Lisa Ward
Topic 5 paper
My reading of this week’s material was colored by my reading of Johnsen and
Olsen’s paper on archaeology and hermeneutics. This paper, for me, explored the
superstructure of archaeological thought or, to put it a different way, the philosophical
underpinnings, divorced of the individual theories and methodologies used “on the
ground”.
In reading the history of hermeneutics that Johnsen and Olsen present, one of the
biggest questions that occurred to me is “How can you be sure?” The idea of “re-thinking
past thoughts” or is at the same time troubling and engaging to me. It is engaging for the
fact that, on the surface, it does seem like that the most natural way to get from a piece of
evidence to knowing what it means. Certainly, in some cases, it is very easy;
understanding why people build settlements near water or planting a garden in fertile area
are not that great of an intellectual leap. The physical needs of water and food will never
change. But, after that, the picture becomes much fuzzier. How could I, a privileged
student in 2009, actually put myself in the shoes of someone who is subsistence farming
or hunting in order to survive? Dilthey’s idea of the “lived experience” and the “life
expression” do not easily bridge the gap of circumstances between scholars today and
people living a thousand years ago. Even his adoption of the “Geist” and the assertion
that “what individuals hold in common has objectified itself in the world of the senses”
(Johnsen and Olsen 422) do not convince me of my ability to fully empathize with people
who lived long ago. How we perceive the information that our senses relay to us is
interpreted through the lens of our experience and our emotional relationship to those
experiences.
However much early hermeneutics does not line up to me, how is it treated in a
more modern context? The Shanks and Tilley reading certainly explains hermeneutics in
a way that is more applicable. They separate the idea of being empirical and being an
empiricist: “It is important to distance being empirical—considering data in all its
potential fullness and complexity—from being empiricist—granting primacy to that data”
(Shanks and Tilley 115). In their view theory is developed not merely about objects, but
that there is a relationship between the theory and object such that they shape each other.
This means that the archaeologist and the data have an effect on each other which results
in the development of a “theoretical object”—an object in which theory effects it and the
object shapes theory. From there one has to make “conceptual links between the
theoretical objects such that they can be show to be related to each other in a coherent
fashion” (Shanks and Tilley 112). Finally, structural principles are developed out of
logical progression and links among the theoretical objects and conceptual links.
Middle Range Theory, as first used in sociology, “existed at a middle range of
abstraction and provided a crucial linkage between data collection and higher order
theories” (Raab and Goodyear 256). In Raab and Goodyear’s view, Binford’s use of
Middle Range Theory in relation to site formation processes is a narrowing of the
definition of it. And while, for the most part, hermeneutic approaches do not allow for the
separation of data and theory, I find an interesting link between Middle Range theory and
Shanks and Tilley’s explanation of how the archaeologist goes from data to structuring
principles. In a way, the development of theoretical objects and conceptual links could be
classified as the mid-way point between data and a larger principle. I do not think,
however, that Shanks and Tilley would allow for the idea that these things can be
separated out and treated as individual things. Their explanation of interpretation is that it
cannot be divided from empirical date because it is not optional; we are always
interpreting what we see and experience. This is the opposite of Binford’s processual take
on analogy. He does divide data from the analysis and interpretation of it. While
processualism in general does not fit well with the holistic interpretation process of
hermeneutics, the concept of analogy to direct the thinking does not. As hermeneutics
considers interpretation to be an on-going process, one could argue that if an object found
during a dig makes an archaeologist think of something that he or she has seen before,
then the analogy helps to define the object in-hand.
Analogy in archaeology actually exists in two forms. The second, is the use of the
theories of natural science in archaeology, which was the processual approach in creating
an analogy between archaeology and the natural or “hard” sciences. Hermeneutic
philosophy dismisses this comparison. Giddens wrote about the “single” and “double”
hermeneutic in natural and social sciences. Because a social scientist cannot remove him
or herself from that which he or she is studying, there are two levels of interpretation and
the analogy between social and natural sciences falls apart. However, Shanks and Tilley
take this even further. They propose a “fourfold hermeneutic” of archaeology that
includes: “(i) the hermeneutic of working within the contemporary discipline of
archaeology; (ii) the hermeneutic of living within a contemporary society as an active
participant…(iii) the hermeneutic of trying to understand an alien culture involving
meaning frames radically different from his or her own; (iv) the hermeneutic involved in
transcending past and present” (Shanks and Tilley 108). I am not sure how far I am
willing to agree with this; according to this model, all social sciences are actually a triple
hermeneutic, because they too exist in contemporary disciplines, contemporary society,
and involve trying to understand an alien culture. And why not more? One could argue
that there are levels of hermeneutic beyond the four that they suggest, relating to place,
class, education, and many others. I think that this idea is better understood as there are
any number of paradigms, factors, and experiences that shape the way we think and
interpret the world around us. Either to ignore them or enumerate them is to forget about
the complexity of all of our own lives and the lives of those who left traces of them
behind.