Grammar

Giorgio Buccellati – May 2026

The concept

Even a first impression approach to an archaeological site entails a grammar” – but it is at its most rudimentary. One knows that it hides an ancient settlement and one may even conjecture an approoximate date. The grammar may elaborate and introduce interpretive elements, some even based on fantasy

It is against the background of the broken traditions that we must view the notion of grammar.

Each of the different “archaeologies” has its own “grammar.” Even the

see especially broken traditions

– presupposition of live langhuage

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

A grammar is the tool of choice for an epistemic analysis of any body of data. And it is especially suited for dealing with the archaeological record.

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