Grammar

Giorgio Buccellati – May 2026

“Grammar”

A grammar is the tool of choice for an epistemic analysis of any body of data. It defines an organism in terms of how it is known: seeing an object as an organic set of entities and relationships, it translates this set into an organic epistemic structure, i. e., a structure that reflects how we know that bdy of data.

If reduced to a set of rules and instructions, grammar is then seen merely as an operational manual. It is instead, much more meaningfully, the method through which we can articulate in an organic way our knowlegde of the “five” archaeologies.

The five epistemics

Each of the five archaeologies has, in fact, its own grammar.

And it is especially suited for dealing with the archaeological record, multifarious as it is.

The threshold

(1) Outer view

Even a first impression approach to one or more archaeological sites entails a grammar, in a variety of shades. A scholar would have assumptions about issues like the nature and the time of occupation, based on a variety of clues, such as surface finds or information from other sources.

People living in the territory would develop a general notion about the site(s) hiding ancient settlement(s) or monument(s) in plain view. Their grammar may elaborate and introduce interpretive elements, some even based on fantasy. Some elements might be exploited for ideological and political purposes such as, for example, with the Roman “fasces” (a bundle of rods with an axe, emblem of the power of punishment) as used by Fascism

it is the mystique fo the “ruins”

(2) Non-contextual excavation

One speaks of this as an “uncontrolled” excavation, but it is, in fact, highly controlled. It aims to uncover specific “things,” to act quickly and to avoid detection.

(3) Contextual excavation and typology

This is the most complex grammar, and the only one we are considering here.

(4) Typological

(5) Study of the past

The grammar of contextual excavation and typology

This grammar deals only with “archaeology” as understood in the first acceptation, as it relates to excavation in a strict sense. This is the one aspect that is exclusive to archaeology, whereas the study of material culture independently of its original context depends on methods developed in the study of history, art, architecture, and such.

What is “grammar”

– presupposition of live language

in archaeology, a live tradition

The archaeological record, unlike a language, is not so organic. It is vast congeries of disaggregated data. But for few exceptions, the constituents as found are not the constituents as operative. Hence their grammar must go through two intermediate steps, one that defines the “things” as found, the other that defines them in terms of their orignal function and thus re-aggregates them into wholeness. It is, we might say, a grammar at the power of two.

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The quality of a grammar is judged in part by its “power,” i. e., the effectiveness with which it can account for the data on the one hand and generate an output on the other. In the case of a linguistic grammar, this refers to a mutually understandable oral communication. In our context, this refers to how the totality of the data as found can be accounted for, in the first place, and then to how the data can be recomposed into unity. There are, therefore, two concomitant aspects.

The two aims of an archaeological grammar

creatying the referential record

Such a grammar is, we might say, a grammar at the power of two. There are two concomitant aspects:

how the totality of the data as found can be accounted for, i. e., how a grammar can document the disaggregated elements in their emplacement, and then
how the data can be recomposed into unity, i. e., how a grammar can lead to a reconstruction of the cultural whole to which the fragments give witness.

Hence a grammar of the archaeological record must go through two intermediate steps, one that defines the “things” as found, the other that defines them in terms of their original function and thus re-aggregates them into wholeness.

FOR REVIEW

In common usage, the term “grammar” is restricted to the linguistic domain: it refers to the description of a language and to the rules that govern it.

As I apply this concept to the archaeological record, we need to reflect on the wider implications of the term. The aim is to show how the term so understood provides a powerful conceptual tool for looking in an organic way at the cognitive process that accompanies every excavation. Both the epistemic and the hermeneutic dimensions of the archaeological endeavor can thus be more properly controlled and explained. The grammar looks at the excavation process as an organic whole, which must be seen precisely in its wholeness.

A fundamental corollary of a grammatical approach is that it makes it possible to seamlessly translate the multiplicity of data emerging from the excavation into a complex interplanar digital publication that affects all aspects of the excavation process. [refer to publication section below]

The grammatical approach proposed here differs substantially from the way in which one normally looks at archaeology from an epistemological point of view. See for example Bednarik 2003 [add titles]

The limits of experience

hermeneutics

refr to appropriation

speaking a language vs. living a tradition

Here, too, the tradition is broken, but not dead

On this see Critique, articles

References

B 1996 OB grammar

interactional linguistics (Minna) ~ presentation and hermeneutics – see maieutics

see pragmatics and maieutics

Meshel 2014; McAffee 2015 review of Meshel

Christopher Woodward, In ruins (Rather than serving as a guidebook to archaeological sites, In Ruins investigates the idea of ruins and the emotions they evoke. Woodward examines how ruined structures can symbolize lost civilizations, mortality, memory, nostalgia, and the passage of time. The book traces changing attitudes toward ruins, particularly the rise of the eighteenth-century fascination with picturesque decay and romantic melancholy.

Piranesi can also be read alongside modern thinkers such as Michael Shanks, Christopher Tilley, and Laurent Olivier. All, in different ways, treat archaeological remains not merely as evidence but as active mediators between material traces, memory, and imagination—a perspective that resonates strongly with Piranesi’s vision of ruins as living presences rather than inert relics.