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    Wylie Disunity of Science and Archeology

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    QUESTIONS OF EVIDENCE, LEGITIMACY, AND THE (DIS)UNITY OF SCIENCE n Wylie ‘The recent Science Wars have brought into sharp focus, in « public forum, contentious questions about the authority of science ‘and what counts ax property scientific practice that have long structured archaeological debate, As in the larger debate, lacal- iced disputes in archaeology aften presuppose a conception of science as a unified enterprise defined bry common goals, stan- dards, and research programs: specific forms of inquiry aré advocated (or condemned) by claiming afiliation with science so conceived. This pattern of argument obscures much that is most creative in archaeological practice. Archaeologists routinely exploit both integrating and fragmenting relations among the sciences, especially in establishing evidential claims. I will argue that the credibility of these claims tsa function, not of scientific status acquired by corporate affiliation, but of the substantive trade in fools and fechnigues, empirica insighis, models, and theories that is made possible by focal interactions berween archaeology and a wide range of other disciplines. There isimuch more ta be gained by developing a rich critical understand- ing of the imerfield relations that make this trade possible than by appealing to generic ideals of science. Las recientes Guernas Clentficas han enfatizado, en un foro publico, das sobre la autoridad le ta cieneia y practica clentfica que por mucho tiempo han estructurade el debate arqueolégieo. Asi como en el debate general, disputas particulares en la arque- ologta frequentemente presuponen un concepto de ta ciencia como una empresa tnificads, definida por fines, estandares, y pro- gramas de investigacién comumes; se defienden (0 condenan} especificas formas de investigacidn de acuerdo a su aftliacide con a ciencia ast definida. Este patrén de argumento ascurece la creatividad en la préctica arqueotégica. Los arquedtogos rutinari- ‘amente explotan tanto ta integracién como la fragmentacién de las relaciones entre las ciencias, especialmente cuando deben establecer evidencias. Yo arguyo que la credibitidad de la evidencia no es una funcidn del estatus cientifico adguirido por afit- lacién, sino de aquél obtenido por el intercambio substantive de técnicas y herramientas, descubrimientos empiricas, modelos, y teorias, el cual es posible debido a que existen interacciones locales entre la arqueologia y varias otras disciplinas. Mucho mds ‘se podria ganar si, en lugar de apetar a ideales genéricos de la ciencia, se desarrollara un entendimiento critco de las relaciones ‘entre campos cienttficas que hacen posible este intercambio, ‘e are well and truly in the era of the Sci Isaac Newton” (1997:96)." In the current round of ence Wars. Indeed, it is a telling irony that the last decades of a century so deci- sively shaped by advances in science and technol- ogy should be marked by such acrimonious debate over the credibility of science. As the editors of Scf- entific American make clear in their preface to a spe- cial report on the Science Wars, “Science versus Antiscience” (1997), dissension over the promise and authority of science is by no means a new phe- nomenon: “science has long had an uneasy rela- tionship with other aspects of culture....think of Galileo's 17" century trial for heresy...or William Blake’s rants against the mechanistic world view of debate the terms of public engagement are largely defined not by the critics of science but by a series of high profile defenses of science that appeared in the mid-1990s: Gross and Levitt’s Higher Supersti- tion (1994), Sokal’s Social Text “hoax”, and the New York Academy of Sciences conference “The Flight from Science and Reason” (Gross et al. 1997), These advocates of science react, with growing alarm, to a highly diverse range of critiques and analyses of science: some arise from pragmatic con- ‘cerns about the impact of science on our lives, oth ers from mistrust of the scientific establishment or from gender, race and class critical analyses of Alison Wylie # Department of Philosophy, Washington University, Campus Box 1073, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130. American Antiquity, 65(2), 2000, pp. 227-237 ‘Copyright © 2000 by the Society for American Archaeology 227 inequality in the institutions of science; some depend onempirical studies of the history, political economy, and social dynamics of science, while still others take the form of more abstract epistemological cri- tique, Together they are identified with a rising tide of obscurantism and anti-rationalism, a reactionary movement of “delegitimators” (Holton 1993:153) who express an ill-informed “sense of injury, resent- ment, and indignation against modern science” (Gross and Levitt 1994:5).