SCIENCE

“[O]ne of the most interesting things about archaeological material, is you get the same object, you get three archaeologists, you come up with three different interpretations based on that.” – Vance Watrous (archaeologist)

This essay presents a critical evaluation of archaeology as a science.  Important questions asked and discussed are: In what sense is archaeology a science? How does it compare with other scientific disciplines?  Is archaeology an empirical science or a hermeneutic discipline?  I look at archaeology as it is practised, with special attention to methodology, interpretation of the archaeological record and the role of historical texts.  Also discussed is its relationship with other hermeneutic disciplines, especially textual studies, and how this relationship impacts on the archaeological endeavour.  The eventual aim is to establish the limits of the archaeological reach in a similar way that Immanuel Kant established the limits of “pure reason” years ago.

Archaeology was born during the Modern Era – like all the other well-known disciplines.  During the modern epoch, all “disciplines” strove towards respectability, to become recognised as disciplined sciences. The set ideal was to be objective, to reach final results, to establish truths. There was optimism that humans will eventually be able to obtain and establish certain and final knowledge. This perspective has, however, changed a lot since the late 1940’s. During the last half of the twentieth century philosophers of science began levelling severe criticism against the possibility of obtaining final answers and in our present Postmodern Era, it has become recognised that the mentioned goals are for the most part unreachable. Even though all sciences will always be “disciplined”, using strict methodologies, with established techniques and methods, their ability to obtain final results and answers are limited. This conclusion also pertains to archaeology.

Although I am not an archaeologist myself, I have a live interest in this field of study, coming from a philosophy of science background. In my reading of the present situation, many researchers in the field still operate in the modernist frame of mind, trying to establish certain final “truths”.  A debris of the modernist mindset of positivism, in which positive empirical evidence serves as the only measure of “truth”, still lurks in their midst despite the fact that it has become discredited in philosophical circles.

The relevant question that needs to be posed is: What kind of science is archaeology and what are the limits of its reach?  What conclusions can reasonably be drawn by archaeologists and what cannot, that go beyond the limitations of the field? Even though good articles by philosophers of archaeology focus on these matters, these philosophers can for obvious reasons not really remove themselves from the scientific “paradigm” to which they belong (Kuhn 1962), often resulting in a tempered criticism in with the (perhaps unconscious) objective seems to be a defence of the status quo. I duly recognise that my own critique is simply another perspective, but nonetheless believe that it may have value as an external philosophical critique of archaeology as a science.

In this short essay, I will only focus on those aspects of archaeology that I see as critical to the evaluation of archaeology as a science.  These include methodology (with special reference to inductive and deductive methods), interpretation of the archaeological record as well as the role of historical texts.  I will elucidate my arguments with examples from archaeological experience stretching over the last few decades.  These include material related to different excavations and finds, mostly from the ancient Middle East (as this is where my own interest lies). Throughout the discussion, I will also compare archaeology with other scientific disciplines, namely the natural and social sciences, as well as the hermeneutical disciplines.

Methodology

In an effort to establish archaeology as a scientific discipline, archaeologists have used the tools traditionally associated with both the empiricist and the rationalist approaches to science, namely inductive and deductive methods. Inductive methods start from the empirical data and try to establish generalised laws. Deductive methods start from theoretical hypotheses and test this against the data. Although researchers try to use one or the other method, in practice it is very difficult to keep these methods apart. The one feeds into the other and the other way round. Data is used to formulate hypothetical models which are tested and then (using the information) revised to establish better models.

The only science that uses purely deductive methods is physics. In physics, it does happen that mathematical equations that are deductively derived produce new insights that do not originate with any data. A good example is the Dirac equation which predicted the existence of antimatter. Mathematically constructed deductive theories are powerful in the sense that they give precise predictions and allow for the possibility of falsification, which goes much further than mere “verification”.  The philosopher of science, Karl Popper, recommended this “falsifiability” in physics (Popper 1957). However, most philosophers of science have accepted that this principle could not be established as a general rule to define a science.

