Archaeological Pragmatics (original) (raw)
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Semiotics in History and Archaeology
Jamin Pelkey, Susan Petrilli and Sophia Melanson Ricciardone (eds.), Bloomsbury Semiotics. Vol. 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
Semiotics has enjoyed a limited, but enduring interest in history and archaeology. Projects like ‘semiotics of history’, ‘historical semiotics’, ‘historia sub specie semioticae’, ‘semiotics of archaeology’, ‘archaeology of semiotics’ and ‘archaeological semiotics’ have been proclaimed periodically since the heyday of semiotics in the 1970s. Although never a dominant focus, semiotic approaches have opened many important new theoretical vistas and produced some important empirical studies in history and archaeology and their potential is definitely not yet exhausted. This chapter provides a short history of joining semiotics to historical and archaeological research featuring separately Saussurean and Peircean perspectives. We shall present some major achievements and discussions in historical and archaeological semiotics, primarily in theoretical, but also in empirical terms, and describe some key questions and research perspectives for the future of semiotics in these two fields. But first, we will offer a general framework for the semiotic analysis of past societies.
Pragmatic Archaeology and Semiotic Mediation
Archaeology is a semlotic enterprise engaged in the study of meaning-making practices by past actors and of archaeologists themselves. Archaeology embraced its semiotic character in the context of the processual and postprocessua/ debafes, and in terms of various postprocessual developments. Recently some archaeologists have drawn inspiration from the material semiotics of Bruno Latour to advocate for a symmetrical archaeology. This perspective offers a novel approach to object agency and focuses on how objects and humans together form assemblages. However, it neglects a satisfying account of how objects and things transform each other. One productive way fotward is a consideration of semiotic mediation offered by a pragmatic archaeology linked to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce.
Figures xi 5.5 Axis of reflection and point of bifold rotation for the core area of Chaco Canyon (Fritz 1978:Figure 3.7). 5.6 The William Paca garden (courtesy of the Historic Annapolis Foundation). 6.1 Structure, habitus, and practice (after Bourdieu 1984:Figure 8). 6.2 Modalities of structuration (after Giddens 1984:Figure 2). 6.3 The mutuality of ritual and social maps of the Saami kahte (after Yates 1989:Figure 20.4). 6.4 Pot decorated with snake motif from Igbo Jonah (Ray 1987:Figure 7.3). 6.5 The canoe as a big man (Tilley 1999:Figure 4.3). 7.1 Steven Mithen's cathedral model of the evolution of intelligence (Mithen 1996:67).
Signs of prehistory. A Peircian semiotic approach to lithics
How can we understand prehistoric lithic objects? What meaning should we give them and what view should we adopt to claim access to their significance? How can we reduce and clarify our biases? This article is a proposal to introduce Peircian semiotics to review lithic objects. For a long time, these were apprehended as types, sometimes within evolutionary lineages; however, in this research, knapped stone objects will be perceived through a semio-pragmatic grid and reviewed as signs. The proposed approach is a new way of accessing the fields of technical phenomena of prehistoric communities. This new perception aims at a quest for objectivity, by clarifying the affective, analytical and interpretative a priori as an answer to the sometimes very personal view of the prehistorian on lithic objects. Charles Sanders Peirce's logical theory of signs or semiotics is contextualized within an 'artisanal' reading of prehistoric tools as initiated by Éric Boëda and further developed by Michel Lepot. Through this phaneroscopic/phenomenological vision, the technical object, now a sign-object, is placed in action (semiosis) within a system of signs. This new trajectory is positioned both as a methodological tool and as an innovative milestone in the construction of a more logical episteme in Prehistory, taking lithics both as signs of past human activity and of archaeological representations.
Semiotics of Prehisroric Artifacts: the Channels of Communication between Present and Past
Sign character of language, communication process, Fine Art, religion and others symbolic forms, has been for long time proved and several philosophers, aestheticians and semiotics as such give her sufficient attention.It must be admitted that the basic analysis is reduced and solely focused on the function, structure and usage of signs researched by linguistic approach. This traditional model of linguistic interpretation is neededto bear in mind for applications of semiotics theories. Despite morphological analyses of non-linguistic forms, for example: Fine Art, religion and culture (in general) often occurs situation when others non-lingual structures are not inserted in the research of communication process. It includes artefacts which shows some frame of Reference and are adapted for communications of some character (they use specific language) with recipient (among themselves) but how deeper to the past we come the harder we know to identify any of concrete reference. It´s possible that in the past artefacts of everyday (and cult) use entered to the communication with the user more active and intensively like in present. The given paper focuses on the period of human history of which we have knowledge only by archeology and different analogies from present. The examination will be dealt with semiotic of communication which were created, or could be created by prehistoric artefacts on examples of Slovakian Iron Age eligible for generalizingconclusionsvalid for thesigns and symbols(as such) of whole prehistoric artefacts. It would be also needed these findings raise so that they are determining and helpful for aesthetic interpretation of given artefacts and so detect possible “language” of production or perception of prehistoric objects. By reason of interrupted, modified, forgotten or maximally changed tradition, the knowledge of concrete meaning and reference (content of information) eithersymbols orcharacters are missing. This meaning is still mediated but during the time it become illegible with the loss of the “key” and therefore the research must be based on theories of different semantics, semiotics, aesthetics, philosophers and others theorist and methodologically test the application of each theories and notions. A similar problematic was debated by the author in the conference appearance in Presov. Of the main importance were texts from E. Casirer, N. Goodman and W. Dawis and “iconological analysis” of Celtic coins from L. Lengyel which offers the identification of form with certain content, mainly with mythological scenes. The given piece of paper focused more on reconsideration and determination of accurate use of the terms like symbol, representation, ornament and stylized representation in the scenes on Slovakian Celtic coins. By the preferring of term symbol (with his denotative function), the issue gradually and marginally passed into semiotic. Also later