Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology by Ian Hodder

Author:Ian Hodder [Hodder, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781877462764
Amazon: 0521528844
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Historical theory and method: Collingwood

The emphasis on archaeology as a form of history is widely found in the period up to the 1960s in America and Britain, and it is probably true to say that it remains the dominant viewpoint in much of Europe. Taylor (1948), while drawing a distinction between archaeology and history, emphasized in his conjunctive approach the ‘inside’ of cultural units, the particular internal relationships and meanings. Archaeologists in Britain, many of them influenced by Collingwood, often emphasized the historical dimension of archaeological inference (Clark 1939; Daniel 1962; Hawkes 1954). Piggott (1959) suggested that archaeology is history except that the evidence is not intentionally left or recorded as history; it is ‘unconscious’. For Hawkes (1942, p. 125) cultures have both an extension in space and time, and intention in the social and economic field. All viewed culture as involving norms and purposes which were historically produced, but which could change over time.

While overarching norms and rules of behaviour are often stressed, there is also much lip-service paid to the individual as an important component in social theory. Collingwood, in particular, has a well-defined theory of social action. ‘What is miscalled an “event” is really an action, and expresses some thought (intention, purpose) of its agent’ (1939, pp. 127–8). He does not see action as a response to a stimulus, or as the mere effect of the agent’s nature or disposition (ibid., p. 102). So Collingwood says that action is neither behavioural response, nor is it norm. Rather it is situation specific, the ‘event’ being played out and manipulated according to bounded knowledge of the situation. Because situations of standardized types arise, action appears to be rule-bound, but in fact in many aspects of life there are no rigid unchanging rules. Each specific situation is so context dependent, with different combinations of factors involved, that it would be impossible to have a full rule-book of behaviour. Rather, it is a matter of ‘improvising, as best you can, a method of handling the situation in which you find yourself’ (ibid., p. 105).

As a result of this emphasis on action rather than event, a recursive relationship between theory and practice is produced. Culture is therefore a cause and an effect, a stimulus as well as a residuum, it is creative as well as created. Because each creation is context-dependent, generalisations are seen as losing their value.

For Collingwood, as for Daniel (1962) and Taylor (1948), the use of cross-cultural generalisation in interpreting historical data is denied. Collingwood pointed out (1946, p. 243) that, properly speaking, the data do not exist because they are perceived or ‘given’ within a theory. Historical knowledge is not the passive ‘reception’ of facts – it is the discerning of the thought which is the inner side of the event (ibid., p. 222). How then, asks the positivist-trained archaeologist, do we validate our hypotheses? Well, certainly not through the application of universal measuring devices, Middle Range Theory. These would be, in Collingwood’s terms, superficial, descriptive universal theories. How then do we proceed to validate?

Well, one answer is to say that we don’t.

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