From the onset, phenomenological perspectives in archaeological interpretation have been fraught with controversy. Early reactions to a phenomenological approach did a great deal to thwart these studies and to discourage archaeologists from embracing phenomenology in both method and theory. Has the phenomenological critique been wholly warranted and is there a place for a phenomenological approach in archaeology? My goal in this paper is to create a space for phenomenology that functions as a guide for archaeological inquiry and accounts for shared human experience that transcends time and space without compromising the importance of contextual analyses.

This chapter begins with a review of how explicitly phenomenological as well as sensorial approaches have been employed in archaeological interpretations and how they have been received by the archaeological community. This is followed by a discussion of assumptions that underpin the adoption or rejection of phenomenological methods. Here I problematize the distinction between past and present, the historical and the evolutionary, arguing that the past does in fact reside in the present. I also argue that from an evolutionary perspective, as modern humans we share a cognitive architecture that interacts with the physical world that can provide a basis or structure of phenomenological experience. Bearing this in mind, two ways forward are suggested for bolstering phenomenology in archaeological practice. First, following Julian Thomas (2012), I argue that phenomenology can be treated as an analogy that may function as a line of evidence to help establish explanations, understandings, and meanings in archaeological interpretations, as elaborated by Alison Wylie in her “cables and tacking” metaphor (1989a), according to which scientific theories are slowly strengthened by many lines of evidence over time, with phenomenology as one among several sources of evidence. Second, phenomenological studies in archaeology can be extended by taking a “naturalized” approach in which these studies may be used to develop testable hypotheses to be investigated methodologically using quantitative instrumentation. This is illustrated in a case study about the experience of darkness in caves derived from patterns in the archaeological record, indicating that dark zones of caves were primarily used as sacred or special places, not for habitation. A laboratory experiment is presented which demonstrates that darkness may affect not only the choice of dark caves as ritual venues, but human cognition itself, therefore extending phenomenological archaeology to other fields and using it to answer broader questions.

1 A Phenomenology of Landscape

The adoption of a phenomenological approach in archaeological interpretations was initially reserved for studies of place or landscapes. The concept of landscape has a long history in Europe dating from at least the seventeenth century in studies of natural features and human modifications to the land (Thomas, 2012, 167). In its inception, landscape archaeology was conceived as an objective enterprise. Archaeologists studied landscape features and investigated chronological developments, processes, and modifications, often producing descriptive works. However, in the 1990s the focus of landscape studies shifted to a “post-processual landscape archaeology” (Fleming, 2006, 208) that engaged “perspectives on human nature, perception, experience, and meaning” (Thomas, 2012, 168). One of the first offerings to fully address this was Christopher Tilley’s (1994) book-length treatise, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments, a study of archaeological monuments in landscape settings, which drew on phenomenology as a means for interpretation of the archaeological record. Taking a post-processualist (humanist) approach in which he rejected explanations using scientific and quantitative methods such as maps, categorization, statistics, and computer modelling on the grounds that they were dehumanizing, Tilley adopted new methods geared toward understanding the relationships between people and meaningful places. Invoking Heidegger, Tilley argued that his own bodily experience provided a “privileged vantage point” for apprehending the world (13) and drawing on Merleau-Ponty, he contended that the body constituted “a way of relating to, perceiving and understanding the world” (14). Tilley reminds us that “the human body itself provides the starting point for knowledge of the world, and all human modern beings (Homo sapiens sapiens) have the same kinds of bodies and perceive the experience of the world in similar human ways at a basic biological level” (Tilley, 2005a, 202) thereby serving to link the past to the present. Throughout his career, Tilley has maintained that it is through the mediation with the body that archaeologists perceive the world so that they may their rest archaeological interpretations on their own perceptions. His field methods included walking the landscape, observing views, making detailed notes, taking photographs and videos, filling out forms, using checklists, and producing narratives of his own experiences as means to understanding the landscape from a human (subjective) perspective rather than taking a scientific (objective) stance. For Tilley, it was through the researcher’s own subjective experience that a traditional objectification of the landscape in archaeological practice could be mitigated.

