My brain hurts. I studied archaeology at university just about a decade ago, when postprocessualist ideas weren't really on the radar (well, mine, anyway). As I moved on to museum work I lost touch with much of what's "hip" and new, and my only real hint of theoretical/phenomenological brands of archaeology was a girlfriend who was interested in it. There's even a branch called "gender archaeology" if memory serves.
I recently read an article in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal (which most have to pay for unfortunately) entitled "Experiencing the past? The development of a phenomenological archaeology in British prehistory Joanna Bruck", which seemed a characteristically verbose introduction to the idea of phenomenological archaeology. The idea that what we experience or imagine about sites and objects today, can tell us meaningful things about past peoples. Sounds rather like a new age version of Ethnography to me. The parallels in that are limited, surely they are even more so in this case, tainted as they are by hundreds or thousands of years of cultural and geographical difference? There also seems to be too much room for seeing things that aren't there, or at least making claims that are unfalsifiable. An example would be Tilley, a pioneer of this sort of thing, who claims that this megalith was intended to mimic the range of hills to its west. That's just apophenia/pareidolia, isn't it? To me, they look no more alike than any other pair of flattish curvilinear shapes. Then you have the "experience" of walking around a Neolithic henge today being used to draw conclusions about the past:
This is the sort of thing most of us do when we visit a site - we imagine, and form our own idea of what it might have felt like to live those years ago. But we wouldn't dream of offering it for publication. What evidence can be used to support such ideas? How is this any different to Bauval's Great Pyramid/Orion's belt speculation or even Von Daniken? In one way only - it's published in academic journals, is properly footnoted, and is taken seriously by some professional archaeologists. But are they being led down the proverbial garden path? Other aspects of the methodologies being used involve timing how long it takes to walk between buildings of a given site, how strenuous the hike up a hill was, and other such things that are highly subjective in their interpretation and dubious in their relevance to what we can say about the use of that site in the past.
Some of this work must (I assume) have merit and at least make for interesting speculation and discussion, but in general, do such approaches stand up to critical scrutiny? I'm tending towards "no" but am open to persuasion. Does it even matter? I would say "absolutely it does". The whole movement seems to be a bit of a navel-gazing free-for-all where evidence is sidelined in favour of feelings, speculation, and dare I say, "woo". There have been criticisms of this approach, though I can't lay hands on any just now. From what little I've seen so far, it seems like an ill-advised application of some philosophical ideas to what should be a rigorous (if not wholly scientific) evidence-based discipline not afraid to either say "we don't know" or to make it very clear what is hypothesis based upon evidence, and what is wild-assed-guess.
Is anyone well-versed in this area and able to offer a sceptical angle on it? Here's an abstract from the article in question (I'll try to find more free access stuff online but it's a bit obscure and confusing for laypeople (and me!) and doesn't seem well represented):
I mean, seriously, what?
I recently read an article in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal (which most have to pay for unfortunately) entitled "Experiencing the past? The development of a phenomenological archaeology in British prehistory Joanna Bruck", which seemed a characteristically verbose introduction to the idea of phenomenological archaeology. The idea that what we experience or imagine about sites and objects today, can tell us meaningful things about past peoples. Sounds rather like a new age version of Ethnography to me. The parallels in that are limited, surely they are even more so in this case, tainted as they are by hundreds or thousands of years of cultural and geographical difference? There also seems to be too much room for seeing things that aren't there, or at least making claims that are unfalsifiable. An example would be Tilley, a pioneer of this sort of thing, who claims that this megalith was intended to mimic the range of hills to its west. That's just apophenia/pareidolia, isn't it? To me, they look no more alike than any other pair of flattish curvilinear shapes. Then you have the "experience" of walking around a Neolithic henge today being used to draw conclusions about the past:
This is the sort of thing most of us do when we visit a site - we imagine, and form our own idea of what it might have felt like to live those years ago. But we wouldn't dream of offering it for publication. What evidence can be used to support such ideas? How is this any different to Bauval's Great Pyramid/Orion's belt speculation or even Von Daniken? In one way only - it's published in academic journals, is properly footnoted, and is taken seriously by some professional archaeologists. But are they being led down the proverbial garden path? Other aspects of the methodologies being used involve timing how long it takes to walk between buildings of a given site, how strenuous the hike up a hill was, and other such things that are highly subjective in their interpretation and dubious in their relevance to what we can say about the use of that site in the past.
Some of this work must (I assume) have merit and at least make for interesting speculation and discussion, but in general, do such approaches stand up to critical scrutiny? I'm tending towards "no" but am open to persuasion. Does it even matter? I would say "absolutely it does". The whole movement seems to be a bit of a navel-gazing free-for-all where evidence is sidelined in favour of feelings, speculation, and dare I say, "woo". There have been criticisms of this approach, though I can't lay hands on any just now. From what little I've seen so far, it seems like an ill-advised application of some philosophical ideas to what should be a rigorous (if not wholly scientific) evidence-based discipline not afraid to either say "we don't know" or to make it very clear what is hypothesis based upon evidence, and what is wild-assed-guess.
Is anyone well-versed in this area and able to offer a sceptical angle on it? Here's an abstract from the article in question (I'll try to find more free access stuff online but it's a bit obscure and confusing for laypeople (and me!) and doesn't seem well represented):
I mean, seriously, what?
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