Istvánovits Eszter (szerk.): A nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 55. (Nyíregyháza, 2013)
A 2010. október 11-14. között Nyíregyházán és Szatmárnémetiben megtartott Vándorló és letelepült barbárok a kárpáti régióban és a szomszédos területeken (I-V. század) Új leletek, új értelmezések című nemzetközi régészeti konferencia anyagai
The archaeological research on ethnic phenomena and the social sciences Gheorghe Alexandria Niculescu Archaeologists get their knowledge about ethnic phenomena in two ways. By using the knowledge embedded in their research tradition or by borrowing knowledge from elsewhere, from other traditions of archaeological research, from historical research or directly from the social sciences. The second course of action is now taken by a growing number of archaeologists educated in local culture history research traditions, like Sebastian Brather or Florin Curta, who are aware that assumptions about ethnicity taken for granted by their colleagues are fragile and, to a great extent, shaped by nationalist representations of society. They are encouraged by the current ideology of interdisciplinarity, which presents contacts between disciplines as fruitful cooperation within the pacific world of scientific research, imagined to share not only some basic commitments which make it different from common knowledge, but also the same view about what is to be known and what is worth knowing about it, differing only in the methods employed. The various disciplines are imagined as complementary, each particular form of scientific knowledge being supposed to fit into the coherent big picture of an objective reality.1 This irenic representation of the scientific world ignores some facts. Many disciplines compete in their attempts to understand humanity, for instance interpretive social sciences with evolutionary anthropology,2 or the normatively inclined political scientists with the social scientists who try to understand what happens, not to imagine what should happen. This competition can go up to denying the scientific character of what the opponent does.3 Some disciplines are more important than others. Archaeologists from my research tradition believe that history is more important than archaeology and that mathematics or physics are more important, scientifically more accurate and intellectually more demanding than both history and archaeology. In an interdisciplinary encounter, a molecular biologist has certainly more chances to impose his or her views on humanity to an archaeologist, especially in an encounter with one educated in the culture history tradition, because of a deep-seated belief, seldom developed into something specific, that there is more to ethnicity than culture. Those culture history archaeologists who believe that what was good yesterday is no longer so today do not provide any information on how and why this change in their views happened, thus showing the lack of reflexivity characteristic for their tradition of research, and tell nothing about 1 For the debate about the unity/disunity of science see Galison- Stump 1996. 2 This competion is alive in the debates between postprocessual and evolutionary archaeologists. For recent attempts at reconciliation see Riede 2005. and Cochrane-Gardner 2011. 3 See, for instance, Bourdieu 1977. 87 on political science. NyJAME LV. 2013. 371-377. 371
