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Methodological Issues in Contemporary Americanist Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Robert C Dunnell
Robert C Dunnell*
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

The central purpose of the symposium in which this paper was originally presented was to elicit from anthropologists those problems in their discipline which, from the perspective of a practitioner, might merit philosophical attention. Setting aside the difficulties that must arise when an anthropologist, unfamiliar with the scholarly tradition of philosophy, attempts to identify philosophically interesting issues, any anthropologist is confronted with a further problem. Anthropology is not a coherent discipline in the same fashion as many other academic departments. Nor is any anthropologist really “expert” in more than one of the major disciplines (I would caution wariness of those who claim more) and most only within a particular strain of the relevant discipline.

Being an archaeologist, I feel constrained to treat that discipline.

Type
Part XVIII. Philosophical Problems of Anthropology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 716 - 744
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

The writer is endebted to Dr. Philip Kitcher, PSA 84 program chair, for the invitation to participate in this symposium. Drs. D. K. Grayson and A. Wylie read this manuscript in draft and offered valuable comments. M. D. Dunnell made important editorial contributions and B. May typed, more or less cheerfully, the several drafts. To these individuals, and any I may have inadvertently omitted, I am most grateful.

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