During the modern epoch and even today, many researchers viewed deductive and inductive methods as tools for establishing what reality is really like. Researchers who held to the correspondence theory of truth believed that with better and better models, the essence of reality would eventually be laid bare. This optimism became punctured when physicists came up with two very different fundamental theories describing reality, namely Einstein’s general gravitational theory and quantum physics. Although both theories correctly predict outcomes to an astounding degree, they actually describe reality very differently (Pine 2006). Even though they seem to represent complementary theories, they imply that despite the fact that reality exists, we do not know – and would probably never know – what it truly is like. What is more is that there is absolutely no way to establish whether any model describes reality as it really is. A similar situation exists in the social sciences, where the complementary theories of behaviourism and psychoanalysis are used to describe the complex reality of human behaviour.

Although archaeology uses these same methods, a corresponding historical “reality” similar to natural reality studied in the natural sciences obviously does not exist against which models could be tested. The process of time has destroyed the historical reality that once existed. Even in cases where a city was suddenly destroyed and artefacts are well preserved (as in the case of Pompey), the archaeological record is incomplete. All archaeological records are incomplete.

What are the implications of this incompleteness?  It implies that archaeologists are stuck with an incomplete “reality” – the real historical situation or “reality” does not exist anymore. There exists an unbridgeable gap or “distance” between the historical reality and the archaeological reality present in the archaeological record. No historical “reality” exists for archaeologists to study comparable to the existent but unknowable reality underlying nature against which theoretical models in the natural sciences could be tested.

Incompleteness and Theoretical Models

Various models could be produced for any archaeological setting, all of them corresponding to the same archaeological data but with nobody knowing which model (if any) corresponds to the historical situation. The fact that a model is confirmed by the data says nothing; it merely confirms that an archaeological correlate for the model has been found. It does not in any way establish that the model corresponds to the real historical situation that once existed on the ground. In this instance, the different models are not complementary, they are competitive. And it is impossible to decide which one (if any) is correct. We find the same problem in other related disciplines like textual studies for example, in which the real textual histories of ancient texts are forever lost and no amount of hypotheses and testing could ever reproduce it (see below).

To illustrate this problem the difficulty of distinguishing between trade, emulation and migration in the archaeological record can be mentioned. Even with lots of data, it often happens that archaeologists cannot decide among themselves which model (or combinations of models) is applicable. Archaeologists from different backgrounds often use different models to explain the same data. A few examples will suffice.

1) Some believe that abundant evidence exists that people from Mesopotamia migrated to Egypt during the period of the Uruk Expansion (Redford 1992:24); others believe the data only shows emulation by a local elite (Wilkinson 2002:241, 245). 2) Some use a model of migration to explain the cultural change at the beginning of the Bronze Age in Cyprus (Frankel 2000), others apply a model of emulation by an emerging elite to the same data (Knapp 1993a). 3) Some believe that the cultural change in the coastal areas of southern Palestine at the beginning of the Iron Age prove the arrival of the Philistines (Dothan 1995); others believe the change was due to trade (Vanschoonwinkel 1999). The list of examples is endless, so to speak. Bernard Knapp once said the following with reference to the Minoan “colonies”: “[T]here is no way to settle it [the controversy] one way or the other” (Knapp 1992).

Some archaeologists are quite straightforward in their assessment of this problem. David Anthony, for example, writes the following about the tendency to prefer models of trade or emulation over migration: “Migration has been demonized and has mystified Western archaeologists since the rise of ‘New Archaeology’ in the late 1960’s… Several writers have noted that the rise and fall of the popularity of migration and diffusion in western archaeology seems closely linked to the prevailing milieu in politics, national interests and intellectual trends” (Anthony 1997:21). 

It seems that it is not only “scientific study” that decides which of the aforesaid models would be accepted; things like political correctness, national interests and what is trending, also play an important role. The incorporation of other disciplines like genetic studies may eventually lead to more substantial and clear results, but the applicability thereof is often restricted by the lack of relevant data as well as the fact that DNA sequences provide only limited access to someone’s parentage (and after seven generations, that is, about 150 years, the chance that a person’s genetics are passed on to descendants falls dramatically).

