Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-03T05:06:48.630Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multiple Analogies in Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Cameron Shelley
Cameron Shelley*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Analogies have always had an important place in the reconstruction of past cultures by archaeologists. However, archaeologists and philosophers have objected on various grounds to the importance granted to analogy. Heider proposed the use of multiple analogies—analogies incorporating several sources—as a way of overcoming these objections. However, the merits and even the meaning of this proposal have not been explored adequately. This article presents an examination of instances of multiple analogies in the archaeological literature in order to motivate an adequate account of them in terms of the Multiconstraint theory of analogy, and in order to examine their role in archaeological inference. This article does not end the debate over analogies once and for all, but it does bring some needed clarity to this issue of central importance to the philosophy of archaeology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 579 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48108-1003.

‡

Thanks to Paul Thagard and an anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier versions of this paper. This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References

Ascher, R. (1961), “Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17(4): 317–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L. R. (1967a), “Comments on K. C. Chang's ‘Major Aspects of the Interrelationship of Archaeology and Ethnology’”, Current Anthropology 8(3), 234–235.Google Scholar
Binford, L. R. (1967b), “Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking: The Use of Analogy in Archaeological Reasoning”, American Antiquity 32(1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L. R. (1993), “Bones for Stones: Considerations of Analogues for Features Found on the Central Russian Plain”, in Soffer, O. and Praslov, N. D. (eds.), From Kostenki to Clovis: Upper Paleolithic-Paleo-Indian Adaptation. New York: Plenum Press, 101–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burstein, M. H. (1988), “Combining Analogies in Mental Models”, in Helman, D. H. (ed.), Analogical Reasoning: Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy (Synthese Library 197). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 179–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, D. and Reisberg, D. (1992), “What an Image Depicts Depends on What an Image Means”, Cognitive Psychology 24(2), 145–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chang, K. C. (1967), “Major Aspects of the Interrelationship of Archaeology and Ethnology”, Current Anthropology 8(3), 227–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copi, I. M. and Burgess-Jackson, K. (1992), Informal Logic (2nd ed.). New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Donnan, C. B. (1971), “Ancient Peruvian Potter's Marks and Their Interpretation Through Ethnographic Analogy”, American Antiquity 36(4), 460–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finke, R. A. (1989), Principles of Mental Imagery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, J. W. (1992), “Observations on the Late Pleistocene Bone Assemblage from the Lamb Spring Site, Colorado”, in Stanford, D. and Day, J. (eds.), Ice Age Hunters of the Rocky Mountains. Niwot: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1983), “Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework”, Cognitive Science 7(2), 155–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. N. (1996), “Visual Models and Scientific Judgement”, in Bairgrie, B. S. (ed.), Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Glasgow, J. I. and Papadias, D. (1929), “Computational Imagery”, Cognitive Science 17(3), 355–394.Google Scholar
Gould, R. A. (1980), Living Archaeology (New Studies in Archaeology). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, R. A. (1990), Recovering the Past. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Gould, R. A. and Watson, P. J. (1982), “A Dialogue on the Meaning and Use of Analogy in Ethnoarchaeological Reasoning”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1(4), 355–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grayson, D. K. (1983), The Establishment of Human Antiquity. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gunther, R. T. (1945), Life and Letters of Edward Lhwyd (Early Science in Oxford 14). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haynes, G. (1991), Mammoths, Mastodons, and Elephants: Biology, Behavior, and the Fossil Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heider, K. G. (1967). “Archaeological Assumptions and Ethnographical Facts: A Cautionary Tale from New Guinea”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 23(1), 52–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hesse, M. B. (1966), Models and Analogies in Science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. (1983), The Present Past: An Introduction to Anthropology for Archaeologists. London: B. T. Batsford.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, D. R. (1995), Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Holyoak, K. J., Gentner, D., and Kokinov, B. (eds.) (1998), Advances in Analogy Research: Integration of Theory and Data for the Cognitive, Computational, and Neural Sciences (NBU Series in Cognitive Science). Sofia: New Bulgarian University.Google Scholar
Holyoak, K. J. and Thagard, P. (1995), Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, G. (1990), “Imagery Effect on Problem Solving”, in Hampson, P. J., Marks, D. F., and Richardson, J. T. E. (eds.), Imagery: Current Developments (International Library of Psychology). London: Routledge, 169–196.Google Scholar
Kelley, J. H. and Hanen, M. P. (1988), Archaeology and the Methodology of Science. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Keynes, J. M. (1921), A Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan & Co.Google Scholar
Leyton, M. (1989), “Inferring Causal History from Shape”, Cognitive Science 13(3), 357–387.Google Scholar
Leyton, M. (1992), Symmetry, Causality, Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G. E. R. (1966), Polarity and Analogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mill, J. S. (1872), A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (8th ed.). London: Longman.Google Scholar
Millman, A. B. and Smith, C. L. (1997), Darwin's Use of Analogical Reasoning in Theory Construction. Metaphor and Symbol 12(3), 159–187.Google Scholar
Mitchell, M. (1993), Analogy-Making as Perception: A Computer Model. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Paivio, A. (1983), “The Empirical Case for Dual Coding”, in Yuille, J. C. (ed.), Imagery, Memory, and Cognition: Essays in Honor of Allan Paivio. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 307–332.Google Scholar
Shelley, C. (1996), “Visual Abductive Reasoning in Archaeology”, Philosophy of Science 63(2), 278–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, C. (i.p.), “Multiple Analogies in Evolutionary Biology”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Biomedical and Biological Sciences.Google Scholar
Spiro, R. J., Feltovich, P. J., Coulson, R. L., and Anderson, D. K. (1989), “Multiple Analogies for Complex Concepts: Antidotes for Analogy-Induced Misconception in Advanced Knowledge Acquisition”, in Vosniadou, S. and Ortony, A. (eds.), Similarity and Analogical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Talalay, L. E. (1987). “Rethinking the Function of Clay Figurine Legs from Neolithic Greece: An Argument by Analogy”, American Journal of Archaeology 91(2), 161–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thagard, P. and Shelley, C. (1997), Abductive Reasoning: Logic, Visual Thinking, and Coherence, in Dalla Chiara, M. L., Doets, K., Mundici, D., and Benthem, J. van (eds.), Logic and Scientific Methods (Synthese Library 259). Dordrecht: Kluwer, 413–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trigger, B. G. (1987), A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, A. and Shipman, P. (1996), The Wisdom of Bones: In Search of Human Origins. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson.Google Scholar
Wylie, M. A. (1982), “An Analogy by Any Other Name is Just as Analogical: A Commentary on the Gould-Watson Dialogue”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1(4), 382–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, M. A. (1985), “The Reaction Against Analogy”, in Schiffer, M. B. (ed.), Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 8. Orlando: Academic Press, 63–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar