Writing about time
Seren Griffiths
Developments in the application of Bayesian statistical modelling of assemblages of chronometric data have resulted in discussions in the scientific dating community concerning best practice (e.g. Buck and Millard 2004; Parnell et al. 2011). Bayesian modelling techniques are beginning to be applied as part of important large scale projects such as Whittle et al. (2011) and Bayliss and Whittle (2007). These applications have changed the ways that archaeologists write histories of sites, processes and material culture.
These approaches can be contrasted with anthropologically informed ways of writing about time (Gell 2001), materiality (Olivier 1999; 2001; Holtrof 2002), and landscape (Ingold 2000; Witmore 2007) and ways other writers have approached chronology and models which influence our interpretations (Patrick 1985; Chadwick 1997; Thomas 2004; Lucas 2008).
This paper will present Bayesian statistical modelling case studies, and compare the output of these models with previous approaches to writing about chronology. It will focus on the tensions that might be inherent between these different approaches and traditions to writing, presenting and visualising time and change in the archaeological record.
(Ab)usability of statistics in archaeology
Peter Demján
When formulating scientific hypotheses which fulfil the rejectability criterion, the archaeologist is faced with the challenge of choosing a representative sample from often highly fragmentary data. The natural scientific approach of random and repeated sampling is possible only in the case of highly abundant archaeological records mostly of natural origin, such as coal or pollen samples in 14C dating. To achieve scientific rigor in evaluating cultural artefacts, an approach of modelling based on explorative statistics and subsequent statistical evaluation of these models using primary archaeological sources as validation criteria seems more plausible.
Dobkowice revisited. Geophysical prospection and excavations of an enclosure of the Jordanów culture
Mirosław Furmanek, Maciej Ehlert, Marek Grześkowiak, Agata Hałuszko, Mateusz Krupski, Maksym Mackiewicz
The discovery of the site near Dobkowice (Lower Silesia) dates back to 1971 and was purely accidental. Archaeological excavations were carried out in 1972 and in 1979–1981 and have revealed 16 features; among them various kinds of pits, the remains of a ditch, and 4 burials related to the Jordanów culture.
In 2012 a geophysical prospection with a magnetometer was performed on site. A number of anomalies have been recorded, which indicate the presence of archaeological features, including a double ditched enclosure. The presence of ditches, and their chronological association with the Jordanów culture have been confirmed by targeted excavations in designated areas, which followed the geophysical survey. Moreover, during the excavations, a burial containing two ceramic vessels and an unidentified copper object has been discovered within the inner ditch.
In southwestern Poland, apart from the recent discovery at Dobkowice, a similar feature of the Jordanów culture has been uncovered in Tyniec Mały. The similarities between these two sites include their location in the surrounding landscape, the presence of ditches and the occurrence of burials within the ditch fills. Such sites, on which ditched enclosures have been identified, are most often interpreted as fortified settlements or animal enclosures (kraals). However, it seems that their function may have been more complex and not only limited to economical aspects.
Taphonomy as key concept for the bioarchaeological interpretation of complex burial features: a Neolithic example from Salzmünde, Germany
Christian Meyer, Corina Knipper, Guido Brandt, Marcus Stecher, Sarah Karimnia, Frank Ramsthaler, Björn Schlenker, Susanne Friederich, Harald Meller, Kurt W. Alt
Prehistoric burials are an important source of information for archaeological research — cultural practises, religious beliefs, artefacts, and the people themselves are embedded in the same intentionally created features.
For a comprehensive scientific analysis and interpretation of burials, it is necessary to combine various archaeological disciplines, constantly matching results to one another and re-evaluating them if necessary. Human skeletal remains should be the foremost focus of research in burial archaeology, as the grave, its construction, and contents are dependent on the biocultural characteristics of the persons interred within. While the anthropological profile of the deceased, a composite of osteological, genetic and isotopic results, obviously gives information of central importance, events affecting the condition of the physical bodies before, during and after the inhumation are also highly relevant for the understanding of burial features.
One example of a very complex Neolithic multiple burial is presented from Salzmünde, Germany. It contains nine individuals, which display burn and chop marks and missing body parts in a complex pattern. Utilizing mainly osteological evidence for the treatment of the dead, a chain of recurring events is reconstructed, including results of other analyses, and the most plausible interpretation is presented. In this case burial taphonomy holds the key to the whole feature, which has profound effects on the interpretation of the site as a whole. It follows that similar sites and features, including complex arrangements of human remains, have to be analysed in detail, before a definite burial scenario can be presented.
Wild Things in the North? Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers in Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe 5500–3900 cal BC
Peter Rowley-Conwy and Robert Layton
The northern edge of the Bandkeramik and its successor Neolithic cultures formed a boundary between farmers and hunter-gatherers that remained largely static for some 1500 years. Archaeologists commonly assume that the farmer/forager relationship involved foragers becoming ‘clients’ of the farmers. We will argue this conception is misplaced, and derives from recent encounters between foragers and the outside world. Notions of wildness, savages and agrios societies may not be appropriate.
Two types of evolutionary theory are available to archaeologists and anthropologists: adaptive and progressive. The Darwinian approach focuses on the relative reproductive success of members of a population adopting alternative subsistence strategies. This may adequately explain the co-existence of farmer and hunter-gatherer strategies in neighbouring areas and can be tested against evidence of the impact of environmental change.
Most classic, nineteenth century formulations of progressive evolution assumed that an unspecified force drove organisms and societies in the direction of increasing complexity. The extended co-existence of foragers and farmers calls this approach into question. While Marx’s theory explains the specific conditions under which social evolution can cause progressive change, his theory is particularly appropriate to European capitalist colonization, the period covered by most written records of hunter-gatherer interaction with other societies.
Early farmers are unlikely to have been capable of dominating hunter-gatherers in the same way. Behavioural ecology, which takes into account the interaction of organisms in shaping the environment to which they adapt, may offer a better explanation of forager-farmer co-existence.
Rain or Shine: Dynamics of Prehistoric Village Organization on the Great Hungarian Plain
Attila Gyucha, Paul R. Duffy, William A. Parkinson
The later prehistory of the Great Hungarian Plain is characterized by periods of village nucleation and dispersal that historically have been attributed to shifts in climate, hydrology, and subsistence. This paper examines human-environmental relationships from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age on the Great Hungarian Plain based on systematically collected data from the Körös Region. We use a multi-scalar approach that integrates information from multiple geographic and social scales to argue that environmental and subsistence concerns have been overplayed in our understanding of the various changes that resulted in the long-term transition from small egalitarian Neolithic villages to larger, more politically and economically complex, Bronze Age polities.
Environment and Culture – Between Determinism and Possibilism
Martin Hinz
The Human part of human-environmental interaction and its dynamic is visible for archaeologists in two aspects: changes in the economic and changes in the cultural sphere. The economic reaction on environmental change is rather self-evident and this connection seems to be obvious. The influence of environmental change on cultural developments on the other hand is not an automatic process but the result of a society or even more of individual actions in dealing with the ecological conditions and constrains of agency. And these re-actions can take different forms.
This paper will present three different case studies: A first example comes from the Early Bronze Age Poland (Bruszczewo), where a cultural change or decline coincide with a shift in the ecological conditions. The second study from the Funnelbeaker Complex shows that the ‘ritual’ activities can remain stable or even increase while the ‘mundane’ activities, estimated from the distribution of 14C dates, shows a sharp decline associated with changes in the climate conditions. A more closer look onto a specific area of the Funnelbeaker Complex in Schleswig-Holstein/Germany, reveals a situation in which a economic change, reflected in in an alteration of the landuse visible in pollen profiles, takes place very likely before a cultural change is visible in the shift to Single Grave burial and cultural traditions. Here it seems possible to state that either these two aspects of society are not connected or, more probable, that the economic change triggered the cultural change with some delay.
Links between social changes and climatic events during the Neolithic
Martin Kuča, Josef Jan Kovář, Miriam Nývltová Fišáková, Petr Škrdla, Lubomír Prokeš & Miroslav Vaškových
The Central European Archaeology traditionally works with a context of the subsequent cultures located within a time scale. The individual cultures are in more detail separated to the phases and sub-phases derived from changes in material culture (i.e. Čižmář 1998; Čižmář et al. 2004). Under this paradigm, the researchers developed a detailed scheme of gradual development from lower phase to the upper phase within the individual culture and the cultural replacements. The test of this scheme using direct dating of archaeological material hitherto was not systematic.
