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Christopher Witmore |
In addition to day-by-day notes, the square supervisor is responsible for a subjective interpretation of the meaning of his or her excavation. This subjective analysis is submitted at the conclusion of his/her work in a particular area and is physically kept separate from the objective facts, so that assumptions are kept distinct from field notes (Joukowsky 1980, 218-219; quoted in Hodder 1997, 691; also 1999, 81).
If the earth is from a sterile layer, it can be dumped, but if it comes from an occupation level, the earth should be carried to the screen, spread on it, and sifted so that no telltale signs will be overlooked (Joukowsky 1980, 175; quoted in Hodder 1997, 691; also 1999, 81).
Hodder highlights Joukowsky’s attempt to maintain a neat separation between interpretation and objective fact in the first statement while at the same time he points out the incongruity of the second, which relates a situated enlistment of methods that is dependent on ‘prior interpretation’ (Hodder 1997, 691). For Hodder, interpretation cannot be nicely parted from the activities involved in data collection, because ‘interpretation occurs on many levels in archaeological research’ (1997, 692). We may recall a similar contradiction highlighted in my discussion of the Keos volume in the previous section. Hodder argues that this logical contradiction is a primary reason why archaeologists should reconsider techniques of fieldwork. Indeed, for those in the empiricist/objective camp to be convicted of self-contradiction is to lose or seriously weaken their claims in the eyes of interpretive archaeologists. By foregrounding an awareness that the past is as much constructed as it is discovered, Hodder in effect flips interpretation, normally conceived of from the objectivist viewpoint as secondary, and situates it as primary whereby it can be said to occur both prior to and simultaneously with the excavation process. The ‘data’ do not exist independently of interpretation. They are subsumed within it. They are constructed.
There is now a large and growing body of literature dedicated to the issues of how interpretation lies behind all aspects of archaeological work (e.g. Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis 2000; Edgeworth 1990; Gero 1996; Hodder 1997; 1999; 2000; Lucas 2001a; 2001b; Richards 1995; Tilley 1989a; Thomas 2004a). Furthermore, the interpretive turn has been fueled by a number of projects with the explicit aim of closing the gap between theory and practice in fieldwork. Some of the more conspicuous and well-known of these include for example, Gill Andrews, John Barrett, and John Lewis with their framework archaeology at the rescue excavations of Perry Oaks, Heathrow Airport, England, Barbara Bender, Sue Hamilton, and Chris Tilley at the site Leskernick on Bodmin Moor, and Ian Hodder, Ruth Tringham, and team members at the Neolithic archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. All claim to have moved away from a scientific model of excavation where data are treated (naïvely) as existing independently of, and prior to interpretation. In what follows I will discuss how some of these archaeologists have addressed the gulf between theory and practice in their perspective projects.
Framework archaeology developed out of collaboration across a disciplinary divide between academic and commercial archaeology for the purposes of archaeological fieldwork for the British Airports Authority at Heathrow under the direction of Gill Andrews, John Barrett, and John Lewis (2000). Although explicitly focused on interpretation during excavation, framework archaeology does not set aside the notion of objective record. Framework archaeology ‘places great emphasis on interpretation in addition to recording, and developing a historical narrative as the site is excavated’ (Framework Archaeology, [link]). The authors claim they are writing against the common (legislated) practice in commercial archaeology of producing an objective archaeological record for subsequent interpretation. They regard this deferral of interpretation as not only adding to the cost of historical research, but also exaggerating the division between ‘excavators’ and ‘academics.’ Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis maintain that one of the primary objectives of their program is to produce ‘an on-site history of the human inhabitation of the landscape’ that ‘is concerned not so much with how things were made (the traditional focus of archaeology) as with how people were made as social beings within certain material conditions’ (2000, 529) (we may note here the firm separation of people and things).
The recording system utilized by framework archaeology works against laminar (parallel chronological blocks separated by seemingly impermeable transitions) temporal descriptions found in traditional archaeological procedure. In contrast Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis claim that the framework system facilitates connections and associations across the temporal ‘frames’ of classic chronology maintained in standard archaeological mapping. Therefore, a field system constructed in the Bronze Age and which ‘operated as an element of the Iron Age landscape’ can be accommodated in the mapping and documentation as a significant feature within the Iron Age landscape (2000, 529). The authors also place a great deal of emphasis on an integrated site database. Unfortunately, they do not present any examples of the two-dimensional maps produced by this system, nor the concomitant database they hold in such high regard and little else is published of their work (although refer to Beck 2000).
At this point it is worth noting that while Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis work against laminar temporal divisions in the past they are nevertheless complacent in their acceptance of excavation as a form of destruction (2000, 527). Cultural Resource Management emphasizes archaeological materials as a resource which ‘is either destroyed of preserved’ (Lucas 2001a, 37). This mentality of destruction treats the material world as distant and separate and thus reinforces the ‘Great Divide’ and the modernist separation of past from present. In this way, the authors betray a self-contradiction by adding to the ultimate laminar chasm maintained by modernist thought (accusations of self-contradiction being the rational that necessitates a new turn). They fail to explicitly map themselves into the landscape they are excavating.
In questioning the prevalent rhetoric of destruction in archaeology, Gavin Lucas has offered an alternative notion of excavation as a transformative, materializing process (2001a; 2001b, 211-214). For Lucas, as archaeologists ‘we constitute the archaeological remains through our engagements with them and the tools we use in that engagement’ (2001a, 38). Through our unique bodily interaction with an archaeological site or landscape—through excavation or survey—we produce and literally materialize our ‘data.’ In this respect, ‘excavation is not so much destruction as displacement’ (Lucas 2001a, 40). As archaeologists we displace and materialize a site through the creation of an archive. Contrary to the notion of archaeology as an unrepeatable experiment it is the archive that facilitates the possibility of iterability. In this intervention archaeologists transform the site and in the process they too become part of the life history of the site (refer to Shanks 1998 for a similar discussion in relation to the life of an artifact). These are extremely important points that I will take up in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4. Overall, Lucas regards this materializing process as an interpretive, hermeneutic activity.
For Ian Hodder, with the critical awareness that interpretation occurs on all levels in the construction of ‘data’ comes a need for more fluid and flexible forms of fieldwork (Hodder 1997; 1999; 2000). To this end, Hodder along with an international team of archaeologists have been developing a reflexive methodology at the excavations of Çatalhöyük. Their approach to the creation of reflexive methods has involved questioning even the most taken for granted aspects of archaeology, including the contexts in which they work. These contexts range in character from local to national to global and are situated at the intersection of political, religious (Islamic or new age), tourist, and economic concerns. This complex web of linkage contains multiple groups and communities with vested, yet often conflicting, interests in the site(s) of Çatalhöyük.
In response to this diversity of interest a number of multivocal ‘strategies’ have been employed. Multivocality, which arose in response to the polemics concerning power, authorship, and representation of the 1970’s and 80’s (Marcus and Fischer 1986, 7-16), is a means of addressing diverse and often contradictory voices through their integration in archaeological discourse (in the Foucauldian sense).
At Çatalhöyük, ways of facilitating multivocality were implemented through programs for the presentation of different interpretations of the material past in the Visitor Center. However, as Hodder emphasizes, this quickly became an issue for some members in the Goddess community who sustain an avid commitment to the site. They recognized the role of the archaeologists in providing the ‘data’ for others to interpret. In this way, they maintained ‘that the ‘data are already interpreted by you’’ (Hodder 2000, 5). For Hodder ‘this statement confronts the ascetic calm of the laboratory scientist and the self-contained methods of the field excavators. It shows that alternative voices have to be included in the very construction of the data themselves’ (Hodder 2000, 5). As a result, the methodology at Çatalhöyük facilitates multivocality and reflexivity in the archaeological process. The integration of multivocality in the construction of ‘data’ is an important aspect of dealing with the multiplicity and complexity of the material past.
