Good Will Ranting

In the 1960s, Lewis Binford was at the forefront of a movement known as processualism. Two writers, Willey and Phillips, who some say began the movement, Stated that "American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing" (Willey and Phillips, 1958: 2).  Some expect that the nature of an anthropological problem will fall into our hands through narrative. Others rely purely on scientific reasoning and hypothesis testing. I would suggest that a combination of these two methods is ideal. Many have argued for the nullification of narrative, and that to gain more respect as a discipline, we need to rely more on hard sciences like physics, biology, and chemistry. However how hard are these sciences? They may be presented to peers in a manner that would suggest that they are relying only on the scientific method alone, but when documents such as this are presented to the general public, either through magazine, news release or otherwise, the dialect is changed to better suit the audience. I would argue that this usage of language, and the more than likely addition of the necessary aspects of a narrative would then make it soft. The reason archaeology is viewed as a soft science is that much of the hard data is left to human interpretation, and that the “individual” cited by post-processualists is bounded by the story created by the inferences of the individual studying them. They lack representative power because they are not vocally present, and as such the burden of accurately representing the construct of our humanity lies with the archaeologist. We have an immense amount of responsibility in the accurate representations of the past. This makes it extremely important that our inferences remain unbiased and free of political rhetoric. 








References:


Willey, G. R., Phillips, P., (1958) Method and Theory in American Archaeology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 

Graves are good

If I could choose what was buried with me, I don't know if I would be serious or not. As an archaeologist, I'm always dissecting the possible of grave goods within sites. This gets pretty boring after a while. I think that it would be interesting to see exactly which grave goods you could get away with before those excavating it became suspicious. With that in mind, the first thing I would want to have buried with me would be a toilet. I would be placed upon this sacred urn in a repose of intense thought. Next, a full place setting would be placed at my feet, and on the plate would be half eaten copy of The Life of Pi. At my side would be my trusty gilded carafe filled with raisin bran. Finally, on my head would be a traffic cone. It would be pretty enjoyable to read the site reports from archaeologists excavating my grave. Archaeology is by no means easy. When interpreting evidence from site reports, there is no way we can directly interpret the thoughts of the people we are studying. However, grave goods are an excellent way of deciphering what people think of their dead. Since I doubt very much that people thousands of years ago have anywhere near the amount of goods to associate their lives with, grave goods are typically representative of the socioeconomic status of an individual. Unfortunately, we are usually never faced with a case that is so simple and direct.