* As diverse as they are, what these critics share that makes them the target of defensive reaction is a concern to raise skeptical questions about expansive claims of authority made on behalf of science. Often in raising these questions they challenge the presumption that the sciences are uniquely non-parochial in scope and warrant, that they share a body of investigative practices capable of establishing knowledge that decisively transcends the contexts of its production. Sometimes they endorse the more prosaic, if deffationary, view that the sciences are inherently human, social and polit- ical enterprises, diverse in form, contingent and evolving. In reaction, the defenders of science reaf- firm the divide between science and nonscience, and insiston the unique integrity and authority of science as a corporate whole. ‘Archaeology is one place where this protracted battle forthe heart and soul and, crucially, the author- ity of science has been evident in local skirmishes over the legitimacy of particular research programs and types of inquiry. The confrontation between the friends and foes of science in archaeology took canonical form in the debate generated by post- processtial critiques in the 1980s, in the period when the current Science Wars were just beginning to take shape. Binford inveighed against the enemy within: the “archaeological Yippies” (1989:5-9) and “free will” humanists (1983:216-217) who, he says, view science “with contempt” (1989:66) and threaten to reduce archaeological inquiry to “socio-political moralizing” (1989:66). Those he cri sharply have often enough responded in kind, dis- missing mainstream processual archaeology as form of banal and self-deluding scientism, at best conceptually naive and, at worst, hegemonic, fetishis- tic, and stultifying (see, e.g., Shanks and Tilley 1987:5, 12, 15, 18, 23).VanPool and VanPoo! (1999) provide a recent assessment of these exchanges that makes clear their Science Wars character. In the last decade there has been a marked ten- AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 65, No. 2, 2000 dency, in many quarters, to moderate the most extreme of these positions (see discussions by Kosso 1991; VanPool and VanPool 1999). For example, Hodder has made the case for an interpretive archae- ology that eschews this dynamic of contestation for “positions of dominance” within existing discipli- nary power structures (1991:8-9); rather than seek an alternative “universal method” capable of dis- placing currently dominant scientific approaches, he urges a conciliatory (pluralistic) strategy predicated ‘on commitment toa “guarded objectivity” (1991:10). He has subsequently generalized this argument, rejecting the tendency to treat positivist theories of science, or experimental science itself, “as banners behind which a unified discipline can be assembled” (1999:29). At the same time, various strands of processual archaeology have been reframed in ways that take account of postprocessual critiques and ini- tiatives, In an effort to come to grips with the full range and complexity of processes responsible for the archaeological record, behavioral archaeologists have been increasingly concerned to find ways of investigating various dimensions of the cultural life- world of past agents that Binford rejected out of hand as an unsuitable subject for a properly scientific archaeology (Skibo et. al. 1995; Wylie 1995). Buteven as these conciliatory moves mitigate the polarized conflict between processual and post- processual archaeology, the reductive, all-or-noth- ing strategies of argument typical of the Science Wars continue to play a pivotal role in-a number of other contexts. They are clear in the reaction against external threats to disciplinary autonomy that has taken particular prominence in recent years. The fear of what archaeologists stand to lose if scientific ideals are undermined in any way is palpable in the starkly drawn opposition between “science-like archaeology” and the “Demon-Haunted World” (Clark 1996) that frames some of the most antago- istic exchanges over NAGPRA. As Clark puts it, the advocates of “mysticism, religious fundamen- talism, creationism, and belief in the paranormal combine with post-modernist academics to attack the critical realism and mitigated objectivity chat are the central epistemological bases of the scien- tific world view” (1996;3); in this they threaten the very existence of a scientific archaeology. ‘At the same time the scientizing ambitions asso- ciated with the New Archaeology resurface, with vigor, in internal debates over the merits of various Wylte) of its successors; for example, they are a key com- ponent of arguments for evolutionary archaeology that redefine the subject matter of archaeology as (just) that which can be studied using properly sei- entific methods,” Consider O’Brien and Holland’s arguments for a “complete paradigm shift within archaeology” (1995a:193), the promise of which lies in its thorough-going materialism. They justify the rejection of any culturalist conception of the archae- logical subject that sets it apart from “the rest of the phenotypic world” (1995a:177) not only on theoret- ical grounds which suggest the fruitfulness of a bio- Jogical (selectionist) alternative, but also because the range of behavioral, sociocultural, ideational factors central to such a framework are, in their view, irrel- evant to properly scientific forms of explanation (1995a:195; see also Lyman and O'Brien 1998:643), and because itrelies on forms of reconstructive infer- ence that they consider to be categorically and unac- ceptably insecure (1995b:151; Wylie 1995:204-208).