Tilley’s methods met with harsh criticism among many scholars within the archaeological community (e.g., Barrett & Ko, 2009; Brück, 2005; Edmonds, 2006; Fleming, 2005, 2006; Hamilakis, 2014; Johnson, 2012; Thomas, 1993). By employing his own experience, Tilley’s method was considered to be excessively subjective, favoring a solitary individual, in this case one with male Western sensibilities, considered to be Colonialist and gender-centric. Julian Thomas (1993, 22–23) criticized Tilley for other reasons, arguing that visual modes of perception have been overemphasized in landscape studies attributing the primacy of vision to a mode of appropriation in the modern Western world (also see Goodwin & Lecari, chapter “Reconstructing Past Phenomenology Using Virtual Reality”, this volume). It was also noted that phenomenological interpretations suffered from equifinality. As Brück (2005, 51) pointed out, “it is often impossible for the reader to judge whether the relationships identified by the archaeologist in the present were indeed considered significant in the past,” suggesting that multiple interpretations should be evaluated, and that phenomenological studies such as Tilley’s simply present assertions about experiences without bolstering evidence. Additionally, by describing the past in terms of his present embodied encounter of the landscape, he was “essentializing” the experience of people in the past and obliterating potential differences between modern and past subjects.

Barret and Ko (2009, 280) discussed Tilley’s use and understanding of the roots of phenomenology in philosophy and offered the following synopsis based on his underlying assumptions:

  1. 1.

    The archaeological record cannot be understood without a human presence. Meaning arises in a human engagement with material conditions

  2. 2.

    The body is the medium through which this engagement occurs.

  3. 3.

    By using his or her own body as the medium of engagement, the archaeologist can encounter a past Being-in-the-world, and, in doing so, grasp the meaning of the archaeological record.

They argued that assumptions 1 and 2 are consistent with the phenomenology of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, which they find plausible, but find statement 3 to be problematic. The argument is that, via the first person encounter we produce a meaning, but it is a contemporary meaning, not the thoughts of a past person. This is consistent with Heidegger’s ideas about the historical situatedness of perception.

Tim Ingold (2005) is particularly critical of Tilley’s (2004) work. Here he points out an example of what he refers to as “hyper-interpretation”:

When not expounding on the actuality of the world, Tilley is eagerly speculating on what people might have believed it all meant! To take just one example, the solution basins created by erosion on a standing-stone ‘were perhaps regarded as carvings created by the ancestors’ (2004, 51). Perhaps they were; perhaps they were not. Tilley has a penchant for wheeling in the ancestors, whenever needed, to lend an air of ethnographic authenticity to his conjectures. But if his concern is really with experience, why do these conjectures deal so exclusively with what people might have believed? (2005, 123).

To others, Tilley’s hyper-interpretive methods lacked rigor and had the problem of imposing one’s own feelings and observations onto the people of the past without considering the cultural contexts and symbolic meanings imbued in past perceptions of landscapes.

However, though fellow archaeologist Julian Thomas agrees that modern archaeologists cannot really know the experience of ancient people, he sees value in using the phenomenological approach. According to Thomas, “I can only encounter the world through the body of a male, twenty-first-century academic, and I cannot occupy anyone else’s body. This need not render the project of an experiential archaeology invalid” (Thomas, 2004, 32). For Thomas, objects or artifacts such as monuments must be not only historically and culturally situated but contextualized within the landscape itself. Because they had meaning for past people, they represent more than an extinct social pattern; therefore, phenomenology becomes a means by which to establish a more holistic understanding of the past serving “as an analogy for past worlds” (2012, 182). In this sense he and critic Matthew Johnson (2012) concur that phenomenology cannot be used a stand-alone approach (as proposed by Tilley), but is informative when coupled with other methodological approaches to produce more complex and nuanced interpretations of the archaeological record.

2 The Sensorial Turn

Despite heavy criticism, Tilley’s work prompted numerous revisions of his ideas and generated more nuanced approaches to phenomenological archaeology, which were later employed in the “archaeology of the senses,” an approach that rests heavily on idealist constructions and the role of memory in sensorial experience. Many archaeologists have embraced “the sensory turn” (Skeates & Day, 2020, 1), although the investigator’s own embodied experience paired with an element of self-reflexivity remains the most important methodological tool for interpretation (Brück, 2005, 50).

In Archaeology of the Senses, Yannis Hamilakis (2013) criticizes Tilley for his emphasis on visual fields at the expense of other sensory modalities, and for the subjectivity of his approach arguing that his analyses are “ahistorical, universalist and homogenising” (100). As a remedy to this critique, sensory studies emphasize investigations of the multisensorial experience avoiding the traditional primacy of ocularity, including not only the five senses of western thought, but others as well such as “sense of place” (168–170). Hamilakis supports the use of visualization techniques and virtual reality but reminds us that these techniques are primarily based on visual experience, and envisions a future in which virtual reenactments will be immersive to include other senses such as sound, smell, touch, etc. But, in his own case studies, Hamilakis, makes use of traditional 2-dimensional maps and black and white photographs. He relies heavily on description and use of his own imagination in recreating the sensory experiences of what people “would” have seen and heard (187). In this sense, the work lacks rigor in much the same way as Tilley’s highly criticized subjective observations of landscapes and unreconstructed archaeological sites.

A critique of the archaeology of the senses is that it is just doing phenomenology under a different name, and so many of its critiques of phenomenology could equally be applied to sensorial studies. Though it is rarely made explicit in these studies, out of necessity phenomenological assumptions are employed in all sensorial investigations. Because phenomenology works at the level of the individual and is experiential in its very nature, no matter how many biases or assumptions we acknowledge, we cannot infer humanistic understandings without using a highly subjective method. Sensorial archaeologists argue that reflexivity helps to mitigate this subjective approach, yet there is no accepted methodology for producing self-reflexive observations and these typically aim at acknowledging biases, though we know that these are often unconscious and therefore difficult to access. Husserl’s bracketing would be instructive, but it is never invoked. Sensorial archaeology also invites us to engage with the experience of people that interact with their environments in special ways such as hunters, farmers, craftsmen, etc., which is reminiscent of Collingwood’s epistemology for establishing historical knowledge in which the researcher uses knowledge of the historical context in the modern imagination to attain a better understanding the thought and meaning underlying human action in historical texts in what he terms “re-enactment” (1946, 282–302).

Re-enactments or reconstructions in virtual reality offer a promising approach to sensorial archaeology and phenomenology. Developing and refining virtual reality (as well as archaeological models of past environments and cultures, may go a long way in better approximating our understandings of past people) (See Goodwin & Lercari, chapter “Reconstructing Past Phenomenology Using Virtual Reality”, this volume), but the problem of “subjectivity epistemology” (Barrett & Ko, 2009) remains though it is based on virtual realities. It will continue to do so unless we develop new avenues for understanding human feeling, thought, and meaning. Tilley (2005a, b, 203) himself reminds us that “…as human beings, we can only study things as we experience them. All such studies are necessarily limited and therefore can be criticised.” Is this true or has the use of subjective experience been prematurely dismissed due to lack of clear methodologies? It may be that it is simply undertheorized.

Arguably all archaeologists are phenomenologists at some level. As Mathhew Johnson points out:

It is also certainly the case that behind the often rather dry and impersonal top-down maps and plans produced by traditional landscape archaeology there lies a practice of field craft that is engaged, empathetic, emotive, and based on lively dissent and discussion (a tradition in which the author of this article was raised in the 1980s). However, it is equally true that prior to the reflections on field practice of the last decade or so, this lively practice rarely emerged onto the printed page. (2012, 278–279).

In other words, field archaeologists are immersed in the landscape, we experience the environment, we imagine what it would be like to live in a pithouse in the desert or on top of a pyramid in the jungle. We touch and handle the objects made by people of the past and imagine owning them and discerning their use in our phenomenological theorizing (Tilley, 2019). These imaginings are what generate many of our ideas, models, and hypotheses. But, the question remains, what is the role of phenomenology in archaeological practice and can it be considered a viable stand-alone interpretive method?

3 Underlying Tenets of Phenomenological Approaches

The extent to which archaeologists accept or reject phenomenological approaches rests primarily on their stance on the question as to whether we can replicate the experiences of others. I will argue three points (1) that the proposition is based on basic belief systems or assumptions held by the archaeologist concerning their perspective on the existence and viability of the psychic unity of mankind (Johnson, 2012, 277), (2) how much influence the “real world” (environment or material world) exerts on human perception and conceptualizations, and (3) whether they envision the latter as an all or nothing position or a matter of degree. If one assumes a unity of thought coupled with similar external realities such as environment, it is then theoretically possible to transcend time and space to infer human experience. On the external reality side of the equation, the more stable or unchanging the environment or the better the reconstruction, the higher probability of correlating past and present experiences (this is the basic premise of virtual or physical reconstructions, experimental archaeology, and other analogical arguments). No archaeologist argues that their subjective personal experience exactly replicates the experience of a person from the past, but that it approximates or has commonalities that are a matter of degree or probability.

Psychic unity is a concept that originated in Greek philosophy and was introduced into the anthropological literature by Adolf Bastion (1881), then taken up by Frans Boas (1911/1938) to combat biological racism inherent in Classical Evolutionist theories. Psychic unity contends that all humans have the same mental capacities that are universally shared and grounded in their common biology (Shore, 2000; Facoetti & Gontier, 2020). There is a “unity” between all humans beings, past and present, insofar as they share a common set of cognitive structures. This sets the stage for the phenomenologists’ argument that the human body itself (Tilley, 1994; Thomas, 2002) provides “a starting point for knowledge of the world, and all modern human beings (Homo sapiens sapiens) have the same kinds of bodies and perceive and experience the world in similar human ways at a basic biological level” (in Tilley, 2005a). Phenomenologists in archaeology likely refer to the embodiment of thought and its relationship to the environment, but psychic unity is thereby inferred because their argument collapses without it. Some anthropologists (See e.g., Shore, 1996) contend that culture structures and organizes thought to the degree that psychic unity is no longer a viable, yet this remains to be seen and none has successfully refuted the basic premise.

Postprocessualists that adopt Franz Boas’ historical particularism, a theory which contends that everything from culture to human experience is historically contingent, adhere to a Heideggerian phenomenology that is consistent with an emphasis on history as a primary constituent of phenomenological experience. This has led critics to dismiss phenomenological approaches on the grounds that we cannot understand the experiences of past people because they are too different from our own. Phenomenologists mitigate this by introducing self-reflexivity into their observations and by considering the cultural context of past people in an effort to render a more viable and less subjective interpretation. Other researchers that adhere to evolutionary and cognitive approaches envision a synergy and co-evolution between the brain/body, culture, and the material world that does not privilege one over the other and recognizes biological constraints and endowments on which cultural practices are constructed, which recursively contribute to shaping human cognitive capacity over long periods of time (Cosmides et al., 1992; Hutchins, 2008; Renfrew et al., 2008).

From an historic perspective, if we are indeed “thrown” into the world and its historic contexts in the Heideggerian sense, we are influenced by not only the present but taken to a logical extreme, the sum total of human history that is carried into the present from the distant past. Is not deep history in some sense embedded within our psyches and cultures and does this not provide yet another link to our past that is rendered in our world view, practices, and phenomenological experience? While we may be historically situated in the present, does that not entail that we are also historically situated in the deep past? This perspective argues for connections between modern people and their ancestral roots, building yet another bridge from the present to the past.

Evolutionary psychology as well as neuroscience would support such a premise. Not only is recent historical content part of our makeup, but long-term historic knowledge, as well as cultural and biological adaptations play a role. The brain itself is a product of neurological adaptations shaped by a long evolutionary history. In this sense, we may think of history as working on multiple scales- the immediate and the recent variations and the long-term and evolutionary- shaping both cultural content and biological processes. So, we may recognize short-term cultural variations as resting on deep histories and adaptations brought forth by a nexus of the brain/body, culture, and the material world. In a phenomenological approach, that considers the complexity of experience, a space opens for the contemplation of experiences that are remnants of ancient practices, beliefs, or evolutionary processes. This is not to suggest that there are social memories, but rather deep accepted knowledge and embodied responses, many of which are taken for granted as the way things are or may operate at a subconscious level. To recognize our relationship to our past dissolves the gap between the past and present in that the past literally still exists in the present in the body and within culture writ large.

In philosophical circles, the role of the physical world in perception is highly debated. This is an old issue that dichotomizes realism vs. idealism. For instance, realism posits that the real world is external to us and the things in it exist independently of ourselves and our sensibilities, whereas Kant’s transcendental idealism argues that seemingly external objects come into being as representations. Kant argues that our cognitive apprehension of reality is not so much mirroring a pre-existing world as a construction from our cognitive capacities. Should archaeologists take a radical idealist stance and deny the existence of a “real” external world, arguing that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas with a lack of realist grounding, it becomes more challenging to understand not only people of the past but people of the present.

One must ask, are we in fact so different from one another and do we live in such radically different mental worlds that there can be no real understandings between us? Can we not have an empathetic understanding of each other, modern people from other cultures, or people of the past? We intuitively know that this is not true. In order to appreciate the use of phenomenology in inferences about past people, we need to accept the importance of the physical world external to ourselves as an important element influencing perceptions and concepts, even if one does not fully accept a “pure” perception, that is, one without theoretical constructions. As Yoshimi (2015, 300) notes, “the idea that all being is a correlate of consciousness is unsupported.” This is also addressed by Smith (1995) in his discussion regarding Husserl’s epoché. He argues that according to Husserl, regarding a physical thing there can be an infinite variety of appearances “of all men,” that suggests that everyone’s reality will differ. He goes on to note that the world outside of ourselves not only has physicality, but agreed upon social components. An example of this would be descriptions of colors. Physical light waves within a spectrum produce different wavelengths that manifest as colors. What we call these affects (the phenomenon) are agreed upon social norms such as “red.” According to Smith:

…the problem with all transcendental idealist views is of course the problem with intersubjectivity—of accounting for the existence of harmony among the different worlds which arise when “world” is relativized to your and my subjective appearances and of accounting for the possibility of a single universal science which would govern the modes and manners of such appearing (429).

