fulltext - Simple search

Jan Apel
ware. A phenomenological approach, on the other hand, aims at contextual
understanding and this requires that the researcher share categories with the
agents whose technology is investigated. Thus, the analysis has to be based
on folk categories that are embedded in conceptual skill and that are needed
wards understanding the experience of the people that are actually involved
this tradition would take the emic
granted.
In archaeology, these two perspectives were originally discussed in the
typology debate of the 1950s and 60s (see Malmer 1965). However, while this
discussion revolved around the question of whether or not archaeological
types were “real” (realism) or “constructed” (rationalism) the possibility of
merging these perspectives was never considered, probably because the sub
positivist epistemology that denied the importance of subjective experience.
As concerns experimental archaeology, the severe critique of emic approaches
delivered by processual archaeologists, such as David Hearst Thomas (1986)
and Lewis Binford, must be seen in this light. This may also explain why the
chaîne opératoire
be reduced to a tool for empirical descriptions of reduction sequences in its
in prep).
In the 1980s and 90s, a relational perspective was advocated in a debate
of the archaeological use of relational versus formal analogies. In this discus
bate (Wylie 1985; Ravn 1993). While the notion that most archaeologists use
research is self evident, there are great advances to be made if these different
phases in the research process are used in a consistent manner. An emic (in
side) perspective needs to be combined with a modernistic (outside) perspec
tive if we want to go beyond that which is purely cultural and ideological.
This is not least important when social aspects of prehistory are discussed
and, as I see it, it is a prerequisite for archaeology in general (Apel 2001:9).
208