Theory and CRM (part 2): Smell Bacon?

It isn't possible to operate without theoretical commitments, not really. So there is a dominant theory in CRM, we just don't admit it. If I had to describe this theory, it is a mix of Baconian inductivism and, well, animism. I'll tackle animism later, so first: Baconian inductivism. Lots of syllables, simple idea. Insofar as we have a disciplinary commitment, beyond regulatory hoop-jumping, it can be summed up as total description ("grokking the site in its fullness" to quote the late Ned Heite) and adding to the dataset of sites. We don't need theory because we are simply describing, using standard methods--thought is unnecessary when action is guided solely by procedure.

The people who will need theory are the proverbial "future archaeologists," the obsessed unfortunates who will read all our reports, see the patterns in the data, synthesize them, and, long after we are dead, finally give our professional careers meaning. There will be jet packs in the future too.

Thus ethical concerns in CRM often find shape, not in the hope for social justice or a better society, but in the nervously detailed recording of assorted variables that are chosen, not for their contribution to research, but because "future archaeologists might want to know." Our professional careers can be Kafkaesque exercises where we are forever accumulating evidence to defend ourselves before a tribunal that doesn't yet exist, whose charges we don't know, and whose needs we can't understand. No wonder we drink so much.


Josef K, Lena, and the "dataset" (The Trial 1962)