with reconsideration, modification and subsequently by application of iconological and cosmological analysis of symbols and scenes of “Celtic Fine Art” from M. Aldhouse – Green was created issue also presented in Presov. Author returned to the semiotic line of research with the issue about aesthetic analyses of thraco-scythian horizon artefacts which was presented on the conference in Ostrava and at the same time it became the first space where were prehistoric artefacts considered as the elements of communication (discourse). The results were limited to the relation myth – artefact (as symbol, respectively the representant of myth) – recipient and thus to the communication with the mythological space through artefacts but the author divined at the same time that the analysis of frame of Reference must be more detailed and wider. All reported issues (conference) had lead to concerns about relation: “artefact – recipient – reference” and thus about discourse as such and became motivating for the creation of semiotic analysis in order to determine the place of artefacts in the aesthetic perception of prehistoric man. The given analysis would be much wider in the range of authors and deeper and detailed in the defined issue. In the selecting of contributors author would be not limited on well known names (E. Cassirer, U. Eco, L. Lengyel, E. Panowský, W. Dawis, Moritz, Schiller, C. G. Jung, C. Levy-Strauss, N. Goodman, J. Mukařovský, W. Krug, K. Solger and others) but he will also work with a tradition of Slovak theorist (Bakoš?, P. Bujnák, A. Vandrák, M. Greguš, P. K. Z. Hostinský) and so offer methodologically rich but compact unit researched the chosen artefacts and their character function. The key effort would be the attempt to prove that the character function of artefacts is present; that the researched artefact has it place in communication (discourse) and also that the understanding of place of objects sui generis in the world of prehistoric man is determining for aesthetic interpretation. The main aims of this piece of paper are the followings: 1. make an opinion on the use of concept sign for prehistoric artefacts; 2. support the hypothesis of the possible functioning of prehistoric artefacts as resources in the communication process (language, discourse) of prehistoric society; 3. allocate the frame of reference for prehistoric and present recipient (comunicant, medium, recipient?) and define the process of transaction and its impact on the change of artefacts reception, their interpretation and communication-able; 4. through the semiotic approach provide one of the possible methodologies of aesthetic interpretation of prehistoric artifacts; 5. Explore the principle of communication-able of artefacts and 6. present structure, operation and function of discourse and name its constituents/facilities in application on prehistory. Central purpose of the study is to undermine the assumption that communication as such (speech, language) is limited (except speech, facial expression, gesture) on objects in which are content/reference/information obvious (Fine Art). In the spotlight of given issue is extralinguistic area of discourse and knowledge of its structure could help to identify the model of interpretation suitable for aesthetic research of prehistoric artefacts. We could therefore talk about paralinguistic reference relation between object (as a proxy for some information, or sign entering into communication) and his recipient.
Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays 1
'The data obtained, even if then classified by a computer, must be first comprehended and assimilated by the human mind to acquire significance and to ultimately enrich our culture' (Anati 1976: 163f). 'Every archaeologist is, by the way, a semiotic researcher " (Nordbladh 1977:68) Semioticians are not offering (or menacing) to do the archaeologists' job. We are certainly not going to do the digging. Semioticians can not be expected to dig up the ground, or to turn over all the layers, not even in a metaphorical sense: it is not our task to develop full-blown archaeological theories, nor to explain all the details of concrete, situated, prehistoric displays. What semiotics generally, and visual semiotics in particular, can bring to archaeology is, first, a comparative approach, permitting a classification of prehistoric visual displays, such as petroglyphs and pictograms, in relation to other visual signs, or other iconical signs, and other sign types generally, and, in the second place, an array of models, concepts, and methods, developed all through the fairly lengthy history of semiotics (which is longer, but less concentrated, than that of archaeology), mainly during the last century and a half, since the time of the proverbial founding-fathers, Peirce and Saussure, but in particular during the recent decades of intense semiotic research. What we can offer to do, then, is to take over at least part of the semiotic task the archaeologist has laid upon himself: but what this means, or could mean, will be more readily explained once we have defined the nature of semiotic research. What would be needed, ideally, in the study of prehistoric visual displays, as so often elsewhere, are scholars having the double competence of semiotician and archaeologist: but for the time being, the most we can hope for, is to encounter a semiotician with a layman's knowledge of archaeology, and an archaeologist more or less well-steeped in semiotics. In the long run, however, the task of semioticians and archaeologists alike. should be less to justify the ways of semiotics to archaeologists, or the reverse, than to discover a common language for us all. The present contribution is written from the point of view of semiotics, by one who can claim no more than a superficial knowledge of archaeology. Hopefully, it may offer
World Archaeology, 2021
Birdstones are an enigmatic and diverse group of objects found across eastern North America with concentrations around the Great Lakes region. Via specula- tive interpretations of form, analogical comparison with other regions, and consideration of basic contextual information, archaeologists think of birdstones as parts of canoes, flutes, unspecified ceremonial assemblages, and, most fre- quently, atlatls. Discourse and debate about birdstones largely neglects issues of material vibrancy and semiotic process, including the processes by which archae- ologists and others began to name and typify these objects in the late nineteenth century. This paper rethinks birdstones through a ‘more than representational’ approach that combines assemblage theory with Peircean semiotics. Although both lines of thought align with relational ontologies, non-representational critiques, and post-anthropocentrism, archaeologists rarely consider the two together. This approach helps us chart how birdstones emerged and evolved through a complicated set of human-nonhuman interactions that continue into the present.
Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays
Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays 1 'The data obtained, even if then classified by a computer, must be first comprehended and assimilated by the human mind to acquire significance and to ultimately enrich our culture' (Anati 1976: 163f).