Ad
related to: archaeology theories pdf
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways.
Until the mid-20th century and the introduction of technology, there was a general consensus that archaeology was closely related to both history and anthropology. Since then, elements of other disciplines such as physics , chemistry , biology , metallurgy , engineering , medicine , etc., have found an overlap, resulting in a need to revisit ...
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture. It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural evolutionism began to fall out of favor with many antiquarians and archaeologists.
These range broadly from an empirical archaeology viewed as a science, to a relativistic post-modern concept of archaeology as an ideology that cannot verify its own concepts. Therefore, the search for a unifying explanatory theory is a major concern among philosophers of archaeology.
"Behavioural Archaeology" was first published by Michael B. Schiffer, J. Jefferson Reid, and William L. Rathje in 1975 in the American Anthropologist journal. [1] Leading up to the publication, archaeology as a discipline was expanding in its practice and theory due to the specialisation of various areas and new ideas that were being presented to the community.
Post-processual archaeology developed largely independently among the archaeological community in the United States. As such its primary influence was critical theory, as opposed to the French Marxist anthropology which had been the primary influence upon their British counterparts.
Systems theory in archaeology is the application of systems theory and systems thinking in archaeology.It originated with the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the 1950s, and is introduced in archaeology in the 1960s with the work of Sally R. Binford and Lewis Binford's "New Perspectives in Archaeology" and Kent V. Flannery's "Archaeological Systems Theory and Early Mesoamerica".
Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical perspective in archaeology that focuses on the ancient mind. It is divided into two main groups: evolutionary cognitive archaeology (ECA), which seeks to understand human cognitive evolution from the material record, and ideational cognitive archaeology (ICA), which focuses on the symbolic structures discernable in or inferable from past material culture.