The "Secret Science"?

ARCHAEOLOGY IS A SCIENCE

Academic disclaimer: I have written papers for both Grad and Undergrad classes on this

Most people here will probably find this boring but it’s a topic I know a bit about so I thought I would post something and maybe spark some interest.

The long History of this debate summed up quickly: Early archaeology was basically looting, see excavations in Egypt during the 1800’s and early 1900’s or Schliemann’s excavation of Troy. There were some exceptions though, Sir Leonard Wooley and Flinders Peitre, for example, both took steps to ensure the integrity of their work. During the 1940’s there was an expansion of the sciences in archaeology caused by the explosion in technological advancement caused by WWII as well as influential thinkers like Lewis Binford and pushed further in the next few decades by more archaeological theorists such as Michael Schiffer. This has come to be known as the Cultural Historical-Processual transition.

Now, archaeology utilizes something that everyone over the age of 13 is very familiar with, the Scientific Method. Archaeologists now emphasize testable hypotheses, as well as quantifiable data, to determine the location and extent of excavations. The objective and purpose of archaeology today is to obtain data while furthering our knowledge of the past, this is opposed to its earliest iterations which were most concerned with procuring objects for display in museums and private collections. Most of the earliest archaeological research was less concerned with “who” and “why” but rather concentrated on simply placing things in their chronological order.

The extent of the entanglement of archaeology and science can be seen most clearly in two aspects. The first of which is the incorporation of scientific fields in the practice of archaeology, illustrated here in two examples. The First example being the use of Geographic Information Science/Systems (GIS) which has/have been used by archeologists extensively to investigate supra-regional trends as well as determine relations of site and artifacts to the context of their locations. This has allowed researchers to tract artifact type or style movements in both time and space or even attempt to identify the decision making processes of ancient peoples in relation to selecting locations or creating trade patterns (some case studies are listed below).

The second example is Osteology and Stable Isotope Remains. Using comparative studies of the cumulative data for skeletal remains of individual’s from multiple populations, it is possible to determine the sex, likely age at death, stature, and possibly even ethnic lineages (the last one is highly debated though) of found remains. Additionally, based on the analysis of isotopes from the same skeletal remains it is also possible to determine the region someone grew up in, the region they resided at the time of their death, as well as reconstruct their diet. How all of this is done is explained in the readings listed below.

The other aspect in which the relationship between science and archaeology is highly visible is in the funding process, especially in the US. The primary funding agencies, National Geographic, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, all have very specific requirements for projects to be approved. These requirements are largely based on applicants being able to prove there is quantifiable and measurable reasoning for the project being able to provide the results the excavator expects. Also in the requirements are contingents that the applicant can demonstrate that the prosed project will add to the quality of information of broader themes than solely the researchers own specialty, a mantra of the scientific community.

In recent decades another epistemological movement has taken hold within archaeology, known as the post-processual movement. As the processual thinkers were highly influenced by scientific thought, they attempted to define cultures as systems; a methodology which has been largely abandoned today. Post-processual theorists have begun to incorporate philosophies such as feminism and phenomenology into archaeology as cultures are more fluid and influenced by human interactions than systems that can be defined by a strict set of rules. While during the 1980’s the debates between these two schools of thought became so heated that many encounters between subscribers of each reached rather “colorful” levels, today it is largely accepted that the ideal stance on archaeological research is somewhere between the two.

If anyone does wind up reading this in its entirety I hope you found it interesting and thanks for reading an article on most will undoubtedly consider a boring topic.

General Readings on this topic
Johnson, Matthew, 2010. Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackewll.

Schiffer, Michael B, 1987. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Trigger, Bruce G, 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Examples of the Use of GIS in Archaeology
Altaweel, Mark, 2015. Settlement Dynamics and Hierarchy from Agent Decision-Making: a Method Derived from Entropy Maximization. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 22: 1122-1150.

Bevan, Andrew; Wilson, Alan, 2013. Models of Settlement Hierarchy based on partial evidence. Journal of Archaeological Science. 40: 2415-2427.

Osteology and Isotope Analysis
Lee-Thorp, J A, 2008. On Isotopes and Old Bones. Archaeometry 50(6): 925-950.

White, Tim D; Folkens, Peter A, 2005. The Human Bone Manual. New York: Elsevier Academic Press.

Archaeology Funding Information
nationalgeographic.com, 2016. Committee for Research and Exploration Grant. [Online] Available at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/grants-programs/cre-application/ [Accessed: 3/22/2016].

neh.gov, 2015. NEH’s Application Review Process. [Online] Available at: http://www.neh.gov/grants/application-process [Accessed: 3/22/2016].

nsf.gov, 2016. Archaeology and Archaeometry. [Online] Available at: http://www.nsf.gov/ funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=11690&org=SBE&sel_org=SBE&from=fund [Accessed: 3/22/2016].