Professional Documents
Culture Documents
RICHARD A. GOULD
Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912
AND
PATTY Jo WATSON’
Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130
1 Watson’s portion of this paper was prepared at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California, which is partially supported by NSF Grant BNS
76-22943.
355
0278-4165/82 $2.00
Copyright 0 1982 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
356 GOULD AND WATSON
PJW
I believe that all the research referred to above can be categorized
within a single logical structure as described below. (I consider ethnoar-
chaeology to include experimental archaeology because in it the ar-
chaeologist creates the situation to be observed rather than taking it
where he or she finds it, the end result being the same: observations made
of archaeologically relevant variables within a living context.)
Ethnoarchaeologists, like all other archaeologists, operate with the
basic assumption that there is a real past, about which we can attain real
knowledge by means of inferences based upon archaeological and histori-
cal records. Well over 99% of the human past is documented archaeologi-
cally only (or not at all). There are no written records anywhere before
about 5000 years ago, whereas our oldest recognizable ancestors ap-
peared between 3 and 4 million years ago.
Archaeologists interpret archaeological remains by drawing inferences
from them, on the basis of observations made in the present, about the
long-vanished people who left these materials. Ethnoarchaeology, for-
mally or informally applied, is the source of all observations that enable
archaeological interpretation. Although the specific information sought is
of great variety, as are the techniques used to obtain it, there seem to be
only two fundamental purposes fulfilled by use of such information.
(I) To generate explanatory hypotheses for specific items or patterns
recovered archaeologically, i.e., to answer the questions What was this?
and What was it used for? as applied to an artifact or artifact class, a
fragmentary architectural form or a class of architectural features, or to an
associational pattern.
(II) To derive theories and broad lawlike generalizations about re-
lationships between human behavior on the one hand, and material cul-
ture resulting from that behavior on the other.
THE ANALOGY IN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL REASONING 357
Obviously these two purposes are closely related; in fact one cannot
pursue one without simultaneously pursuing the other even though one’s
immediate goal is (I) rather than (II), or vice versa.
Most of the presently available ethnoarchaeological studies are of the
first kind noted above, many having been undertaken in parts of the world
with artifactual and architectural traditions extending into prehistory.
Such places include portions of Mesoamerica (Thompson 1958; Nelson
1981; Reina 1980), Australia (Gould 1971, 1978, 1981), Africa (David 1971,
1972; David and Hennig 1972; Yellen 1977), the Near East (Hole 1978;
Horne 1982; Kramer 1982; Ochsenschlager 1974; Watson 1979b), the
Arctic (Binford 1978b; Oswalt and Vanstone 1967; Oswalt 1974), and the
U.S. Southwest (Stanislawski 1969, 1977, 1978; Stanislawski and Stanis-
lawski 1978).
*The discussion that follows owes much to two papers by M. Alison Wylie (1978, 1980).
358 GOULD AND WATSON
of the subject matter: human beings and their social behavior throughout
three million years and over the entire globe.
Given the immensity of these difficulties, we should not be surprised at
nor overly frustrated about the high uncertainty level in archaeologic~
interpretations. Nor should we be driven to a position of ultimate skepti-
cism regarding knowledge of the real past such as Collingwood expresses
(Collingwood 1946:228) when he says, “history is nothing but the
reenactment of past thought in the historian’s mind.” We can achieve
knowledge of the real past by applying empirically-based techniques
within a general framework of argument by ethnographic analogy.