On the other hand, natural sciences work with models of climate and environmental changes placed in absolute chronology. The dendro-curve and a high resolution radiocarbon dating (with a dendro-curve based calibration) is available for the Holocene period. In addition, Mayewski’s definition (Mayewski et al. 2004) of a series of RCC (Rapid Climate Change; basing on a high-resolution GISP2 record) indicates variable climate during Holocene.
The important challenge we are faced on is an attempt to connect both archaeological and natural scientific views and test hypothesis to what extent the social changes and climatic record are intercorrelated.
References:
Čižmář, Z. 1998: Nástin relativní chronologie lineární keramiky na Moravě. AMM, Sci .soc. 83, 105–139, Brno. Čižmář, Z. – Pavúk, J. – Proházková, P. – Šmíd, M. 2004: K problému definování finálního stadia lengyelské kultury. In: Hänsel, B., Studeníková, E. (Hrsg.), Zwischen Karpaten und Ägäis. Neolithikum und ältere Bronzezeit. Gedenkschrift für Viera Němejcová-Pavúková. Internat. Arch. Stud. Honoraria 21, Rahden/Westf. 2004, 207–232. Mayewski, P. A. – Rohling, E. E. – Stager, J. C. – Karlén, W. – Maasch, K. A. – Meeker, L. D. – Meyerson, E. A. – Gasse, F. – van Kreveld, S. – Holmgren, K. – Lee-Thorp, J. – Rosqvist, G. – Rack, F. – Staubwasser, M. – Schneider, R. R. – Steig, E. J. 2004: Holocene climate variability. Quaternary Research 62, 243–255.Resilience in the Neolithic: how people maintained cultural traditions and mitigated environmental change in prehistory
Roderick B. Salisbury & Gábor Bácsmegi
Neolithic populations in Central Europe lived in a world of dynamic climate change. Human ecology and the related concept of resiliency provide a conceptual approach to understanding the ways that human societies and the environment affect each other. This paper explores human-environmental interactions in light of local environmental changes linked to small-scale climate change. Case studies come from the 2011-12 investigations at two small early Late Neolithic settlements (c. 5000 BC) set along palaeomeanders of the Körös River in Békés County, Hungary. During the course of the Neolithic, this region saw complex development in social and settlement organization, including the nucleation of populations in large settlements and the continued reoccupation of living space. Utilizing archaeological and environmental data, we tackle the question of why these communities chose different lifeways, and how these choices reflect efforts to mitigate environmental change.
Our project develops a new comparative methodology for examining the dialogue between small communities, cultural traditions and environmental change. We use geochemical and geophysical prospection of settlements, traditional surface survey and environmental analyses to examine cultural resiliency. By cultural resiliency, we mean the ability of a society to maintain and develop identity, knowledge and ways of making a living, despite challenges and disturbances, by resisting damage and recovering quickly. In this case, we are looking for ways that Neolithic populations on the Great Hungarian Plain handled environmental change.
The cultural and natural environment of the Yamnaya kurgans in Northeastern Hungary
Csaba Bodnár, András Füzesi & Márton Szilágyi
The basic question of our presentation is the relation between the Late Copper Age – Early Bronze Age settlement pattern and the kurgans related to the contemporaneous Yamnaya Culture. The appearance of the kurgans in Eastern Hungary is explained by several researchers as a result of migration processes. However, the recent theoretical approaches give us an opportunity to reinterpret and review the whole problem, which hasn’t been investigated in this region so far.
Our research area, where we are going to survey the available archaeological record, is the Hortobágy, a region located at the northern part of the Great Hungarian Plain (500 km2, cca 300 kurgans, 40 LCA-EBA settlements). We can investigate the construction, the reconstruction and the destruction of the kurgans by using excavation datas, while the contemporaneous settlement pattern can be examined by the results of earlier field surveys. The relation of the LCA-EBA settlements and the Yamnaya kurgans is analysed by means of GIS.
The kurgans of the Great Hungarian Plain still constitute a significant part of the landscape, they must have played an important cultural role in the mentioned period of prehistory — not only as tombs, but as built monuments as well. Although the length of the investigated period and the difficulties of the precise dating of the kurgans allow us only to observe some basic rules. On the ground of these regularities we can set a new, more flexible and more complex explanatory model, instead of the traditional discourse of the strict, culture-historical approaches.
