Explanation in Archeology

Abstract

The leading candidate for a peculiarly historical explanation, the so-called “genetic explanation,” can be shown to be nomological in character; the mere recitation of a list of successive events is not an explanation at all unless there are implicit laws or empirical generalizations linking the events. There seems to be general agreement among anthropologists that it is, at least by intention and aspiration, however short it may fall of the deductive elegance of physics. The goal of anthropology is presumably the explanation of the similarities and differences of customary behavior in all possible pairs of societies, past and present, and common knowledge of human dispositions is clearly not equal to this task. Anthropologists are devising objective measuring instruments, looking for association, and thinking about connecting generalizations. The only point to be made is that a historical science is no less a science for being historical.

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