Gnoseological foundations of social reconstructions in archaeology

The article is aimed at describing and analyzing theoretical and methodological foundations of social reconstructions in archaeology. The subject of social reconstructions is the social structure and the object is the funerary ritual. Funerary monuments are the widespread sources, which makes it possible to use quantitative methods for studying the social structure of ancient societies. The social structure, funerary ritual, and their factor mathematical model are considered as self-sufficient multi-structural objects. The authors state that the invariant of a social structure is reflected in the funerary ritual. The specific kind of invariant is defined in many ways by the gnoseological conditions of the building of the mathematical model. The following gnoseological foundations of the mathematical model are highlighted: theoretical and methodological approaches, cognitive and value orientations of the researcher; quality of the excavations, field research, which are reflected in reports, and planimography of funerary monuments. The main theoretical and methodological approaches for studying social structures are described, namely, historicism, evolutionism, and cultural-historical, structural-functional and systematic approaches. The authors analyze the influence of hypothetic-deductive presuppositions of the researcher on the representative set of burials, the selection of the conditions for the analysis, and the interpretation of the resulting model. They conclude that there is a lack of interdisciplinary operational terms and theoretical grounds for the analysis of the processes of getting and understanding the results. The formalized language of the mathematical model does not embrace the social object to its fullest. Semiotic structures of the funerary ritual are of a syncretic nature, which contradicts the uniqueness of mathematical references. The main difficulties are manifested in the separation of pragmatic, mythological, and mental social meanings of archaeological artifacts. They are a priori hidden from the researcher because of the difference in cognitive structures at the different stages of the historical course. The further perspectives are the following: 1) to form interdisciplinary operational terms allowing the researcher to move from the empirical data to gnoseological constructs; 2) to find the ways to minimize the influence of subjective structures on the outcome of the mathematical analysis of archaeological material.