Between inventiveness and interpretation: ground stones

Year 2021, , 175 - 200, 20.12.2021

Adnan Baysal

https://doi.org/10.36891/anatolia.936537

Abstract

In Turkey, archaeological research has developed more with the scientific understanding of 'doing excavation' than a concept of 'the adequacy of digging'. Of course, archaeological research should involve excavation, but scientific understanding cannot be limited to this. Excavation is one of the techniques used by the science of archaeology. When we start from this point, excavation work should be as successful at knowing and understanding the past which is the essence of science, creating knowledge of this and sharing this information, using it and making it accessible to everyone as at excavation itself. However much archaeological work is generally understood as the ritual of excavating the soil to find 'new unknowns' (or 'newly re-discovereds’), and, having restored them, giving them to museums, this situation only makes up an accumulation of material culture and its visuality. Despite the focus on the enrichment of Turkish archaeology since the 1960s with interdisciplinary research and the putting into practice of multidisciplinary research, today it is difficult to move on without asking to what extent this has been successful. Archaeology, even if it has been reduced to the scale of excavation today, is a discipline generally evaluated as the system of the scientific practice of excavation operating within the triangle of theory, method, and practice. Today we can observe that it is in a position where the first of these is largely ignored, the second has not yet been seen and the third is taken directly or sometimes piecemeal from the excavation systems developed by German, American or English archaeology. Within this archaeology, based on the third process of the triangle, interpretation, which needs to take place after excavation, is among the most important of the missing components. Based on this general view, this study of ground stone industries, which have long been neglected in the archaeology of this country, is shaped in such a way as to be an example. In this study, which underlines the question of where the stone tools in question are and where they should lie in archaeology between inventiveness and interpretation, an attempt is made to lay the foundation for ground stones in the first corner of the above-mentioned triangle. Also, however much it is claimed that archaeology is a multidisciplinary field, I aim to show that this is not true when looked at from the perspective of ground stones.

Keywords

ground stones, inventiveness, creativity, interpretation, macrolithics, lithic technology

Supporting Institution

yok

Project Number

yok

Thanks

Editöre ve hakemlere zamanları ve tavsiyeleri için şimdiden çok teşekkür ediyorum.

References

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