Stanford Journal of Archaeology

THE DILEMMA OF CONTACT:

Archaeologys Ethics-Epistemology Crisis and the Recovery of the Pragmatic
Sensibility

Timothy Webmoor
Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University

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ABSTRACT
A consideration of cultures of contact for contemporary archaeological practice
necessarily involves engagements with non-archaeologists or local stakeholders. These
discussions in the literature tend to revolve around ethics. That is, the ethical
responsibility on the part of archaeologist to increasingly involve a public that has
strong associations with sites that archaeologists study and work at. This paper assays
the burgeoning literature devoted to the topic, and makes the claim that ethics is not
the right trench to be digging in. This is because the fundamental issues which fuel the
debate over whether to involve local stakeholders are at core epistemological
dilemmas. Operating according to the deeply ingrained epistemological tradition of
correspondence theory, archaeology faces a crisis of doing the right thing ethically and
incorporating subjective values into archaeological representations or retaining
objective representations and circumscribing non-archaeological participation. The
paper fills out this assessment by examining two archaeological projects from two
different contexts: a Traditional Cultural Property in the United States; and the
UNESCO World Heritage site of Teotihuacn, Mexico. Pragmatic principles of
knowledge justification, a third-party philosophical tradition eschewing corres-
pondence theories of objectivity, are discussed as a neither/nor solution to the current
ethics-epistemology crisis. Implementing a mediating archaeology, based upon
pragmatic justification of archaeological knowledge, is discussed in relation to an on-
going project at Teotihuacn.

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IS THERE A DILEMMA OF CONTACT?

As way of introduction, I think it first important to explain what this dilemma is all
about. Such a full-stop word does wonders in academia by underscoring the
importance of inconsistencies in reasoning which were overlooked; or, more likely,
felt to be satisfactorily dealt with as to not warrant such a red-light signifier. And the
very reaction of audiences to dropping dilemma in a title quickly breaks down the
range of reactions to a full spectrum. Yet, as we might expect, the spectrum refracts
between two poles: those immediately put off by such words in a mature archaeology
where intractable problems have long been mused over (and solved?); and those
curious as to what the dilemma could represent for archaeologyfor me to explain
myself.
With currency of talk in the human sciences leaning away from binaries,
unification or such poles of reaction, why might I still insist upon the divisiveness of a
two-horned dilemma? Though my approach is aware of the entire spectrum of
sentiments, I am going to argue from the premise that unless the concerns of the two
extremes are addressed, the middling reactions tend to ignore inconsistencies and go
about business as usual. Analogous to a bi-partisan political system, there simply rests
the reassurance that pulls in two directions inexorably compromise for the middle.
With statistics, a mode, medium or mean of data are incalculable without defined limit
values on either side of a distribution. And like the predictable reactions to the term
dilemma, I will argue that there are two limit-defining reactions in current
archaeological discussions of stakeholder groups, or non-archaeological interest
groups, that a social or anthropological archaeology engaged with cultures of contact
ought to consider more closely. (At the outset, I must disclaim that I am going to
assume the necessity of such discussions themselves, particularly in countries such as
Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand, as such informing predilection
was the inspiration for the current volume).
In this paper, I want to suggest a third party, and outline the tenements of a
third movement which, though wider than and gaining momentum outside of
archaeology, has yet to be seriously discussed in the discipline. While such a sensibility
or third party approach, what I am tagging mediating archaeology, must be
discussed later, at the outset I want to identify its legacy of crossing well-worn, extra-
disciplinarian divides between analytic-continental philosophy, science-humanities,
objectivism-subjectivism, fact-value and so forth. Such pragmatic thought has derived
from a curious imbroglio of post-positivist philosophy and ethnography and has been
applied in the trenches of the science wars with science and technology studies (STS).
Acknowledging my influence at the beginning will aid in anticipating the movement I