Plenty of grain pits — the Times of plenty? The study of silo pits as a tool for the interpretation of part of the Bronze Age economy
Mária Hajnalová, David Parma
Ancient fields, or similar archaeological evidence which can be used as a relatively straightforward evidence for the Early Bronze Age arable farming productivity, is lacking in the East Central Europe. Such reconstructions therefore have to rely on other sources and types of evidence. Apart from archaeobotany (if representative assemblages of plant macro-remians are available), the information obtained from study of silo pits is other of the possible options. Evaluation of the suitable excavated sites in south and central Moravia documents the presence of settlement areas with 1. higher numbers of pits of various types and functions and 2. settlement areas with pronounced concentration of grain (silo) pits. It can be assumed, that at the latter sites, the certain (probably major) portion of cereal harvest was stored underground. Volume of each of the silo pit can be accurately measured, and constancy of form and some basic dimensions (diameter at the base/bottom) allows eliminate errors induced by taphonomic and transformation processes. If the number of households using the pits and the duration of the occupation can be estimated, it is possible to model productive ability of the community and the rate of its stability. Encountered must also be variability of possible uses of the pits, deriving from direct archaeological and also historical or ethnographical evidence.
Prehistoric fortifications: a collective muscle-building activity
Ladislav Šmejda
To fortify a place means to make it less susceptible to attack by building defensive works, located usually in a favourable natural setting. Large amounts of material must be obtained, moved and used in the process of such construction. This activity was without any doubt physically demanding and helped the people involved to build up their musculature; nevertheless, the title of this contribution remains to be rather metaphorical. I aim to explore how a collective work of this kind could strengthen social relations and create impressive material image of a particular group of people (their communal ‘muscles’ figuratively increased in the general social competition). Although fortifications have always been described in terms of their protective and military value, we should look beyond the literal meaning of the words and strive to interpret also the accompanying symbolic connotations. Many parallels can be drawn between human body, architecture and the natural (and of course supernatural) environment in their structural anatomy and the possibility of repeated modifications. It is noteworthy that in some regions, including central Europe, building monumental fortification systems was popular during certain periods of prehistory, while in other regions and/or other periods it was not. This disproportion cannot be fully explained by simple factors, e.g. by the changing character of warfare over successive periods or by the varying defensive potential of local geomorphologies. The argument in this paper supports the view that prehistoric fortifications alternately appeared and disappeared on the scene of cultural landscape, bringing along a specific way of structuring space. Such kind of spatial organization regularly left behind a strong signature in the archaeological record, witnessing an intensive interaction between communities and their natural as well as social environment.
A model of ceramic production, specialization and standardization of ceramic assemblages – on the basis of two sites from eastern Croatia belonging to Vučedol culture
Ina Miloglav
Ceramics, as all other products which are a part of human activity, is produced and used within a social context. In a supply and demand system ceramic workers were producing for consumers and were adapting themselves to the market within the frame of socio-economic demands. The analysis of ceramic material from two Vučedol sites in eastern Croatia (Damića gradina at Stari Mikanovci and on Ervenica in Vinkovci) has enabled the reconstruction of Vučedol society viewed through its economic and technological segment, social organization and organization of production.
Statistical test undertaken using coefficient of variation (CV) has shown a certain level of standardization of ceramic material which is particularly visible on bowls.
The reason for greater level of standardization noticeable on a certain type of bowls shows that the bowls were being used more intensively and frequently in everyday life, which led to its faster wearing out, deformation and breaking, and consequently to its greater production and richer experience in its making. The production was taking place locally within the settlement, which is being confirmed by mineralogical-petrographic analyses and the method of X-ray diffraction done on ceramic fragments. The proposed model of organized production of ceramic products in Vučedol society would mean large-scale ceramic production which is still taking place within a household, and which is conditioned by greater commercial activity, increase of population, as well as social organization marked by stratification of society and emergence of hierarchic relationships.
Variability of the Bell Beaker pottery: a technological approach
Klára Neumannová
My study is influenced by French technological approach of chaines opératoires. It offers a different system of classification of pottery, based successively on technological, petrographic and typological criteria.
