Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation

Abstract

THE WORK of the archaeologist can be divided into four tasks. First there is the formulation and refinement of concepts; second, data gathering and processing; third, the interpretation of the data, and finally, synthesis. The four tasks are obviously related in an hierarchical scheme: concepts enable meaningful synthesis, synthesis depends on interpretation, and interpretation is ultimately founded on archaeological data. Substantial progress has been made in approaches to the first, second, and fourth tasks in recent years. Productive work on concepts is illustrated by the successful Seminars in Archaeology of the Society for American Archaeology. The appearance of the new journal Archaeometry under the auspices of The Research Laboratory at Oxford, with its concentration on the application to archaeology of instruments developed in other disciplines, indicates how vigorous the attack on the second task has been. The ambitious work World Prehistory by Grahame Clark, if not wholly successful, demonstrates that a synthesis of human prehistory on a global scale is now feasible. What can be demonstrated for concept formulation, data gathering, and synthesis, cannot be easily shown for archaeological interpretation. If it is granted that acceptance of synthesis must vary with confidence in interpretation, it becomes apparent that interpretation warrants attention. The most widely used of the tools of archaeological interpretation is analogy. In its most general sense interpreting by analogy is assaying any belief about nonobserved behavior by referral to observed behavior which is thought to be relevant. The purpose of this paper is to examine this single interpretative tool. Concentration is on analogies where no historical records are available as aids. Evidence which suggests that there is cause for concern with the present status of analogy as an interpretive tool is presented and some suggestions are sketched. The introduction of analogy into archaeology can be traced to the era of the classical evolutionary ideology. Analogy in this period was elementary: if it were true that certain living peoples represented early phases of human history, then the interpretation of the remains of extinct peoples could be accomplished by direct reference to their living counterparts. A monument to this logic is Sollas' Ancient Hunters. In this work the Tasmanians, Australian Aborigines, Bushmen, and Eskimos were enlisted as modem representatives of four successive paleolithic complexes. The question of the use of any class of palaeolithic tools could be satisfied by direct referral to one of the four groups. For example: