THE NEXT SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: How it might shape the third millennium

And when com- pared with relevant archaeological data and cultures it will allow critical analysis of how the two interact. This will inevitably lead to critical discus- sions about genetic and cultural interaction and transmission. In addi- tion we shall be able to trace human diseases, lactose tolerance, eye and hair colours etc.

A paradigm is a shared foundational set of theoretical beliefs and priori- ties that govern the way one or several disciplines interpret their data. When Thomas Kuhn introduced the concept in for the natural sciences Kuhn it was soon applied in archaeology to character- ize the major changes in thinking from cultural history to processual and later to post-processual archaeology.

However, several researchers later argued that paradigms, or discourses to use the French concept, are much more encompassing and relate to the way humanities and social sciences interact with society throughout history. Figure 14; Bintliff In the words of Eric Wolf: He sees the original de- bate between Enlightenment and its enemies as having formed all sub- sequent debates. Or in his own words: The issue of Reason against Custom and Tradition was raised by the pro- tagonists of the Enlightenment against their adversaries, the advocates of what Isaiah Berlin called the Counter-Enlightenment.

In the wake of this debate Marx and Engels transformed the arguments advanced by both sides into a revolutionary critique of the society that had given rise to both positions. The arguments put forward by this succession of critics in turn unleashed a reaction against all universalizing schemes, schemes that envisioned a general movement of transcendence for hu- mankind. There is, in my opinion, little to suggest that we are past these clas- sic debates and shifts in ideological and intellectual climate. I therefore tend to see the present changes in archaeology as part of a larger shift from postmodernity to a revised modernity.

If this were not the case we should instead consider the third science revolution as inherently archaeological, which it is not: Here the parallel computing and digital revolution in modern media and communication also had huge impact by creating Big Data. This combined data and knowledge revolution is thus interdisci- plinary and global, and therefore changes observed in archaeology are also likely to be observed in other disciplines.

There are, however, two conditions that influence the course of the new paradigm, and whether it is still possible to maintain a dominant global position. This implies that there were marginalized regions, such as former eastern Europe under communism, which was cut off from such global develop- ments, or disciplines with minority status, which lacked the critical mass and importance to enter the global cultural and intellectual trends. We may therefore also expect this to have an in- fluence on the acceptance of new theoretical ideas, and a more sceptical approach in some academic camps towards the third science revolution and its impact.

In addition to this, archaeology occupies a specific po- sition among the social and historical disciplines, between science and the humanities, which may suggest a stronger acceptance of the science revolution than in other social and humanistic disciplines. Archaeology is concerned with long-term history, as well as its con- stituting sequences of short-term history and personal lives. The A-DNA and strontium revolution redefines human origins, health and mobility, and establishes a new prehistory.

One such example is Eulau in central Ger- many: The DNA analysis could demonstrate that children buried together with a man and a woman were their offspring. But in addition the strontium isotope analyses revealed that the males were local but the women were non-local, originating in a nearby, but different Neolithic Culture. Here the combined evidence from A-DNA, strontium isotope analysis, osteological analysis of skeletal trauma and archaeological analysis of flint arrowheads revealed an ancient drama of potential wife robbing and later revenge Meyer et al.

The reconstruction of such a singular historical event is powerful as it opens the door to social and political dynamics and ten- sions on the ground, which, however, were played out and should be situated in the larger context of the expansion and consolidation of the Corded Ware culture among neighbouring and retreating Neolithic cul- tures during the third millennium BC. Here future genomic DNA analy- ses will be able to reveal how this happened. Thus, the ongoing scientific revolution of archaeological knowledge has implications for theory and interpretation, as well as critical think- ing.

When the contours of this new prehistory become clearer we will see new theoretical and interpretative models emerge, and I have suggested what they may look like Figure 1. Prehistory will thus in some situa- tions be subject to the same level of detail as modern material culture studies.

This opens up for a truly human history from the Palaeolithic till today, and a truly interdisciplinary understanding of human history. It will require the development of a critical archaeology that engages in a discussion of biology vs culture, genetic versus cultural evolution. However, we are past theoretical hegemonies in the humanities. This invites theorizing that is more integrated in actual modelling, such as agent-based modelling or complexity theory. Some will see this as a return to a more processual, positivistic approach, which may in part be true, but it is one that is also informed by critical theory about the use of the past.

It will therefore be more engaged in political and ethical issues. This new discourse is emerging already, but will become domi- nant during the next decade.

