Social media attack to blog post to journal article

figure from my paper

My paper, "Social Science and Archaeological Enquiry", was just released, online, by the journal Antiquity (last week, I think). It is volume 91 (356), pp. 520 - 528. You can find a copy here.   This is without a doubt the strangest journey to publication of any of my papers, so maybe it is worth telling. I have the Grateful Dead on in the background, which helps. The story begins with my attendance at a talk on the "new materiality" by Rosemary Joyce at the University of Colorado Department of Anthropology in late January or early February, 2016. I did not like the lecture, and I made some snide remarks about it in this blog, here.

The new materiality: Vacuous or just incomprehensible?

Looking back, I was perhaps a bit harsh in my tone, bordering on rudeness. Some students from UCB posted some critical remarks about my post on their departmental Facebook page.

You can see some of the posts from the Boulder group here.

I fired back and posted some more remarks on my blog. I was taken to task by the department chairman, in a rather rude ad hominen post, for shooting my mouth off without restraint, rather like a small child. You can find all this pretty easily if you are interested (note: it is not very interesting...). Nearly all of the criticisms from Boulder suggested that my speech was not valued. I was insulting; I was trying to spoil their special lecture; I should not say such nasty things about their distinguished visitor. Many people came along and liked their critical posts. I became a pariah to UCB Anthropology-Facebook. But not a word about the intellectual content of the lecture or my reaction to it.

I was dismayed, insulted, and demoralized by my first social-media hazing event. The comments to some of my blog posts discuss some of these issues. But to me, the key issues were--and are--scientific and intellectual. I found the whole approach of Rosemary Joyce's talk to be anti-scientific and thus detrimental to the advance of the kind of archaeology I advocate in this blog. I was particularly incensed at her argument that fields like archaeology had to choose between the humanities and the natural sciences. She claimed that, given the inadequacies of natural science, we should choose to follow the humanities. This is so wrong-headed, it drove me nuts.

My reactions led to me create a series of posts that clarified my views of science, social science, and the place of archaeology. Writing these helped me clarify my own views of the topic, and try to put them into a framework that would be clear to other archaeologists (ever wonder why i blog? This is a primary reason - it helps me clarify my thoughts).

Science, Social science, and archaeology: Where do we stand?

Pascal Boyer's view of science, social science, and the humanities

Why is it important to strive for a more scientific archaeology?

Why is a scientific archaeology so hard to achieve?

((you can get to the later posts from the first one))

After this whole event had died down, it occurred to me that I should present these ideas in a larger venue, in a streamlined and more efficient context. Why had no one called the postprocessualists to task for their outdated and inaccurate views of positivism and science? Why haven't scientifically-minded archaeologists shot back at the epistemological hogwash? So I sent off a short piece to Antiquity, and they accepted it. I was a bit nervous, wondering if it was entirely proper to put ideas from a blog post into a journal article. But this was not at all a literal re-doing of the blog. The basic message was the same, though. I came across the paper on archaeological theory by Julian Thomas, and found that none of the work I do - theoretical or empirical - would fit under his definition of "archaeological theory." So I contrasted it with the list of different approaches to archaeological theory given by Jarvie and  Zamora-Bomilla. I also continued some of the themes from my paper on archaeological arguments.

So the path of this article was:

- attended a talk I did not like
- wrote a snarky blog post about it
- was attacked on social media
- sharpened my thinking in a series of blog posts
- condensed and sharpened the ideas further for a journal paper

So, I figured that it was time for another blog post (this one). Perhaps I should give a bad lecture on the whole affair and complete the circle. Or maybe I should shut up and concentrate my efforts on publications, not blogs.

To quote my favorite rock band, "What a long strange trip its been....."

References:

Jarvie, Ian and Jesús Zamora-Bomilla (editors)
2011 Sage Handbook of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Sage, New York.

Smith, Michael E.
2015 How Can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The SAA Archaeological Record 15 (4): 18-23.

2017 Social Science and Archaeological Inquiry. Antiquity 91: 520-528.

Thomas, Julian
2015 The Future of Archaeological Theory. Antiquity 89: 1287-1296.

Why is a scientific archaeology so hard to achieve?

This is the third of three posts on my view of a “scientific archaeology.” The first two were, “Science, social science, and archaeology: Where do we stand?”, and “Why is itimportant to strive for a more scientific archaeology?”