One can compare the archaeological study of historical evidence with the study of the origins of the universe. The universe still exists and scientists are able to study light that originated during the early stages after the universe came into being. Even though it is impossible to establish exactly how the universe originated, scientists were able to show that the astronomical data corresponds well with the predictions of the Big Bang model, which allowed them to eliminate the competing model of a static universe. Although the biological sciences to some extent share the problem of incomplete historical data, it can be assumed that the laws of nature that gave birth to the species are still valid. From this it may be suggested that the biological sciences would also eventually come to a better understanding of the processes involved and be able to “predict” outcomes similar to that found in physics.

Interpreting the Archaeological Record

As in the case of the empirical sciences, data collection forms a central part of the archaeological endeavour. But does this imply that archaeology is an empirical science? Although archaeologists carefully prepare their digs, using all kinds of techniques to establish a good definition of the excavation, the dice is always loaded against them. Even though data constitutes “evidence”, it cannot be compared with any experiment in the natural sciences or controlled study in the social sciences.

There are two reasons for this dilemma. In the first place, the dig is a non-repeatable experience. Although it could be compared with similar excavations elsewhere, it could never be the same. The fact that it is a one-off experience implies that it is after all also a personal (individually and socially) experience for those involved – it is not necessarily the case that other archaeologists would have arrived at the same conclusions. One can mention many examples of different interpretations of the same archaeological excavations and data. The observation of the archaeologist, Vance Watrous, says it all: “[O]ne of the most interesting things about archaeological material, is you get the same object, you get three archaeologists, you come up with three different interpretations based on that” (Watrous 1998).

The other aspect in which archaeological excavation differs from controlled experiments is that it is impossible to know if the accessible data is a representative sample. In most cases, it obviously is not. The problem is alleviated when the same items appear at many different sites, but in that instance those items are not context-dependant and most likely of a very basic nature. As a consequence, any conclusions drawn from the data are provisional and open to criticism. In the days of positivism, it was often assumed that no “evidence” serves as “proof” that such evidence does not exist. But this is just plain wrong. Since it cannot be shown that archaeological data is representative of a particular historical situation, how can substantial scientific conclusions be drawn from it?  It is not only possible but inevitable that evidence has disappeared with time or that it has been severely damaged or reduced.

Many examples could be given to illustrate the non-representative nature of archaeological data. The excavator, Giorgio Buchner, for example found one small precision balance in the refuse of a metal workshop, together with a miscast bronze fibula and a few related items, which serve as the only possible evidence for Strabo’s statement that goldware production was one of the main activities of the early Iron Age Euboean settlement off the Italian coast (Buchner 1979). A while ago it was reported that an organic layer, probably resulting from a tsunami, covering archaeological remains from 6000 years ago in the Burren More in North Clare in Ireland, dissipated when exposed to air. The same is true for papyrus and similar perishable materials, especially in Middle Eastern contexts. This again confirms what have already been shown (although in this instance from the inductive side), namely that archaeologists are stuck with an incomplete record of historical “reality”, which severely limits their ability to establish which theoretical model corresponds to the historical situation.

Although archaeology involves “experience”, archaeologists do not conduct “experiments”. Excavations are neither repeatable nor representative. Archaeology is therefore not an “empirical science” in the way that this terminology is usually understood. Even though excavations are empirical in nature, this is not enough to establish archaeology as an “empirical science”. This fact was recognised decades ago by philosophers of science. Even when archaeological excavations are conducted in a carefully controlled manner, the archaeological record is always open to different interpretations. Although interpretation cannot be excluded from any data (even in physics there exists various interpretations of quantum physics), in archaeology interpretation is not grounded in empirical experimentation.

