Archaeology

Giorgio Buccellati – July 2026

The five epistemics

We “know” broken traditions in different ways

(1) Pre-excavation

desultory, superficial, firsthand, direect. immediate, first impression

(2) Non-contextual excavation

(3) Contextual excavation and typology

excav + typology

(4) Typological

(5) Study of the past

The two archaeologies

In current use, the term “archaelogy” has two parallel acceptations.

Anyone “knows” a site even before excavation: it is the most generic and least differentiated epistemic confrontation.

We , through excavation first and then through an assessment of what has been extricated from the ground.

Non-archaeological excavations

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.

Stricto sensu, the term assumes excavation as the primary epistemic goal, a process which archaeology shares with no other discipline. It is on the basis of such prior stratigraphic analysis that the subsequent step of typological analysis is taken, a process that is shared with a number of other disciplines.

A Mesopotamian “tell” like Urkesh is a prime example of a setting to which stratigraphic analysis applies. There was no standing monument visible when excavations started, and most likely none had been in view for some three millennia.

Lato sensu, the term does not include stratigraphic analysis. It starts directly with the task of typological analysis.

This applies to standing monuments as diverse as Stonehenge, the pyramids or the Colosseum, and to objects that were not excavated with proper archaeological method and in the best of cases are housed in museums.

develop rather the “study of the past”

“Archaeology”

The term “archaeology” is broadly understood to refer to two distinct epistemic activities.

At the excavation moment, data are confronted in a disaggregate state, with discrete elements embedded in an amorphous mass. These elements must be disengaged from a context that for the most part was not built up intentionally.
Besides excavation, we confront structures that stand on their own out of the soil, retaining their own original integrity, however fragmentary this may be; and objects that have either been preserved outside of any original context, or have been extracted from their context without regard for the context itself.

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.