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am wanting to push for, highlight my intellectual debts and, critically, mobilize

historical case studies for why I feel such recent thinking not only is appropriate for
archaeology and its most divisive issue, but why archaeological practice is form-fit to
contribute to such thinking as well. Indeed, archaeology has historically and continues
to sit atop a humanities-natural science split and, as a consequence, has developed a
unique sensibility of practice that cannot be properly located in either camp or in a
hybrid of the two. As I will draw out, this archaeological sensibility is a pragmatic
sensibility. As the discipline has little discussed pragmatic thought, the time is right for
an identification of this unique sensibility against the backdrop of a contrastive
problem.
My conclusion that there exists an ethics-epistemology crisis fracturing
archaeology along reactive lines is based upon the burgeoning literature addressed to
such anxiety (Bender 1998; Bray 2001; Carmichael 1994; Hodder 2004; Lynot and
Wylie 1995; Meskell 1998; Kehoe Nelson 1990; Nicholas and Andrews 1997;
Patterson Schmidt 1995; Swidler et al. 1997; Vitelli 1996; Zimmerman et al. 2003.
The more acrimonious exchanges tend to constitute manifestos for or against such
inclusion and are lime-lighted in the flurry of scholarly journal articles: Anyon and
Ferguson 1995; Fotiadis 1993; Goldstein and Kintigh 1991; Green et al. 2003; Hale
2002; Hemming 2000; Hodder 2002; Marshall 2002; Mason 2000; McGuire 1992;
Meighan 1992; Meskell 2002; Mulvaney, 1991; Oyuela-Caycedo et al. 1997; Politis
2001; Powell et al. 1993; Shepherd 2003). I will briefly discuss my own work with
governmental archaeology in the United States, as well as my on-going project at
Teotihuacn, Mexico. For academics what better diagnostic is there than literary
output? Such output has revolved centripetally around topics of archaeological ethics
and indigenous or non-archaeological stakeholders. This is the archaeological-scape
of post-NAGPRA familiar to many of us, encompassing the horizon of even those
archaeologists not directly working in compliance with mandatory statutes or in highly
politicized contexts. Why might this be so? Why is recent discussion of ethics so visible
in professional society debates, at conference proceedings and in the literature? Is this
evidence of the dilemma of which I am trying to convince you?
I want to put forward that it is not ethics per se that grabs our attention and
preoccupies us. Ethical conduct certainly is an admirable compass point for orienting
professional paths. Yet what the discussions of ethics rarely directly address, but which
drives the more public debates, is epistemology, or questions over a theory of knowledge
for archaeological reasoning (although notable exceptions include Mason 2000;
Watkins 2000; Watkins 2001; Wylie 2002; Zimmerman 2001). Epistemology is as
troubling as it sounds. A mention of the word conjures stuffy, abstract reasoning and

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worse, rules of logic. None of which would square very well with the idea of
archaeology as a hands-on (and dirty) activity out there in some remote location.
What would archaeology have to do with this hallowed specialization of philosophy,
with the study of the nature of knowledge and justification? However, archaeology,
more than most other disciplines in either the sciences or humanities, has many hurdles
to jump in getting from the down and dirty of field work to accepted knowledge claims
of just what happened out there in the past. There are all sorts of epistemological
warnings which flash when archaeological reasoning goes about bridging past and
present, from objects in ruin in the present to subjects in the past. All of this
complicated further by the fact that archaeology, unlike the experimental sciences or
textual humanities, destroysor at least transformsthe tenuous remnants of
evidence it does have in its pursuit of explaining this tattered evidence. So while many
archaeologists, even those who have contributed to epistemological debates in the
discipline, feel its time to get-on with the doing of archaeology (Cowgill 1993,
Flannery 1973, 1982), or at the least to merge the rampant theorizing with the dirt and
field of practice (e.g. Hodder 1991, 8, 1999; Watson 1991, 272-3), the deflection to
ethics will, I argue, only deepen divides amongst archaeologists as core inclinations
formed by epistemological leanings only get buried. Particularly when the discipline is
involved not only in internal, theoretical wranglings, but, as it increasingly operates
in a post-colonial or postmodern setting, is mandated from external interests to
incorporate equally imbedded, non-western or local ideas about what counts as
knowledge.
While there were early, pre-NAGPRA cooperative projects that placed
priority on consultation and inclusion of non-archaeologists, it was the binding
legislation of 1990 which sparked such a controversy. And some of those involved in
the legislation, such as Echo-Hawk and Trope (2000) as well as early commentators
(Mason 2000), pin-pointed the divisive issue at the root: NAGPRA, particularly
section 7, paragraph a (25 U.S.C.A.7(a)4) mandates the consideration of folklore,
kinship and oral history in establishing cultural affinity for claims to repatriate
cultural material and/or human remains. Additionally, the following section 8
(ibid:8(b)a-c) prescribes punitive damages to insure compliance. Now, NAGPRAs
full statutes have already been discussed somewhat, and I leave full exegesis to those
more qualified (see esp. Echo-Hawk and Trope 2000; Mihesuah 2000). My point in
citing this particular section of the binding legislation is to underscore that, yes,
NAGPRA demands consultation with archaeological stakeholdersWatkins
legiethicsbut, fundamentally, it sets up as an outcome for such consultation the
altering of standards of evidence in archaeological reasoning. I believe this is what

