On the Interpretation of Archeological Evidence in Historical and Sociological Terms1

Abstract

H AWKES (1948:5) has rightly remarked that archeology belongs to History not only in operational practice, but in philosophical theory likewise.2 In practice, however, history is based on documentary evidence and is highly personalized in the sense that we can usually see the individual person playing his part. On the other hand, archeological evidence is limited to the portions of material culture which time and circumstance have permitted to survive until at least the moment of discovery, and because of its medium archeology tends to be impersonal since the individual, as a person, can but very rarely be discerned. Professional historians, forgetting that philosophically, as Devoto (1946:9-10) reminds us, history is coterminous with mankind, tend to limit themselves to the study of literate societies. From the various sources of documentary evidence, of which some like inscriptions, papyri, etc., are also archeological in the manner of their discovery, we can learn about the nonmaterial aspects of that society's culture, such as language, social organization, religion, historical events, and even the personal reactions of its members to the problems of life as expressed in myth, chronicle, tale, prayer, poetry, or drama. The archeology of these societies is, to use Hawkes' (1954: 156-57) term, text-aided: in German it is sometimes called archdiologie, as distinct from Vorand Ur-geschichte, which is text-free. Hawkes' (1951:3ff.; 1954:159ff.) cognitional system of nomenclature for prehistory serves as an excellent instrument whereby we can measure the validity of applying inferences based on documentary evidence, in practice mainly philological, to predocumentary periods. Such inferences can sometimes be extended back through protohistoric to parahistoric times but with decreasing validity. But in these periods we are mostly, and in the purely text-free zones of human history we are completely, dependent on archeological evidence and archeological reasoning for our knowledge of human activity and achievements. During the past century archeology has developed a rather impressive form of reasoning, usually garbed in a specialist jargon, in which most of the terms are borrowed from other sciences ranging from geology to ethnology, but often with altered meanings. Most archeologists tend to take their modes of interpretation for granted but the recent studies of Willey (1953), Phillips and Willey (1953), and Hawkes (1954) undertake a critical re-examination of archeological methods and theory, which is a healthy symptom of scientific maturity. In this study I propose to examine further some of the problems raised by Willey, Phillips, and Hawkes in regard to the archeology of predocumentary periods, reviewing both European and American methods of interpreta-