Explanation revisited

Citation: Renfrew, A.C. (1982) Explanation revisited. Theory and Explanation in Archaeology, edited by C. Renfrew, M. Rowlands and B. Seagraves. Academic Press, pp. 5-23. (RSS)
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Summary

In this paper, Renfrew overviews the development of scientific explanation in archaeology in the past years, discusses current explanations we often use, and then tries to resolve some of the confusion and then clarify direction for future. He divides explanation in archeology into several periods, including Darwin’s impact, new archaeology in 1960s, critiques to law-like argument of cultural development, and current confusion of contradictory paradigms.

Renfrew discusses five different approaches of explanation which influence archaeology. The approaches include historiographic, hypothetico-deductive, ststems thinking, Neo-Marxist, and structuralism. Historical explanation focuses on individual event by emphasizing its particularity rather than its generality. For H-D approach, the thing is to be explained is to be deduced from higher order laws. The systems approach in archaeology views every unit together as a system, which is similar to organism and it balances by homeostatic processes. Neo-Marxist focuses on modes of production, relations of production, and forces of production, and thinks specific case can be classified into general model. Structuralism suggests material expression can reveal mental construction and believes general structural principles. In archaeology, Renfrew points out that the aim of most approaches is to make generalization and seeks to apply an explanatory principle from one society to other societies.

In order to understand the logical elements of a good explanation in archaeology, Renfrew examines the features of useful explanation. A good explanation will contain specific event, the class of event, the process, and the pattern. In addition, he uses some archaeological studies such as Maya collapse as examples to illustrate that the form of most satisfying explanations is clear and general. He concludes that explanation must consist of propositions that can be widely applied to other cases. Moreover, there are two different paths for explanation, one is the general and comparative explanation, and the other one is unique based on specific analysis of context. For Renfrew, he prefers the former one, and thinks that an adequate explanation for archaeology should be in form of generalization and formalization.