Relativism and Archaeology

In his very informative article, Knapp gives an account and a critic of Post modernism as a philosophical stream and he comments on side-phenomena as well, like feminism, nihilism, and relativism. On the second part of his article, he comments on the impact of post modernism on archaeology, and on other human sciences in general.

As an anti-thesis of post modernism, modernism came to the scene  with Renaissance, and was powered by the Enlightenment rationalism. Science, reason and objective facts dominated the science area, while “metanarratives” of Marx, Darwin etc. imposed themselves as “truths”.

The emergence of post modernism in the 20^th century is based by the author to the socio-political environment of the era: after the disasters observed in this century, there is little consolation or faith in human reasoning for a better future. One of the reasons was the desperation of the post 70’s generation. 1970’s were black years in Western economies. On one side, there was the oil shock and disturbances in the giant economies of States, Britain etc. As a reaction to this, the “Fordist” welfare economies changed into flexible, defragmented structures, and this change was not without debacles in the society. Post modernism arrives as a denial of this situation marked by industrialization, information technology, and mass media.

The author first comments on the impact of post modernism on feminism. Being more or less contemporary phenomena, these two trends seem to react synchronically. However, the feminists sticking on gender and post structuralism evolved into an authoritarian aspect, while post modernism denies authority. Nihilism, has more in common with the extremist side of post modernism, denying the existence of truth. The nihilist motto in archaeology would be, accordnig to the author that:” We cannot know the past”. Another comment on truth comes by Foucault, who asserts that knowledge (and whatever that is sold us as “truth") is only shaped by the cultural constructs of the observer. The subjectivist relativism will free us from these dictations, and will provide many alternative answers to our question. An important tenet of relativism is that it denies a  methodology in science. But if there is no methodology, against what the interpretations will be tested and whose interpretation will be correct? Correctly, Knapp states that in a polyvocal world as well, some will be dominant and some will be marginalized. It is highly possible that, the observation of the dominant will be affirmed as “truth” again.

The post modernism finds its relative in archaeology as post processualism. There are many positive contributions made by this view into archaeology. Bintliff summarizes them in three tenets: 1- the critical examination of the social, moral, emotional involvement. 2- the questioning of the validity of the ‘fact-sheets’. 3- encouragement of multiple views of the past, awareness of women, non-elites and ethnic minorities of the past. It should be also added that, post processualism was able to define a process: this view was able to link social structures to human agents, and to focus on the individual agent. Another interesting emphasis was made on the symbolic meaning. According to the relativists, the meaning of the “text” (both in litteral meaning and how Hodder uses this word I think) is not inherent in it, depends on how people read it or experience it. so the archaeologist becomes both the reader and the co-author of the evidence.

The interpretive archaeology asserts that, archaeologists are interpreters; that archaeology is social; that interpretation is concerned not with causal explanation, but with understanding; and that interpretation is a multivocal activity.

An application of this view is explained by Hodder, called as “Reflexive Excavation Methodology” in both of his essays. His archaeology has four tenets and these are: reflexivity, relationality/contextuality, interactivity and multivocality. I will first comment on Hodder’s methods then on his ideas about interpretation. Hodder sets several steps of the reflexive method, he is generally involved here with an interdisciplinary team working in parallel, keeping artifacts within their context and having lab visitors pay a daily visit to the archaeological contexts, use of IT -web diaries, video recordings, 3D visuals, virtual reality- which could increase interpretive efficiency, and multivocality. Some of the aspects Hodder is citing seemed quite deja-vu to me. There are many projects working on interdisciplinary basis, and computer technologies that he proudly explains are quite banal ( an Access database is even used by our pharmacy keeping inventory records while many scientific disciplines today have programs specialized according to the needs and requirements of this discipline) although I think computer use in archaeology is very serviceable. The visualisations that Hodder offers by www are data that has been already interpreted, since it’s re-created and/or edited by drawing; so how will the author deal with it?

Another ambitious claim made by Hodder is on interpretation. According to him, interpretation occurs at many levels of research: even the place to be excavated is choosen by interpretation. So there’s no objective data description/collection, so that a subjective interpretation could be made afterwards. In order to dismiss the empiricist contradiction, Hodder comes up with a “flexible” methodology which basically seems to be the idea of including different

interpreting agents into the whole process. The different groups of interpretation, that Hodder counts are interesting: the islamist mayor vs. the Eu representant, the sponsoring bank, local peasants, aryanists, Goddess-worshippers... Although his call for an authoritarian science seems practically impossible to me, I think Hassan is not completely wrong on criticizing Hodder including these groups into archaeological research. If anyone’s ideas are as legitimate as those of archaeologists, why do archaeologists exist after all? Getting practical info from local peasant women about ovens should be praised, and such ethnographic work is being done by a large amount of researchers today, but what has archaeology got to do with the touristic advertisements made by the government or Eu policies? I feel the same discomfort while reading Hodder’s consideration of aryans, goddess worshippers or islamist politicians than Hassan probably felt. How much discomfort Hodder feels about them? And since the interpretation depends on the cultural constructs of the observer, can Hodder claim that he is immune of the Western ideological bias with his overwhelmingly Western team of researchers? After all this long speech about ethics, responsibility to the society, multivocality, I think Hodder could consult his “empathy coming from ages”, common sense or sixth sense at least: because what he states here is just too extremist, and controversial.

In the recent article about crane symbolism in Çatalhöyük, tha authors are involved in a thorough research on the crane bones found in the site. Their interpretation about these bones ( that crane wings were used in a dance imitating these birds) is not without a base. A careful bone analysis is done showing that the birds were not hunted for eating, but for another purpose. On the other hand, there is also a wall painting showing cranes with human feet, which could be interpreted as human dancers. The authors give other examples of crane iconography through other Middle-Eastern sites as well. As an example of interpretive archaeology, many religious links are claimed, and it is discussed that crane dance may invoke sun, fertility, renewal, fidelity etc. I could put a comment here, because I’m not sure if cranes really winter in Anatolia, since their nests (generally built at the minarets) are never distrubed because it is believed that “they will come back” , and common belief is that those who see a crane migrating will travel a lot. If the authors are considering Celtic beliefs about cranes, they could consider these as well.