Digging up concrescences

A Hermeneutics for Process Archaeology

Bibliographic Data

ID3918898
AuthorsShaun Gallagher (0000-0002-3147-9929, Philosophy, University of Memphis , Memphis, USA, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume53
Issue1
Pages15-25
Publication date2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWorld Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-8243 • E-ISSN: 1470-1375
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00438243.2021.1993990
OpenAlexW3211341086
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited28

In this paper I build on the process philosophy of Whitehead and on enactive approachs to hermeneutics, to suggest that if we want to conceive of archaeological practice in terms of a process archaeology, then rather than characterizing it as ‘digging up the past’, it is better to think of it as digging up concrescences. From the perspective of enactive hermeneutics, no artifact (from past or present) is a completely determinate matter of fact; its meaning is enacted in an ecology of practices, and should be understood as part of a dynamical network (of uses and beliefs) that changes when viewed from different perspectives. To the extent that an artifact retains an affordance-related meaning, whether original or new, it remains a concrescence and is never reducible to a determinate matter of fact

Affordance · Archaeology · Artifact (error · Digging · Epistemology · Hermeneutics · Meaning (existential · Original meaning · Perspective (graphical · Process (computing · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · History · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Representations and Identity