° In an effort to break a pattern of interaction characterized by sharply drawn opposi- tion over what should count as scientific archaeol- ogy, Schiffer has drawn attention to a number of areas of interest shared by evolutionary and behav- ioral archaeologists; the first is a common commit- ‘ment to “a scientific epistemology” (1996:647). To make the case that this constitutes genuine common ground, however, Schiffer must argue against the claim that“behavioral inference” is inherently unsci- entific and dispensable, It is precisely this proposed point of commonality that O'Brien et al. reject (1998:486—488), reasserting the unique epistemic advantages of an archaeology that models itself on paleobiology (Lyman and O'Brien 1998;643) and focuses strictly on the physical, engineering charac- teristics of material culture, conceived as the sur- viving (“hard”) elements of past human phenotypes.” ‘This pattern of argument is by no means unique to archaeology (see Dupré 1993, especially Section IV). It arises whenever a particular research pro- gram, or method, or empirical-theoretical claim is defended (or rejected) because it fits (or violates) a generalized conception of what counts as properly scientific practice. This strategy of claiming credi- bility by corporate affiliation fails fortwo related rea- sons; it depends on an appeal to generic ideas about what makes a discipline scientific that are notoriously problematic; and it threatens to foreclose, by fiat of @ priori definition, methodological and theoreti¢al QUESTIONS OF EVIDENCE, LEGITIMAGY, AND THE (DIS)UNITY OF SCIENCE questions that must be held open if empirical research practice is to grow and develop. If anything survives of global claims about science it is a very general commitment to “finding out what it is the case” —to learning from evidence and experience rather than relying on received wisdom. While this Enlighten- ment spirit provides little in the way of guidelines specific enough to settle local questions of warrant, it does rule out, as counterproductive, any response that depends on defining in advance what will count as science. To avoid the pitfalls inherent in Science ‘Wars strategies of argument, I propose a variant on the advice offered by environmental activists: think globally, about the resources that a wide range of research fields have to offer archaeology, but make the case for the credibility and authority of archae- ological practice locally, in terms of particular inter- field relations and their efficacy in solving specific archaeological problems. Global Unity ys. Local Integration My diagnostic argument is that Science Wars-style debate is driven, politically as well as conceptually, by conflict over a cluster of assumptions about the nature of science, specifically, about its essential unity as an enterprise." What science critics contest and science advocates defend is the very idea that there is such a thing as “science”: a unified enter- prise defined by a set of shared attributes that uniquely determine what it is for a discipline to be scientific, that set real science apart from other (lesser) epistemic enterprises, and that trump any non-scientific interests or knowledge claims that might challenge the epistemic authority of science, Unity theses have a long and distinguished, if conflicted, history. On standard formulations, “global” unity theses take (at least) three forms. Their advocates assert that scientists study a unitary and orderly world (a metaphysical unity thesis); that they subscribe to common explanatory goals and rely on a distinctive scientific method to realize them (a methodological unity thesis); and that, if they apply these methods systematically, they will produce objective, truth-approximating results in specific domains that converge on a single coherent and com- prehensive system of knowledge (an epistemic unity thesis). As presented in one particularly influential analysis, “The Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis” (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958), scien- tists are understood to study a hierarchically struc- 230 tured world; part:whole relations hold between the ‘objects of scientific inquiry such that each field, but for the most basic, is presumed (o study objects that can be “decompos{ed] into things belonging to the next lowest level” (1958:9) and explained (without remainder) by appeal to laws governing the compo- nents. On this account, as individual scientific dis- ciplines develop, the content (the laws and theories) of each field should prove reducible to that of the ‘next most basic until you reach a “unique lowest level,” a foundational science of elementary particles (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958:9). This is the model of relations between the sciences on which R. Wat- ‘son relied in an early analysis of the scientific status of archaeology in which he argues that archaeology is located at the top of an ascending hierarchy of sci- ences defined by the complexity of the phenomena the complexity of thinking human in societies evolving through time is the most complex object of study in the known universe” (1976:60). As influential as these global unity theses have been both within and outside the sciences, there is ‘growing consensus that they are unsustainable empir- ically as well as conceptually. Arguments for meta- physical and epistemic unity have fragmented into local debates about the relationships that hold ‘between the content and subject matter of particular pairs of science: physicalist or materialist reductions of psychology to neuroscience; biochemical reduc- tions of genetics; the “quantum takeover” in physics that has been contested by Cartwright (1995). And inall cases the prospects for reduction remain at least contentious and certainly distant. Although no one can claim to offer arguments that decisively settle the matter, disunity in the content of science seems to proliferate rather than diminish as the sciences mature and specialize, leading to a recognition of greater complexity rather than of simplicity in the ontology of the subject domains. Ironically, the family of unity theses that is most prominent in the Science Wars debates—that of methodological unity—was among the first to prove problematic as a “working hypothesis” for analysis, of the sciences. Ideals of methodological unity were constitutive of classical (nineteenth century) posi- tivism, and were a matter of intense interest for twen- tieth-century logical positivists whose central ambition was to identify, and extend to new domains, the forms of practice that had been instrumental in AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 65, No. 2, 2000 realizing the dramatic successes of the natural sci- ences that established their preeminent authority (eg., Newtonian mechanics, Darwinian evolution- ary biology, Lyellian geology, Einsteinian physics) Despite their best efforts, however, the logical posi- tivists and their successors found it impossible to devise a demarcation criterion that captures what it is that makes a science scientific and clearly distin- guishes science from nonscience.” The conclusion drawn by the late 1950s (anticipated by critiques dat- ing to the interwar period) was that if such criteria are specific enough to exclude astrology and other favorite examples of pseudo-science, they also exclude many of the diverse and evolving forms of inquiry that seem unquestionably scientific, and if they are general enough to embrace all the disci- plines typically recognized as sciences they tend to be too permissive to provide any discerning measure of epistemic credibility (see, e.g., Suppes 1984). Pethaps the best known of these criteria, and the ‘one that has had the greatest staying power, is the deliberately broad principle of demarcation defended by Popper: that the line between science and non- science can only be drawn on the basis of a “criti- cal” as opposed to a “dogmatic” attitude to inquiry, not with reference to any particular method or rela- tionship between theory and evidence (e.g., Popper 1963). On this account science is characterized by a commitment to formulate ambitious claims about the world and subject them to rigorous empirical testing, scrupulously avoiding any temptation to pro- tect these claims against counter evidence when test- ing goes against them, or to treat success under testing as evidence that their truth has been con- firmed; all that testing can demonstrate with cer- tainty is where error lies.'” Consistently maintained, the bold conjectures that Popper insists must be held open to revision in light of evidence include methodological conjectures about how best to proceed in a particular research area. This means that in the best, most creative sci- ence, the tools of inquiry are constantly evolving and are often finely tuned to specific problems or fields. As Dupré puts the point, scientific method is, at best, a “family resemblance concept” (Dupré 1993:242); the most you can claim about what unifies the sci- ences methodologically is that they reflect commit- menttoa very general catalogue of epistemic virtues (Dupré 1993:243; Ereshefsky 1995:157). On stan- dard formulations these give pride of place to some wylle} form of requirement for responsiveness to evi- dence—sensitivity to empirical fact” (Dupré 1993:243)—and for exposure to as wide a range of critical challenge (empirical and conceptuall) as pos- sible. They also typically require internal coherence and external consistency (e.g., compatibility with well-established knowledge and reliance on plausi- ble background assumptions), and posit a number of other “free floating aesthetic virtues” (Dupré 1993:243) such as explanatory power, generality, and simplicity which may be differentially relevant to some fields or subfields of science." It is impor- tant to note, however, that these principles cannot be satisfied simultaneously; trade-offs between them must always be made. And they require local spec- ification to be useful as a source of guidelines for ‘actual practice.’ By no means can they function as table, transcendent set of standards for adjudicat- ing claims about the credibility—qua scientific standing—of particular disciplines or research pro- grams, The one thing that these general ideals do make clearis that itis inimical to the animating spirit of scientific inquiry to define in advance what will countas properly scientific method and then endorse particular research programs or fields because they conform to these ideals." Although it seems fair to say that the quest for global or “singleness” unity theses (Hacking 1996) hhas run aground, there are a range of more prosaic, localized relations between research fields which are crucial to the credibility of their individual practices and knowledge claims. These include, for example, the emergence of “interfield theories” in contexts where conventional advocates of unity would expect the theories in one field to prove reducible to those of another (Darden and Maull 1977);"* various forms of “cross-disciplinary research cluster” in which neighboring fields remain autonomous but are each reshaped by the interactions that become necessary when researchers consider phenomena that cross-cut disciplinary boundaries (e.g., cognitive-neuro- ience; see contributors to Integrating Scientific Disciplines, Bechtel 1986); and the technology- induced “trading zones” recently discussed by Gal- ison (1996) that emerge when highly technical “strategies of practice,” like computer simulation, find application in diverse, otherwise unconnected fields. There are, in addition, a great many mote mundane patterns of trade and interaction that sus- tain durable relationships between fields even though QUESTIONS OF EVIDENCE, LEGITIMACY, AND THE (DIS)UNITY OF SCIENCE 231 they do not supplement the donor or recipient fields substantially enough to generate an interfield theory or cross-disciplinary research cluster or semi- autonomous “trading zone.” These kinds of interac- tions between fields are the lifeblood of systematic, empirical research; they are what make the coordi- nated activities of these fields greater than the sum of their parts, even if they do not constitute a unified whole. Nowhere are these patterns of interfield trade and ‘mutual influence more important than in archaeol- ogy. At their most expansive they involve the appro- priation from neighboring fields of orienting theory ‘or domain-defining metaphors, for example, the metaphors that underpin “‘structuralist,” “eco-sys- temic,” and “evolutionary” approaches to archaco- logical inquiry. More modestly, they include borrowings of more limited scope: the routine trans- fer of subject-specific explanatory or interpretive models and, crucially, what might be described as “evidence stabilizing technologies,” a complex of instruments, skills, and background knowledge (after Hacking 1992)—interpretive principles, middle range theory—that are essential for establishing the evidential basis for evaluating explanatory orrecon- structive claims about the past. My constructive thesis is that local arguments for the credibility of particular research programs— specifically, local assessments of empirical war- rant—depend fundamentally on claims, or assumptions, about the relationships that both inte- grate and fragment the disciplines that are typically associated together as sciences. By extension, when archaeological claims to epistemic authority are legit- imate (which they often are), itis not because archae- ological practice is in some generic sense scientific but, rather, because archaeologists very effectively exploit the unities and disunities between fields in establishing highly local (and defeasible) claims to ‘empirical credibi How Archaeologists Exploit the (Dis)unity of Science Itis now uncontroversial that any appeal to evidence (in archaeology as elsewhere) is a “three-place rela- tion” (Glymour 1980); any claim about the eviden- tial significance of material identified as a “record” of the past depends on mediating assumptions that establish a link between the material traces that sur- vive archaeologically and the past events or condi- 232 tions of life that are presumed responsible (in part) for producing these traces. This dependence may be technically circular but it need not be viciously cir- cuilar; evidence is certainly theory-laden but it is not necessarily laden by the theory it is meant to test or support. "This is just to say that archaeologists rou- tinely exploit contingent disunities among fields and theories which ensure a degree of vertical indepen- dence between the hypotheses they propose torecon- struct or explain the cultural past and the linking principles they use to constitute archaeological data as evidence that bears on these hypotheses. Con- sider, for example, the use of physical chemistry to reconstruct dietary profiles, and the use of these, in turn, to evaluate the claims of a theory about social stratification. If the dietary evidence proves consis tent with this theory (applied to the ease at hand), what makes its support compelling (if tis) is not just the security of the auxiliary hypotheses used to estab- lish its significance, but an implicit judgement that such evidence could have turned out otherwise. How- ever much it is a construct, it does not share the assumptions, or the errors, of the claims it is being used to support, evaluate, or challenge.'