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Wylie (2002, 243-4) presciently (and optimistically) acknowledges when she sees
non-scientific goals requiring productive transformation of the discipline; and
Zimmerman (2000, 2001) when he sees the development of a new and different
archaeology. A few other scholars on both sides of the spectrum I mentioned earlier
also anticipate the epistemological challenges and adjustments for the discipline
(Mason 2000; Echo-Hawk 2000; Zimmerman 2001, 170).
It is not the consultation process with the public interested in archaeology
which is the source of anxiety (though some may abjure even from this). I believe most
archaeologist have an inherent interest in communicating to the public about their
research. And some, stemming from familiarity of the debate in archaeology
concerning ethnographic analogy and ethno-archaeology, would probably agree that
consultation with stakeholders, at a minimum, may in fact helpfully expand the range
of models and potential hypotheses for testing (more of this later). So while there is
more work, particularly of a bureaucratic kind, there may be pay-offs for
archaeological reasoning as conceived in deductive or inferential modes. Additionally,
with ethical codes of professional societies (such as Society of Professional
Archaeologists (SOPA) or Society of American Archaeology (SAA)) setting the
expectation for consultation as professionally respectable, there really seems little point in
debating the need for ethics in archaeology. What still may be usefully debated, with
respect to ethics of inclusion, is the degree or scope of involvement based upon
underlying ethical models utilized (Intuitionism, Formalism, Contractarianism,
Teleological, etc) and this, contrary to how it is framed, rests on issues of
epistemology. So, to convince you of this, I want to turn attention to the
epistemology-engine (cf. Ihde and Selinger 2005) driving the discipline and why it has
broken down. Reparations are in order, but not in first order to the Other of
archaeology. Following the sage maxim put your own house in order before attending
to your neighbors, fixing the engine will drive the ethical change necessary down the
road.

DRIVING THE GREAT DIVIDE: REPRESENTATION AND ITS TWO-

LANE HIGHWAY
Now, to demonstrate I am not just a post-ism anthro-apologist hooking onto a bit of
legislation to wield deconstruction of traditional standards of practice, let us get
specific. An exploration of the dominant reactions to non-archaeological inclusion will
prompt an appeal to the alternate-party approach I stated above. An anticipation of the
change to the discipline may take two tracks depending upon the received-view that is
dominant in particular archaeological camps.

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The controversy over the status and admissibility of oral history within
alternate patterns of argument in archaeology is a good place to begin. In a series of
exchanges in Antiquity, Roger Echo-Hawk (2000) and Mason (2000)1 debated the
evidential status of such history, and how/if it should be incorporated into
archeological models of past mechanisms and processes. Mason argued vehemently that
oral history and other established lines of archaeological evidence were simply
irreconcilable due to oral history lacking several key, shared characteristics:
rational, open to verification, search for order via reductionism (Mason 2000,
240). The scientism in Masons dismissal is apparent if unsurprising. The crux for
Mason is that oral history cannot be demonstrably related to physical, real processes.
Thus it is relegated to entertainment (Mason 2000, 263). Though he does not
explicitly state his position on analogical reasoning, his argument indicates that oral
history would fall short in either the additional capacities of building potential
hypotheses (use in abduction) or as a converging form of evidence for more robust,
causal claims. For Mason, therefore, we can say that he launches an epistemological
argument against the mandated inclusion of oral testimony that authors such as Echo-
Hawk are proposing.
Echo-Hawk disputes the discrediting of oral history as particularistic, subjective
and lacking causal relation to identifiable physical processes. He cites the Arikara
testimony as long-term history of North America (2000, 267-70). In the paper, he does
two things which are of immediate interest. One, he assumes the veridical nature of the
oral account and re-designates it oral record; and two, as a record, he advocates its
complementary usage with the archaeological record for reconstruction of the past. It is
less for analogical reasoning than as a ready-made parallel account useful for bolstering
other lines of evidence in explanation by convergence. Roger Echo-Hawk (2000, 270-
2) suggests a similar realist stance to oral history as a complimentary source of
evidence.
The debate over how to integrate stakeholder participation, in this case the
status of oral history, revolves around not ethics, but around the informing
epistemological positions and their mutual compatibility. Such discussions that attend to
the details of how to incorporate non-archaeological stakeholders turn not on what is
ethically right, but on what is right. Additionally, the oral history debate refracts a
general prism for viewing one of the lanes (of the two I alluded to earlier) the discipline

1
Others have contributed assessments concerning the status of oral history and its place in archaeological
explanation, particularly Anyon et al 1996; Anyon et al 1997; Ferguson et al 1997. Two commentators
draw explicit and reasoned accounts for and against the incorporation of oral history in archaeological
explanation (see Mason 2000; Echo-Hawk 2000).

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is taking over the dilemma. I will call it realist-circumscription. Debated in

epistemological terms, those tending towards a realism hold that, irrespective of the
specific (and usually multiple) tactics of argument employedwhether nomothetic-
deductive, inferential model building, statistical modeling, analogical reasoning, etc.
the goal of archaeological inquiry will be to approximate the actual, preferably causal,
conditions which obtained in the past. It is a reconstructive effort to mirror in
arguments the selected-for conditions responsible for the archaeological record.
Obviously there will be a range of diversity with respect to both scale and scope of
these causal factors, depending upon the informing position. So they may range from
large syntheses aiming high for general and widespread covering-laws, or they may
start inductively, building from more local and ephemeral details, to posit less
subsuming factors.
For involvement of non-archaeological audiences, a sweep of the literature
establishes a coherent pattern of involvement of stakeholders via induction to
normative archaeological methodology and theory based upon this overall stance to
reconstruction. Thus participation, even if untoward such as the proposal of an
alternate (oral) history, is incorporated into a realist framework for sharpening the
archaeological image of the past. Such a response to stakeholder participation makes
historical sense as the discipline already has an extant body of theoretical literature
going back to the early 20th century discussing methods for enriching the source-side
of models for testing. A common thread to such positions, whether aligned specifically
with deductive and inductive positions, is the ability for non-archaeological record
sources to add robustness to the interpretation of the record. Among such positions,
ethnoarchaeology, ethnographic analogy, and standpoint theory may be identified as
practices oriented towards enriching source side parameters for subsequent testing
against the subject side of the record (Wylie 1989, 1992). Some may even propose
radically unexpected models for testing. The overall goal is a better, more objective
representation of past.
This seems common-sensically sound, but such a realist-circumscription approach
begins to break down when apparently incommensurable conceptual schemes for
determining desired knowledge and evaluative principles are warranted, as with
Traditional Cultural Properties (TCPs) and sacredness as a causal explanation for and
criterion of significance (King 2003; developing from Bulleting 38 of the National
Park Service, see Parker and King 1990). Such post-NAGPRA amendments to the

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National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)2 problematize such an incorporative

