Comment by MangoToupe
3 days ago
> Archaeology is a Science
Archaeology is a collection of arbitrary-but-largely-agreed-upon definitions. That doesn't make it a science. The entire focus on whether or not this is a civilization (or indeed why such a determination matters) is a great example of why you should abandon consensus at the door.
I'm not sure you've ever seen multiple archaeologists in a room together if you think they agree on definitions, or that agreeing on definitions is sufficient to end their arguments.
Usually we say archaeology is a "big tent" field, where anything that's useful can find a place rather than relying on prescriptive definitions of what should and shouldn't be used. If this gives you flashbacks to Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism, you've got the idea.
There are definitely scientific things within archaeology and many archaeologists who spend their days doing activities indistinguishable from what goes on in adjacent geology and biology labs. It's not uncommon for archaeologists to hop back and forth from the biology and anthropology departments either. There was even a movement called processualism in the 50s-70s to fit archaeology within the scope of a traditional science that's widely regarded as a failure.
Of course we would also have to ask what a science is. The traditional hypothesis->experiment "scientific method" is used in archaeology, but doesn't really apply to historical events. We can generalize that a bit to the Cleland's "smoking gun" idea for historical sciences (so we don't need to fully throw out popper) and indeed it's quite a popular perspective today for the "best" way to do archaeology. It's just not the the totality of methods used by the people we call archaeologists.
I don't disagree on any particular point; i just dislike the dismissive attitude writing off archaeology as a science.
I was very surprised when I saw ancient cement kiln in Peru, very similar in size and technique to freshly built one (20 years ago) near to my parents town, but labeled as «a religious structure fit with stones».
As I see here[0], cement stucko on top of natural stone was pretty popular technique back then.
[0]: https://odysee.com/@hiddenincatours:3/megalithic-saqsaywaman...
Ah, but that’s ritual cement
Making cement is a ritual, yes.
Only the gods can guess at what "religious" is supposed to mean outside of modern context of course.
For fertility.
According to archaeologists every object is either a religious object or a "fertility" fetish, because that's all that humans could think about yesterday.
I forget which sci-fi show it was, but there was a scene with an archaeologist digging up a modern bar. A beer mug was described as a "ceremonial goblet."