° The cal complement to this argument is to be seen in a common objection to some variants of evolutionary archaeology: that vertical independence is compro- mised when the assumptions central to proposed selectionist explanations also inform the interpreta- tion of archaeological data cited as support for them. The identification of technical “improvements” in material culture depends on background knowledge from engineering and material science that seems clearly independent of hypotheses about the selec- tion pressures operating on a human population, But it is not at all obvious that such independence is maintained when evolutionary archaeologists take the further step of inferring that these patterns of change are “heritability-dependent” and subject to selective control (e.g., O’Brien and Holland 1995b:184), much less that they enhance the repro- ductive fitness of those who made and used the mate~ rial in question. ‘A second and, for present purposes, more impor- tant dimension on which archaeologists make effec tive use of both unities and disunities among the sciences is to be seen in forms of evidential argu- ment that exploit the horizontal independence that may obtain between distinct lines of evidence. The intuition here is that if different types of evidence— AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 65, No. 2, 2000 different aspects of the archaeological record, inter- preted in light of different ranges of background the- ory—all converge in supporting a particular reconstructive or explanatory claim about the past, the credibility lent these claims by the assembled evi- dence is enhanced much beyond a simple additive function. To the extent that these lines of evidence are, indeed, independent of one another, itis implau- sible that such coherence could arise accidentally, or ‘as a result of compensating errors that compromise each chain of evidential reasoning. The crucial methodological corollary is that, if distinct lines of evidence are indeed independent from one another, then cach can be used as a check on the others; a fail- ture to converge can be counted on to expose weak- ness in the constituent chains of reasoning that may not be evident when considering the security of each taken on its own, Sometimes historical archaeolo- gists exploit this kind of disunity when they argue that archival and archaeological data constitute “two independent sources of evidence” (Leone and Pot- ter 1988:14), each of which can be used to extend and to cross-examine claims about the significance of the other. More generally, this strategy of eviden- tial argument is at work whenever archaeologists use multiple lines of evidence to triangulate claims about particular past events or conditions of life. Consider the use of tree-ring sequences and measures of radio- carbon decay, magnetic orientation, and the internal evolution of stylistic traditions, to determine (respec- tively) absolute cutting, burning, and deposition dates, and tradition-specific production dates. It is the independence between these lines of evidence that makes their convergence compelling (when it happens), and allows them to be used as a check on one another, Both of these standard strategies of evidential ‘argument depend on complex background assump- tions about local interfield unities; there must be enough continuity between fields to make possible the transfer of auxiliaries (or, more generally, evi- dence stabilizing technologies) from the contexts in which they were developed to archaeological con- texts. But at the same time, their credibility depends on underlying assumptions about specific points of disunity among fields which guarantee a crucial inde- pendence between explanatory or interpretive hypotheses and the linking principles used to bring evidence to bear on them. When these assumptions are made explicit, at least three quite different kinds wylie) of independence are at issue, and often are elided: causal, epistemic, and institutional independence. Often institutional disunities-the disciplinary divi- sions that set archaeology apart from the fields on which it relies for external resources—are treated as a proxy for independence in the other two senses: between the various causal processes that produced (and continuously act on) the archaeological recortl; and between the diverse bodies of background knowledge (linking principles, middle range theory) thatarchaeologists use to establish the evidential sig- nificance of this