The Archaeological Record as Text

It has been proposed that the archaeological record should be viewed in analogue to a text (Schiffer 1985) or at least as having symbolic meaning (Guarinello 2005). As in the case of textual studies, archaeology is essentially an interpretative (hermeneutic) discipline. Various interpretations of a “text” are always possible and no single interpretation could necessarily be established to be the right one. Bernard Knapp wrote in this regard: “Archaeologists of different backgrounds, however, read such ‘facts’ in different ways and assigned alternative meanings to the same material. In other words, the archaeological record, as ‘text’, has its own autonomy and is open to multiple interpretations on the part of its readers” (Knapp 1993b). This view explains why theoretical models, which are in fact nothing but sophisticated perspectives, will always be competitive even when they incorporate complementary aspects.

It may, however, be asked whether the analogy of the archaeological record with texts is really a good one. Although it captures the fact that the interpretation of archaeological data is unequivocally perspectivist, it does place that record on the same level as texts. But is that really the case? What distinguishes texts is the information contained therein – information about historical events and situations. This is exactly what non-textual archaeological data for the most part lacks. Although such data could provide certain basic information, for example about natural and human-produced catastrophic events, the information is severely limited in nature because its relation to known history is not explicitly given. Non-textual data merely provides partial access to background information, for example about material culture.

The big difference between texts and non-textual data in their ability to provide information could be easily illustrated. The presence of foreign communities, for example, is very difficult to establish solely from the archaeological data. The Old Assyrian colonies in Anatolia would have been “invisible”, had it not been for the discovered tablets. Malcolm Weiner noted in this regard:

“As Machfeld Mellink, James Mellaart and others have observed, had the tablets not survived little else would suggest the existence of an Assyrian colony since the colonists adopted local architecture and pottery. The situation with regard to Karum Kanesh is not unique. Tablets tell us of many Assyrian trading colonies in Anatolia. At other major excavated sites as Bögazkoy and Alishar, again only the tablets give any clear indication of the presence of an Assyrian trading colony… It is clear that there are differing views among specialists as to whether an Assyrian custom can be detected at Kültepe… I think it would be very difficult to identify something which is specifically Assyrian without the tablets” (Weiner 1984:17, 26).

The same can be said about the Ugarit tablets which dramatically changed the academic perspective on late second millennium BC Canaanite culture. Clearly, it would be impossible to obtain the conclusions drawn from the texts instead from the available Canaanite material culture.

A certain kind of information, however, exists that can only be provided by archaeological data, especially organic material. This concerns information about the age of the data. The unique ability to accurately date structures and catastrophic events from organic material provides it with a particular scientific significance. For these calculations, archaeologists are however dependent on other disciplines like dendrochronology. But even in this instance some doubt has been cast by scholars on the scientific techniques used in this regard.

In his book, A Slice through Time (1995) the dendrochronologist M.G.L. Baillie acknowledges that the master chronologies “are not 100% matches” and that the application of the technique is based on subjective judgement: “The practised dendrochronologist is looking for matches that he/she is willing to accept, based on experience, as correct matches between long ring patterns”. In his review of this book, Ron Tappy wrote: “This subjective intuitive aspect of dendrochronology might easily fail to satisfy the tolerances and significance levels expected by statisticians… Recognition of this subjective human element and the inconclusiveness of many of the case studies introduced in the course of the book dampen somewhat one’s appreciation for the purportedly absolute precision of the science. Various factors, such as the loss of the outermost layers of unconsolidated sapwood from a collective sample, seem to compromise the accuracy of the overall method” (Tappy 2001:215). Dendrochronology is perhaps not as accurate as is often assumed.

Dating archaeological layers have other problems as well. Sometimes the dendrochronologically derived dates for samples from the same archaeological layer differ substantially. The grain and charcoal samples taken under well-controlled circumstances from the destruction signifying the end of layer 6 at Tell Brak (this is the period just before the Akkadian king Naram-Sin’s palace), for example, gave dates of 2023 BC and 2662 BC respectively (Oates 1985:144). Archaeologists normally assign the reign of the Naram-Sin somewhere in the middle between these dates.

