Using the present to interpret the past: the role of ethnographic studies in Andean archaeology

Abstract

Within Andean research it is common to use ethnographic analogies to aid the interpretation of archaeological remains, and ethnographers and archaeologists have developed shared research in technology, material culture and material practice. Although most of this research does not follow the detailed recording methods of spatial patterning envisioned in earlier formulations of ethnoarchaeology, it has had a profound effect on how archaeology in the region has been interpreted. This paper uses examples from the study of pottery production to address earlier debates about the use of ethnographic analogy, discusses the dangers of imposing an idealised or uniform vision of traditional Andean societies onto earlier periods ('Lo Andino') but stresses the benefits of combining ethnographic and archaeological research to explore continuities and changes in cultural practice and regional variations.

Material Correlates Analysis (MCA)

“…Middle Range Theory (Binford 1967, 1978)—which advocates the use of analogical inference and the objective testing of hypotheses to examine connections between the present and the past—greatly influenced the development of ethnoarchaeology. A principal objective of ethnoarchaeology has been to move away from simple suppositions of cultural continuity and to establish a more comprehensive approach to interpretation by identifying predictable features of human behavior (David and Kramer 2001; Sillar and Joffré 2016; Stiles 1977). Since the 1960s, a number of cross-cultural ethnographic analogies have been utilized to interpret individual objects and techniques (production techniques and uses), as well as wider issues of social and economic organization such as exchange networks and social hierarchies (Sillar and Joffré 2016; Stiles 1977).…”

“…Since the nineteenth century, archaeologists have used some form of ethnographic analogy to interpret archaeological material (David and Kramer 2001; Sillar and Joffré 2016; Stiles 1977). In the context of the new or processual archaeology of the 1960s, ethnoarchaeology gained prominence as a subdiscipline of archaeology.…”

Maintenance and Mutability amongst Specialist Potters on the Northeast Coast of New Guinea

“…Gosselain (2016) has recently pointed out that one problem in ethnoarchaeological observation is that formal continuities imply a stasis in social history over long time spans, despite major fluctuations to power relationships and capitalist social relations during the recent period of colonialism. Sillar and Ramón Joffré (2016) further demonstrate that many ethnoarchaeological studies focus on tradition as a static and monolithic entity, rather than the ongoing processes of change that produce historically contingent variation.…”

Archaeologies of Island Melanesia: Current Approaches to Landscapes, Exchange and Practice

“…However, it is rather naïve to suppose systematic persistence in behaviours over millennia, as similarities in material culture do not necessarily equate with diachronic continuity, particularly when comparing social groups separated by such long periods of time There are several examples of presumed ancestral traditions changing significantly through time (e.g. Sillar and Ramón Joffré 2016) and even some cases where the social value of food items is known to have shifted from one extreme to the other, as in the case of oyster or deer in Europe (Grant 2002:20-22;van der Veen 2003:409-410 for other examples). Overall, 'it is far too easy to assume that the values assigned to particular foodstuffs in the past were the same as they are today' (Grant 2002:22).…”