Ideologies in Archaeology

8. Histories of Mound Building and Scales of Explanation in Archaeology

194 8 Histories of Mound Building and Scales of Explanation in Archaeology susan m. alt The explanations we construct to explain past lives reflect the theories , methodologies, and ideologies that underlie our investigations. Of these, researchers’ ideologies are usually the least explicit. It is true that in anthropology, ideologies have been addressed via debates over gender biases, formalism versus substantivism, and modernism versus postmodernism (for examples, see Sahlins 1972 on economics; Slocum 1975 on man the hunter; Ulin 1991 on modernism). But then, even the “hard” sciences are neither ideologically blind nor completely objective (Kuhn 1962). This knowledge, that there are effects of unspoken as well as acknowledged ideologies in what we term objective science, means that we should routinely interrogate the assumptions and ideologies that underlie our archaeologies. That is, in fact, the only way to identify and mitigate those effects. I attempt to do that here. In this paper, I am concerned with the implications of following a program that gives preference to parsimonious explanations. “The simplest explanation is best” is a well-worn mantra invoked in scientific explanations. But is it appropriate for archaeological explanation ? Here, I question the assumptions that inform the preference Histories of Mound Building 195 for parsimony and explore the implications of that preference. And I do this informed by a body of archaeological literature that points to the difficulties of discussing world history in terms of greater or lesser degrees of societal “complexity” (for example, Bawden 1989; Cobb 2003; Crumley 1995; Curet 2003; Feinman and Neitzel 1984; Hodder 1986; Kristiansen 1991; McGuire 1983; Nelson 1995; Pauketat 2007; Paynter 1989; Shanks and Tilley 1987a; Spencer 1987, 1990; Upham 1987; Yoffee 1993, 2005; Yoffee, Fish, and Milner 1999). The question is, can we ever understand complexity if we keep invoking simplicity? The question needs to be considered because, as things stand, arguments for or against a particular level of complexity seem implicit in the ways certain pasts are explained. For example, in North America, there has been a tendency for some practitioners to prefer a priori the “simplest” explanation for any social phenomenon. This tendency is tied to what is thought to be “good science,” for good science employs Occam’s razor. The drive for simplicity of explanation is particularly strong in the case of the mound builders of eastern North America, whose earth-moving practices are tangled up in ancient and modern-day ideologies. In a teleological and circular set of arguments, North American societies have been labeled as not very complex, so their monuments cannot be complicated constructions (thus mound building is described as a simple affair); in reverse, the assertion that mound building need not have been very demanding or highly organized is used to warrant arguments that Native American societies never became very complex. I argue here that this ideological entanglement was and is rooted in issues of observational scale that obscure our ability to accurately measure social labor and evaluate mound-construction histories. These matters of scale are also tied to a seeming misunderstanding of how parsimony should be employed. I suggest that when it comes time for the interpretation and understanding of the past, we need to be sensitive to the scale of observations that leads one to inferences of simplicity. The simplest explanations in archaeology are not always best at certain scales of analysis, assuming that they rest as much on scientific ideologies as on actual archaeological evidence. To elaborate on the relationship between explanation, ideology, and observational scale, I consider Mississippian mound building in the eastern United States, relying heavily on mounds at the large, 196 susan m. alt well-documented center of Cahokia in the “American Bottom” region of southwestern Illinois and eastern Missouri (Dalan et al. 2003; Milner 1998; Pauketat 2004). With respect to the genealogies of moundbuilding practices, conclusions regarding mound building there and elsewhere take on a very different character depending on the investigator ’s scale of observation. Background In math or physics, the simplest and most elegant explanation is commonly preferred on principle (Popper 2002). The preference for parsimony and the search for simplicity can be traced to comments by Aristotle (McKeon 1941) and has been promoted since by such thinkers as Newton (1964), Kant (1950), and, more recently, Hawking (1988). It is well represented by Sir William of Occam’s famous dictum or razor: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.” This law of parsimony holds that, when there...