Ethnology as Archaeology
In Lund a society called Etnologiska föreningen was founded 1903. The intention was to bring about an association of people from the subjects of anthropology, ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and psychology, who had common bands in their interest in man and human cuIturaI phenomena. Ethnology was thus the spreading umbrella under which all these disciplines were thought to be able to shelter. It had been introduced to Sweden by the zoologist and archaeologist Sven Nilsson. The subject was continued by Gunnar Olof HyIten-Cavallius, whose magnum opus on the Värend district of Småland bore the subtitle "An Essay in Swedish Ethnology" (1863-68). This work was distinguished by its focus on people and the author's holistic view of their spiritual, material, and social culture, and the method of using modem-day survivals in these spheres to reconstruct life in prehistoric times.
For the first generation of scientifically schooled researchers, there was no real boundary between ethnology and archaeology - they were both concerned with knowledge of the past, fornkunskap, the indigenous equivalent of the term archaeology.
The primary scientific paradigm that made the prehistoric perspective possible was evolutionism. This had been developed in geology and comparative research, and it was the method introduced by Sven Nilsson and continued by Hylten-Cavallius. The leading light in archaeology, Oscar Montelius, was also an evolutionist. In the Nordic Museum, as in other museums of cultural history, artefacts in the permanent exhibitions were arranged on the model of the typological method, just as they were in the archaeological museums.
When functionalism then made its entry, ethnology could still be combined with archaeology. The archaeologists were responsible for prehistoric finds, but they were often bewildered by them. Ethnologists could explain the function, especially of the objects found in medieval archaeological contexts, drawing on their knowledge of modem artefacts and techniques.
Diffusionism also served as a shared theory for ethnology and archaeology. This era is easily recognized by its diffusion and distribution maps.
Folklorists also focused their research on the ancient past. In 1939 C. W. von Sydow in Lund published an essay entitled "Folktales and Archaeology". Philologically oriented folkloristics had a similar prehistoric perspective. The prehistoric perspective survived longest in the lists of required reading for undergraduates. In Sigfrid Svensson's introductory ethnological textbook from 1966, the first chapter is entitled "Folk Culture and Prehistoric Culture". This is illustrated with a number of examples representing both material and non-material culture. One of the subtitles is characteristic: "The Continuity of Artefact Forms". The criterion of form played an important role in archaeology, and it was applied not just in archaeological but also in ethnological investigations.
How was the prehistoric perspective in Swedish ethnology broken? Evert Baudou argues that the holistic view of the past began to weaken as soon as separate university subjects were established. Gustaf Hallström was rather alone among archaeologists as a defender of the concept of "the living past" . von Sydow did not only represent the prehistoric perspective; he was also deeply impressed by psychology. There were therefore several different - even mutually incompatible - lines in his research. For Sigurd Erixon on the other hand, it was the influence of sociology that led to a change in course.
For comparative studies in time and place, it became necessary to focus on individual elements of culture, whether fairy tales or threshing flails. These often became so central that the people who had created and used them were left in the background. This was particularly the case in diffusionist studies, and as a result, there was harsh criticism of diffusionist research. In opposition to ethnological studies of elements, the early sixties saw the coming of studies of cultural laws, systems, and societies of various kinds.
Two new concepts helped to divert interest from the study of elements. One was ecology, the other was context. In Sweden it was the new anthropological influences in particular that were mainly responsible for the change of paradigm.
Another factor that led to the abandonment of the prehistoric perspective in ethnology and folklore studies was an increased awareness of source criticism. Source criticism is never wrong, no matter what angle it comes from. In combination with the other arguments that I have put forward, it has meant that ethnologists have deserted some of their old fields of study. Ethnology became an interviewing science, with refined interview techniques. But only living people can be interviewed, which limits the temporal perspective to a thin section comprising at most three generations living at the same time.
The education explosion at the universities at the end of the 1960s meant that students of ethnology had to seek careers outside the museums. This in turn meant that ethnology lost its role as vocational training and that the courses became more general and anthropological in character. The divergence between archaeology and ethnology has already had damaging effects. Archaeologists and ethnologists simply are not familiar enough with each other's research.
Will archaeology and ethnology continue to go their separate ways? New scientific methods in archaeology suggest this. Yet there is at the same time a new human perspective in archaeology. The archaeologists' focus on artefacts is beginning to shift towards a greater interest in the people who used the artefacts, their social organization, and even their religious conceptions. Archaeologists have once again begun to take an interest in ethnological and anthropological questions, having introduced the concept of "ethnoarchaeology".
An important factor for a rapprochement between ethnology and archaeology is that the task of archaeology is not confined to revealing the supposed original meaning of ancient remains but also the multitude of meanings that have been ascribed to them through the centuries.
Both ethnology and archaeology study man as a cultural being, although in different epochs. They have in common the elementary questions of what people eat, how they dress, how they build, how they organize their societies, and how they relate to supernatural powers. Turning the dock back and transforming ethnology back into a study of the distant past is neither desirable nor possible. But it would undoubtedly be fruitful to prolong the longue durée perspective backwards in the case of ethnology, forwards in the case of archaeology, especially with an increased awareness of the pluralism of meaning.
