Página 66 - Pyrenae46-1

Gustavo G. Politis Reflections on Contemporary Ethnoarchaeology
64 PYRENAE, núm. 46 vol. 1 (2015)ISSN: 0079-8215 EISSN: 2339-9171 (p. 41-83)
answers obtained during this fieldwork is biased due to this asymmetrical situation. And
this is probably a constant to all ethnoarchaeological situations in the world. As a result, I
am skeptical about the supposedly “objective and rigorous” observations, whether expres-
sed in words, numbers or formulas, of which some ethnoarchaeological projects are proud.
A crucial and recurrent question in the contemporary debate is the following: how
often are the results of ethnoarchaeological research applied in archaeological investiga-
tion, in what has been called “dirt archaeology” (Skibo, 2009) or “real archaeology”? Or,
are the correlates, models, and proposals generated from ethnoarchaeology relevant for the
current archaeological interpretation and for theory building? Or, are ethnoarchaeologists
only producing cautionary tales, more anecdotic than effective? Worries emerged in the
beginning of the subdiscipline (Rice, 1984) and continued along the last decades, especia-
lly in relation to pottery analysis (Sullivan, 2008a, 2008b; see discussion in Skibo, 2009)
and to the direction the subdiscipline has taken (Simms, 1992). Some years ago, Hegmon
(2000: 135) declared: “Ethnoarchaeologists have, for the most part, failed to find clear-cut
universally applicable correlates for many social and economic processes, such as speciali-
zation or ethnicity”. More recently, González-Ruibal added his voice to this chorus stating
that “practically no archaeologist uses the work of ethnoarchaeologists to understand the
archaeological record” (González-Ruibal, 2008: 17),4 and gave the example of the Mayan
area, where, from his perspective, in spite of the great amount of ethnoarchaeological
work carried out in the region, the information is hardly used by Mayanist archaeologists.
In principle, I disagree with these pessimistic views, although I do recognize that a
great amount of ethnoarchaeological information, correlates, or models are hardly ever
used in any archaeological interpretation or in discussion searching for “theory building”.
No matter which theoretical approach they come from, several results—in many cases
obtained with a lot of effort and spending a lot time and funds—are never used in any
analogical arguments or in any theoretical debates. There certainly exists a sort of “limbo”.
But there are three arguments against the unenthusiastic view. Firstly, these “forgot-
ten models” have a latent value that could be activated at any time, when new sources
for specific archaeological interpretation were required. This kind of ethnoarchaeological
repository would be fundamental in the future if globalization succeeds and traditional
behaviors and other—non-western—patterns of rationality disappear (see also Yu, 2014:
2544). Secondly, while it is true that ethnoarchaeologists failed to find “clear-cut univer-
sally applicable correlates”, archaeology and anthropology failed as well. The time of the
law-like propositions has passed and now most archaeologists believe that correlates are
not universal, that they are contextually positioned and historically situated. In conse-
quence, the search for universals is not in the archaeological agenda any more (although
for exceptions see Vila, 2006; Roux, 2007). Thirdly, many ethnoarchaeological results
have proved to be very useful for archaeological interpretation, and are at the core of the
debate. Let me develop some examples to support this.
4. My translation.