approach where stakeholder participation is limited to an application of, and education
in, this normative archaeological frameworka confined participation as trained-
archaeologist. As Parker and King (1990) outline for identification and evaluation of
TCPs in the States under new National Park Service (NPS) guidelines, a site may be a-
archaeological under normative definitions lacking evenas with the case of Mount
Shasta for instancesubstantive archaeological material. Nevertheless, Bulletin 38
stipulates the consideration of TCPs as significant and amenable to National Register
protection, despite the acknowledgement that the criteria for establishing significance
does not necessarily entail the presence of artefacts. Instead, the criteria discuss the
local valorization and usage of locales that hold significance for cultural practices.
A case in point is a site documented by myself for the US Forest Service on the
Commanche National Grasslands (Webmoor 2003). The paucity of diagnostic surface
material and lack of sub-soil deposits all, under standard NHPA section 106 criteria,
lead to a determination of the site as unlikely to contribute significantly to an
understanding of prehistory and thus insignificant and not eligible for inclusion on
National Register for protection (FIGURE 1). However, when told by representatives
from the Comanche Tribal Council of Oklahoma that the ephemeral site was a vision-
questing locale, significance could be conferred based upon local attribution of
sacredness. Additionally, subsequent documentation proved contentious as even the
disclosure (GPS coordinates) of the site on State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO)
forms was contested. In the literature, such incongruous valorizations of the past may
border on outright acrimony, with charges of scientific imperialism (White Deer
1997) or further co-optation of alterity by western discourse (Gnecco 1999), not to
mention the more mainstream media commentary by Vine Deloria Jr. (1997). As
counter-productive as such outright declarative characterizations seem to most
archaeologists, there is legal leverage (particularly in the United States under NAGPRA
and NHPA amendments) for demanding determination and control of archaeological
sites.3 Again, as with issues of oral history, the controversy revolves not around ethical
2
The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966 (Public Law 89-665) established the
framework for conducting archaeology in the United States on public land or with public funds which is
still utilized in its rudiments today. Expansion of the National Register of Historic Places, establishment
of an Advisory Council to adjudicate compliance, and detailing the Section 106 process for insuring
complianceregulated through 36CFR 60 and 36CFR 800were all ushered in under the sweeping
legislation.
3
Kennewick Man provides the complementary example to archaeological sites, where vituperative
exchanges vocalize the gravity of the stakes for scientific-sovereignty negotiation, see Watkins 2001;
Watkins 2003.

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issues of whether to consult with local tribal councils or not (as it is mandated for
section 106 compliance), but the epistemological wrangling of how to correlate or
mitigate the at times intractable frameworks for knowing a site such as a TCP.
Dissimilarly, however, to the conglomerate of responses within an
archaeological framework to an issue such as oral history which I have adumbrated, an
other course-of-action taken by some archaeologists, where such ethno-philosophies
abut, tacks an alternate but well established response. These move along the spectrum
of types of understanding coined by Wilhelm Dilthey away from erklarung towards
verstehen. From a cultural and social perspective, such moves away from compatibility
of frameworks, far from threatening epistemic soundness, provide the subjective and
personally mediated, and so all the more humanistic, insight into the human
experience. Subtle existential details are precisely what tend to be glossed in realist-
circumscriptive programs. So the other direction on the two-lane road I am using as a
metaphor tends toward an anthropologizing of archaeology, placing interpretive goals
on a more nuanced, personal and socio-political context.4

A PRAGMATIC NOTION OF HUMAN INQUIRY AND MEDIATING

ARCHAEOLOGY
While the majority of negotiations lie along the spectrum between these general poles I
have identified, such as descriptive accompaniment to more quantitative data on causal
factors, the impasse in operating assumptions and goals for archaeological knowledge is
apparentparticularly for those here at Stanford. As I assay the contemporary
situation, we inherit the following consequence : our neo-liberal values of the academy
urge us to be inclusive (and of course ethical) while retaining our inherited adherence
to epistemological safeguarding. Such a personal and intellectual inconsistency places us
in a compromising position. Let me again summarize the resulting maneuvers along the
circumscribed spectrum: 1) archaeologists outright confine rational inquiry to
epistemological standards to ensure objectivity and so exclude stakeholder opinion; 2)
more middling-way and less conflict producing is to include stakeholders in rational
inquiry albeit circumscribed by adherence to standards of archaeological practice
developed according to the correspondence (objectivity) goal in mind; or 3) (less
common in discipline) move to anthropological inclusion where descriptive inclusion
on the part of stakeholders is included alongside more traditional archaeological

4
Hacking 1999 draws the keen insight that there may be more similar ontological maneuvering than
expected, with social constructivism replacing external reality with society as the bedrock of causal
determinism. For a parallel questioning of the premises of social archaeology, see Witmore and
Webmoor 2007.

