Phil. Soc. Sci 6 (1976) 227-234 On the Ascription of Functions to Objects, with Special Reference to Inference in Archaeology* MICHAEL E. LEVIN, Péilosophy, CCNY-CUNY ‘The American Museum of Natural History has on exhibit a collection of ‘small stone flakes that the curator has denominated ‘choppers of the African neolithic period’. There are important methodological ques- tions to be asked about these objects and their baptism: how and why did such objects come into existence? How do we know what they were for? ‘What does it mean to say that these objects were for, and used for, chopping? What can one conclude about the overall social fabric of a culture which had a place for objects with the use these objects had? These questions, of course, are to be asked of all the created and affected physical objects of aculture, or their surviving traces, and what is sometimes called the epistemological problem of the relation of be- haviour to material culture is to outline the presuppositions of answer- ing, and asking, these questions. Given a particular physical object—suppose a simple stone flake—it is often easy tosay how it came into existence. We know enough physics and chemistry to hazard a reasonable guess about the processes neces- sary and sufficient to bring the object into question into existence. If we suspect that human agency was involved in the creation, we know enough kinesthesidlogy to retrodict the hand movements that must have been executed as part of the causal history of this piece of stone. But that human agency played a role in the creation of a physical object is insufficient for counting that object as part of material culture. First, the object must not have been created inadvertently—soot from a hearth is not material culture. This is no bar to using inadvertent by-products in the ongoing theoretical effort to reconstruct a vanished culture, much as Sherlock Holmes used cuff lint to reconstruct the recent travels of his. acquaintances, My chief interest, and a chief interest of the ar- chaeologist, however, concerns those physical objects which were for Something: choppers, traps and the like. By ascribing a function F to an object {the flake, say), the archaeologist kills two birds with one stone. He has first, ventured a causal hypothesis about how the cobble came into existence. The logic of this inference is discussed extensively * Received 6.1.76 Copyright(c) 2002 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright(c) Sage Publications, Ine.