Broken traditions

Giorgio Buccellati – June 2025

Archaeology as the recovery of broken traditions

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 burial), 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 for us.

We deal, in other words, with 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. The data are mute, but they are indeed witnesses. The task of the archaeologist is to record the document and understand what it witnesses.

On this see Critique, articles

The process of “recovery”

The question arises: how can we claim objectivity in aiming to ascertain how these things “worked” in their original context? and, consequently, what meaning may they have had for their users?

The process goes through three steps.

1. Grammar: the brokenness. – The data must be recorded as found, in their brokenness. Each element that is excavated is identified according to a set of criteria that is independent of potential meaning – as to its location (emplacement) and formal traits (typology)

2. Semiotics: function. – One must then identify patterns that correlate the fragments in their disaggregation. The regularity of patterns cannot be accidental, and thus we can plausibly infer that the clustering of elements signals an original intention and c.onseauently an original function.

3. Hermeneutics: meaning. – Correlating the data as found to a variety of other data from the excavations and behyond, we mayk then infer what was the meaning of what has been recovered, both for the ancients and for us.

The UGR model

The UGR system prioritizes the three steps in sequence.

At the very moment of excavation, thegrammatical approach is given absolute priority and total attention < in a double direction. First, every single element is described as to its emplacement, deposition and typology in full detail. Second, the data so analyzed remain forever part of the record.
Still during excavations, but also subsequently,, there is a sustained effort at providing a semiotic definition of the elements, both in terms of their being classified into substantive wholes and in terms of identifying the specific traits that pertiane to the ir assumed function.
Largely after the excavation is over, often at great distance in time, the greater interpretive effort brings to bear on what are perceived to be the more “important” elements the weight of comparative and intgegrtive analysis, seeking to situate them in what is assumed to have been their context in actual life (the “Sitz im Leben”).

An example

As an example we may look at the underground structure whlich came to be identified as a Hulrrian abi found in unit A12.

Grammar: permanently placed stones forming a cylindrical enclosure include a number of superimposed layers, each containing a variety of movable items, all of which are documented individually and in terms of their location.
Semiotics: the clustering of animal bones shows an unusual pattern, with a preponderance of bones of piglets and puppy dogs; this pattern is repeated in all superimposed layers, from which one can infer that the structure served a specific purpose over a long period of time.
Hermeneutics: comparing these data with written texts from Hittite culture, which is known to be related to the Hurrian population at Urkesh, it can be concluded that this structure served as a channel to the Netherworld, known in Hurrian as abi.