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accounts of archaeological material. I would argue that all three adjustments are
negative in the sense that they want to minimize the hybridization of results which
would, under the belief in correspondence, relegate such archaeological inquiry to
biased, politically motivated or value-laden.
So while not black and whitewith a range of re-formulations of practice
based upon external mandates and ethical recognitionalong the spectrum, all three
approaches falter upon the still dominant worry to produce Representationalist
account of the Past. Why is this not productive? My thesis is this: the apparent
conflict between ethics and epistemology is only driven by a correspondence theory of
truthold Platonic distinctions between knowledge and rhetoric/opinion, reality and
appearance, and fact and value. Such defining conditions regarding what constitutes
beneficial knowledge lingers from the vestiges of an epistemological tradition most
forcefully convened by logical-positivists with the cognitive significance demarcation
criterion. These dichotomies must be re-threaded in order to operate with a more
common endeavor in archaeology without the fracturing tension pulling in two
centrifugal directions.
The shift that I am arguing forwith influences of pragmatism, in the
American traditionis not entirely new to the discipline (e.g. Gaffney 1987); but it
requires an abeyance of inherited notions of correspondence as being the definition of
truth in human inquiry, and the re-framing of what we believe is the desired end
result. What difference does the notion of right representation do? Thinkers such as
James (1907) and Peirce (1955) suggest that a representationalist account just does not
go very far:
Grant an idea or belief to be true [but] what concrete difference will
its being true make in anyones actual life? How will the truth be
realized? . . .What, in short, is the truths cash-value in experiential
terms? (James 1907, 114).
As James continues,
the fact that the possession of true thoughts means everywhere the
possession of invaluable instruments of actionand that our duty to
gain truth, so far from being a blank command from out of the blue
can account for itself by excellent practical reasons. . . [truth] passes
from cold-storage to do work in the world, and our belief in it grows
active (Ibid., 115).
Truths do work in the world; they pay. Analogous to health, strength, happiness and
other processes connected with getting-on in life, truth from the pragmatist account
is simply a collective name for processes that are made in an on-going negotiation with

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experience. We can think of it as something possessed or inherent, but this abstracts

the phenomena under inquiry and cuts the life-ties to in-action that gives truth its
recognizable functions. Rather than static or essentialist, justification is a process that
helps us deal, both practically and intellectually, with our articulations in the world.
And because of this active-quality, truth is a leading-to, or a becoming, which
integrates us better and more fully with experience. It is a tool for fulfilling functional
purposes, however diverse these purposes are defined.5
Rethought in Deweys (1957) and Rortys (1979) metaphor as adaptive tool,
truth makes no claim to the accurate mirroring of nature or external reality.
Building upon the failure of positivist-led analytic philosophy to tag particularistic bits
of reality with bits of language as direct correlationsuch as Russells atomistic
programthereby laying a correspondence foundation for more complex (synthetic)
statements about reality, the pragmatists emphasize that truths do work. This move
obviates the skeptical gap (long historically established) that opens between words,
representational media, knowledge claims and external reality. Instead of fit to
reality as representation, the question is (pragmatically) reformulated. If a knowledge
claims is good, it is kept as an operating principle not because of axiomatic reasoning
or non-falsification by hypothetico-deductive testing, but because it aids our various
endeavors in negotiating experience.
As the methodological touchstone of archaeology, let us consider mapping as a
case in point. There have been debilitating critiques, particularly from post-colonial
quarters, of the inherent bias of western cartography and its representational scopic
regime (Harley 1992 for the most strident critique). Yet would any archaeologist step
into the field without a map? Even a phenomenologist wandering the moors of England
and looking for non-textually inscribable relationships between material remains and
landscape carries a map. I daresay otherwise s/he would get lost. So why universally
utilize the map despite being a relative (i.e. western) medium which cannot
irrefutably establish its correspondence to out there. Because our experience with
maps is that, more than any other navigating or organizing tool, they work. The map
works like a cognitive and sensory prosthesis in the hands of a map-user (Webmoor
2005 on mapwork). Without it, the archaeologist cannot perform the same work as

5
Pragmatism is not a relativism as there is no skeptical questioning of the causal relations to world,
Putnam 1995. If anything, pragmatism assumes from the outsetas it considers the legacy of Descartes
methodological doubt to be a mistaken precedentdirect, casual enmeshment with the world, cf.
retrodiction in Rescher 2005. It is Davidson himself who offers a triangulation notion of language
and understanding directed at undercutting the relativism of conceptual schemes and paradigms of
scientific research, Davidson 1985.