From this standpoint, the physical world has the potential to provide a basis for the common or “psychically unified” structure of phenomenological experience, that transcends time and space in instances where physical things remain relatively consistent or recognizable in both the past and present. This is a basic underlying assumption that Tilley makes in his phenomenological arguments that overlay the past and present, essentially compressing time.

So where does this leave phenomenology in archaeological practice? Clearly there are debates regarding the underlying assumptions about how perception works and how modern human experience may be used as a tool to better understand the past. Unfortunately, this is the only tool we have available. All we have are the subjective experiences of modern people (archaeologists or otherwise) to use as data in phenomenologically-based inferences, be they sensorial experiences or those that attempt to establish meaning. Unless archaeologists abandon the pursuit of understanding past experience, we must work with the only tools we have, ourselves and other humans. I envision two paths forward. The first is to strengthen and develop current methodologies. The second is to adopt a “naturalized” phenomenology in which phenomena provide data to be explained using scientific approaches.

4 Ways Forward: Phenomenology as Analogy

Following Julian Thomas, phenomenology may be thought of as a special kind of analogy. This suggests a way of strengthening phenomenological arguments. The use of analogy was much debated and discussed in archaeological circles in the 1960s–1980s, particularly in New World archaeology where there has been a great deal of cultural continuity. In archaeological interpretation, analogy has been variously defined, but its broadest definition is probably that of Ascher (1961, 317), who states “In its most general sense interpreting by analogy is assaying any belief about non-observed behavior by referral to observed behavior which is thought to be relevant.” It is one of archaeology’s most widely used tools, traditionally employed to link ethnographic, experimental, or other known data to the archaeological record and may be utilized in model building. However, within the discipline there is a fundamental epistemological debate concerning the use of analogy as a form of evidence (Binford, 1967, 1968; Gould & Watson, 1982; Wylie, 1989a, b).

The question is whether it is possible for archaeologists to understand the past solely from analogic reasoning or whether analogs should function only as testable hypotheses. Archaeology is always concerned with the unknown (and to some the unknowable), and therefore has an affinity with predictive methods. Studies of human behavior require special methodologies and statistical inferences, but studies of past human behavior are even more demanding. How does one deal with phenomena that produce patterns, especially those that are never completely identical except to varying degrees? Due to the lack of uniformitarian principles or laws that are the foundation of the natural sciences, many archaeologists use pattern recognition and analogs to interpret data. But the variability in human behavior renders ethnographic analogy (and pattern recognition) both attractive and risky. On one hand, archaeologists are reliant on analogy to provide models of human behavior. Grahame Clark (1951, 50) observes that all sciences that deal with the remote past must “…interpret evidence about the past to some degree in terms of what may be observed in the present.” On the other hand, archaeologists know that even in similar or identical circumstances high behavioral variability exists preventing the archaeologist from putting total faith in analogs (See Watson, 1979, 1980; Watson et al., 1984, 259–269). The strength of the analogy will also depend heavily upon the question(s) asked and the type of inference sought.

Archaeologists recognize two types of analogies, formal and relational. Formal analogies refer to similarities in form or “formal” attributes between archaeological and ethnographic objects or features. Similar forms may be separated in time and may come from different cultures. For example, we recognize ancient projectile points or pottery vessels because people still use those objects today and they have similar characteristics. A cup fits easily in the and has a large enough rim diameter so that one may put it to the lips and easily drink from it and may be recognized for its form that follows its function.

In order to reduce uncertainty, formal analogies can be strengthened on the ethnographic (modern) side (Ascher, 1961, 322), such as when there are many ethnographic cases. For instance, take the example of the cup. Cups are used today and have been used historically in a large number of cultures throughout the world. By providing multiple instances, archaeologists can build up strong inductively reasoned cases. The modern analog is so statistically common that we would expect it in the archaeological record thereby reducing uncertainty. When we consider phenomenological experiential observations, the more people that have similar experiences, the stronger the argument for the plausibility of the phenomenological analogy. Additionally, experimental archaeology provides a vehicle for exploring human experience in circumstances (or form) that simulate the past. Experimental archaeology creates controllable imitative experiments to replicate past phenomena that may be used to test hypotheses or strengthen analogs (Mathieu, 2002, 1). An elaborate case of an experimental project is Lejre, a reconstructed Iron Age village in Denmark (Rasmussen & Gronnow, 1999). Here, archaeologists as well as the general public can experience living in a reconstructed Iron Age house and conduct domestic routines that might be expected of an Iron Age person. In this way the experiment attempts to recreate the past so that a modern person could have simulated a past experience. While it is beyond the project goals to know exactly how past people established meaning in their social relationships, in the Lejre experiment they may physically embody the Iron Age experience comparing that experience to their own, which may lead to additional insights or help bolster analogical arguments about past people. Recreating past environments is what drives virtual reality, 3D modeling, GIS and other computer simulations. Currently, simulations typically lack the total immersive sensorial experience that can be achieved in a full-blown reconstruction, but may still produce useful analogical information that could be crowd sourced, possibly statistically strengthening the sensorial analogy on the ethnographic or modern side.