Another problem is that the presence of organic material does not necessarily determine the age of the structures in which it is found. The structures could have been in use for long periods before those products were included therein. Even when organic materials do form part of the structures, it might have been incorporated during repairs or rebuilding. Pottery does provide a basis for relative dating but in many instances such finds are insufficient to clearly define and establish the period to which the associated structures date.

The Role of Historical Texts

Archaeology shows the most promise when artefacts and texts are found together. When texts are inscribed on structures, as is often found in Egypt, the possibility of obtaining substantial information about historical events is definitely the best. This is probably one of the most important reasons why Egyptian archaeology is generally viewed as secure, if only for the main dynastic periods. When texts are found in well-preserved layers, the prospects are also good. When the provenance of the texts is, however, unknown or when other historical texts are used in the interpretation of the archaeological data, the situation becomes much more complicated. But even in the best of cases, both the archaeological artefacts and the texts or the combination thereof are open to different interpretations.

What is more is that the overall interpretation of the situation usually involves other archaeological data and historical texts. Although archaeology has considerably enlarged our knowledge of the past through the continuous production of new artefacts, the practice of archaeology has always involved and included historical texts, except for the early pre-historic periods. This implies that archaeology is actually an empiric-hermeneutical discipline, which is as far as texts are concerned very much dependent on other hermeneutic disciplines.

Historical texts used in archaeology are also studied in disciplines like philology, history, literature, religious and textual studies and so forth. These fields have their own particular ways of dealing with texts. Of special importance is the reliability of the historical information contained in these texts. Establishing this reliability depends on many factors, one of which is the textual history of texts. All historical texts have a certain textual history, how it came into being. Texts like the Bible are typically compiled from other older texts and traditions and then edited and copied in the process of having been handed down.

The question that immediately follows is how the textual history is determined. Again, theoretical models are constructed, using methods typical of these fields of study, like source criticism. These disciplines, however, face the same barrier found in archaeological excavation – the real textual history is lost. Given the impossibility of substantially (empirically) verifying many of the assumptions used and the fact that new information could always upset the carefully constructed models, there exists no hope of ever arriving at the real textual history. The data used to test such hypotheses is always provisional; their verification does not establish facts. Even if one does allow for the possibility that the real textual history could in some instances be reconstructed, it is still impossible to know if this goal has in fact been achieved. This implies that many possible interpretations present themselves, resulting in the formulation of various different perspectives. The hermeneutic disciplines can therefore also do no better than developing competing perspectives.

Critical Approaches to Texts

In an effort to get these hermeneutic disciplines recognised as sciences during the modern epoch, scholars have historically adopted a “critical” approach towards the information in historical texts. This included the use of the rationality criterion, assuming that we can rationally determine the likelihood that historical events have taken place. But this assumes that human behaviour is always rational, which it is not. Certain confirmed historical events are very unlikely to have happened – but they did. There is absolutely no way to rationally determine the historicity of events.

This critical approach moreover assumes that without supporting evidence, the information could not be trusted.  In practice, this often leads to a positivist rejection or at least suspicion and doubt of textual information that has not been verified. But on what basis is this verification done? On the basis that archaeology provides sufficient evidence to decide what should be accepted as reliable information. The problem is however that archaeology is not an empirical science in the true sense of the word, dendrochronology is not really a rigid statistical science (see above) and all archaeological data is provisional in the sense that there always exists the possibility that new data will be found that might, even dramatically, alter the picture.

Many examples can me mentioned where textual information that was once seriously doubted, was later confirmed by new evidence. A few will do. There was a time when the historicity of the “Great Rebellion” against Naram-Sin (and even his foreign conquests) was doubted (Cooper 1993). The discovery of a school text from the period of Naram-Sin himself, however, confirmed that this event did in fact happen. Joan Westenholz commented: “This fragment of a student’s poor exercise is the only extant proof that literary works were composed on the theme of contemporary historical events. The triumph of Naram-Sin over the rebellious city states was probably celebrated in pomp and circumstance… In the city of Esnunna… a teacher made this subject the topic of an assignment of a written composition for a student” (Westenholz 1997:223).