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with it. And a map (of course) does not work as a navigating and orienting tool except
when associated with a located map-reader. Having a map will enable not only certain
decisions (such as where to survey, where to excavate, where to predict subsoil
deposits), but will likely suggest these possibilities. The map is a pragmatic tool par
excellence. Like a Heideggerian tool-to-hand, when thought about in a course-of-
action, the map confounds any traditional epistemological discussions of
representational accuracy. It is a cyborg-like mixture of people/things which in action
cannot be purified out (for mixtures in archaeology, see Webmoor and Witmore
2007).
So, far from relativism, pragmatists divest themselves of the realists positing of
a skeptical gap between words and things, and discard the realist-idealist distinction in
epistemology that was misguided from the outset. Instead, the cash value is placed
upon practical efficacy in obtaining specific goals. If such a characterization smacks of
common-sense, it should. When we stand back from our theoretical positionings there
is therapeutic recognition of how archaeologists routinely operate in the field, in the
planning of projects, or in the laboratory. If it was once said that archaeological
interpretation is data-led (cf. Hodder 1999), it seems more appropriate to say that
archaeological practice is in fact goal-led. We can say there is an irreducible theory-data
relationship, but to say so is only meaningful in the context of archaeological work;
and in-action, all pursuit is practical pursuit geared towards immediate and long-term
goals. We hold our practical goals much more intimately than our theoretical biases.
While simplistic (though not a simplistic instrumentalism), there is much to be gained
from acknowledging our pragmatic sensibility.
Updating Dewey and James, Rorty (2000) and Putnam (1995, 2002) push the
image of truth as tool, not as mirror of nature. In doing so, their emphasis links-up
with a host of students of science such as Hacking (1983, 1999) who, involved in
experimentation, acknowledges that truth of things is assumed (not questioned from
the outset) if they are instrumentally useful (the veracity of his sprayed sub-atomic
particles). Ideas are not judged on terms of their supposed picturing capacityin fact,
Hacking would disavow (along with his positivist predecessors) such theoretical
realism. Truths are kept if they fulfill goals and practical tasks. And much the same
movement has taken shape in Science and Technology Studies (particularly Actor-
Network-Theorists and notables such as Latour) where the epistemological gap raised
by skepticism is closed as a result of not being useful in characterizing the increasingly
inter-connected networks of people-things (such as the archaeological map) (e.g.
Callon 1997; Latour 1999; Law and Hassard 1999). Instead of these representational
goals for knowledge, pragmatic thinkers emphasize identifying multiple, practical goals

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and setting to work to see, through the causal constraints of reality, which will function
best in meeting these values. Thus, there is a Darwinian/naturalized characterization to
knowledge which intersects with the idea of stakeholder participation: the more
courses-of-action undertaken with various practical goals in mind, the more democratic
the inquiry process, the more likely that broadly useful truths serving the practical
needs of society will emerge (cf. Dewey 1925, 1957 and his democratic inquiry).
As a case in point in global heritage, there are over 69,000 denizens of the
Valley of Teotihuacn, Mexico, with several thousand more each year emigrating from
Mexico City 45 km to the southwest. Situated at the border (at the boundary of federal
property) of five growing pueblos is the UNESCO World Heritage site of Teotihuacn
itself (FIGURE 2). The recent construction of a Wal-Mart within the sites peripheral
zone garnered much national and international media attention and mobilized local
residents, valley merchants, and spiritual leaders (FIGURE 3), as well as Mexico City
intellectuals, around the debate pitting transnational, economic interests versus values
of national and symbolic origins and prehispanic pride. What was to be the middle-
American moguls impact upon cultural heritage and Teotihuacns role as a spiritual
center (FIGURE 4); especially with the Wal-Mart visible (just 1.4 km from the main
gate) from the summit of the pyramid of the sun?
Interviews with these local leaders and activists conveyed the impression that
Wal-Marts economic impact upon traditional markets, as well as the blatant abutment
of pre-modern with high-modern symbols, formed the focus of the valleys angst.
But what, in total, were the values held for Teotihuacn, and what were the goals for
its future? Five over-riding goals were identified through statistical sampling and an
ethnographic survey of 471 locals and Mexican national visitors to the site: Heritage,
Archaeological Science, Economic Interest, Diversion/Entertainment and Spirituality/
Religion (Webmoor 2007). While interest in further archaeological production of
scientific knowledge contributed to valorizations of the zone, the study identified at
least four other desired goals, not normally considered by archaeologists for future
endeavors at the site. Indeed, even the row over the Wal-Mart had not brought to light
some of the values held by locals and visitors. In particular, the strong statistical
correlations between scale scores compiled for each of these goals suggest that non-
archaeological goals for research cannot be separated out from economic and heritage
related goals (FIGURE 5). Inheritage, combining the mutually involved associations
of these three broad goals for Teotihuacn as an archaeological site, better conveys the
integration of activities all carried out through the nexus of a single site. These may or
may not overlap with those parameters of research identified as goals for archaeological
investigations, but the question from the outset must be: what is to be gained from

