Glossary

Critical theory A philosophical position in the humanities and social sciences that seeks human liberation and social transformation through knowledge and action. empiricism A theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.

Epistemology The study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge.

Hermeneutics An epistemological theory with roots in the study of biblical texts that understanding is based on the dialectical (back-and-forth) relationship between the whole and its parts.

New Archaeology A movement that began in America in the 1960s, aimed at making archaeology more scientific by employing empiricist and neo-positivist principles. positivism A philosophy that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method.

Postprocessualism A school of archaeological thought that uses critical theory and interpretative methods while cautioning against the shortcomings of scientific archaeology. processualism A school of archaeological thought that uses empiricist theories of knowledge and scientific methods to derive testable models of human behavior.

Throughout its 200 years as a recognizable intellectual activity, archaeology has focused on both the recovery of ancient objects and explaining what precisely those objects mean about the societies that produced them. In this sense, ‘explanation’ in archaeology is historically and culturally contingent, and the aims and techniques of archaeological explanation shift as the epistemological and ontological foundations of the discipline shift. The purpose of this entry is to define precisely what explanation in archaeology is in contemporary terms.

Explanation is defined by most dictionaries as ‘the act of giving the reason for, the justification of, or the cause of phenomena.’ Historically and linguistically, the terms explanation and cause are associated with scientific approaches in the social, behavioral, and natural sciences. Within contemporary archaeology, however, there are both scientific and nonscientific approaches to studying the past. A proper examination of ‘explanation’ in archaeology therefore requires a broadening of the definition of explanation to include any epistemology that gives meaning to the past as derived from the material record. This entry will therefore be an expansive treatment of the topic to cover both nonscientific and scientific approaches.