Related Papers
The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovations
Stefan Burmeister, reinhard bernbeck
Histories of innovation are prototypical success stories. The advent of the wheel, of writing, printing, the steam engine or computers: where would we be without these path-breaking technological innovations and their global consequences? At least retrospectively, innovations appear as linear, straightforward processes. However, this view is too simplistic. Innovations are not self-evident new elements of life but meet social and technological resistance. In accounts of past innovations, we also often forget that their price is always an irremediable loss of knowledge and practical skills. This collection of essays shows that innovations, both ancient and more recent ones, are located in a network of pre-existing life-worlds. The authors elucidate the wide and often unrecognized impacts of innovations on social structures and cultural practices. Case studies from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, central Europe and the modern world highlight the preconditions and oft-ignored secondary effects of innovation. They address the complex social negotiations and the multitude of unforeseen and unplanned changes which accompany the New, rather than focusing on intended changes, which are usually understood as improvements and ways to broaden possibilities for action. Our ultimate goal is to investigate the complex entanglements of innovations in past and present worlds and deepen our understanding of mechanisms of cultural change.
Archaeology and Innovation
2017 •
reinhard bernbeck
This introduction to a set of papers on innovations in ancient societies discusses an overview of crucial issues raised in the collected contributions. It is evident that the esteem for innovations in different societies was highly uneven. Most of the contributions collected here argue that in non-modern circ*mstances, innovations had to be inserted into existing cultural traditions with utmost care to be successful.
The Digital Atlas of Innovations: A Research Program on Innovations in Prehistory and Antiquity
Florian Klimscha, Jürgen Renn, Barbara Helwing, Sebastian Kruse
The authors discuss the simultaneous appearance of technological innovations in three key technologies (metallurgy, wheeled vehicles, weighing systems) in the second half of the 4th millennium. This is done from a source-critical perspective because the innovations are discussed with the help of dynamic maps from the Topoi project Digital Atlas of Innovations. Besides indications of diffusion gradients influenced by special research conditions, exceptional waves of innovation can be detected for all three technologies in the discussed period. These waves of innovation cannot, however, be generalized but have to be understood on the basis of the respective technology traditions and lines of development specific to local areas. Monocentric diffusion theories can be clearly disproven, local technology developments and their converging in certain centrally situated regions have to be assumed instead. Similarly, the transfer of objects and their châine opératoire can only be detected rather infrequently, while the adaptation to local socio-economic and environmental factors can be demonstrated
Svend Hansen – Jürgen Renn – Florian Klimscha – Jochen Büttner – Barbara Helwing – Sebastian Kruse, The Digital Atlas of Innovations: A Research Program on Innovations in Prehistory and Antiquity
Svend Hansen
Archaeology and Innovation: Remarks on Approaches and Concepts
Stefan Burmeister
This introduction to a set of papers on innovations in ancient societies discusses an overview of crucial issues raised in the collected contributions. It is evident that the esteem for innovations in different societies was highly uneven. Most of the contributions collected here argue that in non-modern circ*mstances, innovations had to be inserted into existing cultural traditions with utmost care to be successful.
A developmental approach to ancient innovation
Carl Knappett
Contextualising Ancient Technologies
Florian Klimscha
Science, Technology & Human Values
Archaeology and the Social Study of Technological Innovation
1993 •
Michael Geselowitz
Prehistoric archaeology, which in the American academic structure is part of anthropology, has always included and continues to include the study of social aspects of technology, particularly of technological innovation. Despite early calls for their inclusion in the field of science, technology, and society, however, archaeologists and their research have not, by and large, been integrated into this new discipline. This article is a renewed appeal for the use of archaeology in studying issues of technology and society. An example drawn from prehistoric Europe illustrates how archaeology can provide a fresh perspective on social aspects of technological innovation, as well as specific data for cross-cultural comparison.
From invention to innovation: technical systems in late Prehistory
Christian Jeunesse
Jeunesse C. (2021) From invention to innovation: technical systems in late Prehistory, in: F. Klimscha, S. Hansen, J. Renn (eds.), Contextualising ancient technology. From archaeological case studies towards a social theory of ancient innovation processes, Berlin Studies of the Ancient World 73, 2021 Edition Topoi / Exzellenzcluster Topoi der Freien Universität Berlin und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, p. 57-66. The concept of technical system is a major tool to improve our understanding of the history of techniques. A technical system is a coherent set of interdependent techniques sharing all or part of their chaînes opératoires and forming a ‘paradigm’ of its own within the technical range of a society. The ultimate major technical system to be set up in the course of Prehistory is the ‘mixing-and-combustion technical system’ (MCTS). The MCTS is responsible for the invention of ceramic about 33 000 years ago. For the first time man allows himself to substantially modify his environment through a process which is a matter of both hybridization and empiric chemistry. The main inventions of the MCTS are of Palaeolithic age. Their turning into innovations is the very essence of the neolithisation process.
Contextualising Ancient Technology
Svend Hansen, Florian Klimscha
