Court Reporting. On the effectiveness of the narrative ideal in Hallstatt research

Abstract

My paper is based upon the assumption that prehistoric archaeology’s business is to generate chronographic texts instead of the construction of narratives like in historical science. Archaeology should have the ability to cope with abstractness and indecisiveness conditional on the nature of archaeological findings and features without conceding to a supposed need for completeness and concretion. Archaeological reconstructions’ 'faintness and incompleteness', to quote Moritz Hoernes, is not a blemish that has to be compensated; archaeology rather has to accept the specific restrictions of its sources and so the interpretation of its finds and features has to be accurate but abstract as well. Following a narrative concept, archaeology risks to transpose its issues into concrete life-like pictures which tend to take their own way due to their suggestive power. Th is assumption will be exemplified in reference to Hallstatt period research. Based on some linguistic peculiarities and repeating rhetorical figures, a specific jargon is formed that can be ascribed to a request to narrate a coherent and closed story of this period. This jargon is analysed as a characteristic of a reasoning that is bound to an ideal of narration.