Animality/humanity: A strategically persistent dichotomy that hinders scientific progress in archaeology

Abstract

The animality-humanity divide in archaeology, among other oppositions inherited from anthropology, strategically serves to maintain the current paradigmatic isolation between interpretive and evolutionary archaeologies, which is based on a dual ontology of humanity. This isolation as well as the claims of self-sufficiency strategically favors the persistence of these approaches by preventing them from competing with each other, and by avoiding in this way to show their differential explanatory success. These practices are promoted by individuals seeking to secure their intellectual niches and the spread of their ideas, resul-ting in the accumulation of errors due to intellectual inbreeding and a low action of selective refutation. Aimed to erode the foundations of this isolation, I suggest the abandonment of this dual dichotomy and the dehumanization of archeology by considering that humans are not the subject matter of the discipline. I suggest that the advancement of scientific archeology will increase by adopting a monistic and materialistic ontology of humanity and everything composing the archaeological record, as it promotes the transfer of ideas between paradigms for building relationships of complementarities or competition. So I conclude that the increase of cumulative scientifically sorted knowledge in archeology requires the removal of all para-digmatic insulation, as well as the development of contexts of knowledge production that favor theoretical plurality, theoretical innovation and paradigmatic opening to refutation in search of generalizations.