record. In many cases this is plat- sible enough. The ratios of "C to °C and 'C are the resultof physical processes that are so different from those that produce distinctive patterns of tree-ring accretion or, indeed, from the cultural processes responsible for orderly stylistic change, thatit seems plausible to regard them as causally independent, and to assume that the background knowledge (and technical skills) required to bring them into play as evidence relevant to archaeological problems are fundamentally different in content as well. Likewise, the trash pits and official archives of an historical community may be produced by such different means, and may require such different interpretive resources to serve as evidence, that they too can be regarded as independent in the relevant senses, But often assumptions about the alignment of these different kinds of independence cannot be made, and none can be assumed to entail the others. Disciplinary boundaries may not cut the world at its joints where different orders of causal production are concemed, and may not insulate neighboring disci- plines from the influence of assumptions that ate capable of inducing compensatory errors in appat- ently independent lines of evidence. Early debate over the tree-ring calibration of “C dates was dri- ven, in part, by concern that there might be levels or kinds of interaction between the causal processes responsible for these apparently distinct sources of evidence for absolute dates that had not been anti¢- ipated.'” And where historical archaeology is con- cerned, the independence of archival and material records cannot be taken as a given (see Wylie 1999:37-41), Itis nothard to imagine circumstances under which the disposal of trash and the creation of| a public archive might reflect the same ideological principles, or mask the dynamics of social differen- tiation in similar ways, Indeed, there often is more robust independence between genres of documen- QUESTIONS OF EVIDENCE, LEGITIMACY, AND THE (DIS)UNITY OF SCIENCE 233 tary record (¢.g., personal letters as opposed to polit- ical speeches) or between types of archaeological material (the management of trash and public archi- tecture) than between archaeological and historical evidence as such. In addition, recent critical litera- ture in history and in archaeology suggests that the practice of deploying different kinds of evidence is not necessarily proof against the influence of a com- mon stock of background assumptions: forexample, both history and archaeology reflect the influence of the politics structuring debate about how to mark the Quincentennial (Trouillot 1995;pp. 108-140), and the racism, reframed as romanticism, that underpins the representation of early interactions between Europeans and the First Nations (Trigger 1991). In short, appearances of disciplinary disunity may be as deceiving as projective ideals of unity, Todetermine epistemically relevant independence it is best to proceed on a case by case basis, and for this two lines of inquiry are necessary. Claims of causal independence can only be established by first- order empirical investigation of the formation processes responsible for specific kinds of surviving trace or record. This is, of course, an area in which a great deal of work has been done both internally and through judicious borrowing and pooling resources with other disciplines; the proliferation of hybrid spe- cializations in the traditions of experimental and eth- noarchaeology testifies to the importance of this dimension of archaeological practice. But to settle questions about conceptual independence it is nec- essary to consider the intellectual and institutional relationships that hold between the disciplines on which archaeologists rely for the background knowl- edge, skills, and technologies they bring to bear on archaeological problems; it is critically important to understand the degree to which these presuppose common assumptions, interests, and influences that may introduce compensating error into archaeologi- cal judgments about the significance and strength of particular forms of evidence. This requires not just conceptual analysis, but also systematic appraisal of the relationships of trade, co-ordination, and mutual influence that hold between diverse bodies of (sci- entific) knowledge and practice. If judgments of con- ceptual independence are to bear weight in local arguments of justification for particular archaeolog- ical research programs, they must themselves be treated as empirical hypotheses. The growing tradi- tion of critical archaeology promises just this kind of 234 substantial second-order understanding of the his- torical and sociopolitical conditions that shape archae~ ological practice. In this it is by no means a luxury, extraneous to the business of actually doing archae- ology; itis anecessary resource fordetermining when circularity may be virtuous and when, by contrast, foundational assumptions are complicit in ensuring that evidence will turn out as expected. Conclusion {n conclusion, f urge a skeptical attitude toward