In a remarkably bad short paper in the current SAA Archaeological Record, Ian Hodder makes a number of statements that equate to the claim that archaeology is bullshit (Hodder 2018). “Bullshit” is a term that refers to speech intended...
In a remarkably bad short paper in the current SAA Archaeological Record, Ian Hodder makes a number of statements that equate to the claim that archaeology is bullshit (Hodder 2018). “Bullshit” is a term that refers to speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. Liars care about the truth and try to hide it; bullshitters don’t care whether their speech is true or false. Harry Frankfurt (1986, 2005) published the major works on bullshit, although antecedents can be found back to Plato and Orwell (1946 (1968)); see also Cohen (2002).
Hodder’s first dubious claim is that “the
most important public value and function of archaeology is its role in place-
and history-making” (p. 43). That is, archaeology is primarily about heritage,
identity, and cultural achievement. It is about the present, not the past. Most
archaeologists disagree with this. Archaeology is about the past. That
is why we carry out excavations, surveys, artifact analyses and dating—to reconstruct
and learn about human society in the past. Hodder’s first claim may be wrong
and regressive, but it does not qualify as bullshit.
Hodder then gets to his main point: “much
of archaeology uses the past to play out the contemporary preoccupations of
dominant groups and to regurgitate the present in their interests … I have
become tired of archaeologists just mirroring present concerns and theories”
(p.43). The bad guys here are people like me, who study inequality, sustainability,
or some of the other “grand challenges” we have identified for the discipline (Kintigh et al. 2014a; Kintigh et al. 2014b). Archaeologists
go for headlines and not for local context, we are told; “This is what I mean
by a post-truth archaeology or fake history.” (p. 44).
The concepts post-truth and fake news
are typically applied to current affairs to refer to the kind of disregard for
the truth captured in Frankfurt’s concept of bullshit. As Kathleen Higgins (2016) noted in Nature, “post-truth refers to blatant lies being routine across
society, and it means that politicians can lie without condemnation …
scientists and philosophers should be shocked by the idea of post-truth” (p. 9).
So, Hodder is suggesting that people like me and my co-authors (Kohler et al. 2017), or the grand challenges
crowd (Kintigh et al. 2014a; Kintigh et al.
2014b) are blatantly lying about the past. We are (knowingly, I guess)
just projecting the concerns of the present—the “preoccupations of dominant
groups”—back to the distant past.
I am not surprised that someone like
Ian Hodder would characterize research by someone like me as post-truth and
fake news. To make such an accusation, however, one must have workable concepts
of science and truth in order to know that they have been violated. But, Hodder
shows in this article (and elsewhere) that he has a faulty understanding of
science. Like other post-processual archaeologists, Hodder thinks that science
consists of discovering “universals that are singular in their unique law-like
characteristics” (p. 43). In a recent paper in Antiquity (Smith 2017), I note
how Hodder's post-processualist colleagues like Matthew Johnson (2010)
criticize the concept of science in archaeology by employing a 50-year-old
(outdated) definition of science and explanation. Science is not necessarily
about universals and it is not necessarily about laws. It is about a rigorous
search for evidence and explanation by constantly testing claims and
hypotheses.
Contrary to Hodder’s assertion, those
of us who use archaeological data to study phenomena such as sustainability,
inequality, or political systems in the past do not adhere to the post-processualist
caricature of science. Instead, we employ current concepts and epistemologies.
These are aptly summarized by philosopher of science Daniel Little’s list of
three epistemic features of science:
1. empirical testability
2. logical coherence
3. an institutional commitment to intersubjective
processes of belief evaluation and criticism (Little
1995)
For additional statements of the nature
of science in relation to archaeology and the other social sciences, see (Smith 2017), (Wylie
2000), (Gerring 2012:11), (Bunge 2011), (Little
2009). Or see some of my prior posts on this topic, including:
Because Hodder has a faulty
understanding of science, he has little basis for criticizing the scientific
claims of other archaeologists. A look at the journals that my colleagues and I
publish in (Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PLOS-One, etc.) shows that the “big
question, big data approach” that Hodder dislikes (p.44) does indeed conform to
contemporary scientific standards. So, just what standards are we violating
that would warrant the labels post-truth and fake news? Hodder has none to
offer.
I turn the tables here and characterize
Hodder’s article as bullshit. He evidently does not know the nature of science,
and thus his critique shows a disregard for the truthfulness or rigor of our
work. His paper is post-truth, fake news, bullshit.
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2018 Big
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