Darwin and Archaeology

Contextual and Post-Processual Archaeology

The articles written by Binford and Hodder seem to completely contradict each other. Yet the two archaeologists blame each other of being value-laden and consider each other’s statements as “imposed as self-evident truth”. Here I will try to outline Hodder’s basic assumptions about his point of view, altogether with Binford’s criticisms, with my personal criticism to both.

According to Hodder, the main idea behind archaeology is to infer past cultural meanings. The archaeologist must deal with constructing symbolic meaning in the past. He claims that, (and I think, correctly) to be interested in artifacts out of their context is pure antiquarianism. Hodder differentiates two main types of meaning, those are functional interrelationships and ideological and symbolic meanings. The first meaning is given to the object with regard to how it functions in relation to economical and social structures. According to Hodder, previous theories and Processual Archaeology dealt too much with the first meaning of the object and ignored its symbolic meaning; it if faulted, because these two meanings are necessarily interwoven according to Hodder.  However, finding symbolic meanings in an artifact would be, in my opinion, extremely difficult. Hodder assumes that there are some very basic rules underlying the ways in which the human being gives meanings to things: in antiquity and now. He uses the term “contextual”, as placing of items “with their texts” and claims that the archaeologist should “read” those texts.

Hodder suggests that the archaeologist should go beyond typological similarities, and ask questions about the context and the meaning of the artifact. Rather than direct comparison of forms, the artifact should be treated both in similarities/ differences and in four dimensions (those are Temporal, Spatial, Depositional and Typological). However, relevance of these dimensions is important: Hodder states that some kind of a guideline is needed for the types and similarities/differences although he doesn’t tell how such a scale could be made.

Another important point in Hodder’s statements is his understanding of explanation and description: explanation comes from description by successive question and answer. However, all description involves” theories, description, subjectivity, generalization and historical imagination”. Hodder’s subjectivity is violently criticized by Binford. Another amply criticized point is that, Hodder suggests one can compare a present society with one in the past, by reconstructing the past society within the present. Binford claims that (by using Hodder’s own words); in order to do such a thing one should have a priori information about the past world, and that this is impossible.

In the later parts of his essay, Hodder criticizes Binford’s mathematical approach. As Binford does not give an emphasis on meaning, the ability of the individual to create change in the society is minimized (and Binford blames Hodder’s view as ‘egocentric’). On the other hand, Hodder criticizes, rightfully, the mathematical approach’s fallacy in its “ceteris paribus” assumption: “other things” are never “equal” in real life. Hodder also states that, cultural reality is an assortment of varied perspectives, so there cannot be one true version of events.

Binford ‘s main argument in his criticism is Hodder’s subjectivity issue. The subjective thoughts of the archaeologist would become the source of knowledge, since this empathy comes from “ humanness”. Binford is right in claiming that this would be deriving from archaeological record and hence, nonsense. But I think Hodder’s writings offer more questions than answers, and his emphasis on symbolic and ideological meaning is a big step that Binford completely ignored. Hodder believes that, what we see in archaeological record is what we want to see and hence paradigm-dependent, and subjective. Binford is archi-against this suggestion, claiming that a first-hand observation is objective. His example of 243 blue glazed pottery and 109 brown pottery in fact both betray the missing part in his theory, and imply what Hodder wanted to say: it’s just an observation, and does not reflect anything else than the number of a certain pottery in a certain site. And scientific approaches can also be paradigm-laden, and even politics-laden. It all depends on how one wants to distort the current data: just change the mathematical model. The examples given by Binford are too simplistic to be able to kill Hodder’s ideas, no matter how subjective the latter is. Binford’s Cartesian graph he created between the frequency of pottery shards and frequency of burned rocks is a pity: most probably, there would be a positive relationship between the two. It’s self-evident. However there can be a one-by-one relationship between the price of a hamburger in Turkey and the population in India. What I mean is, how will the archaeologist deal with less self-evident, complex parameters in the archaeological record? How does the archaeologist choose the lenses through which he/she looks upon the artifact? Besides criticizing what Hodder says, Binford’s paradigm doesn’t offer an alternative answer to those questions.

I think Binford has some missing points in his treatise about testing theories as well. On page 36, he says:” ... Theories must be directed toward anticipating relationships among variables, and such relationships may be monitored by scientists”. Binford doesn’t explain according to which criteria one will monitor the theories, neither gives a comment about how all theories can be monitored (that is, verified by “science” I assume) by science.

One must also agree that Hodder’s relativism leaves no space for a proper understanding of archaeology; if everyone feels free to interpret the data the way he/she wants, then where would archaeology go as a discipline? And values that one gives to an object might be different in antiquity and in present. A simplistic example: a small oblong pot may mean to me a perfect container for planting a flower; my friend may think about putting his pencils in; some antique person may use it as a drinking cup. Unlike what Hodder says, that there is no one “true” version of the story, actually there is a true version, but it may not be preserved to us. On the other hand, it is still possible that we still did not discover the method of seeing the event, as it took place in the antiquity.

Although one can say that Hodder’s relativist view doesn’t help too much to the aim of discovering the past as it is, his contribution in emphasizing symbols and ideologies is enormous. These concepts, are important components of a society, be it in the past or in present, and “scientific” theories like Processual Archaeology unfortunately cannot say too much about them.