Comments on John Barrett and Krystalli Damilati’s Essay (2004) "Some Light on the Early Origins of Them All"

By Razie Mah

Colin Renfrew attempts to explain the emergence of the earliest Aegean civilization in 1972, with the publication of “The Emergence of Civilization”. Around thirty years later, researchers gather in Britain to discuss Renfrew’s attempt, in light of what happened next. The result is a compilation, titled “The Emergence of Civilization Revisited”, published in 2004, by Oxford Books, as a contribution to Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology.
John C. Barrett and Krystalli Damilati contribute chapter 8 (pages 146-169), presenting a theoretical discussion centered on the distinction between processual and post-processual explanations. The latter arises as a criticism of the former, after Renfrew’s book was published.
These comments examine this contribution through three lenses.
The first is a model built in “Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy”. Positivist and empirio-schematic judgments exhibit a particular triadic structure. This is a model for the Age of Ideas.
The second is the two level interscope, consisting of category-based nested forms on the content and situation levels. This model captures the relational structure of sensible construction. Naturally, the goal of the modern social sciences is to describe our world in sensible (that is, not religious) terms.
The third lens is the first singularity. The first singularity is a hypothesis concerning the potentiation of civilization. The hypothesis is presented plainly in “The First Singularity and its Fairy Tale Trace” and evocatively in “An Archaeology of the Fall”. Neither Renfrew, nor his commentators thirty years later, Barrett and Damilati, have knowledge of this proposal. If they did, then their works would have taken on a very different tone.
What would that tone have been?
If processual archaeology looks for material causation within the paradigm of modern scientific inquiry, and if post-processual archaeology criticizes processual archaeologists for not including human motivations, then the first singularity stands in contrast to both, by proposing an immaterial causation, a change in semiotic practices, that potentiates unconstrained social complexity, that is, changes in human incentives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Nov 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781942824824

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments on John Barrett and Krystalli Damilati’s Essay (2004)

Some Light on the Early Origins of Them All

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2019

Notes on Text

This work comments on chapter 8 of The Emergence of Civilization Revisited (2004), edited by John Barrett and Paul Halstead for Oxbow Books (Park End Place, Oxford, OX1 1HN, pages 146-169). This book belongs to Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology.

Chapter 8 consists of an essay by John Barrett and Krystalli Damilati. The full title is Some Light on the Early Origins of Them All: Generalizations and the Explanation of Civilization Revisited.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction

Recommended: Comments Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy

Table of Contents

A Passage of 30 Years

The Goldilocks Judgment

Systems Analysis

The Bronze Age

Systemic Change

Models of Exchange

Structure, Agency and History

Exchange and Value

Aegean Palaces

A Passage of 30 Years

0001 A child born in 1972, the year that Colin Renfrew’s book, The Emergence of Civilization, is published, would celebrate his 32nd birthday in 2004, the year that Sheffield University publishes the proceedings of scholars revisiting Renfrew’s work.

Renfrew wrote on the development of Bronze Age civilizations in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. John Barrett and Krystalli Damilati contribute an essay on the idea of explaining the emergence of civilization.

0002 These comments consider this essay in light of the three models (A, B and C), positivist and empirio-metric judgment (A), sensible construction (B) and the first singularity (C).

None of these models are on the table in 2004. Yet, all three apply to this essay.

0003 What happens to archaeology between 1972 and 2004?

Barrett and Damilati open their essay by considering two types of explanation in archaeology: processual (D) and post-processual (E). The first labels archaeology in 1972. The second goes with 2004.

0004 Processual archaeology (D) attempts a scientific inquiry into the past. As such, the positivist (A1) and empirio-schematic judgments (A2) should apply.

0005 What is a judgment?

Obviously, my use of the term, judgment, is technical. A judgment is a primal type of triadic structure. A judgment is a relation between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. As such, a judgment may be graphically depicted.

0006 Science involves two judgments.

These two judgments are delineated in Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy.

The positivist judgment (A1) is primary.

The empirio-schematic judgment (A2) is subsidiary.

0007 Here is a diagram of the standard empirio-schematic judgment.