Yet such is also a challenge to the territoriality of science. Therefore, in breaking down the division between science and the social, the multicultural is integrated as part of the reflexive program. This strategy resonates with issues facing Native Americans in the Americas (Watkins 2003), with post-colonial conditions in, for example, India and South Africa (Chadha 2002; Sheppard 2003), and class or labor divides in fieldwork (Berggren and Hodder 2003; Shanks and McGuire 1996). Consider for example the differences between scientific and native understandings of the material past. According to Joe E. Watkins:
For archaeologists, the principle values of the archaeological record are derived from its ability to yield scientific data about past human behavior. While some indigenous people might appreciate the scientific values of the archaeological record and the information it can offer, indigenous values for archaeological sites are primarily derived from their association with ancestors and tribal history—traditional values seen to transcend scientific data. The desire to preserve archaeological sites in situ as monuments that attest to tribal history is often more important to indigenous people than the information that can be gained through archaeological excavation (2003, 277).
The predominant response by communities of archaeologists and Native Americans has become one of balancing scientific and indigenous values through accommodation (refer to Watkins 2003, 277-278) and in some cases inclusive and hybridized practices (e.g. Dowdall and Parrish 2003). Indeed few would question the ethical need for mutual respect on both sides. However, the issue as Watkins emphasizes comes to a head over matters of control concerning the material past and collaborative research. Thus the traditional exclusivity of archaeology’s ‘object’ and ‘practice’ is what’s at stake (Hodder 1999; 2000).
In practice Native Americans are often encouraged to develop archaeological skills in dealing with their heritage (Watkins 2003, 279). Likewise at Çatalhöyük multivocality is grafted into the process of excavation or laboratory work (Hodder 2000, 3-14). The problem in both cases isn’t with acceptance of other points of view rather it is with how we conceive of scientific practice in opposition to other modes of engagement. This oppositional logic leads archaeologists away from possible synergies that occur in how we regard and engage with reality. Moreover, what is missing from these approaches is an in depth consideration of how archaeologists move between the material world and their modes of documentation. For now it is important to say a little more about how the multivocality put forth at Çatalhöyük connects with broader intellectual trends in anthropology.
As the interpretive turn is about directly confronting the problems posed by dichotomous thought in practice the division of ‘the field’ from the supposed contexts of knowledge production discussed at the beginning of this Chapter has begun to receive some critical attention by proponents of the ‘interpretive turn’ (Lucas 2001b, 10-14; Berggren and Hodder 2003, 427-428; regarding gender, Gero 1994; in the context of anthropology, Gupta and Ferguson 1997). Ian Hodder in recognizing the wider contexts in which archaeological production takes place has called for a dispersal of the term ‘field’ (2000). For Hodder:
The separation of an archaeology carried out ‘in the field’ sets up oppositions between descriptive recording and later writing up in the laboratory. It helps to reinforce binary opposites: us and them, self and other, objective and subjective, general and local (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). To counter this hegemonic, colonial perspective, there is a need to disperse ‘field’ and ‘site’ (Hodder 2000, 17-18).