In relational analogies there is close cultural continuity between the archaeological and ethnographic records or a similar adaptation-function. In other words, the best analogies are from closely “related” groups. Some groups are related by their adaptations. For instance, there are particular adaptations that people living in very cold environments might share such as dressing in furs. Desert-dwelling societies are best used as analogs for prehistoric communities that lived similar environments. The use of pit-houses that retain heat are a common desert technology throughout the world for staying warn in an environment that is very hot during the day and very cold at night. Around the equator people grow food in jungle environments using a technique called “slash and burn” farming. This same technique is used widely today and was employed by the ancient Maya thousands of years ago.

If it can be demonstrated that a group has continuously occupied the same geographical area for many years strong analogical arguments can be drawn between modern people and archaeological cultures. Relational analogies are exemplified by the Direct Historic Approach (or Folk-Culture approach in Europe) (Wedel, 1938). Inferences are produced by working back in time from the ethnographically known to the archaeologically unknown using ethnographic, historical and archaeological data. While the approach is not directly applicable for use in phenomenology, considering the experiences of descendent communities makes for stronger experiential analogies, particularly if there are demonstrated continuities in ideologies and world views (ontologies). Working with native interlocuters regarding landscapes of the American southwest, Fowles (2010) noted that it would be impossible to infer meanings in the archaeological record without the benefit of modern people’s special knowledge.

In order to understand phenomenological meanings of analogs would require a much more complex process that would necessarily involve contextualizing subjective or intersubjective experiences (Thomas, 1996, 2012). Philosopher of archaeology Alison Wylie (1989a) suggested a methodological approach to analogs using a “cables and tacking” model of archaeological inquiry. This concept is derived from Gadamer’s hermeneutic circle and Peirce’s argument that scientific theories are more like cables than chains. Rather than a linear chain of single studies that can produce broken links, in the cable metaphor, no one scientific study is sufficient for the development of knowledge, but multiple studies over time are necessary for establishing a knowledge base. Truth is not absolute but is a never-ending social inquiry based on a multitude of arguments (Preucel & Hodder, 1996, 250–254; Gamble, 2015, 113–115). It is by way of Richard Bernstien’s (1983) arguments that mitigate scientific objectivism and relativity that Wylie envisions a grounding for archaeological knowledge. She argues that in the archaeological record there is an underlying “determining structure” that is causal, functional, structural, and intentional.

In the cables and tacking model, not only does the archaeological record itself, but multiple independent studies, often cross-disciplinary, serve to constrain and enrichen archaeological interpretations so that accepted knowledge is the result of their convergence. Archaeologists “tack” between experience-near and experience-distant concepts in a type of dialog that evolves over time and with the addition of new data leading to new concepts, models, and archaeological reconstructions. Wylie argues that this method of knowledge-building also helps to avoid biases because it is unlikely that all strands of evidence would incorporate the same pre-understandings and/or bias. The cables and tacking model would be useful in phenomenological studies that hope to uncover underlying meanings in the natural or built environments by including multiple forms of data that help to contextualize the human experience. In this model, analogies may be strengthened on both the modern and archaeological sides, opening a space to include not only phenomenological experience, but also archaeological contexts, epigraphy, iconography, ethnohistoric or historic data, scientific studies, experimentation, and cross-cultural comparisons to create complex and nuanced arguments.

5 Another Way Forward—A Naturalized Phenomenology

New Archaeology advocated for a scientific approach to archaeological epistemology. Lewis Binford, its most vocal proponent, argued for the incorporation of analogy as a method for the creation of testable hypotheses. This was illustrated in Binford’s classic article, “Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking: The Use of Analogy in Archaeological Reasoning” (1967), a case study used to demonstrate Binford’s proposed use of analogy. At the core of Binford’s Middle Range Theory is the replacement of uniformitarian laws with low-level theories by conducting studies that link the archaeological record with the ethnographic present by means of experimental or ethnoarchaeological studies. Therefore, the use of experiential data fits well with Binford’s program. One might envision using either subjective or intersubjective observations in directing archaeological research and providing hypothetical data to be explained. As an example, in conducting studies involving sound or light in the archaeological record, modern observations would be pertinent to the development of hypotheses that could be tested using methods of quantitative instrumentation.

