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59
G
ustavo
G. P
olitis
Reflections on Contemporary Ethnoarchaeology
PYRENAE,
núm.
46
vol.
1
(2015)
ISSN: 0079-8215 EISSN: 2339-9171 (p. 41-83)
Some topics in ethnoarchaeology
Ethnoarchaeology has been looked upon with a degree of mistrust due to the difficul-
ties that exist in extrapolating contemporary data to analyze past societies, starting with
the fact that the epistemological bases of how to conduct such extrapolations are not
sufficiently developed. This has generated doubts and criticism of analogical reasoning.
Presently, in spite of certain inherent and difficult-to-resolve problems, the great majority
of archaeologists recognizes the usefulness of analogical arguments in the process of inter-
pretation or explanation of the archaeological record, and considers them as indispensable
tools (i.e., Hernando, 1995; David and Kramer, 2001; Ravn, 2011; Lyons, 2013).
Another issue that has generated mistrust is that, to a greater or lesser degree, present-
day indigenous societies—the prime source of analogy, although not the only one—have
had contact with Western society and are integrated, in one form or another, into the
“globalization” process (Cordy, 1976). Many researchers (Begler, 1978: 576-77; Brown,
1970; Buenaventura-Posso and Brown, 1980; Flanagan, 1989: 259; Forline, 1995: 61-62;
Seymour-Smith, 1991: 639, 644), for example, have pointed out that inter-ethnic contact
has often resulted in a decrease in women’s authority in their own groups (Hernando
et
al
., 2011) while in remote areas of Aboriginal Australia it is the opposite —women have
gained authority as leaders in areas that were once led by men. This is because men have
lost some of their main roles—hunter, ceremonial—through changes generated by contact
(C. Smith pers. Com., 2015). It has been proposed, consequently, that present-day societies
cannot serve as analogical references for past societies because most of them—if no all—
are a product of the colonial impact (for the Pacific archaeology see criticism in Spriggs,
2008 and for South America see the account by Siegel, 2014: 354). This criticism, howe-
ver, is unjustified and basically refers to the poor application of analogy (Wylie, 1985),
rather than to analogy as a way of approaching the study of past societies. Moreover, it
is recognized that the power of a given analogy does not depend upon the delimitation
of which traditional or “pristine” group is the source, but rather upon its logical structure
and the conditions of comparability.
The use of analogical reasoning in archaeology has been subject to lively debate
(Gardin, 1979; Gould, 1980, 1900; Wylie, 1985), and strong criticism has been raised in
the past (Wobst, 1978). Freeman (1968: 262), for example, rejected the use of ethnogra-
phic analogy, treating this line of reasoning as unscientific, fundamentally because he
considered it impossible to discover “the parameters of sociocultural structure unique to
prehistoric time periods”. Gould (1980) declared the death of analogy saying that its time
had gone by. However, the anti-analogy storm passed decades ago (although some late
criticism still persists), and there is currently a consensus that analogical reasoning is neces-
sary for every step of the investigation if our final goal is to use present data to deepen the
knowledge of past societies (Hernando, 1995; Sillar, 2000: 8; Gándara
,
2006; for a reborn
debate on this subject see Ravn, 2011). Therefore, based on the epistemological foundation
of the analogical argumentation, ethnoarchaeology seeks to provide information from a