I will give four reasons why a scientific archaeology is hard to achieve:

1. The new archaeologists picked the wrong model of explanation, and we are still paying for their mistake

2. Confusion about “archaeological science” and “scientific archaeology”

3. Ignorance of the social sciences

4. A widespread commitment to abstract and philosophical social theory

Reason 1:  The new archaeologists picked the wrong model of explanation, and we are still paying for their mistake

Lewis Binford and the New Archaeologists latched onto the covering law model of explanation, as promoted by Carl Hempel and the other logical positivists. This is a very restrictive model that does not work in the social sciences. Explanation consists of subsuming a particular case under a general or universal law. But the new archaeologists could not identify any general laws that would help, other than trivialities famously labeled “Mickey Mouse laws” by Kent Flannery. Philosophers of science had already shown the limitations of covering laws for the social sciences, even before the new archaeologists started promoting Hempel. A philosopher of science pointed this out in an archaeology journal (Morgan 1973). The archaeologists replied that Morgan was not an archaeologist and didn’t understand archaeology, and so his critique did not count (Watson et al. 1974)!

A number of archaeologists were highly critical of the covering law approach (Flannery 1973; Sabloff et al. 1973), but they did not have a viable alternative model of explanation. For a while it seemed that systems theory might fill the gap. When I was in graduate school in the late 1970s, systems theory was the cool new thing, and I even published a paper with boxes and arrows (Smith 1983). I published it in Mexico, in Spanish, figuring I could help spread the word on systems theory. Later, I was slightly embarrassed about the paper, glad it was published in an obscure journal!

Explanation via causal mechanisms didn’t become popular until ca. 1990 (Elster 1989; Stinchcombe 1991). But it should be obvious to anyone interested in the archaeology of social processes or in social history that causal mechanisms provide a far more appropriate and satisfying account of explanation than covering laws (see the quote from Charles Tilly in my prior post). This table, from Hedström (2005), contrasts covering laws, mechanisms, and statistical explanations.

Strangely, some archaeologists have continued until recently to argue in favor of explanation by covering laws (Kuznar and Long 2008). But covering laws are most often encountered today either in historical accounts of archaeology, or in works by archaeologists who want to critique natural-science epistemologies as a basis for archaeological argumentation (e.g., Martinón-Torres and Killick n.d.). Get over it, folks. Covering laws are dead. They were superseded by causal mechanisms over 30 years ago!

Reason 2: Confusion about “archaeological science” and “scientific archaeology”

Riddle: What is called “science” but is not science?

Answer: Creation science and “archaeological science.”

That riddle is not entirely fair, but it does bring out an important issue in the way the term “science” is used in archaeology. Consider two dichotomous schemes. The first is one I have talked about several times in this blog (original discussion; see also here). I talk about Science-1 to refer to archaeology with a scientific epistemology and Science-2  describes the use of techniques from the natural sciences, whether or not employed within an overall scientific epistemology. I point out the irony of using the term scientific for non- and anti-scientific archaeological epistemologies, even if used by scholars who employ “scientific” techniques.

The second scheme, as described by Martinón-Torres and Killick (n.d.) distinguishes “scientific archaeology” (the use of a natural-science epistemology in archaeology) and “archaeological science” (the use of natural-science techniques by archaeologists). These are parallel schemes, but quite distinct in their implications. Do you see the difference?

These authors write from the perspective of high-level, abstract social theory. To them, “scientific archaeology” describes the bad guys—new archaeology, behavioral archaeology, and evolutionary archaeology—all of whom are accused of being neo-positivists under the spell of Hempel et al. I don’t want to speak for those three approaches, but from my perspective, the scheme of Martinón-Torres and Killick ignores the kind of social-scientific epistemology that I am promoting.

Their second concept, “archaeological science,” is ironic when describing archaeometric work by archaeologists who fail to follow a scientific epistemology.  Martinón-Torres and Killick give an extended discussion of how “archaeological science” has helped further high-level abstract social theory in archaeology (e.g., materiality, social constructivism). But those applications are not science; that is, they do not follow a scientific epistemology. Perhaps the simplest “litmus test” of the scientific status of an argument is to pose the question “How would you know if you are wrong?” (Smith 2015); based on Haber (1999). Look at archaeological papers on materiality or poststructuralism, and see if they pass this litmus test.

I want to be clear here. I do NOT claim that any work that invokes high-level abstract theory is unscientific by definition. It is entirely possible to use such theory within a paper that also includes lower-level empirical theory in a scientific fashion. But if the ONLY theory on the table is abstract social theory, then it is very unlikely that a scientific epistemology is being followed. I'd love to be proven wrong here, but I don't see it.

I apologize if you are sick of reading the term “epistemology.” But I find it necessary to navigate these waters where non-scientific arguments and research design can be labelled scientific, and scientific approaches are omitted from descriptions of "scientific archaeology."