This approach emphasises strong implications of ethnoarchaeology, which proves that typological classification does not correlate with social entities, contrary to the technological traditions maintained by different mechanisms. The study of the technological variability allows recognition of a social background of the pottery production.
For this purpose a combination of methods is used – firstly macroscopic analysis for identification of technological groups within an assemblage. Then these groups can be precised by petrographic analysis and hypothesis verified by the archaeological experiment.
I will illustrate the application of this method by my study of a Bell Beaker pottery assemblage from the central Bohemia and archaeological experiment concerning the surface treatments.
Why Not Pottery? A Comparative Consideration of the Multiple Variables Underlying the Adoption or non-Adoption of the Multiple Types of Ceramic Technologies
Thomas R. Rocek
This paper examines the factors underlying the adoption and spread of pottery technology. Obviously in Central Europe ceramics arrived as part of the LBK migration, and thus in a sense the use of pottery appears to not require explanation. However, it is important to ask what economic, social and ideological factors condition the adoption and NON-adoption of pottery–for instance by the local Mesolithic populations, as well as their continued use by the incoming Neolithic groups. Evidence of technology of production, use and discard are all critical. I take a theoretical and comparative perspective rather than focusing on Central European data directly, using examples from the recent discovery of 20,000 year old pottery vessels from Xianrendong cave in China and 15,000 year old pottery figurines from Vela Spila, Croatia, as well as more traditionally known examples such as the 30,000 year old Pavlovian figurines, Ertebolle and Dutch Mesolithic pottery, the absence of ceramics in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Middle East, and in the early agricultural periods of eastern and southwestern North America. I suggest that factors of mobility, economics, social organization, and cultural tradition must each be considered independently, and similarly that different kinds of ceramic technologies such as figurines versus vessels, plates or bowls versus jars, low fired course wares versus high fired fine wares, must be examined in their own terms; the category “adoption” or “use of ceramics” is much too simple to allow an understanding of both the cultural and technological factors underlying pottery use.
Pottery decoration in the Late Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain: a multiple-way approach
Katalin Sebők
The reasons to invest into aestethics are diverse but decoration always represents something of an excess, “extra work” in terms of basic subsistence. The focus group of the analysis in this case study is the so-called “textile decoration” of the Tisza Culture of the Late Neolitihic of Hungary. The starting point of the examination is the assumption that the finds decorated with “textile pattern”, (i. e. the decoration itself) may in one way be considered to form a homogenous source of information. The complexity, definite character and position of this find group make it to be an optimal target for testing possibly applicable suppositions, models and ideas.
The characteristic incised decoration of the Tisza ceramics is a very complex but highly uniform system which remains in use seemingly unchanged through the entire life span of the culture on its whole territory. This homogenity raises the question of meaning: can this type of decoration be explained as a way of expressing embedded meaning, being an unambiguous mirror image of the cognitive layer of the culture?
In order to show the presence of such meaning first the structure of the decoration system must be revealed. After that, changes in structure, differences in use, degeneration through time and distance may be described both in materials from sites of the core area and from those in continuous cultural stress situation (interference zones). The description of variance and recurrence patterns both of decorational frames and elements, and the reaction of the system in cultural stress situations may show different levels of encoded meaning, revealing parts of the culture’s cognitive set-up. The patterns of use may also reveal static (local, regional and cultural levels of style) and dynamic (elements of the network of connection: exchange or communication) relations of the culture. The examination of the position of textile patterned vessels in the culture’s ceramic inventar and of the variety in quality of each objects may give us understanding about the role of these decorated objects in society on the levels of the individuals, of the population and of the culture as well.
The marxist archaeology in former Czechoslovakia
Eduard Krekovič & Martin Bača
In 1948 the political situation in former Czechoslovakia radically changed. The communism for decades influenced not only political and social but also ideological progress. The new ideology was supposed to be strongly reflected in social sciences including archaeology. The paper deals with the influence of Marxism on archaeological literature in former Czechoslovakia between 1948–1989. Authors are searching for the existence of Marxist archaeology in Czechoslovakia and are trying to present its theoretical conception and position in archaeological literature.
