The Nature of Archaeological Explanation

Abstract

We argue that the development and use of law-like statements by archaeologists to explain characteristics of the archaeological record has been and should continue to be one of the most important goals of archaeological research. Using a model for explanation developed by the philosophers of science, Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, we indicate the role of such statements in archaeological classification. However, in archaeology such statements are found to be implicit, untested, and extremely general in referent.We further argue that the testing of potential laws requires a shift from an inductive procedure, or from one in which undirected data collection forms the first and the "abstraction" of laws from data forms the last research step, to a deductive procedure in which the explicit formulation of potential laws and their empirical consequences precedes and directs the collection of data.

Paradigms in science and archaeology

“…Methodologically, strict empiricists have adopted an observational research protocol, devoid of any deductive component, lacking in any formal notion of a hypothesis or of the evaluation of a hypothesis (cf. Swartz, 1967;Fritz and Plog, 1970).…”

Gender Thinking in the Making: Feminist Epistemology and Gender Archaeology

“…They were fully familiar with Hempel's (1965) positivistic methodology or Kuhn's (1962) paradigmatic thinking -to name a few -and their intention to turn archaeology into a fully scientific discipline gave birth to thorough reflections on the nature of archaeological reasoning and practice (e.g. Fritz & Plog 1970, Binford 1972, Levin 1973, see Wylie 2002. Archaeology and epistemology have been interwoven for several decades now and, in this trajectory, feminist principles had an important role as early as the 1980s (Conkey & Spector 1984, Dommasnes 1990, Wylie 1991a, Hanen & Kelley 1992.…”

Walter Taylor and the history of American archaeology

“…The evolution of cultural processes was a dynamic explanation of culture, which Taylor said was inappropriate given the static nature of the archaeological record (p. 33). Processualists focused on cultural evolution and cultural processes and demanded the writing of cultural laws (e.g., Fritz and Plog, 1970;Watson et al, 1971). The problem, as Taylor saw it, was that evaluation of the validity of these laws demanded cross-cultural analyses, and the possibility of independent development based on these laws precluded cross-cultural comparisons (Taylor, 1973, p. 68).…”