claims about the scientific status of archaeological practices that depend on appeals to unifying features of science. It is important to think systematically, even globally, about the ways in which archaeolog- ical inquiry is embedded in an extended network of integrating and fragmenting relationships with other fields of inquiry (by no means all or only scientific fields). But where arguments of justification are con- cemed, it is crucial to act locally; it is the details of interfiefd relations that count in assessing epistemic independence, not the affiliation of a particular line of inquiry or method or set of auxiliaries with a cor- porate entity valorized by us as science. The alter native to this admittedly uncertain and defeasible strategy of argument is not the security of self-war- ranting foundations and logical necessity. Itis adog- matic narrowing of horizons that is profoundly divisive and that undermines the one Enlightenment ideal that survives scrutiny: that of holding practice, ‘as well as belief, open to revision in tight of experi- ence, Acknowledgments, 1 thank Christine and Todd Van Pool for inviting me to participate in the symposium they organized on “Method and Theory 2000,” for the 64" Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (Chicago, March 1999); this paper is an outgrowth of my response to their proposal that wwe think broadly about problems facing archaeologists in the twenty-first century, T also am grateful to Lynne Goldstein, Carla Sinopoli, and two anonymous referees for American Antiquity for theiv close reading and perceptive comments; I doubt that I have addressed all their concems but hope they will find the final version improved by their input. References Cited Athanasiou, T. 1995 Science Wars? A Book. A Conference, and a Bit of Polemic. 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As fund- ing for science has declined, scientists have denounced “anti- science” in several books...” (1997:96), The current crisis is also, however, heir to a more pervasive mistrust of science that has been growing in intensity and popular influence since World War Il. See, for example, Novick on the impact of these developments on the American historical profession (1988:135-154, $24-537), ant the Gufbenkian Commission on the shifting fortunes of scientific ideology in the social selences generally (1996:1-70), 2. As soon as it appeared, Higher Superstition (Gross and Levitt 1994) generated intense ongoing debate; see, for example, reviews by Athanasiou (1995); Brown (1995); Lederman (1996); also Ruse’s appraisal (1994), with responses from Latour et al. (1995) and Herbert (1995); and Fujimmura’s critical appraisal of the Science Wars debate more _generally (1998), See also Holton’s Science and Anti-Science (1993), especially his discussion of “The Anti-Science Phenomenon” (chapter 6), for another defense of science often cited in conjunction with Higher Superstition, and the collection, Science Wars (Ross 1996) for a range of responses to these “anti-anti-science” statements. 3. In a special issue of Social Text on science studi Sokal, a physicist, published what he later revealed, in Lingua Franca, to have been # parody of cultural studies treatments of science (Sokal 1996a, 1996b). For the contro vversy over Sokal’s “Hoax” see Weinberg and accompanying responses from Holoquist and Shulman, Levine, Wise, Byers and Pellegrini (1996); Fish (1996); Fujimura (1998); Nagel 1998), 4, Indeed, sometimes the net is cast even wider, assimi- fating social, historical, and philosophical analyses of sci- ence to various forms of religious and counter-cultural reactions against science, In the Scientific American report ‘on the Science Wars (1997), stories on literal creationism and. the popular fascination with UFOs and paranormal phenom ‘ena are juxtaposed with an account of feminist critiques of 5, In a recent critical assessment Bamforth draws a series of parallels between contemporary arguments for evolution- ary archaeology and the claims made 25 years ago on behalf of systems theory as a framework for archaeological theory and practice (1999):"like evolutionary archaeology, systems archaeology was finally going to make us scientists” (1999:24).. 6. Sce Schiffer’s summary of the arguments by which “selectionists deny the need for behavioral inference and denigrate as unscientific the activities who reconstruct the past” (1996:650), 7. Holland, O'Brien, Leonard, and Lyman argue that technical analyses of material culture will allow them to identify “heritability-dependent” variebility that can be linked direetly to processes of natural selection, thereby side- stepping the uncertainty of reconstructive inference, The erit- ies of this genre of evolutionary theory (¢.g.. Bamforth 1999; fespondents to Lyman, and O'Brien 1998) often argue that such claims-by which some temporal change in material cul- ture is identified as “heritable improvements” that enhance AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 65, No. 2, 2000 reproductive success-

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