On Objectivity and Actualism in Archaeology

In archaeology objectivity is both possible and necessary. Objectivity primarily means that we at least try to find the truth about what happened in prehistory. A minor fact is worth more than a great fiction. Archaeological actualism has three main variants: ethnoarchaeology, archaeological experiments, and our own personal, subjective impressions of the archaeological material compared with basic physical phenomena in the world around us. Personal actualistic explanations are acceptable and useful if they concern general human conditions.

mentality has to be reconstructed. We must try to understand why people of the distant past acted as they did. This may be called a hermeneutic outlook.
Obviously it is good to try to understand the situation of people of the past. It gives our own problems more reasonable proportions.
To be able to illustrate the long row of past centuries with clear pictures and tales will give most people a feeling of being secure and at home. Archaeology is useful to the present society, above all owing to its long axis of time, which other humanities lack. Sometimes it is said that archaeology's field of research is only society in its entirety, whereas history often deals with individuals. But it is not quite like that. With the osteologist's help we can draw conclusions from graves, such as age and sex of the deceased, illnesses and possibly the cause of death. Grave-gifts can tell us about ideology, status and wealth. In fact we often know more about an anonymous prehistoric individual than about a medieval person, about whom the written sources often tell nothing more than his name.
The research findings of archaeology are generally reliable, for our sources are numerous and moreover almost always both genuine and truthful. This is not always the case for instance in medieval history, where an important event may be mentioned only in a single text, which furthermore may be tendentious or even faked. Now, which are prehistoric archaeology's sources of knowledge? Obviously the artefact material. And by artefacts I mean, now and later in this paper, all that is manufactured or worked by man, prehistoric objects and monuments, ecofacts and all traces of man in his environment.
Hardly anybody has failed to notice that during the last few decades the study of artefacts has often been criticized. In many cases the criticism is not rational, but a disinclination for the study of artefact materials is rather shown. A jargon has been develo-ped, in which one condescendingly speaks about a fixation for objects, as if it would be a mistake to examine and document the artefacts carefully. One speaks as if knowledge about prehistoric times could and should be searched for elsewhere than in the artefacts.
But if this is considered, it is of course an illusion. All information about prehistoric times is exclusively in the form, substance and location of artefacts. Of course we want knowledge about a prehistoric world of ideas, about social systems, ideology and a lot else that is immaterial. But still the only source of information is nevertheless material: the artefacts' form, substance and location. Sometimes our problem is such that it will not be meaningful to measure the object or study its form in detail. The best strategy is often to see the object in broad outline, to catch its aesthetic qualities. But such an aesthetic impression is also entirely dependent on the object's real, physical form. My very first archaeological excavation made an ineffaceable impression on me. In November 1945 Professor Greta Arwidsson excavated an Iron Age house near the Jägersro race-course in Malmö, and I was her assistant. It rained, and it was cold and dark. The clay was stiff, and we found very little, just a few undecorated pottery sherds. In those days there was a famous jockey on the racecourse, whose name was George Killick. Not only was he a skilful horseman but also a clairvoyant, a spiritualistic medium. He visited our excavation, and he quickly seized a pot sherd and put it to his forehead. For example, it is quite correct to say that the planning of an excavation is a theoretical act (Apel el al. 1995:52).Sometimes it is put forward as something rather radical to have a theoretical base when selecting the material details which you intend to discuss, but that is of course self-evident.
In order to function as a good tool arch-aeological theory has to be structured, of course. Trigger (1989:20)has made a classification in three levels. On the lowest level are the data of the artefact material, as well as generalizations of them, usually in the form of defined types. Middle level theory includes generalizations of human behaviour, such as the economic, social and ideological function of artefacts, but also for instance the organization of the family, the structure of the village and political circumstances. Binford's (1981)middle range theory aims at the relation between observable artefacts and archaeologically unobservable human behaviour. And this is, of course, a central point in archaeology.
In the case of high level theory it is necessary to make a more definite choice between systems such as ecological determinism, Marxism and idealism. Trigger points out that these high level theories cannot be tested effectively; rather, they are like religious dogmas. Nevertheless many archaeologists are mostly interested in these high level theories. And nowadays, unfortunately, many think that work on the lowest level i» at best uninteresting and at worst meaningless.
Archaeology has two great groups of neighbouring sciences, namely the other humanistic disciplines and the natural sciences.
The materials of the first group are verbal and human. The materials of the second group are mute and non-human. The material of prehistoric archaeology i» different from that of all these disciplines in that it is both mute and human (Malmer 1984(Malmer :266, 1993.