Another example concerns the biblical figure of David, whose historicity was widely dismissed in scholarly circles before the discovery of the ninth century Tell Dan Stella on which his name appears. In this case, some scholars were so convinced of the correctness of their view, that they even initially rejected the discovery as fraudulent. It is interesting to note that both the Akkadian Empire, which was remembered as the greatest empire ever to have ruled over Mesopotamia, and the Davidic kingdom share the same scarcity of physical evidence from the original period. Mario Liverani writes the following about the Akkadian Empire: “If we didn’t know from the texts that the Akkad empire really existed, we would not be able to postulate it from the changes in settlement pattern, nor from the evolution of material culture” (Liverani 1993). The opposite is also true – in traditional circles the information in the texts is often accepted too uncritically without a good understanding of the problems involved.

The fact that disciplines like textual studies were born from the modernist-positivist methodologies of the past, which even today have a significant influence on some practitioners in the field, seriously undermines its standing. The use of such approaches in the practice of those disciplines, which in my experience are very much alive, for example, in textual studies, is a matter of serious concern. This is all the more problematic since archaeology has a relationship of reciprocal dependence on those disciplines. These disciplines depends on archaeology for the interpretation the archaeological data, which is in turn used for the interpretation of texts; on the other hand archaeology depends on the analysis of historical texts to interpret their data.

Both the archaeological data as well as the texts are open to widely different and even conflicting interpretations. No wonder that the formulation of coherent narratives using the interpretations developed in the different disciplines has in the past lead to heated debates. In this regard, different views about the destruction of Ebla (during the Akkadian period), the Trojan War, various biblical traditions as well as many other issues come to mind. Those scholars who give more credence to the archaeological data typically follow a “minimalist” approach, whereas other scholars who give more credence to the texts typically follow a “maximalist” approach. Between these opposites, many other approaches are possible. The simple fact is that none of these positions will ever be able to arrive at final conclusions. In some cases, one cannot even accept that the narratives proposed by the academic community are necessarily a “true” approximation to the historical events.

Conclusion

In this essay, I present a critique of archaeology as a science. Archaeology is not an empirical science similar to the natural and social sciences. Although some researchers, especially those educated during the final days of the modernist epoch and deeply influenced by positivist ideas, sometimes give the false impression that archaeology is an empirical science, this is obviously not the case. Although archaeology mine and analyse data under controlled circumstances, this cannot be compared with repeatable experiments in the natural sciences or controlled studies in the social sciences.  Archaeology is much more limited and restricted in its reach.

In archaeology one can never reach beyond a perspectivist view about any historical situation. Accordingly, archaeology can be described as an empiric-hermeneutical discipline. A distinction should, however, be made between hermeneutics insofar as it concerns the interpretation of texts in combination with other data and hermeneutics as the interpretation of non-textual artefacts. The archaeology of the pre-textual age is not “hermeneutical” in the traditional sense. Non-textual data should not be given the same status as texts.

Although archaeology is primarily concerned with physical excavation, it involves many other disciplines. Many of those disciplines are concerned with texts and are also open to widely different interpretations. The process of determining the trustworthiness of information in texts is fraught with problems. When one comes to the eventual formulation of coherent narratives that incorporate both archaeological data and texts, one could never go beyond the practical limits of incomplete and under-represented data and information.

The result is a range of competing narratives, none of which can claim on “objective” grounds to have arrived at the “truth”. The archaeological community should be comfortable with the necessary possibility of different interpretations and should not suppress well-argued viewpoints and narratives that challenge orthodox views.

In the final instance one can ask of what the use archaeology is then. Although archaeology cannot provide final answers, it does increase our knowledge. Its ability to produce new data allows us to construct better and more sophisticated narratives than before – but nothing beyond narratives. In the final instance, archaeology contributes to our enjoyment of life in the same way that literature, art and religion does. It enables us to live the “good life”.

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The essay was first published on 19 August 2012 on wmcloud.blogspot.com