Currie, Adrian (2016) Ethnographic Analogy, the Comparative Method, and Archaeological Special Pleading. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Ethnographic analogy, the use of comparative data from anthropology to inform reconstructions of past human societies, has a troubled history. Archaeologists often express concern about, or outright reject, the practice—and sometimes do so in problematically general terms. This is odd, as (or so I argue) the use of comparative data in archaeology is the same pattern of reasoning as the ‘comparative method’ in biology, which is a well-developed and robust set of inferences which play a central role in discovering the biological past. In pointing out this continuity, I argue that there is no ‘special pleading’ on the part of archaeologists in this regard: biologists must overcome analogous epistemic difficulties in their use of comparative data. I then go on to emphasize the local, empirically tractable ways in which particular ethnographic analogies may be licensed.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Currie, Adrian
Keywords:	Archaeology; Comparative method; Ethnographic analogy; Evidence; Uniformitarianism
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Anthropology Specific Sciences > Archaeology Specific Sciences > Biology
Depositing User:	Dr Adrian Currie
Date Deposited:	30 Apr 2018 00:43
Last Modified:	25 May 2019 17:02
Item ID:	14606
Official URL:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26774072
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Anthropology Specific Sciences > Archaeology Specific Sciences > Biology
Date:	2016
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/14606

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