What is a Multi-Lens Archaeological
Problem?
The most complex and pervasive difficulty that one face’s in the pursuit of archaeological investigations is the Multi-Lens Archaeological Problem.
What I am proposing here is not a method of overcoming this problem but only to illuminate what I have identified as a mostly ignored issue within the discipline. The problem arises from what ( post-processual/ post modern ) has previously identified, but the problem of subjectivity runs deeper than any individual researcher. The problem is with compounding variability from the multiple interpretations any piece of archaeological material is processed through.
Simply
Archaeology seeks to achieve an understanding of the past by any means necessary. This way we can produce a body of archaeological knowledge that can be put to meaningful tasks. Having an understanding of the past based in reality* is an essential
The goal of archaeology in creating knowledge about the past is that in archaeology we are establishing the (an understanding of past events and people’s in a manner that is authentic to the lived experience.)
The difficulty in interpreting a piece of archaeological data is that by the time it has gone from creation to discovery and analysis there have been many layers of meaning that it has been exposed too.
When the object is created it is done so within a culture and society that has it’s own Value Disposition and its own understanding of the past. This is the first and initial layer of meaning that we are trying to get too.
a) We can not claim to understand the significance of meaning in the past.
b) We can not understand the historical condition, How the people who made it understand their place and how their past formed them.
The Object of Investigation is then presented to a researcher of today. The problem that we face in trying to interpret material is that we can not assume to know people’s intentions or thoughts.
What complicated things and differentiates MLAP from simple postmodernism is that here we are including the compounding variation of past interpretations put upon an object and the society/ culture that it is derived from.
This can be exemplified by an object being dug up in the 1890s. First, we have to have an understanding of how the people who first interpreted it understood what we can learn from objects from the past.
General State of Artifacts
Interpreter’s Disposition on the region, time period and culture that produced an object. (Here is an example of interpreting an object based on a pre-existing disposition of a culture, This already limits and shades the interpretation.
This evidence is then used to build and support the previously held understanding of the past.
The next time an artifact is dug up and presented, this will influence how the next artifact from the same period / region / interconnected region or analogous region may be interpreted.
As VD change and methodologies shift the manner of interpretation then also shifts. This then takes the object put through lens one and adds a new lens of interpretation on top of that.
In total, we have a minimum of two different VD lens that archaeological materials are processed through before they are incorporated into the archaeological record.
The reality of MLAP is one that makes an understanding of the hisroty of archaeological inquiry and interpretation a vital one. There is a need to not only understand the legacy of interpretations but more importantly the intillectual history of the periods that cullminated in the interpretation of artifacts. UNderstanding the Ontological disposition is an important point in archaeology, anthropology and any of the social sciences.
In Credible Discourse 