Method & Theory…

A recent post from my colleague over at Middle Savagery reminds me that for some of us…it physically makes us happy to read theory…I agree…Like Levi Straussian myths, for me some theory is “good to think.”

At the same time I am reminded by one of my current students who is taking a “Method and Theory in Archaeology” class that many of his colleagues in the program simply have not been exposed to, and are not comfortable talking about “theory.”…many of these folks see theory as strange, alien, and “not useful.”

I have encountered these two groups of people my whole academic career. At the University of Memphis and the University of Arkansas, I was the frustrated “theory guy” in heavily method-oriented programs…However, when I went to the University of Texas at Austin, although I was finally satisfied with the rich theoretical program there, I also began to realize the importance of the connections between methods and theory…and I felt that some of my colleagues at UT may be very theoretically sophisticated, but not very fluent in good archaeological methods.

I do not see these two entities as diametrically opposed opposites…I see them as inextricably connected…Obviously this should not be a radical idea (praxis anyone?), but time and again one meets “theory” people and “dirt archaeologists.” Close friends and colleagues even mistakenly stereotyped my long-time collaborator James Davidson and myself–he was the method guy and I was the theorist…this woefully underestimates Davidson’s theoretical savvy and (I think) my practical background.

I am a “dirt archaeologist”…I have years and years of contract archaeology underneath my belt (and over 20 “technical reports”), but I am also proud of my theoretical engagement…and I firmly believe that there is no such thing as “non-theoretical” archaeology…only archaeologists who do not acknowledge what theoretical interests they serve.

Part of the problem is a lack of great examples that connect archaeological methods and theories in a solid (and easily accessible) way…How many books have you read (especially in historical archaeology) that have an eloquent theoretical section weakly linked to the actual artifacts and excavated contexts…they read like two unrelated monographs. I long to see more work that is sound in both its methods and theories.

I’ll close by pointing to one literary model I think we should look at…Check out Larry McMurtry’s book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen…If the rootsy, plain-spoken western writer can draw sophisticated connections between Bejamin, storytelling and the West Texas community hub known as the Dairy Queen…theory can be accessible to anyone.

Seriation! (Good Gawd, Y’all) What is it Good For?

Sorry again for my lack of postings this week…I was a bit busy and out of pocket.

Upon my return to Fayetteville, however, I note that my old undergraduate mentor at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), Charles McNutt, is apparently making up for lost time…He has TWO articles in the last Southeastern Archaeology journal (Vol. 24, No. 2, Winter 2005).

I’ve never been quick to jump on the ol’ “celestial alignment” bandwagon, so I’ll leave comments on his “Pinson Observatory” for a later posting…His other article, “Seriation: Classic Problems and Multivariate Applications,” on the other hand, immediately caught my attention.

In this article, McNutt (who incidentally took classes from Leslie White at Michigan in the 1950s) launches an interesting argument against the methods deployed by advocates of “evolutionary archaeology.” Now many archaeologists are far from enamored with this theoretical strain of the discipline, but usually the attacks come from those of us who get labeled “humanist” (or even *gasp* “postmodern”)…In this case, McNutt (who could hardly be called “anti-evolutionary”) takes them to task for misunderstanding what it is that they are measuring with the long established technique of relative frequency seriation.

O.K….for the non-archaeologists who may be reading this, in the spirit of “evolutionary archaeology” let me explain my terms…1) “evolutionary archaeology” is the self-named title of a group of archaeologists who believe that we have not been scientific enough in our approaches to the past. They advocate “lots more” definition and explanation, so they may arrive at sets of prehistoric cultural lineages (check out Daniel Larson’s description of evolutionary archaeology here). 2) Relative frequency seriation is a method that archaeologists have long used to understand how particular forms, decoration styles, and types of artifact rise and decline in popularity (they result in “battleship-shaped curves like the illustration above). Before the advent of C-14 dating this is how we figured out the basic cultural chronologies for much of prehistoric North America…it was particularly important in the Southwest and the Southeastern United States (still confused? try a seriation tutorial here or read the Wikapedia description here).

I haven’t digested all of McNutt’s arguments yet (as I have just read the article), but I am quite interested in McNutt’s explanation of why relative frequency seriation worked so well for James Deetz in the study of historic tombstones (Deetz and Dethlefsen’s classic article can be found on-line here) and why there may be serious problems with the way the method has been applied prehistorically in the Mississippi Valley.

This is not a new line of critique for McNutt who also took on seriation in a 1973 American Antiquity article…this time, however, he perscribes several multivariate techniques that may aviod some of the pitfalls inherant in frequency seriation.

This article will certainly be something to assign to both classes in quantitative methods and southeastern prehistory. It will probably take a few semesters of discussion, however, before I’ve fully explored the viability of McNutt’s critique…but I’m fond of more nuanced multivariate (as well as the more humanistic) approaches anyway…And, while I am certainly not an “evoluntionary archaeologists,” I DO belive that lack of clear definitions and a fear of departing from many tradtional concepts and methods HAS kept us from understanding many aspects of the prehistoric record in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley.