Writing the Past : Knowledge and Literary Production in Archaeology

How do archaeologists make knowledge? Debates in the latter half of the twentieth century revolved around broad, abstract philosophies and theories such as positivism and hermeneutics which have all but vanished today. By contrast, in recent years there has been a great deal of attention given to more concrete, practice-based study, such as fieldwork. But where one was too abstract, the other has become too descriptive and commonly evades issues of epistemic judgement. Writing the Past attempts to reintroduce a normative dimension to knowledge practices in archaeology, especially in relation to archaeological practice further down the ‘assembly line’ in the production of published texts, where archaeological knowledge becomes most stabilized and is widely disseminated. By exploring the composition of texts in archaeology and the relation between their structural, performative characteristics and key epistemic virtues, this book aims to move debate in both knowledge and writing practices in a new direction. Although this book will be of particular interest to archaeologists, the argument offered has relevance for all academic disciplines concerned with how knowledge production and textual composition intertwine. "How do archaeologists make knowledge? Debates in the latter half of the twentieth century revolved around broad, abstract philosophies and theories such as positivism and hermeneutics which have all but vanished today. By contrast, in recent years there has been a great deal of attention given to more concrete, practice-based studies, especially focusing on the coalface of archaeology, i.e. fieldwork. But where one was too abstract, the other has become too descriptive and commonly evades issues of epistemic judgement. This book remains within a practice-based approach but also tries to re-introduce a normative dimension to knowledge practices in archaeology - especially in relation to archaeological practice further down the 'assembly line': the production of published texts. For it is here that archaeological knowledge arguably becomes most stabilised and widely disseminated. By exploring the composition of texts in archaeology and the relation between their structural, performative characteristics and key epistemic virtues, this book aims to move debate in both knowledge and writing practices in a new direction. Although directed mainly at archaeologists, the argument offered in this book necessarily has relevance for all academic disciplines concerned with how knowledge production and textual composition intertwine"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 List of illustrations 10 Acknowledgements 11 1. The production of archaeological knowledge 12 The literary archaeologist 12 Epistemology on the move 14 Knowledge and literary production 20 Doing the right thing: epistemic virtues in archaeology 23 2. Models of reasoning in Anglo-American archaeology 29 The legacy of the nineteenth century 29 Diverging traditions in the early twentieth century 34 Explanation and the philosophy of science 44 Interpretation and hermeneutics 53 Theory-ladenness, paradigm-dependence and relativism 62 Archaeological epistemology in the new millennium 68 3. Text types and archaeology 76 Introduction 76 Archaeology and narrative 77 Rethinking archaeological texts 84 Text types in archaeology 91 Text types and the digital humanities 99 4. Textual composition and knowledge production 108 Introduction 108 Narrative: a sense of an ending 113 Description: a sense of presence 122 Argument: a sense of reason 129 Exposition: a sense of order 136 Conclusion: detachment as an epistemic virtue 143 5. Mobile knowledge 147 Introduction 147 Paradigms and exemplars 151 Analogies and metaphors 154 Concepts and generalizations 161 Concluding remarks 168 Bibliography 171 Index 195 How do archaeologists make knowledge? Debates in the latter half of the twentieth century revolved around broad, abstract philosophies and theories such as positivism and hermeneutics which have all but vanished today. By contrast, in recent years there has been a great deal of attention given to more concrete, practice-based study, such as fieldwork. But where one was too abstract, the other has become too descriptive and commonly evades issues of epistemic judgement. Writing the Past attempts to reintroduce a normative dimension to knowledge practices in archaeology, especially in relation to archaeological practice further down the 'sassembly line' in the production of published texts, where archaeological knowledge becomes most stabilized and is widely disseminated. By exploring the composition of texts in archaeology and the relation between their structural, performative characteristics and key epistemic virtues, this book aims to move debate in both knowledge and writing practices in a new direction. Although this book will be of particular interest to archaeologists, the argument offered has relevance for all academic disciplines concerned with how knowledge production and textual composition intertwine