The Iron Age Archaeology in Serbia: theory, methodology and changing interpretative perspectives
Zorica Kuzmanović & Ivan Vranić
The archaeological interpretations of the Iron Age in south-eastern Europe began in the late XIX and early XX century within emerging culture-historical paradigm – the first coherent archaeological theory practised by visiting scholars who conducted some initial systematic excavations or the earliest local archaeologists who earned their education in western universities. Subsequently, the theoretical perspective of ‘archaeological culture’ and the practice of artefacts classification based on the premise that individuals producing and using stylistically homogeneous material culture most certainly had formed a group with the feeling of collective identity, has been, up until recently, the routine path in Serbian archaeology.
Today, the idea about the archaeological culture as a relatively stable and homogeneous system of values characterizing a certain group is criticized as a reflection and an ethnocentric projection of the modern concept of national/ethnic identity. This paper will provide a short introduction to culture-historical interpretations the Iron Age on the territory of modern-day Serbia and discuss how this interpretative realm in the region is influenced by our own social experience while, at the same time, it still reflects modern socio-political contexts into the past.
The historical and cultural division of the Central Europe Paleolithic in the Soviet archeology
Sergii Paliienko
Two topics related to the Paleolithic of Central Europe were actively developed in the Soviet archeology: the Transcarpathian Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic of Central Europe in the context of the Willendorf-Kostenki culture.
The first problem was actively developed by specialists from the Academy of Science of UkrSSR in Kiev. The archaeologists from Leningrad worked on the second problem.
There were several approaches used by Soviet researchers in the consideration of the problem of historical and cultural division of the Central Europe Paleolithic: the typological, the typological and statistical and the technical and typological. In this case the same criteria were used for selection of different definitions and vice versa – scientists put a different meaning in the content of the same terms, especially it had to do with the term “archaeological culture”. The similar trends were followed by the author studying the Soviet and postsoviet archaeologists approaches to the problem of historical and cultural division of the Eastern Europe Upper Paleolithic. The comparison of these data with each other will highlight the regularities of archaeological cognition and outline new paths for finding solutions.
It’s not culture’s fault
Klára Šabatová
Archeological culture can be considered to be empirically limited structures within a positivistic understanding of prehistory. These are models of human life in a particular time and space, which comes out of the scientific and social mores at the time of their definition.
Today, the growth of this data along with the instruments for their analysis, as well as the introduction of other scientific themes, inevitably leads to a weakening of these models.
The signs, with which cultures were originally described and with which their quantity and ubiquity were studied (burial rituals, the character of settlements, artifacts, space) have often been influenced by signs from the present. The assigning of cultures was influenced by state borders and even ideologies. The pigeon-holing of assemblages/localities to one or another culture has often been done mechanically, without in-depth analysis of the period.
We don’t consider the term Archeological Culture problematic in and of itself. We do however have an issue with the use of this term, where instead of an abstract model, which Archeological Culture is, we create out of an Archeological Culture (the only possible), genuinely existing group.
Constructing discourse between the natural sciences and (pre)history
Jaromír Beneš
Archaeology has been integral part of natural sciences in the second half of the 19th Century. Positive coexistence during period of evolucionistic paradigm ended in first decades of the 20th Century, because archaeology started investigate roots of “nations”. This process stimulated vigorous divergence from natural sciences towards to (pre)history, in particular on the continent. Processual and “new” archaeology and following post-processual response activated again into motion unbalanced relationship between “scientific” approaches and holistic discourse. Current increase of scientific analysis in archaeology (bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology) emphasises requirements how to build archaeological statements. First of all, scientific approaches saturate archaeology by series of very detailed exact data, which make difficult (pre)historical reconstructions and partially inhibited explanation of both social and (pre)historical processes at all. On the second side, prehistorians defended field for more open argumentation as way to integrate many partial facts into the explanatory holistic systems. The basic questions are: how to integrate thousand of particular findings of the “archaeological science” without losing their explanatory character? How construct the holistic discourse in European prehistoric archaeology when particular arguments from different collaborating disciplines are used?
Frequency seriation and multimodal distribution of styles in time
Peter Demján
The basic axiom of a frequency seriation is always the unimodal, gaussian distribution of specific attributes of the seriated contexts in time. In archaeological praxis, we often encounter attributes that are not normally distributed, achieve multiple peaks of popularity over time or produce no regular chronological distribution patterns. In this paper we present the caveats this poses to seriation and propose a new theoretical approach to chronological ordering of archaeological contexts based on their stylistic and technological attributes.
