Introduction

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Archaeology

If we take archaeology to refer, in a strict sense, to the excavation of a matrix that includes a multitude of fragments, sometimes preserved in their original aggregation (as with a buril) but for the most part disjointed from each other, we have by definition a body of data that is no longer part of a living tradition that can interpret the data.

This is a broken tradition: one that has no living carriers, no inheritors of a culture of which we have only fossils, mute witnesses of a life once lived.

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Recovery of data

They data are mute, but they are indeed witnesses. For the archaeologist there emerges then a dual task:

1. the data must be recorded in their brokeneess, and
2. one must identify patterns that correlate the fragments in their disaggregation.

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Recovery of meaning

It is on this basis that we can claim objectivity in aiming to ascertain what meaning these data had for the then living carriers, and thus what meaning they may in turn have for us.

What was the nature of referentiality that these data had in gthe past, and how can we still make it our own today?

We thus have a threefold sequence in the recovery of meaning:

1. grammar
2. semiotics
3. hermeneutics

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The need for a global record

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The epistemic dimension