This last point brings us back to the two kinds of ethnographic analogy
already noted-direct historical and general comparative-and to the be-
lief most of us have that direct historical analogies are stronger than
general comparative ones. It is difficult to justify that belief logically, and
it certainly does not release us from the requirement of treating all possi-
ble analogies, whether direct historical or general comparative, as testable
hypotheses or models rather than as immediately acceptable interpreta-
tions. However, Wylie (1978, 1980), in discussing a possible archaeologi-
cal version of argument by analogy, as the latter concept is discussed in
philosophy, asserts that the strength of an analogical argument is indeed
increased the more fully it meets criteria of number and detailed nature of
similarities in form, and range of occurrence across a variety of archaeo-
logical and ethnographic contexts (Wylie cites Curran (1977) as an ex-
ample; compare also Ascher 1961; Bass 1967; Sumner 1979). This means
that an archaeologist working in a geographic area where cultural contin-
uity is marked has an advantage in acquiring testable and a priori strong
analogies to use in final interpretations over the archaeologist who must
rely solely on general comparative analogy. This is true because descrip-
tions of the physical and cultural activities, institutions, and materials
of the descendants of the people whose remains are being excavated are
more likely to be analogous to the past activities, institutions, and mate-
rials in multiple (often linked) ways than are analogies derived from any-
where else. Nevertheless, although they may possess some higher degree
of prior probability than general comparative analogies, the two kinds of
analogy are on the same logical footing as testable hypotheses; they are
acceptable interpretations only after they have been confirmed.
By definition, meeting the other criterion (range across a variety of
contexts) necessitates search for plausible parallels in other ethnographic
and archaeological situations, hence requiring use of the general com-
parative method. As Ascher (1961) notes, general comparative analogies
are usually believed to be strongest when taken from situations as similar
to the archaeological one under interpretation as possible. However, as in
360 GOULD AND WATSON
(RAG)
Watson has presented a case for analogy in ethnoarchaeology that
contains many points on which we can agree, yet essential differences
364 GOULD AND WATSON
Is Uniformitarianism Necessary?3
I shall argue that the essence of ethnoarchaeology rests not with the
collection of scientific data, no matter how controlled or quantified it may
be, but with the nature of the scientific reasoning by which such observa-
tions are applied to explanations of why human behavior varies and
changes as it does. The key to this kind of reasoning in ethnoarchaeology
is the concept of uniformitarianism. Watson has argued that we lack any
principle of generic uniformity for present and past cultural systems.
Elsewhere, she restates this view by noting that we lack a detailed theory
of cultural systems, past and present.
Watson is probably correct in claiming that there is no principle of
generic uniformity for cultural systems. Although various Iawlike state-
ments have been proposed in anthropology, like White’s (1959:33-57)
law of cultural evolution based upon the human species’ increasing ability
to harness energy efficiently, these have not achieved anything like the
degree of confidence normally attributed to laws in the physical and natu-
ral sciences. I am not prepared to argue that
archaeologists as anthropologists are concerned with the problems of discovering
those fundamental, underlying properties of cultural systems . . . Archaeologists
must assume that, other things being equal, those processes which structure the
ethnographic record have also structured the archaeological record (Wilmsen
1970: 1)
3 This subheading is shamelessly adopted from S. J. Gould’s (1965) paper of the same title.
366 GOULD AND WATSON
We must . proceed along the research path forged quite eloquently by our sister
discipline geology in its adoption of the principle of uniformitarianism. Is the for-
mation of archaeological remains as a by-product of adaptive behavior a process
that is operative in the contemporary world? Can we experience this process rela-
tive to a domain of facts that are observable in the archaeological remains from
the past? (1978b: 12)
tions (Gould 1980: 188- 195). The more difficult it is for an Aboriginal
desert group to hunt this species, as determined by the operation of what-
ever main constraint acts as a limiting factor (in this case, limited avail
ability of water for human groups, which, unlike the kangaroo, must drink
regularly and thus have ready access to waterholes of some kind), the
greater their efforts to economize on the limited supply of meat available
to them. The archaeological signature resulting from this adaptive be-
havior under extreme hunting stress was greater reduction of kangaroo
bones in places where meat was consumed, as Aborigines smashed these
bones into smaller and smaller bits to extract as much edible material as
possible. Less extreme bone reduction for this species thus can be pre-
dicted for those times and places where water was more widely available
over the landscape and Aborigine hunters could gain easier access to
macropods like Megalaiea rufa.
