The Hypothetico-Deductive Method

Processual approaches to archaeology use the Hypothetico-Deductive method to ensure that their practice follows those of other sciences, which ensure the generation of justified, true beliefs. In brief, this method involves explicitly creating a hypothesis, using the process of deduction to find its logical consequences, and the subsequent testing of these hypotheses (Renfrew 1989: 40). This focus on measurement and prediction can be traced back to the goal of validating a hypothesis. For many philosophers of science, such as Karl Popper, validation rests on testability (1959: 46-48) and so a hypothesis must be

posited in order to proceed with the scientific method. This method, like much of current archaeological research and fieldwork, is problem-oriented. One does not simply scrabble about in the dirt, making random observations with no goal. While this method seems most appropriate for laboratory work with controllable conditions and quantifiable variables, the 'hard' sciences for which it was originally devised do not encounter variables such as style or culture.

Culture, as due to chance and the laws of psychology (Aberle 1960: 3) is not within the purview of science, but of culture historians and palaeo-psychologists, according to the renowned processual archaeologist Lewis Binford (1965: 204). To deal with the unscientific vagaries of culture, processual theory considers culture an adaptive process, an extra- somatic system in which people participate, and reduces cultural meaning to adaption to the natural environment. This process of adaptation, as well as other unquantifiable variables can then be discussed as predictable, law-like relationships.

Processual methods use a Hypothetico-Deductive model in order to arrive at an explanation of past events. They may seek to explain one event, a class of events, a pattern or a process. They do not seek understanding of motivations or human agency, only explanation of acts.

In a concise gathering of the main tenets of new archaeology, Yoffee and Sherratt put three phrases into the mouths of processual archaeologists: "culture is a means of adaptation to the natural environment...material culture is the passive product of human adaptation to the natural environment... and ...explanation consists in constructing universal laws through the hypothetico-deductive method" (1993: 4).

Measurement and statistical analysis are the important beginning of any

archaeological inquiry, however, using a processual methodology, questions are not pushed beyond direct measurement of observable data, or correlations made between these data. This disallows inquiry into many aspects of material culture that some would claim are crucial for a fuller understanding of ancient people. The biggest disadvantage to the Hypothetico-Deductive method is that it does not move beyond what can be empirically observed "in discussing meaning, agency and history" (Hodder and Hutson 2003: 41). Proccessualist approaches do not allow for questions about mental states such as intention or meaning. Cultural change or variability, style and symbolic behaviour are described only

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in terms of material function and their possible adaptive advantages. This type of analysis, while 'scientifically' rigorous, is superficial.

The "deductive-nomological" model of scientific explanation, also known as the 'covering law' model, insists upon the presence of at least one general law among the deductive statements in valid explanations. Positivist philosophers such as Hempel and Popper support covering laws in scientific explanation. A good example of this type of law should be "limited to the world of experience and seek causality in the pattern of similar experiences, the regular associations, the observed laws..." (Hodder and Hutson 2003: 21). However, the publication pressure felt by many archaeologists led some to present the academic world with "discovered" laws of either little relevance or no necessity. Flannery called these Mickey Mouse Laws (1973: 51).

A behavioural methodology also makes use of universal laws and does not allow for discussion of human intent or other mental states. While behavioural approaches have added much to the discussion about formation processes of the archaeological record, ironically there has been no contribution to explaining past behaviour.

Cognitive processualism is an attempt by processualists to use the methods of cognitive science to approach the "human ability to construct and use symbols" (Renfrew 1994: 5). There is no desire to approach meaning of symbols in any way; rather the focus is on the use of symbols. Bell (1994: 18) offers some suggestions to those attempting to use a cognitive processual method: 1) restrict statements to claims about cognition; 2) link statements to data about artefacts using formal logic; and 3) make statements as objective as possible.

While this method allows for inference in addition to deduction, the inferences allowed must remain close to the data and must entail statements which are directly

testable by the data. Cognitive processualists aim to make testable explanatory statements, not interpretations, which they see as being easily changed to accommodate anomalous data (Bell 1994: 17).

Middle range theory also involves the application of universal measuring devices. The methods of this approach involve the development of operational concepts with which to seek out behavioural patterns within the material record (Bailey 1983: 2). Middle range theory is therefore not context-specific and tends towards superficiality. It is useful in the same sense as ethnographic analogy is, in that it provides a useful starting point from which deviation is presumed. The range of possibilities opened up by reference to analogy or middle range theory can help narrow the infinite direction of study to a more appropriate, targeted data set.

In describing processual methods of approaching archaeological data, many theorists have made use of the "ladder of inference" (Hawkes 1954: 161-2). This ladder as intended by Hawkes did not necessitate understanding one 'rung' before proceeding up to the next, but merely as a hierarchy of difficulty of inference. Material technology tends to be easiest to make inferences about, followed by subsistence economics. Communal organization is

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more difficult still, with religious and spiritual life at the apex of difficulty. Hawke's goal was to show that it is the human-ness of these activities that make them difficult to infer based solely upon material remains (162). Processual theorists allow movement only up the ladder (Hodder and Hutson 2003: 43).

Hodder turns this upside down in suggesting that without an understanding of social organization or religion, technology and economy are themselves incomprehensible:

"looking for patterns is inadequate, we need to make abstractions about the meaning of the pattern” (Hodder and Hutson 2003: 69).

Despite many attempts by processualists to find a covering, universal law of human behaviour, the only universal law concerning human behaviour with predictive success is that there is no universal law concerning human behaviour.

On the basis of these critiques, an entirely processual approach using the

hypothetico-deductive method is inappropriate to pursue the topic of ritual. Explanation alone is insufficient to describe crucial elements of ritual acts, such as the meaning of acts and symbols, as well as human intent. In order to be able to include all elements of my definition of ritual (in 2.2), the ability to make inferences about the data was necessary. Therefore, I turned from purely deductive methods and considered inductive methods, which promoted the use of analogy and interpretation as analytical tools.