prospects for Geography as an Interdisciplinary Discipline. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 100: 493-01.
Bunge,
Mario
2004 How Does It Work?:
The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms. Philosophy
of the Social Sciences 34 (2): 182-210.
Gerring,
John
2007 Case Study Research: Principles and
Practices. Cambridge University Press, New York.
2012 Social
Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. 2nd ed. Cambridge University
Press, New York.
Harris,
Richard and Michael E. Smith
2011 The History in
Urban Studies: A Comment. Journal of
Urban Affairs 33 (1): 99-105.
Krinsky,
John and Ann Mische
2013 Formations and
Formalisms: Charles Tilly and the Paradox of the Actor. Annual Review of Sociology 39: 1-26.
Luker,
Kristin
2008 Salsa Dancing Into the Social Sciences:
Research in an Age of Info-glut. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Nickerson,
Raymond S.
1998 Confirmation Bias:
A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises. Review
of General Psychology 2 (2): 175-220.
Polimeni, John M.
2006 Transdisciplinary
Research: Moving Forward. International
Journal of Transdisciplinary Research 1 (1): 1-3.
Ragin, Charles C. and Lisa M. Amoroso
2011 Constructing Social Research: The Unity and
Diversity of Method. 2nd ed. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Smith, Michael E.
2007 Form and Meaning
in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning. Journal of Planning History 6 (1): 3-47.
2009a Editorial:
Just How Comparative is Comparative Urban Geography?: A Perspective from
Archaeology. Urban Geography 30:
113-117.
2009b V. Gordon
Childe and the Urban Revolution: An Historical Perspective on a Revolution in
Urban Studies. Town Planning Review
80: 3-29.
2012 The Role of
Ancient Cities in Research on Contemporary Urbanization. UGEC Viewpoints (Urbanization and Global Environmental Change) 8:
15-19.
2015 How can
Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The
SAA Archaeological Record 15 (4): 18-23.
Tilly, Charles
2001 Relational Origins
of Inequality. Anthropological Theory
1 (3): 355-372.
Wallerstein, Immanuel
2003 Anthropology,
Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines. Current
Anthropology 44: 453-465.