Hodder, following Marcus and Fischer (1986; also Marcus 1995), foregrounds the idea that there are multiple groups and locales through which disparate forms of knowledge are produced in relation to the archaeological ‘field’ (refer to Bartu 2000, 101-109; also refer to Lucas 2001, 143-144). In this way, the links and nodes that constitute the socio-political networks of archaeological practice become fields relevant to a pluralistic knowledge of the past. Such a multi-sited take on the notion of field would break up the homogeneity of the term by focusing on the multiplicity of connection. What is more, this would potentially open up the archaeological field to more voices and take us beyond such debilitating binaries. Multi-sited ethnography arose as a means of dealing with the ‘increasing’ complexity of localized ethnographic practice in a globalized world. According to George Marcus, multi-sited ethnography focuses on the complex network of linkages associated with the world system in the constitution of any site (1995). Therefore any knowledge construction regarding a particular locale such as the Parthenon in Athens must take into account the multiple contexts—news media, Coca Cola advertisements, the British Museum, Nashville, Tennessee, etc.—in which the Parthenon is appropriated and re-presented. Sites are both constituted and dispersed through these multifaceted webs. Therefore such webs contribute to ‘its’ (their) meaning. This recognition that we live and work in a world of complexly intertwined locals and globals is an incredibly important step recognizing the dense entanglements that occur in our practice. From a more critical angle this relentless entanglement is necessary in a world where people are oppressed on the basis of arbitrary divisions and false-constructions of difference. In this regard multi-sited ethnography has been embraced as a major aspect of the work at Çatalhöyük.
Any multi-sited study must take into account the conditions of its own production. As such reflexivity is a core aspect of interpretive practice. Adrian Chadwick has argued that the notion of reflexivity on which the methodology at Çatalhöyük is based has not been sufficiently defined nor is it radical enough. For Chadwick, the methodologies employed at Çatalhöyük are ‘top-down’ and hierarchical rather than ‘bottom-up’ and horizontal (2003). Indeed, this problem is exacerbated by the modes of documentation that are recruited. More will be said of this in Chapter 4 regarding collaborative databases.
Aware of this parallel debate in anthropology Hodder recognizes the unique position of archaeology as a bridge to the natural sciences. Indeed this is the crux of any archaeological methodology. For Hodder the problem has been one focused around the debilitating subject/object split. He advocates non-dichotomous thought by embracing both poles of a frame of reference which is itself the problem. This is because the split between subject/object always denies a place for all the quasi-objects, quasi-subjects, and networked assemblages that make up the world (Latour 1993; and others). Our acceptance of a frame of reference that poses humans against the material world or against nature is the very problem. More will be said of this in Chapter 3.
The self-contradictions posed by dualist epistemologies, the simplicities of a linear process, and the denial of subjective determinates in ‘field’ practice, all have made the scientific model a target for proponents of an interpretive turn. However, for archaeologists working in the interpretive mode to provide ‘a social explanation of knowledge is, in effect, to nullify or at least seriously weaken the claims involved’ (Latour 1988, 155) (even though some appeal to a both/and stance (Hodder 1999)) in the eyes of practitioners behind empiricist/objectivist methodologies. This is because one cannot embrace one strut of a dualist conceptual framework that others maintain as oppositional to their position (refer to Latour 1993 for further elaboration). It is in this very regard that the divide between theory and practice is widening and not, as some would have us believe, closing. Of course, given the fragmented nature of the discipline in what can be regarded as a post-hypercritical moment both approaches appear to be surviving well (Kristiansen 2004; Olsen, Shanks, and Witmore 2003).
Neither side—the objectivist/empiricists nor the interpretive school—have effectively questioned whether the epistemology they either ‘naïvely’ believe in (the accusation of the iconoclast) or ‘naïvely’ critique really accommodates archaeological practice in the first place. Why are the proponents of interpretive fieldwork, as many practitioners of the scientific model, oversimplifying how archaeologists move between the material world and their modes of documentation? The problem with the empiricist/objectivist approach is that they maintained an epistemology that simplified the archaeological process too much. Likewise the problem with the interpretive challenge to empiricist/objectivist method is that it focuses for the most part on how archaeologists using the classic scientific model simplify their practice through description rather than what they do in real-time action (the fallacy of the iconoclast (Latour 1999)). Of course, the excavations at Çatalhöyük employ anthropologists who study every aspect of what the archaeologists do, but this is after a research methodology had been implemented on the basis of the epistemological critique. It is by focusing on epistemology that proponents of interpretive fieldwork have inadvertently reproduced an asymmetry that exacerbates the division between theory and practice. I will qualify these assertions.
Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis argue against the cultural resource policy of ‘preservation by record.’ They claim, ‘this policy facilitates, where necessary, the destruction of the archaeological resource and its replacement with a partial record, a record which can never ‘stand in’ for what has been destroyed’ (Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis 2000, 527). The record produced under this policy is not equivalent to the elements of the material world from which they are produced. Preservation by record is for Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis, a less-than-zero sum game. Certainly a .20m by .28m by .037m 365-page publication volume with its diagrams, maps, and photographic plates along with the archive it translates is not the same as an 50m by 80m by 2.65m excavation trench whose 10,600 cubic meters of earth contain the residues of the material past stretching across 3 millennia. This is a drastic reduction. Legislation often needs to be critiqued, reassessed and rewritten, but it should not be taken as the measure of good or bad practice. The touchstone for distinguishing good archaeology from bad does not reside in legislation or epistemology, but rather in what archaeologists do on the ground—in their ontological interactions with a diversity of other entities.
In the course of excavation or archaeological survey the material world has been reduced, but it has also been amplified. The irreductions cancel out the reductions and, indeed, provided certain measures some form of equivalency is attained in this chain of translation. The media and archives do stand in for the material world they were transformed from. But this is not to argue that archaeology once completed becomes a static record as Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis seem complacent in supporting, nor should this movement between the material world and ‘record’ be conceived as a zero-sum game. Indeed to assert archaeology as a process of attaining equivalency between material ‘record’ and textual ‘record’ makes us no more than stewards of the material past. To be sure, it is an unfortunate weakness of the legislation, which allows for a bare minimum and Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis should take issue with it. However, much more is at stake here than we are led to believe. Framework archaeology (as the research program at Çatalhöyük) poses that we collapse subsequent research (characterized as ‘historical interpretation’) into the initial stages of excavation (Andrews, Barrett, and Lewis 2000, 526). Interpretation should not be deferred as previously discussed.
Interpretive critiques have zeroed in on the singularity of the moment of excavation—at ‘the trowels edge’ (Hodder 1999). The notions of unrepeatability and ‘destruction’ are based upon the irreversibility of, for example, removing the fill from a rubbish pit. While this emphasis is important it places most of the attention upon excavation as if it were the only constituting moment in archaeology. Indeed, there are multiple transformative moments like these in the archaeological process (this will be detailed with some depth in a discussion of survey practice in Chapter 3).
The interpretation of ‘data’ seems to foreclose any further engagements with those materials, given that archaeologists have already interpreted them (in the process of (social) construction they have closed off further interpretation). But, the focus of Çatalhöyük on the accuracy of statements concerning ‘data’ is misplaced, because the accuracy of the archaeological process is not solely ‘related to the state of affairs out there but also to the traceability of a series of transformations’ (Latour 1999, 123). Accuracy rests on how we reference each step between excavation and the laboratory and the study or wherever. While it is important to deal with the multiplicity of the material past and the efforts of Çatalhöyük are extremely important in this regard, reference in the archaeological process is not a one-way affair in the construction of knowledge about the past. Referents circulate. Rather than neatly packaged constructed ‘facts’ we call ‘data,’ we always deal with translations that have long chains of transformation behind them (Latour 1987). In this way, current treatments and understandings of obsidian microdebitage (a translation of the materials themselves) are situated at the end of a lengthy process of excavation, articulation, and inscription. Any subsequent engagements with this material are connected to this previous chain of transformation. So in this regard, rather than encountering ‘preunderstandings’ or circumscribed ‘data’ at Çatalhöyük, these multiple chains are often in alignment with many others—Mellaart’s excavation reports and archives, the latest chemical analyses, 19th century modes of lithic illustration, and so on. More will be said regarding the notion of circulating reference, following the work of Bruno Latour, in Chapter 3.
