Sets, Graphs, and Things We Can See: A Formal Combinatorial Ontology for Empirical Intra-Site Analysis

Cardinal, J. Scott

doi:10.5334/jcaa.16

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 93 publications

(92 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…⁹²Bordes 1965, p. 372, Nenquin 1969, p. 205, Odell 2004, p. 104-105, Demars 2011, p. 128. ⁹³Dallas 2009, Niccolucci et al 2015, Cardinal 2019 the examination of the different aspects of the "Structural and analytical typology" leads us to acknowledge its notation system as its core component. The identity and unity of this method is its specific way to represent the analysis of real-world phenomena, namely some old lithic stone implements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the “Structural and Analytical Typology” in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s)

Plutniak

2022

J Paleo Arch

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Usual narratives among prehistoric archaeologists consider typological approaches as part of a past and outdated episode in the history of research, subsequently replaced by technological, functional, chemical, and cognitive approaches. From a historical and conceptual perspective, this paper addresses several limits of these narratives, which 1) assume a linear, exclusive, and additive conception of scientific change, neglecting the persistence of typological problems, 2) reduce collective developments to personal work (e.g., the "Bordes'" and "Laplace" methods in France), and 3) presuppose the coherence and identity of these "methods" over time. It explores the case of the "Structural and analytical typology" method, developed in France, Spain, and Italy from the 1950s to the 2000s by Georges Laplace and his collaborators for lithic implements. This paper 1) provides a detailed historical account of the evolving content of this collective endeavour over five decades, 2) it addresses the epistemological question of what makes the identity and unity of a scientific method, demonstrating that the core component of the "analytical typology" lies in its particular way to represent real-world phenomena through its notation system, and 3) it reveals how this little-known but significant episode of advances in the methods and theory of archaeology, contemporary but independent of the "New Archaeology" trend in Englishspeaking archaeology, was instrumental in the continuation of evolutionary perspectives in France and in the development of quantitative and formal methods in archaeology in south-western Europe, foreseeing crucial knowledge representation issues raised today by digital methods in archaeology and data curation.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the “Structural and Analytical Typology” in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s)

Plutniak

2022

J Paleo Arch

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Cutting the Network, Knotting the Line: a Linaeological Approach to Network Analysis

Pálsson

2020

J Archaeol Method Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Network methods have seen a rapid rise in archaeology in recent years. There are still concerns regarding how well formal networks are able to effectively model local interaction. These are often present in the so-called qualitative network approaches-studies that tend to be based on close readings of relations between entities and the way they form dynamic networks of agents. Such studies have demonstrated the value in scrutinizing the way in which relations might be acted on in practice, and how that might differ from expected results. But rarely do such studies produce network data of the kind analyzed by formal network analytical methods. Formal approaches, on the other hand, blur the specificity of individual relations and trade much of their specificity for the ability to make general statements about relations across large datasets. More generally, the modality of the relation/edge is a crucial way in which formal network analysis differs from other prevalent relational approaches popular in archaeology today, where the substantivity of individual relations is paramount. Such relations are often seen as starting points for subsequent hybridizations that radically alter, if only temporarily, the structure of their respective networks. I argue that a key step in allowing networks to reformulate from initial, datadriven network schemata is the introduction of a more symmetrical agency between the node and the edge. In this article, I discuss how ethnographic sources can be used to achieve this for archaeological survey data. I use assemblage theory as a framework to explore the potential the edge has to offer archaeological network modelling. While assemblage theory is helpful for this purpose, the lack of a computational formality to assemblage theory immediately places it at odds with network science. As a complement, I will also employ the computational ontology CIDOC-CRM to more explicitly articulate the character of links between nodes in archaeological networks. The paper will end by suggesting a method of network modelling which integrates the line as a key source of agency. As a nod to Ingold's call for an increased emphasis on the line, I call this approach network linaeology.

show abstract

Use, Purpose, and Function—Letting the Artifacts Speak

Loughmiller-Cardinal

Cardinal

2020

Heritage

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Archaeologists have likely collected, as a conservative estimate, billions of artifacts over the course of the history of fieldwork. We have classified chronologies and typologies of these, based on various formal and physical characteristics or ethno-historically known analogues, to give structure to our interpretations of the people that used them. The simple truth, nonetheless, is that we do not actually know how they were used or their intended purpose. We only make inferences—i.e., educated guesses based on the available evidence as we understand it—regarding their functions in the past and the historical behaviors they reflect. Since those inferences are so fundamental to the interpretations of archaeological materials, and the archaeological project as a whole, the way we understand materiality can significantly bias the stories we construct of the past. Recent work demonstrated seemingly contradictory evidence between attributed purpose or function versus confirmed use, however, which suggested that a basic premise of those inferences did not empirically hold to be true. In each case, the apparent contradiction was resolved by reassessing what use, purpose, and function truly mean and whether certain long-established functional categories of artifacts were in fact classifying by function. The resulting triangulation, presented here, narrows the scope on such implicit biases by addressing both empirical and conceptual aspects of artifacts. In anchoring each aspect of evaluation to an empirical body of data, we back ourselves away from our assumptions and interpretations so as to let the artifacts speak for themselves.

show abstract

Sets, Graphs, and Things We Can See: A Formal Combinatorial Ontology for Empirical Intra-Site Analysis

Cited by 3 publications

References 93 publications

What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the “Structural and Analytical Typology” in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s)

What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the “Structural and Analytical Typology” in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s)

Cutting the Network, Knotting the Line: a Linaeological Approach to Network Analysis

Use, Purpose, and Function—Letting the Artifacts Speak

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About