• KIRKUS REVIEW.
• Eine Reise in Indien: Von Mumbai zu Ghats am Ganges in Varanasi, der Himalaya Hill-Station Darjeeling und nach Sikkim (German Edition).
• .

We may still see part of the post-proces- sual agenda continue in some camps, and critical heritage studies will keep expanding and thus force archaeology to confront political issues about the use of the past. Let me therefore finally, and very briefly, dis- cuss archaeology and the public domain. During the last generation we have tended to separate the public do- main of archaeology from its scientific domain: Museology likewise became the professionalized manage- ment of collections and exhibitions, and taught as courses along with cultural heritage at universities.

During the last decade or so both fields have developed critical academic research: This professionalization and critical development of new fields of archaeological engagements and research was necessary, but tends to obscure the close relation between the three: A recent example is the attempt by ultra-nationalist Indian re- searchers to claim that Indo-European languages had their homeland in India see debate articles in Journal of Indo-European Studies vols 30 and Very much in the way Gustav Kossinna wanted a Nordic homeland for Indo-European a hundred years ago, based on ideological conviction.

There are no easy solutions to such ideological infiltrations, other than maintaining high-quality, critical research programmes. Snow in his classic lecture from , later published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. We are now in a simi- lar situation, where science has taken a big leap forward in archaeology too just see how the Journal of Archaeological Science has increased its annual issues in recent years.

Thus the natural science turn in archaeo- logical knowledge during the last ten years left archaeological theory, as well as most archaeologists, somewhat baffled and behind. A scientist recently came to the defence of the humanities in the book Aping Mankind Tallis , against what he considered the misrepresentation of humanity.

However, the debates that have followed point to another dimension of modern DNA research: While archaeology has a long and glori- ous history of popularization, there is less experience of taking part in critical public debates, whether in newspapers, television or on the web. I would like to see new forms of academic engagements with the pub- lic that cross-cut our professional domains.

I do not recommend a return to a Romantic past where the polymath and antiquarian was a central figure, as illuminated by Michael Shanks ; see also mshanks. It can take the form of national histories, European histories or gender histories, immigration histories etc. The sky is the limit. Books, like vinyl, will continue as a physical, analogue format, but we need to explore in a scientific way the many new possi- bilities of engaging with the past in the present.

I feel that we are right now experiencing the most exciting of times in ar- chaeology — at least during my own lifetime. The s must have held some of the same excitement, at least for some: A new door has been opened to previously hidden absolute knowledge that once again will reduce the amount of qualified guessing and thus both refine and redefine theory and interpretation.

Is there more knowledge of similar magnitude stored to be unleashed from the archaeological record? We know that DNA is stored in frozen soils and perhaps in other soils under good conditions of preservation, which if successfully applied to archaeology could open the door to full environmental reconstruction, including animals and humans Heb- sgaard et al. It will probably never happen, but the point I wish to make is that innovative research is fostered by dreams about what the past was like and how we can find new ways to get to know about it, and secondly what we can learn from it in the present.

This dialogue between dreams and hard evidence, past and present con- cerns, keeps research going during the long, laborious and unglamorous weeks, month and years in the laboratory, in the museum stores, and at the excavations. At least it does for me. Closing the Theoretical Gap. BAR International Series The Material Constitution of Humanness.

Complexity, Social Complexity, and Modelling. Nettle as a distinct Bronze Age textile plant. The Death of Archaeological Theory? History and Continental Approaches.

Scientific Revolution

Eds Handbook of Archaeological Theories. Alterna- tives and Variations Introduction. Cosmic, Biological, and Social. Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration. University Press of Florida. The Amesbury Archer and the Boscomb Bowmen: Wessex Archaeological Report Settlement Growth as Fractal. Journal of Neolithic Archaeology. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.

Are We There Yet? Archaeology and the Postmodern in the New Millennium. Current Swedish Archaeology Making Sense of Things: Archaeologies of Sensory Perception. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology Provenance of Archaeological Wool Textiles: Open Journal of Archaeometry 2, 1 open access. Journal of Archaeological Science Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

Culture, Identity and Global Process. Climate of the Past 6: World-System Analysis and Anthropology: Reviews in Anthropology Chiefdoms and their Analogues: Social Evolution and History. World-System Analysis and Ar- chaeology: Journal of Archaeological Research Demography and the Intensity of Cul- tural Activities: Journal of Scientific Archaeology, http: An Archaeology of the Relationship between Humans and Things.

