Back to top: Hermeneutics
Meaning and values
There is an immediate relationship to the data in what we may call their raw state. But there must also be a mediated relatioship, mediated, that is, through an appropriation process which must ultimately depend on grammar – even though hermeneutics, as such, does not fall within the purview of grammar.
What hermeneutics seeks to do, is to identify how the material record, as such, may have a deeper meaning that points to values, and this on three levels.
Semiotics
Back to top: Hermeneutics
The relevance of grammar
A properly construed grammar is the trampoline to archaeological hermeneutics, via semiotics. There are two major steps in the process.
- Correlation of patterns. – A grammaticalized universe makes it possible to establish patterns and to see how they correlate. The formal dimension is well estalished and objective.
- Inference. – On the basis of such correlations, one may then safely and arguably draw inferences based on the regularity of the patterns.
For an example see the semiotic interpretation of a conical cup under Principles of epistemics. The UGR contains a large number of such semiotic inferences (e.g., the structure in A12 understood as an abi).
Back to top: Hermeneutics
Referentiality and semiotics
The example just quoted shows how, in a broad sense, we may say that the process just outlined is that of semiotics. As indicated in the discussion of the conical cup, semiotics attributes meaning by identifying the referential dimension inherent in an object, and this process, rooted in grammar, is the proper springboard to hermeneutics.
Back to top: Hermeneutics
From semiotics to hermeneutics
Building on what we have just seen, hermeneutics offers the possibility to establish referentiality not just with an object, but with the wider reaches that the object held for the native carriers of a given cultural tradition, whether emotional, spiritual, or simply a as matter of etiquette – as with the conical cup in our example.
Back to top: Hermeneutics
References
Cipolla 2025
B mKB 2024 Balzan Dirt and People pp.21-23
Wylie 2023
Back to top: Hermeneutics