Archaeology, a contemporary practice

Archaeology is the study of the human past through material remains (see for example, Childe 1929, Clark 1939 & 1952, White 1943, Hawkes 1954, Binford 1962, Flannery 1965, Clarke 1973, Hodder 1982 and Barrett 1988). The

historiography of the archaeological discipline has been well explored elsewhere (Hodder 1995b, Trigger 1996, Johnson 1999, Hodder 2001) but from the early twentieth century anthropological research methods and theory increasingly

impacted upon archaeological work. For example, it was conceived that observations made of living cultures could aid interpretations of past behavioural patterns

(Malinowski 1922, Radcliff-Brown 1922, Boas 1940). This ‘new’ anthropology was distinguished from ethnology as ‘social anthropology’ and derived much

theoretically from the writings of French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), a

‘founding father’ of sociology, along with Karl Marx and Max Weber (Giddens

1971). Observation of living cultures was increasingly advocated within archaeology on the basis that people are motivated by customs, social structures and perspectives and that ideas impact the physical environment, have material effect (Clark 1939, Childe 1949). Increased incorporation of sociological and psychoanalytical theory into archaeological practice reflects a wider recognition that material remains are produced by multi-sensorial individual humans operating within historically situated sets of relations (Lacan 1977, Jung 1967, Durkheim 1984, Spriggs 1984).

This thesis draws widely from post 1970s social theory (Foucault 1972, Bourdieu 1977, Giddens 1986 & 1995). Interpretive and phenomenological archaeologies remain contentious (for example, Binford 1977, Wylie 1985, Hodder 1986, Leone et al 1987, Shanks & Tilley 1987, Pinsky & Wylie 1989, Shanks & Tilley 1992, Preucel & Hodder 1996, Fleming 1999, Wylie 2002, Fleming 2008, Barrett & Ko 2009, Leone 2010). It will be argued that the relationship between humans and their environment is dialectical (Lefebvre 1991) and materialised through interventions made by people motivated by what they perceive as much as by what can be shown empirically to exist. Thus social and psychoanalytical theory and recent

developments in neuroscience add useful strings to the archaeological bow. I turn now to a fuller exploration of interpretive archaeologies.

Interpretive archaeologies

Originally intended to probe material remains from the deep past, archaeological methods have more recently been applied to contemporary culture (for example, Rathje 1981, Tarlow & West 1999, Graves-Brown 2000, Buchli & Lucas 2001, Harrison & Schofield 2010). To an extent, the ‘every day’ is a constant theme in interpretive archaeologies. Interest concerns exploration of meaning, symbolism and language (Leone 1981, De Certeau 1988, Hodder 1990, Bapty & Yates 1990, Shanks

& Tilley 1987 & 1992). Ideology, social conflict, power and the individual often feature and the epistemological roots of western science are challenged (Bourdieu 1977, Foucault 1979, Poovey 1998, Sahlins 2008). Reflective of postmodern approaches more widely interpretive archaeologies commonly draw on post-structuralism, feminism, critical Marxism and structuration theory to facilitate the

development of archaeology as a philosophy of science (Clarke 1973, Gosden 1994, Wylie 2002, Lucas 2005). Psychoanalytical approaches enhance our ability to cognitively map areas according to mood and memory (Renfrew & Zubrow 1994).

Such approaches contend that archaeological data is always active within the present, routinely reinterpreted according to new paradigm perspectives which themselves impact upon interpretation (Martin 1972).

Interpretation and perspective

Interpretive archaeologies propose that there is no single ‘true’ past because, like the present, the past is a tapestry of multiple perspectives (Ingold 2011) and recognise that perspective and the effect of language on meaning must be situated within historical practice (Lacan 1977). All archaeological work takes place in the present therefore all archaeological work involves some level of interpretation (Shanks &

Tilley 1992, Shanks & Hodder 1997). Archaeologist, Christopher Tilley observes:

‘The archaeological record is not so much a historical but anthropological fact.

Meaning is multiple not because of an error on the part of the archaeologist but because the past is open, something which by the virtue of its very social and historical constitution contains different meanings’ (Tilley 1990:136)

Scientific methods characteristic of New Archaeology in the mid twentieth century (Binford 1965, Flannery 1965, Leone 1972) were widely criticised from the latter part of the 1980s, in part because they failed to take account of issues such as the social and ideological construction of gender and the political and contemporary role of archaeological data (Bapty & Yates 1990). Although some felt the pendulum swung too far (Dyson 1993). Early critics adopted structuralism, a form of linguistics theory initially developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and adapted by French anthropologist, Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) (Leach 1970, Trigger 2006). Ian Hodder, a processualist who became an early interpretive archaeologist, used structuralist principles to suggest the basis of human society is to be found in the duality that is perceived between ‘culture/nature, domestic/wild’ (Gosden 1994:157).