This is complimentary to a “naturalized” phenomenology, which comes out of the Husserlian rejection of naturalism (the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes), in other words, an orientation towards natural science (Varela, 1996; Gallagher, 2010; Yoshimi, 2015; Zahavi, 2010). Husserl envisioned phenomenology as having methodological priority over other sciences, yet in a naturalized phenomenology, it becomes an equal partner with the empirical sciences such as cognitive science or neuroscience. As Yoshimi (2015, 9) argues phenomenology can influence other sciences by providing data to be explained. Gallagher (2010, 27) refers to this as “front loading phenomenology,” where phenomenological insights may be used to inform the design of experiments. In other words, empirical studies can test and verify phenomenological descriptions and can extend its application (32). In the following, I offer a case study in which the archaeological record demonstrates an intersubjective human experience that is then studied empirically, thereby extending both archaeology and phenomenology.

6 An Archaeological Case Study Employing a Naturalized Phenomenology

In the world of landscape and sensorial experiences, caves occupy a distinctive place due to the special properties of their morphology. To begin, what exactly is a cave? Caves are somewhat difficult to define scientifically because what constitutes a cave depends on the perspective of human investigators. In the Encyclopedia of Caves, Third Edition, they are defined as “openings in the Earth, large enough for human exploration” (White et al., 2019, 255). As a non-specific term “cave” has come to mean any cavity in the earth. Rockshelters are a subset of caves, but for archaeologists it is important to distinguish the two because they have very different affordances due to the sense of enclosure and the quality of light available. The quality of light may be divided into three zones: light, twilight, and dark (Faulkner, 1988). Superficial hollows such as open rockshelters include light and twilight zones but not dark zones. Although rockshelters have often been used for habitation, these same sites may also contain ritual deposits. Caves with proper dark zones may contain a rockshelter at the entrance that may have been used as domestic habitational space, but the use of cave dark zones as living space is extremely rare and usually only occurs when people are under threat (Moyes, 2012, 5–7). Along with my colleague environmental psychologist Dan Montello, I have argued elsewhere that cave dark zones do not offer high-quality affordance for habitation but do offer high-quality affordance for hiding and secrecy (Montello & Moyes, 2012). Due to sensory deprivation brought on by darkness and silence, dark zones of caves can help to produce meditative states or stimulate otherworldly experiences; a type of affordance is not discussed by Gibson in his visual theory (Gibson, 1979). Therefore, we suggested the term “transcendental affordance” in keeping with Gibsonian ideas that affordances straddle the material world and the world of the mind, arguing that the human/cave interaction works reciprocally to facilitate and encourage symbolic or ritual behaviors. Interestingly, what we find archaeologically is that cave dark zones are used almost solely as ritual or special function places (such as venues for producing images) from as early in human development as the Middle Paleolithic period (Hoffman et al., 2018). This argument is bolstered by the many instances exhibited by cave dark zone ritual traditions that have temporal depth across regions in both the Old and New Worlds (See for examples Moyes, 2012; Büster et al., 2019; Machause-Lopez et al., 2022).

Archaeological research on ancient cave sites brings into focus implicit and explicit uses of phenomenology in interpreting the archaeological record perhaps more than any other subfield of archaeology because of properties within the cave environment that cannot be overlooked. Caves are dark, enclosed, often dank, stunningly quiet or full of reverberation. Bats often inhabit caves and the smell of guano is pungent and unmistakable. Speleothem formations decorate many caves partitioning space. Caves may be labyrinthic and notoriously difficult to navigate because in shadowy darkness the environment appears undifferentiated and landmarks are difficult to recognize.

Despite their various morphologies and special characteristics, the one property that perhaps most impacts human experience and behavior in caves is darkness. Caves are some of the darkest natural places on earth and only in the depths of the ocean can we find such total lack of light. The question becomes, can darkness influence human thought and sensibilities? Several lines of research suggest that it can. Seasonal affective disorders (SAD) are a well-studied form of depression caused by the lack of natural daylight during autumn or winter months suggesting that the quality of light can disrupt circadian rhythms and that this likely has genetic components (See for reviews Lam & Levitan, 2000; Magnusson & Boivin, 2003; Targum & Rosenthal, 2008). Additionally, a recent study has suggested that lighting conditions affect a number of different emotional and perceptual experiences (Xu et al., 2014). Cognitive changes were also observed in studies of sensory deprivation from the mid-twentieth century (See for e.g. Schultz, 1965, 169–194; Suefeld, 1969; Zuckerman, 1969). Researchers noted that sight deprivation effected the visual cortex producing hallucinations or visual imagery. Also reported were “deficiencies in visual-motor coordination, changes in size and shape constancies, color perception, apparent movement, loss of accuracy in tactual, spatial, and time orientation and a variety of other changes” (Kubzansky & Leiderman, 1965, 228–229).

