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Archaeology and Oral Tradition: The Scientific Importance of Dialogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Peter M. Whiteley
Peter M. Whiteley*
Affiliation:
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, New York, 10024
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Abstract

Scientific archaeology and indigenous oral traditions have long been estranged. While there appears to be something of a thaw in recent years, the terms of epistemological engagement are unclear. Are these different modes of constituting the past heuristically compatible at all? Or should they, as the postmodernists would avow, simply be treated as alternative narratives in the intractable culture wars, where the privileged truth-claims of science are dismissed as a spurious arrogance? Focusing on an example from Hopi oral tradition, this paper argues that objective archaeological explanation can gain a great deal, without any loss of analytical rigor, by treating oral traditions not as scientifically unassimilable myths but as a primary source of evidence and interpretation of past social formations. The need for dialogue, then, is important not just as a matter of multicultural diplomacy, but for the enhancement of scientific explanation itself.

Résumé

Résumé

Hace mucho tiempo que se apartan la arquelogía científica de las tradiciones orales indígenas. No obstante que recientemente ha aparecido algo de mejoramiento, todavía falta aclarar las condiciones de empeño epistimológico. ¿Son en modo alguno heuristicamente compatibles estos modos diferentes de constituir el pasado? ¿O, como mantienen los postmodernistas, se deben tratar como narrativas alternativas en las peleas culturales intractibles, en que se rechazan las pretensiones de verdad privilegiadas de la ciencia como una arrogancia espuria? Enfocado en un ejemplo de la tradición oral hopi, este artículo razona que la explicación arqueológica objetiva puede aprovechar mucho—sin ningún daño de rigor analítico—por tratar las tradiciones orales no como mitos no asimilables a la ciencia, pero como una fuente primaria de evidencia y interpretación de las formaciones sociales pasadas. Así, la necesidad del diálogo es importante no sólo como un asunto de diplomacía multicultural, sino tambien para el encarecimiento de la explicación científica misma.

Type
Forum
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , July 2002 , pp. 405 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 2002

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