Consequently archaeology is almost unique. Only somatic medicine may be said to have a similar position; and the comparison between archaeology and medicine is not so pointless as it may seem at first. The medicine of the old ages was, at best, common sense, and the same may be said about archaeology before Thom sen.
During the last few decades criticism has often been directed against a supposed ideal Current Swedish Archaeology, Voh 5, l997 l 0 Mats P. Malmer of natural scientific reasoning, which has been said to characterize archaeology especially during the first half of the 20th century. Possibly archaeological problems have sometimes been treated in such a manner that humanistic aspects are superseded by natural scientific ones, but in my experience, this has not occurred often. The opposite situation is much more frequent. Archaeological artefacts are 100 % substance, even if they express psychological or ideological realities. Thus we cannot, with retained scientific reputation, analyse archaeological materials without mathematical, physical, chemical and other natural scientific methods.
Yet archaeology is not a natural but a humanistic science. The difference is obvious if one tries to use Thomas Kuhn's notion of paradigm in archaeology (Sterud 1973). Kuhn (1970:11)introduces this notion by quoting an example from the history of physical optics. According to Newton's Opticks, which was published in 1703, light consists of small particles. Einstein taught that light is transversal wave motion. Today physics textbooks tell that light is photons, i.e. , quantum-mechanical entities. There is no possibility to combine these three explanations into a unitary theory; you have to explain the character of light in one of these three ways. This is the reason why the three theories replaced each other in a revolutionary manner, as the title of Kuhn (1996) Obviously archaeology should test the applicability of theories and models of explanation in neighbouring sciences, especially anthropology. Ethnoarchaeological research is a very important connecting link between the two disciplines. C. J. Thomsen introduced ethnoarchaeology as early as 1836, and two years later Sven Nilsson published a more detailed version of Thomsen's ideas. Anthropologists of today have largely abandoned ethnographic artefacts, since they are convinced that interviews with living people will give much richer and more clearcut information about society and ideology.
And of course they are quite right, provided that one speaks the language of the studied population, and speaks it quite well. It is really not enough to understand the main sense, one must also be able to detect the nuances in a conversation about delicate and important subjects. But in fact it gradually turned out that even prominent anthropologists, such as Margaret Mead, needed help from interpreters. It also appeared that the persons interviewed sometimes told stories which did not really stick to facts, or even tried to make fun of the credulous westerner (Freeman 1989).
Of course it would have been much easier for anthropologists to test the veracity of statements about the functions of artefacts. But of late they have left exactly that undone.
So ethnoarchaeology on the whole has been developed only by archaeologists. But in spite of the important work carried out by Binford (e.g. 1967), Hodder (1982) and many others, ethnoarchaeology has not yet acquired the central position that it deserves. Good results Cttrrent Swedish Archaerttar&s:, Vot. 5, 1997 have been achieved, but most of the work remains to be done.
Archaeologists have a natural disposition to recognize themselves, so to speak, in prehistoric man. They find their own notions and ideas in the artefact material. In the recent literature there are many warnings against this. More seldom are there warnings against a nowadays rather common, opposite inclination to describe prehistoric man as maximally different from people living today.
The founder of modern geology is James Hutton, who was an older contemporary of C. J. Thomsen. In his work Theoiv of the E«rlh (1795)he presented a theory which was later called actualism. This theory says that such geological processes which take place in present times happened in the same way in the past, during the historical development of the earth. Consequently the theory can be summarized thus: the present is the key to the past. However, the theory does not rule out that other processes occurred in the past, which have no counterpart in the present.
Obviously the term actualism is of use also in archaeology. One variant of «rchaeologic«/ actu«/is«l is ethnoarchaeological methods. Another variant is archaeology by experiment. But the notion of archaeological actualism is much wider. It comprises the totality of modern man's perception of the artefact material compared with the perception of the world around us, not least our everyday surroundings. Surface, weight, light, colour, water, stone and all other such elementary phenomena are probably experienced in the same way by man today as in prehistoric times.
If we want to find Stone Age habitation sites within a certain area we can start by listing those sites which are already known.
Then we can make careful statistics of the position of these sites in relation to various elements of the terrain. After that we must revise the numbers with regard to those modern factors which caused the known sites to be discovered. Guided by these data, we can at last try to find new possible places for habitation sites.
But another method is simply to sit down on the hillside and feel whether we are sheltered from the wind and warmed by the sun.
And if we feel comfortable on the hillside, it may be worthwhile to dig a test pit. Even if this simple form of actualism is insufficient as the only method to find new habitation sites, it may at least prove helpful.
