Integrating Experiment and Enthographic Analogy: A Case Study

WP5

Professor Alan K. Outram

University of Exeter

8th October 2012

Use of Ethnographic Analogies

• Identifying artefact function

• Understanding possible roles of organic material culture in cases without preservation

• Understanding archaeologically invisible or ambiguous activity (both function and meaning)

Ethnoarchaeology

• Archaeologists carrying out the ethnographies rather than anthropologists, because they have different questions in mind and need details on different processes – particularly taphonomic questions and middle range theory.

• Binford particularly good example (e.g. Nunamuit Ethnoarchaeology 1978)

Degrees of Correspondence

• Analogues are not proof, and never can be

• Analogies have more or less strength, depending upon the appropriateness of the context

• How many factors correspond in the analogy

• Are the corresponding factors pertinent or trivial

Problems with Ethnographic Analogy

1. Limited to the known• Not all things that happened in the past will have a

known ethnographic analogue• Analogy may expand our modern, Western

horizons, but we are still limited by what is recorded in the know world

2. Our analogues are limited to certain environments

3. Problems of observation with interference

Conclusion

• Analogy is a useful tool to provide possible answers, that otherwise may not have occurred to one.

• They do not prove anything.

• There are good and bad analogies.

• Be careful of context.

• Support with other investigations, e.g. experiments.

Experiment and Experience

• If there is not a hypothesis being tested then it is not an experiment!

• Actualistic experience is also important:– Just to understand processes we are not

familiar with, so that we can speak with authority

– As pre-experiments or pilot work

Case Study – Bone Marrow and Grease Exploitation

• Ethnographic sources show that fat is of huge value to many subsistence economies and that the extraction of marrow and the fragmentation and rendering of bones is commonplace.

• There is often much bone fragmentation in archaeological sites, sometimes attributed to such practices, but without clear corroborating evidence.

Experiment

Shaft Splinters

Large Pieces

Small Cancellous Fragments

• My approach was informed by– Readings of the ethnographic and

ethnoarchaeological record– Experience of bone fracture and grease

extraction– An experimentally tested method of

classifying bone fractures– The creation of general model of fracture

patterns relating to grease exploitation, based upon experience, experiment, ethnography and ethnoarchaeology, which I could compare to the actual archaeological record.