Theme:
6. A Decade after the ‘Third Science Revolution in Archaeology’
Session format:
Discussion session (with formal abstracts)
Title:
Science or Humanities – Whither Archaeology?
Content:
The prevalence of science in archaeology becomes more marked every passing year. By “science”, we mean the hard sciences - methods, techniques, and approaches that derive from the natural sciences, computer sciences, and mathematics. This also includes scientific epistemologies, such as the hypothetico-deductive and quantitative approaches to the archaeological past. This science revolution has also been accompanied by an increase in research funding for archaeology, making our discipline appear more socially relevant to the wider public. In the process archaeology is now a staple form of research in high-ranking journals. Archaeology is no longer the handmaiden of history or anthropology, much on the contrary, archaeology has become a dominant discipline when it comes to research and popularity.
However, this development in archaeology re-establishes ideas and approaches that were popular 50 years ago, when processual archaeology became the most dominant way of conducting archaeology in the west. But processual archaeology did not last long; it underwent a radical critique that demonstrated the limitations of very strict scientific epistemologies, that there is no such thing as absolute objectivity, and that the ideas and approaches of the humanities can and should still play a role in archaeology.
Is archaeological science the new status quo or is there the possibility to harken back towards the humanities? The sciences are of crucial importance to archaeology, but we can certainly make a case that archaeology operates better when combining both science and humanities. The aim of this session is to discuss the current state of the art with regards to the practice of archaeology, what role the humanities can play, the current critique of the sciences in archaeology, the role of theory in current science research, and ultimately, whether we are happy with where the discipline is going.
Keywords:
Science, Humanities, Funding, Epistemology, Methodology, Method
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Artur Ribeiro (Germany) 1
Co-organisers:
Liv Nilsson Stutz (Sweden) 2
Tobias Kienlin (Germany) 3
Affiliations:
1. University of Kiel
2. Linnaeus University
3. University of Cologne
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