Tilley later critiqued structuralism suggesting it to be inconsistent where ‘symbols’

and ‘structures’ were impossible to define, ‘Tombs kept turning into houses, houses into women and women into pots…’ (Tilley 1990:135)

Post-structuralism seeks to advance concern with meaning and interpretation but remains an incoherent body of knowledge. Jacques Derrida aside, Michel Foucault is perhaps the best known post-structuralist. Moving away from an anthropological view of history, Foucault’s aim was:

‘…most decidedly not to use the categories of cultural totalities (whether world-views, ideal types, the particular spirit of an age) in order to impose on history…the forms of structural analysis. The series described [in The Archaeology of

Knowledge], the limits fixed, the comparisons and correlations made are based not on the old philosophies of history, but are intended to question teleologies and totalizations…’ (Foucault 1972:15-16)

Foucault questioned the epistemology of history and in ‘excavating’ his own culture identified ‘spaces for creativity and resistance’. This notion holds great promise for scholars engaged in archaeology as ‘socio-political action’ (Tilley 1989:104) which is a concept I expand upon later. Foucault’s work amounted to a series of

‘genealogies’ of history, reflecting his development of Nietzschean philosophy (Callinicos 1989). The epistemological roots of the practice of archaeology are, arguably, rational, empirical and Eurocentric. In its earliest incarnations archaeology was a leisure pursuit of predominantly wealthy white men (Bender 1993, Rose 1993, Chadwick 2004). Foucault challenged the foundation of history in conducting an

‘archaeological’ study of the ways in which knowledge is created through links between specific events and the creation of law (a discourse). He showed history to be a complex array of often contradictory series of discourses. Foucault revealed how discourse exerts power – power over and power to – its influence can place certain aspects of humanity into areas where they are conceived of as ‘dangerous’ or

‘immoral’. For example, madness is delineated as an aspect of humanity that is

cordoned off, separated. Through powerful socio-medical discourse, madness becomes ‘Other’, something that requires control through force. The incarceration and punishment of people judged to be ‘mad’ through ‘disease’ (a biological condition) or ‘illness’ (the social construction of the condition) by those whose social position grants them power over others comes down to social constructivism (Conrad & Barker 2010: S67).

For Foucault, discourse was the ‘place’ from where power emanates and to him, the most powerful institutions and disciplinary schools of thought are the church, the state and science. The effect of such discourse driven power in the world is physical, it has material consequences and the human body is often the ‘place’ where such power materialises through mutilation of those found ‘outside the law’, for example, through the guillotine (Foucault 1991). Foucauldian theory is integral to this

archaeological view of contemporary homelessness because it exposes the duality of the condition of homelessness, a social status defined and rationalised by legal and

‘moral’ discourse (Neale 1997) and also an embodied, phenomenological individual experience.

Interpretive archaeologies do not throw out scientific method rather it is explicitly acknowledged that archaeological remains do not excavate themselves any more than cakes bake themselves. For material culture to become archaeological data intervention by people is required and takes place within historically constituted social and political relations. Positivist, empirical scientific theory and method are useful in aiding interpretation of data but the intervention is an act of interpretation.

We can radiocarbon date material in controlled conditions in the present and show the fabric to be, for example, prehistoric. But we are unable to radiocarbon date the prehistoric past as a social, ideological and political construction. Archaeological data do not form a ‘record’ of events rather provide us with ‘evidence for particular social practices’ (Barrett 1988:6, emphasis in original). This is why interpretive archaeologies explicitly foreground the role of interpreters and consider their social position in the world an active component in the way the past operates in the present (Heidegger 1972, Bourdieu 1977, Giddens 1995). We might say that ‘…our

understanding comes from our practice’ (Gosden 1994: 113, emphases in original).

Stories, history is no exception, involves foregrounding some things and masking others. This is what makes archaeology inherently political. Interpretive

archaeologies are reflective, archaeology that is conscious of itself as an active network bearing influence on the operative meaning of the past in the present. I now look more closely at perspective.

There is a false dichotomy in western discourse that dictates that culture

(human/mind/ideal) is separate from nature (non-human/body/real) and yet the ‘real’

(in western philosophy) is deemed more ‘concrete’ than the ideal (Sahlins 2008).