In this process there remains a concern over standardized (textualized) forms of referent. Hodder, Lucas, and others have highlighted the problem of how one pit, one ‘hearth’ (fire installation), one site, or whatever can come to look like any other through standardized forms of record such as pro forma sheets or set conventions in photography and illustration (Hodder 1999; 2000; Lucas 2001a; 2001b). In this way, archaeology facilitates the production of sameness. While questioning convention and advocating experimental forms of documentation are important to generating a critical and dynamic perspective, these authors do not take into account the action of mixed media in the transformation of an entity. Though much is left behind in the process of transformation much also remains through a long established combination of various media. One should, for example, also take into account issues of extra-site comparability and compatibility, which are amplified in the process of transformation (refer to Alcock and Cherry 2004). It is not enough to focus on text alone. Understanding the diverse forms of action manifested in different media is critical. In this dissertation I argue for a measured diversity of documentary modes in the archaeological process.
Archaeology is an event. It is an event through which we should always aim to play a non-zero sum game. This is not about the deferral of interpretation from a seemingly singular moment of destruction, rather ‘what was an event must remain a continuing event. One simply has to go on historicizing and localizing the network and finding who and what make up its descendants’ (Latour 1999, 165). Excavations live on as events through the continual reiteration and reworking of materials in an ongoing process of knowledge constitution. This connects with Lucas’ argument that archaeology should be understood as a transformative and materializing process. However, in this dissertation I hope to put some distance between the concepts of transformation and materialization and certain aspects of hermeneutics and interpretation by taking direction from science studies.
But all of this begs the question—from where does the initiative of action come? The interpretive turn posits an erroneous notion of the world for human-consciousness. Consider the proposition on the part of the Goddess Community from Çatalhöyük that archaeologists have a priori ‘interpreted the data.’ This statement would lead us to believe that the archaeologists alone manipulate the material past. It ‘implies that the initiative of action always comes from the human sphere, the world itself doing little more than offering a sort of playground for human ingenuity’ (Latour 1999, 114). While facts are indeed constructed, to paraphrase Latour, they cannot be reduced solely to the social dimension because their production relies upon brigades of instruments, materials, and media that are mobilized to facilitate their very construction (1993, 6; also Olsen 2003). So while Ian Hodder, Ruth Tringham and other team members at Çatalhöyük, for example, have made important contributions by adding to our awareness of how multiple connections come together in archaeological practice, they have not allowed for the action of things, ‘non-humans,’ in that web of ‘interaction’ (more appropriately ‘transaction’ or ‘negotiation’ (Callon and Latour 1992, 347)).
Briefly take into consideration that as excavation members dig at Çatalhöyük they focus a great deal of energy into knowing as much as possible about what it is they are digging. Rightly so, but re-circulating knowledge about the classification of a seed in order to better understand the context under excavation involves many more actants than an environmental specialist simply interpreting a carbonized seed as einkorn. There are many more entities—whether trowels, tapes, dumpy levels, labeled containers, notebooks, or the human excavator, whether the body sherd from area 1889 in which the seed is lodged, the clean and ordered spaces of the on-site laboratory facility, the microscope, the texts with plant taxonomies, and so on—that come into play (Last 1997, Archive report). In this way, the success or failure of an ‘interpretation’ rests on mobilizing the vast sociotechnical network which lies behind it. Hermeneutics denies the active technical/material aspects of the network in maintaining the illusion that action is always derived from the ‘social’ realm, or rather the human ‘subject’. Reflexive excavation practice has thus far failed to extend reflexivity to encompass the action of things.
Furthermore, our archaeological tradition is mistaken in its modernist embrace of a material world separated from that of ideas and meanings—subjectivities. The archaeologists behind the interpretive turn are complacent in their acceptance of this division by their emphasis of the all-encompassing nature of interpretation. More will be said of this in Chapter 3. Let it suffice to say that because practitioners associated with both turns have not included the intermediary steps involved between the two polar extremes of the world out there and the words in here they have maintained the overly simplistic division between the material world and language which was handed down to them. The interpretive turn, as its scientific adversary, has left archaeology as thoroughly modern (refer to Thomas 2004b).
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