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Ethnoarchaeology

K. Kris Hirst
09 Jul 2022 00:00:00 | Update: 09 Jul 2022 06:12:45
Ethnoarchaeology

Ethnoarchaeology is a research technique that involves using information from living cultures—in the form of ethnology, ethnography, ethnohistory, and experimental archaeology—to understand patterns found at an archaeological site. An ethnoarchaeologist acquires evidence about ongoing activities in any society and uses those studies to draw analogies from modern behavior to explain and better understand patterns seen in archaeological sites.

American archaeologist Susan Kent defined ethnoarchaeology’s purpose as “to formulate and test archaeologically oriented and/or derived methods, hypotheses, models and theories with ethnographic data.” But it is archaeologist Lewis Binford who wrote most clearly: ethnoarchaeology is a “Rosetta stone: a way of translating the static material found on an archaeological site into the vibrant life of a group of people who in fact left them there.”

Ethnoarchaeology is typically conducted by using the cultural anthropological methods of participant observation, but it also finds behavioral data in ethnohistorical and ethnographic reports as well as oral history. The basic requirement is to draw on strong evidence of any kind for describing artifacts and their interactions with people in activities.

Ethnoarchaeological data can be found in published or unpublished written accounts (archives, field notes, etc.); photographs; oral history; public or private collections of artifacts; and of course, from observations deliberately made for archaeological purposes on a living society. American archaeologist Patty Jo Watson argued that ethnoarchaeology should also include experimental archaeology. In experimental archaeology, the archaeologist creates the situation to be observed rather than taking it where he or she finds it: observations are still made of archaeological relevant variables within a living context.

The possibilities of ethnoarchaeology brought in a flood of ideas about what archaeologists could say about the behaviors represented in the archaeological record: and a corresponding earthquake of reality about the ability of archaeologists to recognize all or even any of the social behaviors that went on in an ancient culture. Those behaviors must be reflected in the material culture (I made this pot this way because my mother made it this way; I traveled fifty miles to get this plant because that’s where we’ve always gone). But that underlying reality may only be identifiable from the pollen and potsherds if the techniques allow their capture, and careful interpretations appropriately fit the situation.

Archaeologist Nicholas David described the sticky issue pretty clearly: ethnoarchaeology is an attempt to cross the divide between the ideational order (the unobservable ideas, values, norms, and representation of the human mind) and the phenomenal order (artifacts, things affected by human action and differentiated by matter, form, and context).

 

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