Reason 3: Ignorance of the social sciences

My graduate training was quite isolationist about archaeology and other disciplines. Classical archaeology was portrayed as silly and irrelevant. I remember when this bubble was popped for me. Shortly after I started teaching, at Loyola University of Chicago, I attended a workshop on survey archaeology in the Mediterranean at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Having been socialized that Mesoamerican survey archaeology was the best in the world, I was flabbergasted to learn that some of the Classical archaeologists had better methods than we used in Mesoamerica! More rigorous collections, better calculation of surface counts and densities, and a more rigorous and intensive approach to surface archaeology. This was not silly or irrelevant! (Alcock and Cherry 2004; Barker and Mattingly 1999-2000).

A second component of disciplinary isolation was the message that other social sciences were not of interest to archaeology. We were part of anthropology, the story went, and anthropology stood alone as the light through the forest of nonwestern and ancient cultures. Archaeology got its theory from anthropology (remember the nonsense about archaeology not having any theory of its own, we got it all from anthropology? Good for a laugh today). Disciplines like sociology and political science, I was told, were irrelevant. When I started working on comparative imperialism in the 1990s, it quickly became clear that political scientists and comparative historians had better things to say about empires than did anthropologists (surprise, surprise). But when my interests turned strongly to urbanism, there was no contest. Anthropology had very little useful theory or comparative data (with some notable exceptions, such as urban ethnography in the developing world in the 1960s-1970s), whereas other fields were full of extremely worthwhile material. See my paper on urban theory (Smith 2011) for examples of relevant theoretical perspectives that are mostly non-anthropological and entirely non-philosophical, non-abstract, and non-highlevel.

There is no excuse in 2016 for remaining ignorant of the social sciences. To claim that the choice offered by C.P. Snow in 1959—natural science or humanities—is still relevant is absurd. Killick (2005:186) does point out, in a historical discussion, that “Snow himself acknowledged that he had overlooked the role of the social sciences as a bridge between the humanities and the sciences.” But in his other writings (Killick 2015; Martinón-Torres and Killick n.d.), there is little indication that he identifies social science as a “third culture” (Kagan 2009), not just something vaguely “intermediate” between natural science and the humanities, but fully distinct from those two approaches to knowledge. I apologize for dumping on Martinón-Torres and Killick’s paper so much here. It is not an especially egregious example of the problems I am discussing; its views seem pretty widespread. But it does discuss major issues clearly and explicitly, making it easier to pinpoint some of the key epistemological points.

If you have any doubt about the relevance or the usefulness of the social sciences for archaeology, see my prior posts. Check out some of the works cited in those posts. Go read some Charles Tilly.

Reason 4: A widespread commitment to abstract and philosophical social theory

In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a strong antipathy toward high-level, abstract social theory (also called grand theory) in archaeology. It is not that I think there is anything inherently wrong with this type of theory. Rather, an obsession with this material by archaeologists has slowed progress in the development of archaeology as a social science. Let me try to express my views here as clearly as I can. I will describe five propositions and three conclusions.

First, there is an epistemological hierarchy, as illustrated in the above diagram. This should not be controversial, although some postprocessualists have argued that all theory exists on the same level (See Smith 2011 for citations). But the overwhelming consensus in the social sciences and in the philosophy of science is that the notion of a hierarchy of levels of theory is useful and relevant. I review some of this material in Smith (2011) and will not repeat it here. The number of levels, their specific labels, etc. can vary, but the basic idea of an epistemological hierarchy is fundamental. Here is a simlar scheme, from Alexander (1982), and included in Abend (2008).

 Second, different levels of theory are useful for different goals. The clearest expression of this principle I am aware of is Gabriel Abend’s (2008) paper on the meaning of “theory” in sociology. I discuss Abend’s analysis in an earlier post. It is a brilliant paper. Abend identifies seven different ways that sociologists use the term “theory.” He is not claiming that there are seven types of theory that exist in the world, but that the varying definitions and meanings of theory by scholars tend to fall into seven clusters. Each has its uses.

Third, high-level, abstract social theory is useful for making sense of the world. Abend’s Theory-3 consists of statements about the meanings of social phenomena. Theses accounts provide an “interpretation,” a “reading, or a “way of making sense.” His Theory-5 consists of an overall perspective from which to view, and interpret, the world. His examples include postmodern theory, poststructuralist theory, feminist theory, critical theory, Marxist theory, structural-functionalist theory, and rational choice theory. High-level social theory, of Abend’s types 3 and 5, is fine for abstract thinking about the social world on a very general, conceptual level.

Fourth, because of its very generality and abstractness (see the diagram)—high-level social theory cannot provide accounts of concrete, on-the-ground social events, processes, or conditions. It cannot account for social variation on the level of individuals and institutions. If you doubt this, check out the quotes from sociologist C. Wright Mills and archaeologist Kevin Fisher on page 168 of Smith (2011). Check Roy Ellen’s (2010) discussion of this issue. High-level abstract social theory cannot be proven wrong, and thus fails to conform to a scientific epistemology.

