Archaeology and the future of social science research at NSF

Last year, the NSF Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences called for White Papers on the future of research in this area. This is part of what they asked for:

NSF/SBE invited individuals and groups to contribute white papers in which we asked authors to outline grand challenge questions that are both foundational and transformative. They are foundational in the sense that they reflect deep issues that engage fundamental assumptions behind disciplinary research traditions and are transformative because they seek to leverage current findings to unlock a new cycle of research.

They received 244 responses, and of those, I count seven by archaeologists (there could be more: these are only the primary authors, and additional archaeologists are co-authors of some reports. Or perhaps I missed an archaeologist or two in my quick skim of the list). These are what I found:

• Adams, Rich Future Considerations for Archaeology at Altitude
• Barker, Alex W. Documenting Extant Cultural Collections: A Grand Challenge for the Social Sciences
• Barton, C. Michael SBE 2020: Twenty-first Century Challenges and Opportunities for the Human Sciences
• Chilton, Elizabeth S, NSF White Paper: A Call for a Social Science of the Past
• Kintigh, Keith W Synthesis and Cyberinfrastructure for SBE Research
• McCorriston, Joy Future Research in the SBE Sciences: A View from Anthropology
• Smith, Michael E An Expanded Social Scientific Perspective on Urbanism  (this paper has 3 archaeological co-authors—George Cowgill, Alison Kohn, and Barbara Stark—and three other social scientists).

Michael Barton's paper is about research on human-natural systems; Elizabeth Chilton calls for support for heritage studies; and Joy McCorriston deals with economic rationality; the other titles are more explanatory.

I must admit my disappointment with this rather meager showing by archaeology. Don't archaeologists want to have better access to NSF funding, don't our research questions deserve greater support, shouldn't we position ourselves more in the mainstream of social science research? Its not too hard to transform many of our basic research questions into issues that resonate with broader social science research. Domestication can be framed in terms of human-land interaction, climate, sustainability issues. The rise of states can be discussed in terms of human inequality, origins and variation in governments, or urbanism (all topics represented in the 244 white papers by social scientists).

The SAA wasn't much help, sending around an email notification of the call for papers just a day or two before it was due.

Perhaps archaeologists think that science in archaeology is mainly the domain of technical analysis and archaeometry (conceivably more in tune with the humanities than the social sciences). Or perhaps scientific archaeology exists only in relation to itself and we don't need to reach out to other social science disciplines. Maybe we don't need the broader social sciences because anthropology provides the scientific linkages for archaeology (oops, I'm lapsing into irony here). Many of us are certainly happy to get funding from the Archaeology program at NSF, but maybe that's all we want to worry about at NSF. Or perhaps we are just too busy doing our research that we don't have time for big-picture questions in the social sciences.

I don't like any of those speculative explanations, but I find the small number of archaeologists who contributed white papers to NSF puzzling and disappointing.

Publishing for a general audience

Someone just sent me the following query. They gave me permission to quote it here, but anonymously:

• What are your thoughts about academics publishing books about archaeology (or other non-fiction topics), but for a general readership? Is it frowned upon by other academics (seen as a "waste of time")? And how does this relate to stage of career: should only senior/tenured professors do it, or should a young professor or even graduate student - if the opportunity arises - take a stab at it?
• And perhaps also we should consider whether the prospective author has a solid signed advance contract, or whether s/he plans to write the book and then try to pitch it to publishers - with a chance of failure.

I don't consider myself any kind of expert here, but I can give my views of the matter. These remarks are from the perspective of academic archaeology; I'm sure that government, private, and other archaeologists have different insights and concerns.


First, my general perspective. I think that communication with a general audience is essential for archaeology (and for all scholarly disciplines). I've published some general papers (Scientific American, etc.), and I give public lectures all the time, but I have not thought too much or published anything on this kind of communication.


There has been a general prejudice against popularization within the sciences generally. Carl Sagan, whose astronomical accomplishments were significant (even without his work on extra-terrestrial intelligence), was consistently nominated but voted down for membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Margaret Mead is still dumped on as a "popularizer," not a serious researcher. Is Brian Fagan considered a serious archaeologist, or just a mere textbook author? I don't know how common this attitude is today, but I do think it lingers. My guess is that many archaeologists and others still think that popularization is not serious work, and should be valued less than research and professional publication. Few will admit that today, since there is a big push for communicating the results of science, both within archaeology ( see the publications and lectures of Jerry Sabloff), and in many educational institutions. But if academic archaeologists really think this is important, why aren't more of us doing it?


