Archaeology

Giorgio Buccellati – July 2026

“Archaelogy”

Literally, the term refers to the way in which we “speak” (-logy) about “antiquity” (archaeo-), just as “theology” refers to speaking about god, “sociology” about society, “epistemology” about knowledge.

But “speaking” entails a form of knowledge. It refers, in other words, to an epistemic process: how do we know the object about which we are speaking?

This object of knowledge is generally understood to be what we have considered as broken traditions: we speak about an antiquity which is detached from our experience. It is in this sense that “archaeology” differs, in common understanding, from “history,” which includes a past with which we can more easily identify.

The epistemic dimension

There is an untold number of “archaeologies,” which can be differentiated on the basis of their object (Mesopotamian, industrial, ecc.), the technique (underwater, digital, ec.), the method (processual, post-processual, etc.), and more.

Here, we will distinguish six different ways in which we “know” broken traditions. We “know” these traditions in different ways depending on both the object and the approach. We look on this page at the object (archaeology), and will look in the next page at the approach (grammar).

The six epistemics

Espistemically, we may distinguish six archaeologies, as follows.

(1) Outer view

Anyone “knows” a monument standing as a ruin or a site that needs excavation: it is the most generic and least differentiated epistemic confrontation. A hill that is known to hide an ancient settlement (tell Mozan) or a structure so badly damaged that it is only a shadow of its former self (the Colosseum) are viewed from the outside, in their current state. It is a “superficial” epistemic confrontation, meaning that the object is seen in its surface appearance, without any meaningful insight into the wider frame of reference which lends it depth and substance.

The object in its present state acquires as if an identity of its own, a disembodied reality that acquires a new body, one that is disengaged from its original setting and, in a way, proposes a new authenticity that replaces the search for the live dimension in which the object may be situated.

(2) Non-contextual excavation

Excavation is the process through which we confront data in a disaggregate state, with discrete elements embedded in an amorphous mass. As we do this, we disengage a context – and the decisive question is whether or not we seek to define the context.

A non-contextual excavation aims to extract individual elements for their own sake, as if items in a safe that has contained them for their intrinsic value. It is the hallmark of looting, an archaeology of sorts, which has such neghative effects as to have also been declared illegal.

(3) Contextual excavation and correlative typology

The proper type of excavation is one that aims to understand the context as the matrix within which the “things” are found. In this case, archaeology refers, stricto sensu, to the excavation of a matrix that includes a multitude of fragments, sometimes preserved in their original aggregation (as with a burial), but for the most part disjointed from each other. We have then, by its very nature, a body of data that is no longer part of a living tradition that can interpret the data for us.

As individual elements are extracted from the matrix, they must be described according to a typology that relies on well defined formal characteristics

(4) Constructional and experimental archaeology

Costructional ¹ archaeology see JP

See urkesh,org

(5) Typological analysis

Lato sensu, the term does not include stratigraphic analysis. It starts directly with the task of typological analysis.

This applies to standing monuments as diverse as Stonehenge, the pyramids or the Colosseum, and to objects that were not excavated with proper archaeological method and in the best of cases are housed in museums.

Besides excavation, we confront structures that stand on their own out of the soil, retaining their own original integrity, however fragmentary this may be; and objects that have either been preserved outside of any original context, or have been extracted from their context without regard for the context itself.

(6) Study of the past

= history, but differs because it is generally understood

The primacy of contextual archaeology

Stricto sensu, the term assumes excavation as the primary epistemic goal, a process which archaeology shares with no other discipline. It is on the basis of such prior stratigraphic analysis that the subsequent step of typological analysis is taken, a process that is shared with a number of other disciplines.

A Mesopotamian “tell” like Urkesh is a prime example of a setting to which stratigraphic analysis applies. There was no standing monument visible when excavations started, and most likely none had been in view for some three millennia. Only a few surface sherds gave us a clue as to the potential occupational periods, plus two objects that had been sold on the market and could be assumed to come from the site.

Theory and method

processual, post-processual, anthropology

Foucault: epistemic archaeology

Foucault’s L’archéologie du savoir marked an important transition in the

archaeology of epistemic process

fudnatinoal experience – as with our seeing the house first time

“Foucault calls this approach “archaeology” to emphasize that it uncovers the historical “layers” and rules that organize what can be said in a given period, rather than tracing continuous development of concepts or the intentions of individual authors. The work aims to define the objects, concepts, and procedures of this archaeological analysis and to distinguish it from more traditional approaches to texts, such as hermeneutics, intellectual biography, or the history of doctrines.

Archaeology thus distances itself from interpretive traditions that aim to recover a deeper, underlying truth of a text.

Change is described not as the gradual evolution of ideas but as a transformation in the rules that define what counts as a valid statement or a legitimate object of inquiry. This emphasis on discontinuity aligns with broader twentieth-century critiques of teleological history, while giving them a distinctive methodological articulation.

some readers hold that Foucault’s emphasis on anonymous rules eliminates agency, while others see The Archaeology of Knowledge as a preliminary step toward a more complex account of subject formation in his later work.

Source: “the-archaeology-of-knowledge” - Philopedia Read more: https://philopedia.org/works/the-archaeology-of-knowledge/

Notes

¹^ I use the term constructional to refer to what is known in German as “Bauforshung,” in French as “archéologie du bâti” or “archéologie du mur” and in English as “building archaelogy” or “buildings archaeoogy.”