In most artefact materials there is a polarization into two groups of data. The one group consists of phenomena which can be actualistically interpreted by means of modern ethnographic or western material, or by means of our own personal experience. The other group of data cannot be interpreted in that way. After such a division we shall probably find that part of the actualistically interpreted first group actually seems to have a double explanatory potential, with a link also to the second group. In this way both groups of data will get new explanatory possibilities. Fig. 1 shows a recently published bronze statuette from the Late Bronze Age. found on the mountain of Kullaberg in north-western Scania (Paulsson 1996).This is the fourteenth statuette known of this type (most of them listed by Malmer 1992:382).Ten of the statuettes have been found in Scania and Zealand, most of them on both sides of the Sound. It has been possible to weigh ten of the statuettes, and six of them have a uniform weight of ca. 107 grams. The other four obviously belong to the same weight system, for one weighs I/2, one 3/4 and two 5/4 of the standard weight. The Kullaberg statuette weighs almost 106 grams, which means that the weight has once again been confirmed. Further confirmation is provided by the golden so-called oath-rings, which are calibrated according to the same weight system (Malmer 1992:380-383 and Figs. 4-6). It is not unlikely that the basic weight unit of the system is 26.5 grams (Sperber 1996:50), Carreni Swedish Archaeology, Voh 5, l997 which would mean that the weight of the majority of statuettes is equal to four units, whereas one statuette is equal to three units and two are equal to five weight units.
So it seems as well proven as anything in archaeology that the south Scandinavian Bronze Age was acquainted with a weight Ch ri s(er Åkerberg. system, and used it at least for weighing gold and bronze objects. It is striking that the weight of bronze statuettes was as precisely calibrated as that of the precious gold rings.
But a reasonable explanation is that the statuettes were weights and that the gold rings were among such things that were weighed.
Weight systems in the Bronze Age of Greece and the Middle East support this hypothesis.
For example, it appears that the weight of the Kullaberg statuette corresponds almost exactly to 24 Attic drachmas. And the same weight occurs in Egypt at the time of Akhenaton in the 14th century B.C. (Sperber 1992: 617).
The statuette from Kullaberg and her parallels are so expressive that the explanation may seem quite obvious. Already at the tum of the century Arne (1909:178)wrote that they imitate the goddess Ishtar in Babylonia, who was called Astarte in Phoenicia and Aphrodite on Cyprus. In modern research it would be natural to discuss gender ideas as well. No doubt the statuettes express something about the position of woman in Bronze Age society. Stenberger (1964:300)adopts Arne's ideas and adds some concrete details: "ln their clumsy and modest design they may constitute a cheap mass production, spread among ordinary people. It is close at hand to explain them as images of a goddess, idols, which were placed in the homes and served as a kind of household goddess. " On the whole this is pure fantasy, and undoubtedly Stenberger would not have explained the statuettes in this way, if he had known their weight.
The first statuette incorporated in the collections of the Stockholm Museum of National Antiquities came from S:t Olof in Scania.
This happened in 1895, and you may ask why it took 100 years before the statuettes were weighed. Probably the expressive look of the statuettes was considered to speak for itself. To weigh them would have been a senseless pedantry. But of course the weighing should have been a matter of routine. And if the Current Swedish Archaeatogy, Val. 5, /997 On Ohjectiiin aml Acn&ulisnt in Arrhaerrlr&gv 13 statuettes had been weighed, one would no doubt have soon discovered that they were made in accordance with a strict weight system.
Weighing the statuettes is to use an actualistic method. Metal is expensive today, and it was even more expensive in the early metal age. The peoples of the European continent, who owned the mines, had no reason to send gold and bronze to Scandinavia in unlimited and unweighed quantities. An actualistic explanation of the weights of gold and bronze objects must be that Bronze Age people were scrupulous about these matters.
Of course the appearance of the goddess was by no means insignificant to nordic Bronze Age people, nor were the tales which probably accompanied her from Phoenicia to Scandinavia. On the contrary, the characteristics of the goddess, and the protection she could give, were no doubt important to the Scandinavians. But the accurately calibrated weight could of course not enhance the fame and holiness of the exalted goddess. It would really be absurd if you had to take out a pair of scales to be sure that the statuette represented the right goddess. The weight of the statuette cannot be religiously motivated, but the case must be the opposite: the well-known effigy of the goddess must have legitimated the weight in roughly the same way as the royal hallmark right up to 1972 made the Swedish shopkeepers weights valid. When weights in the Cypriote Bronze Age were shaped like a calf, the signification was the same (Malmer 1992:386).And the dance around the golden calf in Exodus is well known.