I think that career stage is definitely relevant here. Once someone has tenure, it provides the freedom to do things like popularization. If a junior scholar were to write a popular archaeology book, I don't think it would be evaluated negatively in absolute terms, but it would definitely be discounted in relative terms. For example, say I am chairing a search committee for a junior scholar. If person A has published a popular book or some magazine articles, that would be seen, by itself, as a positive attribute. However, if person A has a very popular book plus one journal article, and person B has five articles in top journals but no popular works, person B would almost certainly be ranked higher. A department can't risk pushing someone whose scholarly professional research is less than stellar, since their choice could be declined at a higher level (with various possible negative consequences). This would go for tenure decisions also.

I didn't write my textbook, The Aztecs, until I had tenure. In addition to the factors mentioned above, senior scholars have the advantage of greater experience and perspective, which can benefit popularization. On the other hand, junior scholars may have more energy and passion, and if they are in the midst of relevant fieldwork, this can be a big advantage for the public. The major advice is usually to tell a story that is interesting and attention-grabbing, and junior scholars have some advantages here.


As to the issue of having a contract in advance, I'm not sure how much difference this makes. Many academics pay no attention to contracts - they sign them, and then ignore the dates or terms (or even the book project itself). Others stick to them religiously. Someone with more experience and savvy in book publishing can probably give better advice (I always start with Beth Luey's Handbook for Academic Authors). One of the main benefits I've seen from contracts is that it makes an unfinished book look more "real," more liable to be completed, when listed in a CV.

I'm not sure if this is very helpful. For a grad student or junior scholar, I would avoid large popularization projects unless one is very well organized and very productive (so that one can maintain scholarly research and publications at the same time). Perhaps one could start with smaller projects - magazine articles and the like - and then worry about bigger projects later.

Anthropological bloggers write to the AAA board

A group of anthropological bloggers (including your truly) has just submitted a letter to the President and Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. The gist of the letter is that the discussion of the AAA-science episode in blogs and other social media has been beneficial to the discipline. This interaction (here, on Neuroanthropology, Savage Minds, and elsewhere) has been more dynamic, relevant, and productive than: (1) the rather limited and wooden pronouncements from the AAA Executive Board; and (2) the articles by Nicholas Wade in the New York Times. Therefore the AAA should think about how to promote the use of social media professionally and how to take advantage of this growing network of on-line anthropologists to promote the interests of the discipline and the association.

You can read the letter here.

So just what are the intellectual and professional implications of all this blogging? Come check our our symposium at the SAA meetings on blogging in archaeology, organized by Colleen Morgan of Middle Savagery.

American Anthropologist implies that archaeology is not part of anthropology

Just got the Dec. 2010 issue of American Anthropologist. There is a special section titled "In Focus: (Not) The End of Anthropology,  Again? Some Thoughts on Disciplinary Futures" edited by John Comaraff and Karl-Heniz Kohl (wow, what a nice postmodern-sounding title). There are three articles, each by a sociocultural anthropologist, about the future of the discipline of anthropology. Oops, I mean the future of "cultural anthropology," although only one of the articles (by Andre Gingrich) has the sense to use "cultural anthropology" in its title. The article by Ulf Hannerz ignores archaeology, and the one by John Comaroff uses "archaeology" only to mean the "past" or "history" (deliberately echoing Foucault's usage, I'm sure). Gingrich does mention archaeology when he says, "Other neighboring disciplines among the “four fields”—for instance, archaeology or physical anthropology..."

These three authors, like many sociocultural anthropologists, apparently view their own subdiscipline as the "real" anthropology, with fields like archaeology or biological anthropology as dimly-related hangers-on. These fields aren't really part of anthropology, unless one is forced into 4-field discourse for some reason. These authors certainly seem to think they can write about the "discipline of anthropology," but only talk about cultural anthropology. And by implication one can infer that the (sociocultural anthropologist) Editor of American Anthropologist feels the same way (otherwise one might expect a note from the Editor, or perhaps more precise titles of the articles).

