Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology

254 Pages·2002·8.73 MB·English

by  Bruce Trigger

Artifacts
8t. Ideas

Bruce G. Trigger
Artifacts
81 Ideas
Essays in
Archaeology
|3 Routledge
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First published 2003 by Transaction Publishers
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2002073208
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Trigger, Bruce G.
Artifacts and ideas : essays in archaeology / Bruce Trigger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7658-0165-5 (alk. paper)
1. Archaeology—Philosophy. 2. Archaeology—Methodology.
3. Social archaeology. I. Title.
CC72.T75 2002
930.1'01—dc21 2002073208
ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-0650-3 (pbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix
1. Introduction: Understanding the Material Remains
of the Past 1
2. Engels on the Part Played by Labor in the Transition
from Ape to Man: An Anticipation of Contemporary
Archaeological Theory 31
3. Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian 45
4. Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist,
Imperialist 67
5. Archaeology at the Crossroads: What's New? 87
6. Hyperrelativism, Responsibility, and the
Social Sciences 113
7. Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across
the Darwinian Chasm 133
8. The Real, the Perceived, and the Imagined 155
9. Imagination and Scientific Curiosity 177
10. The 1990s: North American Archaeology with
a Human Face? 195
References 209
Index 237

Acknowledgements
All chapters except the first are revised versions of previous pub­
lications. They are included in this volume with the agreement and
permission of the original publishers. The papers published here
should not be cited as being identical to the original ones. Rights
remain with the original publishers.
Chapter 2, “Engels on the Part Played by Labor in the Transition
from Ape to Man” first appeared in the Canadian Review of Sociol­
ogy and Anthropology, vol. 4, 1967, pp. 165-176. Reprinted with
permission of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Associa­
tion.
Chapter 3, “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian”
first appeared in American Antiquity, vol. 45, 1980, pp. 662-676.
With permission of the Society for American Archaeology.
Chapter 4, “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Im­
perialist” first appeared in Man, vol. 19, 1984, pp. 355-370. With
permission of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Blackwell
Publishers ©.
Chapter 5, “Archaeology at the Crossroads: What’s New?” first ap­
peared in the Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 13, 1984, pp.
275-300. With permission of the Annual Review of Anthropology,
vol. 13, © 1984; by Annual Reviews www.AnnualReviews.org.
Chapter 6, “Hyperrelativism, Responsibility, and the Social Sciences”
first appeared in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropol­
ogy, vol. 26, 1989, pp. 776-797. With permission of the Canadian
Sociology and Anthropology Association.
viii Artifacts and Ideas
Chapters 7, 8, 9, based on three lectures that were delivered as the
1997 “Context and Human Society” series sponsored by the De­
partment of Archaeology and the Center for Archaeological Studies
at Boston University, were originally published as a single paper
titled “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Dar­
winian Chasm” in the American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 102,
1998, pp. 1-34. Each lecture is reprinted as a separate chapter. With
permission of the Archaeological Institute of America.
Chapter 10, “The 1990s: North American Archaeology with a Hu­
man Face?” was originally published in Antiquity, vol. 64, 1990, pp.
778-787. By permission of Antiquity Publications Ltd.
Preface
Several years ago, Mario Bunge, a distinguished colleague in the
Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unit at McGill University
and the tireless scourge of much nonsense that currently passes for
wisdom in the social sciences, suggested that I should publish a col­
lection of my more recent papers dealing with archaeological inter­
pretation, together with an introductory essay that would relate these
papers to each other and to changing modes of interpretation in ar­
chaeology. More particularly he wanted me to gather in one place
my reactions to changing epistemologies that have influenced ar­
chaeology in recent decades.
I wanted such a work to consist of material that was not incorpo­
rated in any fundamental way into my later publications and that the
papers should address a single, coherent theme. Applying these cri­
teria, I eventually selected nine essays that outline my views about
epistemological issues. The earliest of these, published in 1967, is
crucial for understanding my position, but all the rest date from the
1980s or 1990s. Each essay has been edited to avoid overlap and
remove extraneous material; technical terminology and English us­
age have been updated; arguments that have become unfamiliar are
explained or—if no longer consequential—deleted; passages requir­
ing amplification or clarification have been rewritten; and a stan­
dard system of references has been supplied. I have, nevertheless,
attempted to preserve the original spirit of each paper. Doing this
came naturally to me, as the practitioner of a historical discipline
who has long specialized in studying that discipline’s intellectual
history.
Once I had selected these papers, I realized that they had more
thematic unity than I had recognized as I wrote them. Although they
are concerned with the theories of knowledge that guide, or can
mislead, archaeologists, they are deeply rooted in the ontological
realities that constrain the practice of archaeology. As an archaeolo­
gist, I am primarily interested in philosophy as it serves the needs
ix