Work is proceeding on the testing of this proposition archaeologically in
arid Australia, but it is also possible to test it cross-culturally among any
human societies where meat is consumed. For example, archaeologists
can look at dietary remains in forts and castles where conditions of siege
have occurred in historic or recent times to see to what extent bone
reduction of whatever animals were eaten exceeded that of more normal
times. This same reasoning can be applied to accounting for shifts in the
variety of animal species consumed (assuming, of course, that besieged
victims in medieval European castles did not ordinarily eat rats or cock-
roaches for breakfast). If such extreme reduction of fauna1 remains occurs
in the absence of clear evidence for dietary stress, then we can turn to a
higher-level, ideational explanation for possible answers. This I shall call
the “lobster dinner effect,” since it depends more upon normative values
of dietary preferences and their economic correlates. But, as ethnoar-
chaeologists, we cannot approach dietary remains in general or degrees of
bone reduction in particular by looking initially at factors like ethnicity or
taste without risking embarrassment later on when a more parsimonious
eco-utilitarian explanation for the same materials is offered.
S. J. Gould points out that the concept of uniformitarianism arose in the
geological sciences during the nineteenth century as a response to oppo-
sition from clerics like Buckland who argued for a catastrophist view
based upon divine intervention in earth history. Gould distinguishes be-
tween substantive uniformitarianism (a theory of geological change pos-
tulating uniform rates of conditions) and methodological uniformitarian-
ism (a principle involving spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws)
and notes that substantive uniformitarianism as a geological argument for
universal gradualism of earth processes is discredited today (1965:225-
226). He then goes on to assert that methodological uniformitarianism is
really nothing more than a synonym for the definition of empirical science
THE ANALOGY IN ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL REASONING 371
Is Analogy Necessary?
tions from less compelling ones based upon analogy. It is not incumbent
upon ethnoarchaeologists to exhaust all the possible alternative explana-
tions for a particular pattern, but it is essential that they be aware of what
it is about certain kinds of explanations based upon uniformitarian rea-
soning that makes those kinds of explanations more convincing than those
which rely upon resemblances which do not necessarily involve such
principles. Arguments by analogy, in other words, beg the question of
what it is that structures the resemblances one is attempting to explain.
The case of the post-Pleistocene archaeology of the Oenpelli region of
Arnhem Land (White and Peterson 1969) demonstrates this difficulty.
Here, the excavators compared their prehistoric materials with a model of
seasonal transhumance proposed by the ethnographer, Donald Thomson,
for Aborigines of the Cape York peninsula of Australia. Cape York lies in
tropical Australia and has the same extreme alternation of wet and dry
seasons as Arnhem Land, even though it is over 600 miles away. Thom-
son (1939) noted that the toolkits of these Aborigines varied so much from
one season to the other that archaeologists, looking only at their material
artifacts, might be tempted to regard these as evidence of different cul-
tures when, in fact, they were the by-products of contrasting seasonal
hunting and gathering activities. White and Peterson concluded that
Thomson’s ethnographic model from Cape York fitted their archaeologi-
cal evidence from Arnhem Land better than the alternative hypothesis of
distinct subcultures. That is, the ancient inhabitants of the Oenpelli area
were seen as nomadic hunter-gatherers who moved seasonally between
the interior uplands and coastal plain, alternating their subsistence tool-
kits according to the seasonal requirements.
This argument by ethnographic analogy is reasonable as far as it goes,
but it does not eliminate the subculture hypothesis. Archaeological evi-
dence cited in this case is just as supportive of an interpretation involving
two or more cognate but distinct groups supporting themselves within
these different ecological zones but also relying upon varying amounts of
exchange between these zones (either regularly or during widely spaced
periods of stress). Closer examination of the particular ecological cir-
cumstances and appropriate adaptive responses in this part of Arnhem
Land are needed to settle this matter. The seasonal transhumant model
offered in this case only seems to be the most parsimonious because it
resembles a known case occurring in a broadly similar (but not identical)
situation, and because it has not considered other, possibly more par-
simonious alternatives not reported ethnographically for monsoonal Au-
stralia. Until we are shown how one of these alternatives conforms more
closely to the adaptive requirements of this region than the other, and the
archaeological evidence for these alternatives can be rendered less am-
biguous, it remains a fallacy of affirming the consequent.
374 GOULD AND WATSON
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