For Whom the Texts Toll: Genres, Discourses, and Styles in Czech Archaeological Community
Daniel Sosna
Archaeological theories and methods are communicated via language that shapes practices of different archaeological communities. Some of these communities wonder about their failures to spread their ideas beyond the limits of their own intellectual territories. Since written texts are central to knowledge sharing in contemporary archaeology, they represent an ideal target for the investigation of incompatibilities that exist among archaeological communities. It is not just the substantial dimension of texts that scholars consume but also the underlaying assumptions and results of discursive practices that have considerable impact on the acceptance and pervasiveness of scientific ideas. In this paper I present the results of discourse analysis of texts about prehistory from the Czech scholarly journal Památky archeologické. This journal is rooted in 19th century and, therefore, allows us to trace the long development of language vis-à-vis the social world of archaeologists. Genres, discourses, and styles provide the analytical dimensions for understanding differences in thinking and writing between the community involved in creation and perpetuation of the journal and the communities of influential international journals. The results indicate that language plays a critical role not only in dissemination of knowledge but also in formation of ideas about the nature of archaeology as a discipline.
Anarchism and archaeology. Perspective for central Europe
František Trampota
Some archaeologists expect rise of a new paradigm that will form archaeological research in following years. In contrast to this expectation, the aim of this paper is to show that it is not a new paradigm that will become essential for future research, but a change in social structure of archaeological community.
Mentality in central European archaeology (or society in general) is still heavily marked by monarchist (Austrian Hungarian Empire, Prussian Empire) and other totalitarian manners (nazism and state communism) that deformed the society (including science) for past decades and centuries. Totalitarism opposes scientific methods.
If we assume that archaeology is a science, we should follow modern scientific method, e.g. the negative method of criticism, trial and error as Karl Popper proposed. Present day archaeological structures still does not accept repeated testing as a necessary ‘daily bread’ and criticism is often understood as a personal attack.
Here, author proposes reorganisation of archaeological scientific community towards anarchist ideals (antiauthoritarianism, freedom of self expression etc.), which do not oppose to scientific methods. Such reorganisation should happen in minds of archaeologists rather than on baricades.
Getting from point A to point B – from artefacts to behaviour. Past, current and future approaches for artefact analyses in prehistoric Europe
Selena Vitezović
Analyses of everyday tools (from flint, stone, osseous materials), although often, if not always, on the secondary position, after the pottery analyses, create the basic of every archaeological research, regardless to the period, region, methodological approach or theoretical framework. It still relies heavily on the typology, but the importance of experimental and ethnoarchaeological approach grows continuously. However, while methodology went under significant changes in past decades, theoretical discussions were not so abundant as in other fields of archaeology. In the recent years, a concept of technology as cultural-driven phenomenon is more widely accepted, largely influenced by the technological approach from the French anthropological and archaeological school.
In this paper past and current approaches will be discussed, and the author advocates the combination of technological and contextual approach, with the goal not only to improve our understanding of the artefacts in the context of the given society, their value, importance, function and meaning, but also to start discussion on the creation of new theoretical frameworks for social phenomena such as raw material procurement, the organization of the craft production, labour division, etc. The example of the possibilities of such approach will be the case study of the bone industry in the Neolithic Balkans.
A few remarks about different research perspectives in archaeology
Renata Zych
The paper presents the author’s point of view concerning dominant research perspectives in contemporary archaeology. Generally, it concerns assumptions and objectives put forward by postmodernism, that is, first of all, a rejection of any possibility of comprehending the world directly, the world existing only in interpretations and our images of it, and secondly, a constructive, not objective understanding of reality, reflecting a general rejection of objectivity in favor of relativism. The problem of the postmodernistic approach appears to lie in the obliteration of scientific knowledge and different ways of knowing reality. The base of the approach presented here is a distinction between archaeology as a science and art. A moderate form of scientific fundamentalism has been accepted as a distinctive criterion, its assumptions giving an ordered, strictly hierarchical structure of knowledge. The way postmodernists look at the matter, fundamentalism understood in this way should distinguish science (archaeology) from “para-science”. The author has also taken the opportunity to present her own research strategy, the theoretical base as well as practical application.
