Historical development of the Grammar
A Critique of Archaeological Reason

Giorgio Buccellati – January 2025

Introductory

In A Critique of the Archaeological Record, I take up specifically, in the second chapter(“Archaeology and grammar”), the issue of what a grammar is in relationship to archaeological practice.

Analytics

Using Kantian categories, I identify grammar with analytics:

Analytics describes the elements in their morphological and syntactical qualities. Morphology deals with how the elements can be described statically in terms of their formal qualities. Syntax deals with the tensional relationship of the elements with each other. Thus, analytics corresponds closely to what I call “grammar”; i.e., a purely inner-referential system. (p. 15)

If the critique articulates the conditions of possibility of such a grammar, there remains the task of actually producing a working grammar capable of implementing those presuppositions. This I have done for analytics, and the result is a fully detailed online version of the Grammar of the Archaeological Record [which referred to the early version of this website]. (p. 16)

Grammar

I then develop, especially in section 2.6, the definiton of grammar, looking at how it applies to archaeology

Grammar focuses on the inner dimension of a system. Accordingly, it views the system as rigorously inner-referential, with an emphasis on its structural make-up. It is closed to the outside not because it denies the existence of an external dimension or the possibility of relating to it, but because the effectiveness of the analysis is proportional to the way in which levels of analysis are kept separate. (p.24)

I use the term to refer to a formalized insight into the very life of any organism. To this end, it identifies elements that are properly constitutive of the whole and it defines the tensional elements of each element in relationship to the others [...] The term “grammaticality,” in turn, refers to a type of formalization that brings out in full these two aspects of the data. (p.28)

What is distinctive of a grammatical approach is the concern that all statements be systemically linked to each other. Hence the “power” of a grammar: the identification of one element identifies at the same time a whole set of filaments that associate this one element with a host of others. (p.28)

Central then to the notion of grammar is that it is a closed system; i.e., one that does not admit of any addition or changes (see below, 3.4.1). Or, rather, one that is so tightly construed that any change or addition must be considered in the light of its effect on the systemic configuration of the whole. (p.28)

The impact of grammar

In section 2.7 I deal with the impact of grammar:

Somewhat as a reductio ad absurdum, we may say that the entire repertory of possible sentences in a language is a sort of representation of that language, just as an unexcavated site contains the totality of phenomena and processes that constitute the site. But these are presentations with a zero degree of formalization, and hence wholly inadequate. (p.32)

Other relevant quotes

The closer the technique is to the intellectual dimension, the more critical the distinction. Take in particular the use of computers. State-of-the-art equipment is certainly desirable, but to what end if it is not clearly integrated in a method that gives it a specific purpose? It is in this respect, too, that the notion of grammar is important. An archaeological grammar spells out a method of analysis into which all the individual techniques neatly fit so as to produce an organic and well-integrated record. (p.52)

A Grammar of the Archaeological Record (Version 2, Beta release)

Introduction