The weight of the goddesses is by no means an exception. On the contrary, it is a typical case. No reader of archaeological publications can fail to note that they are often bristling with details, which at first may seem unimportant but which later tum out to be very essential (Malmer 1994 Together with social anthropology, archaeology partly developed not only a disregard for artefact material but also for objectivity. The following anecdote could have been fetched from any historical or behavioural discipline: "A few years ago I heard a candidate for a doctoral degree in a social science claim that the demand for objectivity could not possibly be met, and that he for his part intended to ignore it. Instead he meant to start by deciding what conclusions he wished to achieve in his research, his only problem being how to reach them. If such an attitude were to become common our view of science would probably be radically changed" (Bergström 1987:7).
In archaeology several authors spoke about "so-called objectivity", without making the least attempt to explain why, or in what way, an objective archaeological research would not be possible. But also very clear and categorical statements occur: "Theory is thoroughly subjective. ... No discourse on the past is neutral. ... A unitary and monolithic past is an illusion. What is required is a radical pluralism which recognizes that there are multiple pasts produced actively in accordance with ethnic, cultural and political views, orientations and beliefs" (Shanks & Tilley 1987b:212, 245). If this is to be literally understood, it is of course an untenable point of view. We investigate a single past, not more.
If we observe a certain artefact such as a pottery vessel, it was obviously taken out of the kiln in a definite year, on a definite day and a definite minute. The potter who took it out of the kiln was not a strange compromise between an old man and a young girl. Last week the field was ploughed, or else it was ttot ploughed. Every detail in the artefact material has such an exact history, and of course Shanks and Tilley are well aware of that. But they are less interested in such details of the prehistoric past which can be absolutely and objectively established. Rather, they wish to tell a subjective story, which may prove effective in current politics.
What do we mean by objectivity? Is objectivity at all possible in archaeology? Yes, it is both possible and necessary. Objectivity means that we at least try to find the truth about what happened in prehistory. In science a minor fact is definitely worth more than a great fiction. Prehistory was not obscure; it consisted of mere distinct events, and these are what we search for in the first place. Secondly, objectivity means that we strive to base our investigation on a representative sample of the infinitely great number of data which the artefact material offers, and to treat these data in a logically faultless way. Thirdly, objectivity means that we do not suppress facts which are contrary to our political ideology or our archaeological hypotheses.
Archaeologists put different questions to the artefact material, because they have different interests and methods, and they judge the answers according to their personal valuations. But is it then really wrong to speak about multiple pasts? Yes, it is. The truth is that there is only one past, not many. Everything happened in one single way, nothing happened in many ways. But isn't this really to catch at words? If everybody is permitted to make a personal evaluation of the research results, could it not with a little poetic licence be allowed to speak about many pasts? No, Current S&vedishArchaeology; Voh 5, /997 such a formulation must be rejected because it is wrong, and above all dangerous. It will cause, and has already caused, archaeologists to present their picture of the past as if they were writing a novel rather than searching for the truth.
The issue of go-cctlled objectivity, and of choosing a past, originates perhaps mainly in a despair over archaeology's possibilities to reach beyond the trivial and banal and produce a rich and lively picture of prehistoric times.
Perhaps it also springs from a reluctance to submit to the laborious work which archaeological artefact material always demanded, and will demand. Of course it is much easier to construct a picture of the past by hand, a picture which with this method can easily be aligned with one's own political ideas. That was how many historians wrote before Ranke, and also after that, before source criticism was general ly accepted. On the basis of meagre sources with doubtful veracity, one wrote about one's own country's glorious history, in accordance with one's own political ideas.
If we really fear that archaeology, using a scientifically tenable method, will never produce anything but very simple facts about the prehistoric past, we must still say that it is better to strive for a perhaps never achieved, important and objecti ve truth, than to abandon the demand for truth. But there is really no basis for a pessimistic view on the future of archaeology. The picture of the prehistoric past is continuously more and more concrete, rich and reliable. As a matter of fact archaeology made greater progress than most humanistic disciplines in the post-war period. This of course does not mean that archaeology was theoretically leading; the main reason is archaeology's constantly increasing quantity of artefact material. Many other humanistic and social sciences are now short of early material. For example. within Scandinavian languages the supply of medieval texts has run short, and scholars have turned to the great material of modern texts. Fifty years ago most Swedish historians worked on problems in medieval history, but now it is difficult to adopt new points of view even on very central events, such as the Kalmar Union beween the Scandinavian countries. For that reason the scholar's interest more and more has turned to modern history, where the material is overwhelmingly extensive. That Scandinavian archaeology made such great advances partly depends on a high interdisciplinary readiness to receive impulses from other subjects. In addition, and above all, archaeology is almost the only humanistic discipline which possesses a really extensive and moreover steadily growing material from the early and earliest ages. No historian believes that a document will suddenly be found which will solve the enigmas of the Kalmar Union. But for every point in prehistory there is a chance that new material will solve already formulated problems, or open quite new possibilities (Malmer 1994:9).Besides, archaeology's existing material is so extensive that by no means has it been examined from all relevant angles. Neighbouring humanistic disciplines seek new research objects, for instance precisely the archaeological artefact material. So it is absurd for archaeologists to despair of the relevance of their own material.
