Stephanie Koerner wrote:

> Dan Mouer
> I think you are right about a lack of overlap, and the rather sharp
> divisions between disciplinary paradigms.  But perhaps despite appearances
> to the contrary, there may be features archaeology and sociology share in
> common that created and perpetuate those divisions.  Let me try to explin
> this way.
>
> Since antiquity questions about origins--of human ways of life,
> language tool use,...law..religion.. farming..social inequality..the
> state have figured centrally in the ways scholars have thought about such
> 'big picture issues" as (a) human nature, (b) history and (c) the
> conditions about the past.
>
> These questions still play important roles in the ideals and goals of
> arcaheologists (see for example, Renfrew and Bahn's "world chronology" in
> their arch Theory and Methods.  Yet--- in addition to rejecting 19th
> century cultural evolutionary schemes which strart with the origins of
> nature (particles of matter interacting in Newtonian space) and conclude
> with the 'events' which supposedly separated the modern West from both its
> premodern past and the histories of all Other culture---archaeologists
> have variously challeged all of the most essential assumptions about
> 'origins events'.  And most recently they have been successfully
> undermining the supposed separation of the modern West from the supposed
> Rest of human history as well.
>
> Sociology departed historically from the notion of 'rise of the State'--a
> notion based on a series of antitheses (such as that of a State of Nature
> versus Social Contract) and theories about the evolution of human
> capacities for reason.  These notions have been subject to much
> criticism--for example in the now vast criticism of dualism.  And their is
> a concern in sociology to focus attention on the plurality of human
> ecologies in the modern world---.
>
> It may therefoe be useful to promote conversation between
> archaeologist and sociologists, for instance to hear what folks in
> different fields thing folks in the other are doing.  I have tried this
> recently and received alarming responses.  Such as that archaeologists are
> trying to 'discover' the 1rst human beings, the 'invention' of
> agriculture, the decisive role of irrigation in the rise of the State.
> For me the question this raised was how do these assumptions affect
> sociological research on modern 'states', how does these assumptions
> relate to the perpetuation of disciplinary bounderies....
>
> These are messy questions to be sure, but what I think I am attempting to
> do is form a departure point from which explore the reasons your comment
> is on the mark.
>
>  Best regards, S. Koerner

   I suppose we ought to be able to answer the question about the difference
betweensociologists and archaeologists (as anthropologists) in a way that is not
trivial. Otherwise the two terms do not name two disciplines. I find social theory a la
Giddens, Bourdieu, Bhaskar, and social psychological theory, a la Harre, not to mention
language philosophical theory, a la Austin, Searle, to be very useful in my
interpretive approach to the archaeological record. None of these sociologists
(although Bourdieu claims close affiliation to anthropology), social psychologists or
language philosophers have claimed knowledge or interest in achaeology, to my
knowledge, but I have no trouble with that. Their thought is very useful to my
archaeological interests and, therefore, I think that this makes sociology, social
psychology, philosophy, or certain aspects of them, not that different from
archaeology. Possibly another way of saying this is to raise the question that
archaeologists - with the exception of post-processualists - have tended to avoid
social theory on the grounds that sociologists, et al. are not dealing with the same
type of phenomena as archaeologists. Certainly, at the methodological level they are
not. But in terms of the real object of study - namely, society, mind, culture - we
really are treating with the same class of phenomena, humanity. If Stephanie Koerner is
right and sociologists tend to think archaeology is dealing only with origins of state,
agriculture, etc., then maybe we should ask ourselves if there is any basis to this
perception. Are we really seen only in this light or are sociologists just not reading
us?

Regards,

Martin Byers





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