How Valuable Is The Use Of Ethnographic Analogy In Archaeological Interpretation

One of the problems with the prehistoric is attempting to interpret past human behaviour from limited material culture, ethnographic analogy though is a comparative study using modern anthropology, where living societies are used to interpret how people may have behaved and acted within the past. In explaining how valuable ethnographic analogy potentially is, I will first lay out the evidence for how ethnographic analogy can be used for understanding prehistoric human behaviour in the context of rock art. Though I will also explain the limitations and potential pitfalls of using this method during this period and with this material culture, why caution is needed in using analogies, why it should be considered on a case by case bases and why it should be seen as a tool that we use to form hypothesises rather than to determine facts.

The idea of using ethnographic analogy to interpret prehistoric human behaviour relies on there being similarities between current people and those of the past.

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According to Cruz Berrocal “Ethnographic information can also be direct, when both the archaeological and ethnographic contexts share a common geographic setting and a potential cultural connection exists between them” (Cruz Berrocal, 2011). This method has been used widely within prehistoric archaeology though here I will focus on the San. The San people of Botswana are a hunter gatherer society and they are thought to be one of the oldest cultures on earth today, if they were to form a continuous line and are descended from the first inhabitants within the southern part of Africa, then they would fill the requirements for direct analogy and we can potentially form direct analogies between them and past cultures.

Part of San culture is shamanistic, the consensus now is that certain parts of southern African rock art as being symbols of potency, metaphors of trance like experiences, significant human and animal postures and hallucinations experienced by the prehistoric San shamans (Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1999, p.166).

Even though the San do not themselves make rock art, if there is indeed a cultural continuity that exists between them, and the people of the past who did create rock art, then it is possible for us to use this direct analogy to interpret their meanings. Something that archaeological material on its own could never do.

As that is a direct analogy there is also what is known as an indirect analogy, I will continue with the continuation of the rock art example. As there are similarities between European and southern African rock art it has been inferred that this is also a representation of shamanic practices. With the current consensus being that European prehistoric cave art is depictions of shamanic practices that has been attained through altered states of consciousness and experienced visions. Unlike with the San though, the interpretation of European rock art is different, as there is no cultural or geographic continuation here. Not only are these based on geographically distant modern societies that potentially have different world views, but interactions during migration and cultural adaptations to accommodate this. This could mean that people like the San would have very different world views than those people of the past (Peregrine, 1996) can also have had effects upon these past cultures that the San would not have experienced. This may leave us with the problem where we are recreating the present within the past “affirming the consequent” (Gould, 1980, p.29) and where we insert our own world view instead of deciphering those of the past, something that needs to be guarded against.

When making ethnographic analogies we are making uniformitarian assumptions. The uniformitarian approach relies on events and people within the past being the same as those in the modern-day. Within the field of geology, this may make absolute sense where the sedimentary process stays relatively the same through time. Care must be taken in where we assume uniformitarianism is applicable to humans though. An example of where we can use this would be in the preparation of grain harvesting, where we have only a few ways that this can be done, and it can only be harvested at certain times of the year (Johnson, 2019, pp.57–58). When we make comparisons concerning this process, we can assume that they are accurate. Human behaviour and how they think are more complex though, and we shouldn’t imagine that early humans were essentially the same as modern hunter gatherers, that merely lack a few key elements (Kuhn and Clark, 2015). People thinking the same within the past, as they do now is only true if essentialism is also true, and within the context of prehistoric art we do not know enough. As smith states “Perhaps the greatest difficulty in getting at the meaning of prehistoric art is that we do not know the symbolic conceptions which were involved even in naturalistic representations. Are these to be taken literally, that is as signs? Or are they loaded symbols, part of a code to be broken?” (Smith, 1968). It is therefore my view that humans can simply be to complex, especially when trying to decipher human thought processes, for us to use these uniformitarian assumptions.

Further problems concerning the uniformitarian approach that must be considered are the sources themselves. When anthropologists observe societies that we assume are “primitive” and act in similar ways to those of the past, in this case, the San of Botswana. We must consider that they have already been exposed to the western world for several centuries (Greene and Moore, 2010, p.270) with the act of observation itself potentially also playing a role in contaminating data.

When we haven't found an answer to a question using the most reliable tool available to us, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s best to use a tool such as ethnographic analogy. As archaeology changed with the new archaeologists it has made attempts to become more scientific, ethnographic analogy though does not appear to follow this scientific method. The scientific method relies on examining the empirical evidence at hand, forming hypotheses, and then carrying out experiments based on predictions to determine whether the hypothesis is correct. With the interpretation of rock art, we have non-refutable hypothesises that can never be proven or refuted. This leaves us with a subjective interpretation rather than an objective one that “cannot be confirmed or refuted by any form of scientifically acceptable procedure” (Bednarik, 1992b). In truth we do not know enough about their iconographic meaning and “It is not the business of science to create myths about the Past' (Bednarik, 1992a). The scientific method itself can be used when examining rock art though it does have its limits, and when it comes to understanding meaning this will probably be unattainable to us.

Ethnographic analogy may be best employed to form ideas and hypothesises, rather than seeking the facts. As Hayter says that “it can only be constantly restated that analogy does not provide answers, only models, hypotheses and ideas” (Hayter 1992, pp 42) Childe also says that we should use analogy for the direction that we look (Childe, 1956, p.49). Rather than dismissing analogy completely, I see it as being valuable in helping us out of our modern western thinking bias. Current hunter gatherer populations may potentially be vastly different from those of the past, but we must acknowledge that the culture that we live in is a completely alien one to those that we wish to study. By using analogies, we can eliminate some of our own bias and incorporate new ideas that can help us to understand people of the past.

The prehistoric period is certainly vastly underrepresented within the archaeological record, so ethnography may seem like the logical tool, though ethnographic analogy can only take us so far. Quoting A, Currie, “ethnographic analogy should be reserved for a context-by-context basis” (Currie, 2016) and I demonstrated this with the San. Direct analogy can form a link to the past and help us interpret the meaning of rock art, though we must always be careful against inserting our current worldview into the past. We must also remember that human behaviour is more complex than natural processes. Forming analogies between humans and grain harvesting is far different from forming analogies with human expression in the form of prehistoric rock art. Finally, subjectivity must be guarded against and it should be acknowledged that these are not objective interpretations. Analogies are helpful to use within archaeology and can be valuable in forming ideas and creating links to the past, but because of these reasons I believe the value is lessened within the material culture that I chose.

Bibliography

1. Bednarik, R.G. (1992a). Palaeoart and Archaeological Myths. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2(1), pp.27–43.
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8. Martelle Hayter, Holly (1994) 'Hunter-gatherers and the Ethnographic Analogy: Theoretical Perspectives,' Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 8.
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11. ‌Lewis-Williams, D. and Dowson, T. (1999). images of power. Southern Book Publishers, Halfway House, South Africa., p.166.
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13. ‌Smith, P.E.L. (1968). Problems and Possibilities of the Prehistoric Rock Art of Northern Africa. African Historical Studies, 1(1),

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