Abstract
A common problem when classifying archaeological objects is a potential cultural bias of the person deciding on the classification system. These are existing concerns within archaeology and anthropology and have previously been discussed as an emic/etic divide, “folk” classifications, or objective versus subjective approaches. But who gets to decide what is objective is often a subjective endeavour. To examine if and how cultural perceptions bias classification systems, we use methods from the field of cultural domain analysis to quantify differences in perception of ceramic sherds between different groups of people, specifically archaeologists and Indigenous and non-Indigenous potters. For this study, we asked participants to arrange a set of 30 archaeological sherds on a canvas, then interviewed them following each sorting exercise. A geosocial analysis of the arrangements in this pilot study suggests that there are substantial differences in the criteria by which the sherds are sorted between the groups. In particular, the arrangements by the Indigenous potters showed a greater diversity in the selection of underlying attributes. Understanding our different perceptions towards the material we use to construct history is the first step towards approaching a strong objectivity and thus a less fraught and more culturally inclusive discipline.
Highlights
Research with a focus on material culture always sparks debates about how reliable or representative interpretations of past human behaviours and socialBorck et al: Plainware and Polychrome processes can be
Researchers using comparative tools from computer science, the social sciences, and methods developed by archaeologists and anthropologists have advanced our understanding by critically assessing and improving how we study and interpret the material representations of past human behaviour
This article examines how various groups construct categories, not just from the raw elements of attributes encoded within individual pieces of ceramics, and from their cultural background and individual histories. We propose that these intersectionally dependent processes of categorical construction, which we measure using geosocial tests produced from cognitive placement tests of ceramic sherds, can be testable and quantifiable
Summary
Borck et al: Plainware and Polychrome processes can be. In any field focused on understanding humanity through their things, and archaeology in particular, this debate is necessary as researchers grapple with understanding contemporary and historical social, religious, and political behaviours through the fracturing prism of the material world. Researchers using comparative tools from computer science, the social sciences, and methods developed by archaeologists and anthropologists have advanced our understanding by critically assessing and improving how we study and interpret the material representations of past human (and environmental) behaviour. Brew (1946) argued early on that ceramic cladistics that replicated taxonomic conventions developed to examine historic evolutionary relationships in biological organisms was problematic This critique was expanded by Morris Opler, a cultural anthropologist, as he confronted work by prominent archaeologists such as Kroeber, Ford, and White, and criticized them for essentially studying culture and cultural change while ignoring that human beings, more importantly individuals, were creating that change. While this warm-up has the slight potential to skew the participants’ later decisions for how to interpret similarity/difference, it was decided that a warm-up exercise was necessary so as not to have to dismiss the first participant task if there was an error in their understanding of the directions
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