Boule's error: on the social context of scientific knowledge

Abstract

IntroductionOn August 3, 1908, two young French clergymen with a passion for prehistory, the brothers Amédée and Jean Bouyssonie, discovered in a cave near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Sains (Department of Corréze) an almost intact Neanderthal skeleton. Recognizing both the importance of their find and their own inexperience with such fossils, they handed the skeleton to Marcellin Boule, professor of palaeontology at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris.

Nationalism, Local Histories and the Making of Data in Archaeology

“…The recovered prehistoric materials can only become data through representation by ‘some relatively permanent convention of documentation’ (Binford 1987: 392). It is precisely in this domain that differences in training, background, and practices, as well as aspirations, are exposed, as the methods produce a specific, tangible, and very real product: a database that can be handled, examined, and compared by other researchers (see Van Reybrouck 2002 for a discussion of materials being produced through lines of communication). When categories created in this process are compared, the specific character of the prehistoric materials is discussed within the boundaries of assumed conventions, that is, in what Binford identifies as ‘some relatively permanent convention of documentation’ (Binford 1987: 392).…”

“…While recognizing that both personal idiosyncrasies and/or simple human error can play a part here, in choosing to focus on variation in the definitions and typological criteria used by archaeologists I am seeking to focus attention on the significance of a greater cultural and historical context. Local traditions of research, training, scholarship, and communication between scholars, as well as the cultural context of scientific tradition, all play a crucial role in the actual practice of science (Galison & Stump 1996; Keller 1992; Latour 1999; Latour & Woolgar 1986; Longino 1990; Lynch & Woolgar 1988; Van Reybrouck 2002). Archaeology is no exception.…”

“…Of course, both the ‘hard’ and social sciences have long been familiar with the claim that representation is not a straightforward and unproblematic exercise, but is rather a matter of complex information transfers played out in several dimensions (e.g. Daston [2000]; Hacking [1983]; Keller [1992]; Latour [1999]; Lynch & Woolgar [1988]; Rudwick [1985]; Van Reybrouck [2002]). The space between a given fact and its representation as data, then, may be far greater than one might initially imagine, since the manner in which ‘the convention of documentation’ intervenes depends on local particularities of scientific tradition and training, and the broader historical and cultural context at a specific point in time.…”

The Hidden History of a Third of the World: the Collective Biography of Australian and International Archaeology in the Pacific (CBAP) Project

“…We are cognisant of and sympathetic to approaches developed in related areas in Pacific and Colonial studies exemplified by Ballantyne (2002Ballantyne ( , 2012 (Stocking 1987;1995;Urry 1993) has also helped identify lines of enquiry. Particular note has been taken of works on early German anthropology's New Guinea entanglements such as Buschmann (2009) and Germany's further liaisons with Orientalism (Marchand 2009).…”

The History of Archaeology as Seen Through the Externalism-Internalism Debate: Historical Development and Current Challenges

“…Foresample, in the last decade some historians of archaeology have questioned the internalist/ externalist framework (Schlanger 2002: 129;Van Reybrouk 2002: 159), the distinction between science and society (Van Reybrouck 2002: 159-160, Kaeser 2008 and the presentist and anachronistic use of modern categories in the history of science (Kaeser 2008: 9-11;Schlanger and Nordbladh 2008: 1). At the same time, they have stimulated contact with sociologists and historians of science, the analysis of archival and unpublished sources, and the improvement in the technical quality of scholarly studies.…”