So where does this leave archaeology? The flagship journal of the main anthropological association, in a featured series of papers, implicitly dismisses archaeology as an important part of anthropology. When this is added to the insults from the AAA science fiasco, it helps push people like me further from anthropology. In the past few years I have come to view archaeology as a comparative historical social science discipline of its own, rather than as a lesser subdiscipline of anthropology. I discuss this briefly in "Archaeology is Archaeology" (Anthropology News, Jan 2010, page 35 - I'll try to post this on my website soon).

If I were a sociocultural anthropologist who wanted to drive archaeologists out of the AAA, I'd probably do things like fiddle with the wording of planning documents to alienate archaeologists, plant hegemonic articles in AA, and cut archaeology sessions from the AAA annual meeting (this initially occurred in 2002, and was the impetus for the founding of the Society for Anthropological Sciences). Hmmm, all these things have happened.

The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences / editors-in-chief Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. New York: Elsevier, 2001.  26 v. (lxxxvi, 16,695, 588, 898 p.) : ill., maps ; 26 cm.

If you aren't already familiar with this massive reference work, maybe you should be. It is massive (almost 17,000 pages), and it is online (if your library has a subscription). The coverage of archaeology is very good; archaeology is listed as a discipline of  its own and not a subdiscipline of anthropology. I count 44 archaeology articles, most by recognized experts. These are categorized as follows:

• 8 regional syntheses
• 24 entries on "conceptual approaches"
• 12 entries on "methods and practice"

But for archaeologists, its value lies more in the exploration of other areas of social science. The entries are authoritative and compact, with good bibliographies. I use it like a scholarly Wikipedia - a first place to look when I'm looking into a new topic in the social sciences.

Puzzled about the relationship of poststructuralism and postmodernism (from some discussion on Savage Minds), I turned to the encyclopedia today while watching Florida beat Penn State. This entry turned out to be extremely useful for a social-theory-challenged guy like me:

• Mjøset, Lars  (2001)  Theory: Conceptions in the Social Sciences.

He divides social science theoretical approaches into four broad categories:

• law-oriented (covering-law approaches, promoted unsuccessfully by the new archaeologists);
• idealizing (economics, game theory, rational choice theory)
• constructivist (Geertzian anthropology, poststructuralism, postprocessual archaeology)
• critical theory (Frankfurt school).

Most important for me personally, however, is Mjøset's explanation of why constructivists fail to acknowledge that theory exists on multiple levels. I puzzled over this in my recent paper on urban theory. Ian Hodder and Matthew Johnson are dead-set against the notion of multiple levels of theory, which seems like such an obvious and important principle to me. I mention the issue in a footnote, but didn't really understand the issue until I read Mjøset's discussion of constructivist theory.

Murphey's Law strikes again! Don't you hate it when you find an important and very relevant work just after your article is published? (I really wish I head read Mjøset before I completed my paper.) I almost added, "or after your term paper is submitted." But in the latter case, it is a blessing for students, since it gives you a head start when you return to your term paper to revise it for publication. Oh, you don't publish your term papers? Well why don't you get off your butt, stop reading blogs, and do something useful. Here is my logic: If a student has the ability, intelligence, drive, etc. to succeed as a scholar, then the chances are pretty good that such a person's term papers (with some additional work) are worthy of publication. If that is the case, then by NOT publishing them one is not only reducing one's academic chances, but also depriving the discipline of good research.

Here are a few other entries from the encyclopedia I have found useful:

• Bruegmann, Robert  (2001)  Urban Sprawl.
• Evans, Gary W.  (2001)  Crowding and Other Environmental Stressors.
• Jackman, R. W.  (2001)  Social Capital.
• Ostrom, Elinor  (2001)  Environment and Common Property Institutions.
• Wacquant, Loïc  (2004)  Ghetto. (This seems to be a kind of updated to the Encyclopedia)
• Wong, S.  (2001)  Cities, Internal Organization of.

Oh yes, I also found this gem today. In his entry "Postmodernism in Geography," postmodernist geographer Edward Soja says that poststructualism is just a "safer sounding label" for postmodernism.