While it is possible to experience total darkness in caves, archaeological evidence demonstrates that prehistoric people using dark caves had various types of lighting technologies such as tiny oil lamps and wood torches. These sources all produced dim flickering light highlighting the shadowy environment (Pettitt et al., 2017). Could short-term low light conditions produce cognitive effects? Partnering with cognitive scientists Michael Spivey and Teenie Matlock, Daniel Montello, and students Lilly Rigoli and Stephanie Huette, a study run at the University of California, Merced suggests that a darkened environment does produce cognitive change (Moyes et al., 2017). In the study there were two conditions, a light room and a dark room. Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire on magical or supernatural thinking while sitting in one room or the other. Both rooms were small 1.2 m × 1.8 m laboratory spaces. In the light condition, the room had a large picture window that let in a great deal of natural light during the day when we collected data. The dark condition was presented in a windowless room dimly illuminated only by a reading light attached to the questionnaire clipboard. The dark room was otherwise identical to the light room. The reading light provided just enough light to read the questionnaire. The 104 participants were evenly divided and randomly assigned one of the conditions. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first included fifteen questions asking to what degree participants believe (on a 0–10 scale) in a wide variety of types of supernatural thinking, including extrasensory perception, ghosts, reincarnation, a deity that listens to one’s prayers, etc. The second part included 10 short vignettes describing anomalous events in everyday situations, offering multiple-choice responses for how the participant might interpret and explain the event. Two of the alternative responses involved supernatural explanations, while the other two offered common scientific explanations.

The results were suggestive. The participants in the dark room condition rated their beliefs in supernatural thinking on the first part of the questionnaire as two-thirds of a point higher on average than those in the light room. Although this effect is subtle, it is sufficiently reliable across participants that the difference is statistically significant (p < .05). In a two-sample t-test, the effect of lighting condition obtained a t value of 4.74, with degrees of freedom of 102, and a p value of 0.032 (which indicates the probability that the difference in these conditions resulted from pure chance). This difference was replicated on the second part of the questionnaire. Compared to participants in the light room, those in the dark room were 11% more likely to select a multiple-choice response that was associated with supernatural thinking. This difference was also statistically significant in a two-sample t-test, where the effect of lighting condition obtained a t value of 4.57, with degrees of freedom of 102, and a p value of 0.035. Our data suggest that environments can in fact effect thought processes and encourage “magical thinking.”

While these data are preliminary, this is an example of how phenomenology can be extended to address both archaeological questions and questions about the relationship between the environment and human thought. If we are correct, the implications for not only archaeological interpretation but for environmental studies, architectural design and urban planning are myriad and clearly demonstrate the considerable influence of environment on the human psyche at a group level, which is compatible with archaeological findings. These data also legitimize the use of phenomenology in archaeology supporting the value of virtual or physical reconstructions to aid in bridging the years between past peoples and ourselves. Developing rigorous scientific methods to evaluate shared human experience, also aids in addressing criticisms of ahistorical, homogenizing, and Western modernist universalist interpretations of the archaeological record, and provides a way forward in creating grounded intersubjective phenomenological approaches.

7 Conclusion

This paper has examined the use of phenomenology in archaeology and its critique. Although it has come under heavy criticism primarily because of its subjective methodology, there are ways to mitigate this and create a phenomenology that is strengthened by turning to practices used in bolstering analogies between the ethnographic present and the archaeological past. It is unlikely that a stand-alone phenomenological approach will ever enable archaeologists to infer meaning in the archaeological record, but by taking a contextual approach using multiple data streams, some inferences can be brought forward using Wylie’s “cables and tacking” approach. The ethnographic side of analogies may be bolstered by experimentation, reported common experiences, and crowd sourcing, as well as relational analogies from modern cultures.

Where phenomenology can have a major impact on other fields is in suggesting hypotheses to be tested based on patterns explored in the archaeological record. This naturalized approach mitigates the issue of subjectivity on both the ethnographic and archaeological sides of the analogy. One could also employ such an approach using multiple participants in archaeological experimentations and in reactions to simulations. Caves are prime subjects for such exploration because they are such exotic environments and produce such profound phenomenological experiences based on their morphological characteristics. In this sense, cave studies are viable candidates as “proofs of concept” for demonstrating these ideas.