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The current issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory has a special section on "Archaeological spatial techniques and experiential theory." The goal, as stated by the section editors, is to examine "the possibilities and potentials of combining quantitative spatial studies with more human-centered and theoretically explicit approaches to past landscapes" (McEwan and Millican 2012:491). That is, can we bring together the rigorous and scientific approach of GIS and spatial analysis with the postmodern and interpretivist approach of phenomenlogical landscape archaeology? No, we can't. Why not? Because these two approaches have fundamentally opposed epistemologies. This is a case of using scientific techniques in the service of anti-scientific research goals. In the terms I suggested in a prior post on the meaning of science in archaeology , many of the authors are employing Science-Definition-2 (use of scientific techniques from other disciplines) ...

I've just had another rejection from Science magazine. My previous rejection from Science came almost instantaneously . It didn't pass the initial scan, and I heard back within a couple of days. This one took about two weeks, which means it did make it to the "Board of Reviewing Editors" but not to the peer review stage. Here is the statement I received: "Your manuscript was evaluated for breadth of interest and interdisciplinary significance by our Board of Reviewing Editors and by in-house staff. Your work was compared to other manuscripts that we have received in the field of social sciences. Although there were no concerns raised about the technical aspects of the study, the consensus view was that your results would be better received and appreciated by an audience of sophisticated specialists in a long paper format. Thus, the overall opinion, taking into account our limited space and distributional goals, was that your submission did not appear to provide s...

Greetings from Toronto, where I gave some talks and had a great time with the archaeologists at the University of Toronto. Actually, I don't particularly like epistemology. I just read American Anthropologist’s 2012 review article on archaeological publications in 2011 (Hauser 2012) . I came away confused about author Mark Hauser’s epistemology. I can’t seem to translate his approach into my own understanding of social science concepts of explanation and causality. Like many archaeologists, Hauser seems reluctant to discuss these things clearly and explicitly, leaving readers to puzzle them out from fragmentary and cryptic phrases. I was particularly confused by two statements in Hauser’s paper: ·        “addressing long-standing questions about agriculture with new data require a shift from causality to explanations of process in specified contexts .” (p. 185) ·        “One major shift was a general move from the search for ...