Dallas 2014 - J.-C. Gardin on archaeological data, representation and knowledge.pdf

8/11/2019 Dallas 2014 - J.-C. Gardin on archaeological data, representation and knowledge.pdf

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J.-C. Gardin on archaeological data, representation and knowledge:a historical epistemology

Gardin: an outsider to mainstream

theoretical archaeology?

Gardin’s work only of merely methodological,rather than epistemological and theoreticalimportance

– Bruce Trigger, A History of ArchaeologicalThought , 2nd edition (2006)




The birth of the logicist program

Expressing semantic and semantic representation througha formal language, accounting for:

a) the need to categorize the symbols of the vocabulary(words, descriptors) in such a way that formation rules

equivalent to the phrase-structure rules of grammarcan be stated adequately with no regard to the grammatical status customarily assigned to the wordsconcerned,

b) the need to account for the derivation of propositions

from one another , in the adopted formalism, as anecessary component in the understanding oflanguage behaviour.

Document analysis and linguistic theory (1973)




Archaeological constructs (1980)

My goal is to present the schematisation as wellas certain aspects to be drawn … regarding thescientific status of archaeological constructions,

the opposition […] between traditional [and]new archaeology, the virtues and limitations offormal procedures […] in handling archaeological

data, the need for reform of publication patternsin archaeology etc.

Archaeological constructs (1980), p. xi




An account of archaeological

research practice

I am not proposing a new handbook onarchaeological theory, from which studentscan learn the techniques of observation and

interpretation […] my goal is an analysis ofthe mental operations carried out inarchaeological constructions of all sorts, fromthe collecting of data to the writing of an

article or book in published form. Archaeological constructs (1980), p. xi




Archaeology according to Gardin

The universe of intellectual constructionsbased on the study of objects of all sorts, withor without inscriptions, as well as on the

study of inscriptions themselves, or for thatmatter any other written sources; […] worksof art [and other] material remains; artifacts

[and] natural remains. Archaeological constructs (1980), p. 4.




Gardin’s archaeological ontology

• Works addressing material traces of thepast spanning the dimensions of local (L),temporal (T) and human (H) domains

• Reasoning processes involved in bothscholarly (‘scientific’) and amateurknowledge production and publication




Compilations vs. explanations

Category ofconstructions

Entitiesconcerned

Major function

Compilations Material

remains, andtheir attributes

Retrieval

Explanations Ancient men,

their history and

modes of life

Theory

Archaeological constructs (1980), p. 148




Archaeological pragmatics

…the course taken for describing each class(of archaeological objects) necessarily restsupon more or less learned and explicit

considerations regarding the present orpotential utility of those classes for explainingthe variability of archaeological record.

Archaeological constructs (1980), p. 20




On archaeological publication

• A call for an intellectual development ofarchaeology towards new modes ofpublication, beyond material digitisation

• A repositioning and retention of printedpublications as vehicles for narrativity

• A complementarity between logicist digitalmedia and narrative printed publication

•

Still, a separation between the two genresCalcul et narrativit é dans les publicationsarchéologiques (1999)




On archaeological publication, again

Electronic publications are here regarded as aworking tool allowing a community ofdispersed scholars to work in a cooperative

and cumulative fashion and to publish theresults of their research through a world widenetwork.

A combination of narrative and a logicistcomponent to publication

The Arkeotek project (with V. Roux, 2004)




Logicist publication lives on




Science vs. ‘Literature’

I should end my excursion into the ways of formalreasoning by a defense of phenomenological inquiry ;the two forms of mental activity are for me alternativeways by wihich we give free rein to the same impulse,

ignorant of its origin or destination; but aware at leastof the aberrations that inevitably occur when oneform of knowledge want to impose the condemnationof the other. I therefore do not consider tolerance in

this case as a matter of ethics, but rather, in anevolutionary perspective, as a matter of survival.

After Archaeological constructs (1980), p. 180




On the third way

On the ‘third way’

Dallas 2014 - J.-C. Gardin on archaeological data, representation and knowledge.pdf

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