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archaeological understanding?; and is there the basis in local contexts for such goals as
well? If not, in conjunction with archaeological research, there may now be formulated
alternate goals of research at Teotihuacn that are rooted in the practical goals of the
surrounding population. From a pragmatic perspective, the more diverse the goals
identified in planning and implementing multiple courses-of-action, the more likely
that beneficial knowledge on a complete societal level will emerge. Such diversification
of research at Teotihuacn would be undertaken to meet a democratic range of
purposes. As the survey identified, these would specifically involve economic benefits
to the local and national economy, contribution to national identity, and a continuance
of archaeological research which enervates and feeds-into these primary goals. Spiritual
and diversionary values, though held by a minority of the respondents, nonetheless
associated very strongly with Teotihuacn and must be considered as well. In all,
Teotihuacn envelops a loose set of interacting, associative niches which span the
range of archaeological and non-archaeological goals and values.
Now the next question arises: why should we do this? There is not enough
space to do justice to the supporting arguments,6 but they should be familiar from
extra-disciplinarian literatures: 1) history and philosophy of science; 2) lesson (failure)
of analytic philosophy and positivismnow post-analytic movements in philosophy; 3)
external mandatelegiethics that the discipline cannot ignore; 4) trajectory in
archaeological theory and practice. In this paper I have attempted to sketch the latter
two as they are intertwined with the moral: we are no longer insular in the global
heritage context. In response, I feel the lead is to consult these two promptings
external and internal to academiaand usefully combine them.
Where are we and where do we want to go? What is our goal: stakeholder
participation in global heritage? What is our goal: to be ethical. A pragmatic frame-of-
mind then asks how to attain such a goal, what will make a difference? A pragmatic
approach to inquiry is ethical from the ground-up, and so does not present the
awkward band-aid maneuvers to include non-archaeological participation in an attempt
to still dawn the legitimizing results of objective correspondence. Giving up on the
discredited notion of representation will aid in this goal to include alternate interests in
global heritage, as without representationalism there is no longer the fact-value
distinction, and the goals of stakeholders are incorporated from outset to define distinct
courses-of-action for a mediating archaeology.

6
I have addressed the consequences of recent thinking in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and its
departure from Philosophy and History of Science as just such a movement to bypass the stalemate in the
latter with respect to Representationalism/Epistemology, see Webmoor 2007.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks go to the environment of the Stanford Archaeology Center where thinking-
around splits is a necessity. Also to Ian Hodder, Christopher Witmore and Alison
Wylie for discussing these ideas and commenting upon this paper. The final paper
reflects my own shortcomings rather than their perspicacity. Finally, my appreciation
goes to the organizers of the conference for their hard work behind the scenes to
make the conferences course-of-action happen, especially Sebastian de Vivo for his
encouragement and good spirit. Portions of this paper were aired at the Theoretical
Archaeology Group (TAG) in Sheffield and at the Society for American Archaeology
(SAAs) in Puerto Rico.

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ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1. Traditional Culture Property (TCP) documented by the author for the U.S.
Forest Service on the Commanche National Grasslands.

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Figure 2. Satellite image of the central, 'ceremonial' precinct of Teotihuacn, Mexico.

The surrounding towns may be seen, particularly San Martn on the northeast edge and
San Juan de Teotihuacn to the southwest.

Figure 3. Traditional leader of the Teotihuacn Valley, and organizer of the Civic Front
for the Defense of the Valley of Teotihuacn, conducting a springtime ritual for rain
just outside the site's fenced perimeter.

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Figure 4. Gathering of 'Aztec bailadores' or dancers in the plaza of the pyramid of the
sun to commemorate Teotihuacn as the place where the gods sacrificed themselves to
bring the world into existence in Nahua belief.

Figure 5. Box-plot of the frequency distributions of scale scores summarizing the

relative (standardized 1-10) strength of Teotihuacn's principal associations.

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