This dialectic is crucial to this thesis because contemporary homelessness exists as both a concept (ideologically constructed) and simultaneously as an embodied, individual experience (tangible, physical). The epistemological roots that have dominated western thought have made science ‘unquestionable’ to the extent that aspects of knowledge have become fundamentally ‘taken for granted’ or assumed to be ‘true’ (Poovey 1998). Deconstructing such ‘taken for granted’ aspects is the focus of much postmodern theory and philosophy and contemporary archaeologies ‘of us’

seek to materialise where we act differently from how we say or think we act (Rathje 1981, Tarlow & West 1999, Harrison & Schofield 2010). We cannot stand outside the world and look into it objectively. Heidegger called this Dasein or Being There (Heidegger 1972). Post-enlightenment epistemologies hold that science can reveal single-truth evidence and where data are quantitative we might agree that claims are largely substantiated; for example, it is difficult to defy the law of gravity. However, positivist theory contends that two contradictory beliefs cannot be true and this is more problematic where data are qualitative. Habermas is instructive when he suggests that to accept rational method (the tools of scientific enquiry) as unquestionable is to render theory of knowledge defunct (Habermas 1972).

Following Habermas, I find Hegel’s concept of the dialectical useful in thinking about perception and perspective. I will explain.

In Hegel’s (1770-1831) understanding everything is defined by what it is not and everything is in constant motion trying to remain what it is by overcoming the

opposite, everything exists as movement and as contradiction or it is nothing. A table

is a table in relation to the fact it is not part of the chair or the floor. As soon as the table stops being the table and starts being a chair or the floor, the table is defined.

Hegelian philosophy contends that because the mind can reflect on the state of being, unlike a table, and it does this by defining what it is not, the mind is the most

dynamic of all things and therefore the prime mover or force for change in the world, so it can begin to transform the experience of ‘reality’. Chris Gosden phrases this well:

‘Thought is an active element in reality and by changing the nature of itself it changes the systems of relations constituting itself which together make up the physical universe’ (Gosden 1994:64)

In seeing the dynamism of the mind (Hegel calls it ‘spirit’) as the primary force that creates change, it is understandable that his philosophy was rejected as unscientific by structural Marxists such as Althusser (1971). However, I embrace this part of Hegel’s concept because it gives weight to the significance of perception in shaping how day to day life is experienced and created by people. In this respect, I follow in the tradition of anthropological political economists such as Eric Wolf (1982) and Robert Paynter (1999). Hegelian philosophy is useful in thinking about homelessness for the reasons given above and several others. Firstly, homelessness is

predominantly conceived of as ‘other’ or ‘alien’, that is, defined negatively – homeless. Secondly, approaching the contemporary past as an archaeologist, sites can be witnessed constantly changing shape, as data will shortly reveal. We can see contemporary homeless sites ‘…not being but becoming’ (Gosden 1994:64).

Thirdly, the transient nature of contemporary homelessness means that homeless people exist in near constant motion – there is no ‘home’ to which to return. I will now explore the role of hermeneutics which pursued Hegelian philosophy.

Hermeneutics, the science of interpretation, developed largely from critiques of positivism. It can be unsettling because it decentres but leads us back to ourselves (Ricœur 1984). I argue that so long as method is made explicit hermeneutic

approaches need not slip into relativism. Hermeneutic thought removes universal truth and liberates the possibility of seeing things – the past, wars, door-knobs – from multiple perspectives. It does not deny the reality of the door knob but recognises that the door-knob is always subject to the subjectivity of the observer;

that the observer is active within their own habitus (Bourdieu 1977) which impacts the way they interpret the door-knob (the war or the past). In accepting that we are always already in the world, not able to decide to be objective, we are relieved of the true/false dilemma and instead asked ‘…how to decide our reaction to different views’ (Lucas 1997: 41, my emphasis). We can never recover essential ‘meaning’

from archaeological data only hope to understand from more perspectives, be better at thinking around things (Giddens 1995). Shanks & Tilley describe the position of the archaeologist as the ‘fourfold hermeneutic’ by which they mean that the

archaeologist works within four points of interpretation: working within the archaeological discipline, conducting contemporary archaeology within

contemporary society, trying to understand the ‘alien’ culture and attempting to transcend the past and present (Shanks & Tilley 1992:108). Shanks & Tilley (1992) suggest that what is necessary is more theory so that we further question why we construct the past in certain ways and avoid romanticising or reducing the past to sanitised, logical narrative. Gavin Lucas observes that to be inclusive of ‘alternative’

interpretations of the past does not mean we have to agree with them. ‘Our problem is whether that view is represented, since we [archaeologists] hold the power of vocality’ (Lucas 1997:41). This resonates in important ways with the suggestion that archaeology can function as activism because representation in the past is a form of recognition and can aid the development of rights in the present. We do not slip into relativism because, as Tilley reassures us, ‘The past resists our constructions; its empirical materiality has to be respected’ (Tilley 1990:136). Motivations, in the Hegelian sense, behind materiality may always be viewed from multiple perspectives (for example, one man’s ‘discovery’ was another woman’s colonial invasion). I turn now to phenomenology and its application in archaeology.