Archaeology of Art: Theoretical Frameworks

FIORE, D.

Enciclopedia of Global Archaeology. Section: Archaeology of Art

Springer

Año: 2014; p. 436 - 449

Thisessay presents a critical and systematic analysis of the main theoreticalframeworks used in the archaeology of art from the 19th to the 21st century,and outlines their main contributions and limitations. These frameworks aredefined as sets of concepts used by researchers to approach the analysis andinterpretation of visual imagery in the archaeological record, which includesmaterials such as rock art (petroglyphs, paintings and geoglyphs), portable art(decorated tools and artefacts with no practical-mechanical function),sculptures, friezes, body ornaments (beads, pendants, etc.), potterydecoration, etc. Four analytical levels are defined and discussed in this essayin order to explain the variations of these theoretical frameworks along thehistory of archaeology: a) ontology: the way art is defined and conceived fromeach specific theoretical perspective; b) epistemology: the way art analysisand/or interpretation is carried out, i.e. whether is uses induction and/ordeduction, whether it focuses on qualitative descriptions and/or searches forquantitative patterns, whether it uses one or more lines of independentevidence (e.g. image data, technical data, spatial data, archaeofaunal data,ethnographic data, etc.); c) the concepts which are central to each framework,which are used in research questions and in the description, explanation andinterpretation of materials and data; d) methodology: the practical ways inwhich data are collected and variables are measured in the field, analysed inthe laboratory, and presented within and beyond the academic community. Unlikeother theoretical reviews, this essay argues that the frameworks used in thearchaeology of art originate from a combined set of theoretical sources. Thus,it is shown that many theoretical approaches to art stem from widerarchaeological theoretical frameworks (e.g. culture-history, processual,post-processual, evolutionary-ecological, see below) and thus their conceptsare mainly applications of their particular conceptions about past humancultures to the analysis and interpretation of artistic materials in thearchaeological record. It is also shown how other approaches derive from theapplication of theoretical frameworks generated in other disciplines thanarchaeology, such as anthropology, linguistics, art history or sociology (e.g.structuralism, semiotics, historical materialism, see below). Finally, otherframeworks focus particularly on the development of hypotheses about art´sfunctions (e.g. shamanism, art as landmarks along caravan routes, notationhypotheses, etc., see below) which have been developed to tackle specificcases-studies. In sum, a total of 15 theoretical frameworks of the archaeologyof art are critically reviewed and discussed using the four analytical levelsproposed in the entry (ontology/epistemology/concepts/methods), explainingtheir links to the wider frameworks they stem from, and providing a new criticalstudy of their forms of knowledge construction in our discipline.