To what extent is actualism consistent with the demand for objectivity? I mentioned three kinds of actualism: ethnoarchaeology, archaeological experiments, and the researcher's personal reaction to the artefact material. The third form of actualism, our personal reaction, is of course subjective in the real sense of the word. In the above the various forms of necessary objectivity have been discussed. What remains is to discuss the different kinds of subjectivism. With reference to Trigger (1989:22) It is more difficult to judge very specific actualistic explanations. As a single example, we can cite a hypothesis that Middle Neolithic megaliths of Västergötland were intended to "create, articulate, and objectify a ritual landscape" (Tilley 1991:76).The roofs of passage graves consist of the same igneous rock (usually diabase) as the flat-topped mountains with steep sides, which dominate the landscape. The upright walls of the megaliths consist of the same sedimentary limestone which forms the bedrock underlying the mountains. "The up-down, high-low contrasts of the landscape are reflected in the very choice of building stones used to construct the tomb". The cup-marks on top of the roofing stones "might represent constellations of stars in the heavens" (1991:74).Of course we cannot exclude the possibility that prehistoric people had very special motives for choosing the form of their monuments; in fact we must assume that they had. But the validity of an actualistic explanation may indeed be questioned if it refers to modern scientific achievements, such as star charts and geological stratification. The possibility of testing the hypothesis is, as always, to confront it with other facts. What proof is there that these very cup-marks were made at the same time as the megaliths? At least the great majority of cup-marks are well dated to the Bronze Age, and consequently more than 1000 years younger than the megaliths.
Many other Bronze Age petroglyphs are engraved on Swedish megaliths. Are there any other cup-marks that can be explained as star charts? Furthermore, is it really probable that Middle Neolithic people chose diabase blocks to cover limestone blocks in order to copy the geological stratification? No doubt people at an early stage knew that there is diabase in the mountains and limestone in the fertile plains, but not until the 19th century did anyone imagine that there, remarkably enough, is limestone umlerneath the diabase mountains. The reason why the roofs of the megaliths are diabase may well be that this kind of rock resists rain and snow very well. Limestone, on the other hand, is full of fissures in which rain-water runs down, and thus there is a great risk that the stone will be splintered by frost. For the walls of the megalith, however, limestone is very suitable since this kind of stone easily splits into flat blocks of a uniform thickness. And the wall blocks are protected against rain by the roof. This alternative actualistic hypothesis is based on the probable assumption that the qualities of rocks were as well known in prehistoric times as they are today.
The difference between the two discussed actualistic hypotheses is obviously the following. The first hypothesis presupposes that prehistoric man had the same, very special, scientific knowledge and conceptions as its author has: star charts and geological stratification. The second hypothesis presupposes only that prehistoric man possessed common sense in a very general branch of knowledge: the quality of rocks in the home district.
However, also rather special phenomena C«rrettt Sii edi sit tt rehaeoloei. Vol. 5, l997 and conceptions can be actualistically explained, as shown by the goddess from Kullaberg and her sisters. What is the difference between, on one hand, explaining cup-marks and the selection of rocks in the cited way, and, on the other hand, explaining the statuettes as weights? The second hypothesis is not based on learned speculation but simply on a well-established fact, namely, that man in most and probably in all stages of culture had some measure for economic value, especially when it concerned an imported, rare and useful product. We can draw the conclusion that actualistic explanations in the first place must concern broadly humane conditions. But in certain, and not so rare, cases also very special or individual problems may by solved by means of an actively actualistic attitude.
Englislz revised by Laura Wrang. This paper is an abbreviated version of a lecture given on the occasion of the author's 75th birthday.
A CKNO WL EDG EMENTS Tha»k» to Jenny and Jonas Paulsson for perrnission to publish Fig. 1.