Fifth, the kind of social theory that DOES provide explanations of on-the-ground social events, processes, conditions, and institutions is called “middle-range theory” (do I need to say it? Mertonian middle-range theory, not Binfordian middle-range theory, which is fine but is something completely different)  Again, I have an extensive discussion of this in Smith (2011), where I identify several bodies of such theory that are useful for analyzing ancient cities. Abend includes this domain under his Theory-1 (a general proposition about the relationship between two variables) and Theory-2 (an explanation of a particular social phenomenon). This latter is the kind of account provided by causal mechanisms. These are the kinds of theory that are used in conjunction with a scientific epistemology. This is what we should be doing in archaeology.

When I examine these five propositions in relation to the current state of theory in archaeology, I draw three conclusions:

First, many archaeologists seem unaware of causal mechanisms and kinds of middle-range theory needed to generate causal explanations of social phenomena in the deep past. This is a direct consequence of Reasons 1, 2, and 3 above.

Second, many archaeologists apparently believe that high-level abstract social theory is the only kind of theory that matters. Or, more precisely, it is the only kind of theory that they write about.

Third, until there is a more widespread recognition of the value of a scientific epistemology, of middle-range theory, and of causal explanations, archaeology will to find it hard:

•          To create a corpus of rigorous scientific knowledge that can be built upon and expanded as new research is done;
•        To develop accounts of patterns and change in the past that are acceptable to other social scientists, and potentially contribute to general social-science knowledge; and,
•          To communicate to the public just what we are up to, in words that most people can understand. The public loves archaeology. Wouldn’t it be great if they appreciated our ideas and results as much as they do our spectacular finds? Abstract social theory will not accomplish this.

 References

Abend, Gabriel

2008  The Meaning of "Theory". Sociological Theory 26: 173-199.

Alcock, Susan E. and John F. Cherry (editors)

2004  Side-by-Side Survey: Comparative Regional Studies in the Mediterranean World. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Alexander, Jeffrey C.
1982    Theoretical Logic in Sociology, Volume 1: Positivism, Presuppositions, and Current Controversies. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Barker, Graeme and David Mattingly (editors)

1999-2000  The Archaeology of Mediterranean Landscapes. 5 vols. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Ellen, Roy

2010  Theories in Anthropology and "Anthropological Theory". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16: 387-404.

Elster, Jon

1989  Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Flannery, Kent V.

1973  Archaeology with a Capital S. In Research and Theory in Current Archaeology, edited by Charles L. Redman, pp. 47-58. Wiley, New York.

Haber, Stephen

1999  Anything Goes: Mexico's "New" Cultural History. Hispanic American Historical Review 79: 309-330.

Hedström, Peter

2005  Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Kagan, Jerome

2009  The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Killick, David

2005  Is there Really a Chasm betwen Archaeological Theory and Archaeological Science? Archaeometry 47 (1): 186-189.

2015  The awkward adolescence of archaeological science. Journal of Archaeological Science 56: 242-247.

Kuznar, Lawrence A. and Kenneth Long

2008  Deductive-Nomological vs. Causal-Mechanical Explanation: Relative Strengths and Weaknesses in Anthropological Explanation. In Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology, edited by Bradley B. Walters, Bonnie J. MacKay, Paige West, and Susan Lees, pp. 159-173. AltaMira, Lanham, MD.

Martinón-Torres, Marcos and David Killick

n.d.    Archaeological Theories and Archaeological Sciences. In Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory, edited by Andrew Gardner, Mark Lake, and Ulrike Sommer. Oxford University Press, New York.

Morgan, Charles G

1973  Archaeology and Explanation. World Archaeology 4 (3): 259-276.

Sabloff, Jeremy A., Thomas W. Beale, and Anthony M. Kurland, Jr.

1973  Supplement: Recent Developments in Archaeology. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 408: 103-118.

Smith, Michael E.

1983  El desarrollo económico y la expansión del imperio Mexica: Una perspectiva sistémica. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 16: 135-164.

2011  Empirical Urban Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18: 167-192.

2015  How can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The SAA Archaeological Record 15 (4): 18-23.

Stinchcombe, Arthur L.

1991  The Conditios of Fruitfulness of Theorizing About Mechanisms in Social Science. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21: 367-388.

Watson, Patty Jo, Steven A LeBlanc, and Charles L Redman

1974  The covering law model in archaeology: Practical uses and formal interpretations. World Archaeology 6 (2): 125-132.

Why is it important to strive for a more scientific archaeology?

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.