This is one of the essay questions from the Archaeological Method and Theory exam I took a few days ago. I enjoyed answering it so much (why yes, I am a bit mad) that I decided to turn it into a blogpost!

The development of scientific techniques in archaeology since 1960s has cost millions of pounds whereas post-processual developments require no such expense. Do you think spending the money was worth it and why?

I am deeply amused by the idea of someone pumping millions of pounds into some sort of post-processualist think-tank.

In any case, of course I used this opportunity to defend scientific advancements and relieve some of the frustration at all the post-processual blather I read revising for this exam. Not just because writing essays about things I actually have opinions about is fun, but also because I’m reasonably sure my arguments are correct and make sense. It can’t all be a matter of opinion all the time.

Unless of course you’re one of those post-processualists who think all possibilities are equally valid and that American aborigines both came over the Bering land bridge AND sprang fully formed from a mythical subterranean realm. And were created 6000 years ago by God. Fair enough, philosophically there are ‘many different pasts’, but we’re archaeologists, we’re trying to discover humanity’s past; accepting every single theory is counter-productive in every way, and if you’re not even going to ask the question then what’s the point of archaeology at all?*

But enough general ranting, why have the millions of pounds that have been spent of scientific developments been worth it over post-prosessual theoretic developments?

For one thing, scientific advance drives theoretical progress, along with progress in the discipline overall. Of course, I can’t really speak for the more crazy post-processualists, because they don’t seem to be grounded in any kind of reality at all, but the theoretical developments that lead to processualism/New Archaeology were certainly driven by developments of techniques like radio-carbon dating and all the good stuff that means we no longer have to hope we’ll dig up a Roman coin or Egyptian pendant if we want to attach a definite date on to anything. And since post-processualism is a criticism of processual archaeology, you could argue in a roundabout way that it, too, owes its existence to scientific advancements – though since it’s also influenced by oodles of post-modern philosophies that’s really a non-argument.

More importantly, any archaeological theory, post-processual or otherwise, will go nowhere without actual archaeological evidence to back up the claims it makes. Without evidence, there’d be no way to support arguments, never mind come to any conclusions. Without any new evidence being discovered, theorists would be re-treading old ground and run around in circles for the rest of their lives. Theory can not survive on its own. It needs actual archaeological data. Scientific advances provide that data. They give us new ways of uncovering and analysing evidence, and they gives us the means to preserve it for future generations.

The list of scientific methods to find and analyse archaeological material that have arisen since the 1960s is ridiculously long. Do you know how relative chronologies like the Three Age System were tied to definite dates before the invention of ¹⁴C dating? Archaeologist tried to track artefacts or artefact types up from Egypt or the Middle East, because it was still thought that all culture spread to us Europeans from those directions. Of course we still can’t be completely sure about anything, but at least we now have relatively certain chronologies. Of course radiocarbon isn’t the only dating technique, there’s luminescence and other radiometric techniques. That’s dating, and we have ways of finding sites now, too, that aren’t sticking up out of the ground. GPR, magnetometry, even aerial photography depends on portable cameras that produce high-quality photographs – by the power of science! Well, electrical engineering, I suppose.

I read some of Shanks and Tilley’s book when I was revising for the exam, and they argue for a chapter or so about how artefacts should be presented in museums, that they should be tied in more with a social narrative and so on (where they do have a point, depending of course on the purpose of the museum), but how would these things be preserved, especially delicate organic remains, if it wasn’t for scientific preservation methods? Like supercritical drying, to name one really cool one, used to stop wood from shipwrecks shrinking and distorting as it dries. I COULD GO ON.

But instead I will go back to the financial argument. Scientific developments have cost millions of pounds, sure, but how much money have they saved? Newly developed techniques may be expensive, but the great thing about technology – it gets cheaper as it gets better. I keep being told that field archaeology is all about budgeting your money so you can get the most out of the evidence you find. Magnetometers are still fairly expensive pieces of equipment now, but they must have been much more expensive in the ’60s. (I tried to find information about magnetometer prices, but seriously, where would you find these things?)

I can’t imagine what archaeology would be like if everyone argued about theory and ignored scientific developments. It would be utterly pointless and depressing, and I don’t think I’d want to be a part of it. I’m studying this discipline to find out things about the past, to get as close to the facts as possible. And unfortunately, that’s a bit more expensive than sitting around arguing and patronising Native Americans.

 

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* I’m refering to a quote from this article which one of my professors used in an AMT lecture:

“[Sokal] gave as his example an archaeologist who asserted that there was no incompatibility between the position of scientists who had evidence that Native Americans came to North America across the Bering Strait more than ten thousand years ago and the position of Indians who believed that their ancestors arose, fully formed, from a subterranean world, and asked which one was true. His question seemed entirely reasonable, at least until the postmodernists in the audience began to pick it apart.
“On whose authority should we be forced to ask your question?” someone at the back asked Sokal….
“I don’t understand,” Sokal responded, a little exasperated. “These are two theories that are mutually contradictory”.
“Oh no,” someone else chimed in. “The question is, Should the question be answered?”
Sokal was on unfamiliar ground now, and things were getting worse, because just then [anthropologist] Andrew Ross [asked]… “Why would you choose a question that would put on trial Native Americans?” he said, seizing the upper hand. “Why, then, in a polarizing way, are we asked to decide this question?”

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Tags:Archaeology; post-processualism; ranting; science; Theory