Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology

Abstract

Despite earthbound appearances, archaeology is a deeply philosophical discipline; in the course of their work archaeologists routinely confront provocative questions about how they know what they know. Their fragmentary data stand as evidence of the cultural past only given rich interpretation, which raises skeptical questions about whether it is ever possible to escape the trap of constructing the past in the image of a familiar present, or of an 'other' necessary to our own self-understanding. I argue that promising methodological responses to this conundrum have been obscured by polarized debate; although archaeological evidence is always an interpretive construct, it nonetheless has a striking capacity to subvert even our most strongly held convictions about the cultural past. The challenge is to give a systematic account of this perplexing epistemic duality; this is the task I take up, in various forms, in the essays that make up this book. In the process I argue the case for amphibious philosophy of science: conceptual analysis located at the interface between analytic philosophy of science and philosophically sophisticated archaeology, and motivated as much by problems that concern practitioners as by those that are canonical in philosophy, and that draws on the resources of the sciences themselves.

Past materials, past minds: The philosophy of cognitive paleoanthropology

“…Moreover, these practices point to the importance of materiality in cognitive paleoanthropology. Philosopher Alison Wylie and archaeologist Robert Chapman argue that the material record acts as an intransigent “point of resistance” to archaeological presuppositions (Chapman & Wylie, 2016; Wylie, 2002), anchoring historical speculation in cognitive paleoanthropology to a concrete past. A focus on materiality—the paleontological and archaeological record—should also lead us to scrutinize the categories we use when dealing with ancient materials.…”