The World System and the Earth System. Global Socio-environmental Change and Sustainability since the Neolithic. Approaches to the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Past and Emergent Per- spectives. Globalizations and the Ancient World. Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Archaeology and the Inanimate Agency. Human Genetics 3: Thinking Through Material Culture: University of Pennsylvania Press.

An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society.

Network Analysis in Archaeology. New Approaches to Re- gional Interaction. Complex Systems and Archaeology. Nomadism, Evolution, and World Systems: Pastoral Societies in Theories of Historical Development. The Birth of Ecological Archaeology in Denmark. The Neolithization of Denmark: Social Transformations in Archaeology. Global and Local Perspectives.

To appear in The Oxford Handbook of the Neolithic. The Rise of Bronze Age Society. Archaeological theory — Present, Past and Future. Essays in Honour of Evzen Neustrupny The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chi- cago Press. Trends in Archaeological Simulation.

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Unravelling Migrations in the Steppe: Do We Have a Case? Theses and Papers in Scientific Archaeology Consuming and Communicating Identities: Understanding the Archaeological Record. The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: Materiality and Social Practice: In Search of the Middle Ground. Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology A network approach to hierarchisation and state formation in Japan. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The Measure of Civilization: Origin and migration of the Alpine Iceman.

Praehistorische Zeitschrift 88 1— 2: In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects. Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology. The Genetic History of Europeans. Trends in Genetics 28, Strontium Isotopes and Prehis- toric Human Migrations: Ancient human genome sequence of an extinct Palaeo- Eskimo. Advances in Anthropology 2, No. Current Anthropology 54, No. Material Culture, Variability and Transmission. Journal of Archaeological Theory Boundaries, Flows and Connectivities: Mobility and Stasis in the Bronze Age. Social Theory and Archaeology. Univer- sity of New Mexico Press.

Demographic Continuities and Discontinuities in Neolithic Europe: Evidence, Methods and Implications. Genes, Memes, and Human History: Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution. Annual Review of Anthropology Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution. Univer- sity of California. Who Gets the Past? The Johns Hopkins University Press. The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies.

Some Reflections on Heritage and Archaeology in the Anthropocene.

• Questions??
• Waiting for Who??
• The first industrial revolution – 1765.
• Buy for others?
• Il regalo perfetto (Italian Edition);

Norwegian Archaeological Review 44, No. Genes, Culture and Human Evolution: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Can an Archaeologist be a public intellectual? Globalization, Battlefields and Economics. Archaeological Theory and Predictive Model- ling: A Live Report from the Scene. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Agent-based Modelling and Simulation in Archaeology. Advances in Geographic Information Science.

The latter he characterizes as having led to the disap- pearance of the boundary between science and humanities and between theory and data. In- stead, I view it as primarily a critique of processual archaeology — spe- cifically its idealist quest for generalizing laws of human history and be- havior. Postprocessual archaeology was and is not a cohesive theoretical approach or paradigm, and proponents embrace a wide variety of the- oretical perspectives: These perspectives and critiques have had several lasting and significant effects on archae- ology as a whole: The postprocessual critique and debate had a profound effect on the field of archaeology — even for those who would never call themselves postprocessualists.

Postprocessualism has probably only affected CRM archaeology to a small degree, specifically with respect to the kinds of stakeholders consulted and the more diverse array of interpretations offered i. On the other hand, in academia much has changed. The types of subjects that are undertaken in archaeology include the Af- rican Diaspora, social inequality and racism, Indigenous archaeology, repatriation, and heritage values.

The pursuit of new subjects has not led to the diminution of field methods, labs methods, and data manage- ment. But it has affected how we do what we do — how we create catego- ries in our data, who we consult with and when, who we share our data with, and how we interpret our data. A new focus on such topics led not only to new data but to the development of new theoretical approaches as well.

Does that mean you are a postprocessualist? As archaeologists we know that typologies and nominal variables in general should be used only in so far as they are useful. At this point I think it is most useful to think of 21st-century archaeology as a palimpsest of its own history and as inextricable with the values and priorities of the times, which includes the role of big data, a need for heritage management in the context of competing values, and a challenge to the role of the historiographical expert.

Does this mean we should declare a third scientific revolution in archae- ology? While the Internet, faster computers, and more sophisticated applications have advanced both the scale and speed of potential research avenues, I do not share his perspective on the how these advances will impact archaeological theory. Our creation and use of archaeological databases and data set is largely undertheorized. Amassing larger datasets does not remove the interpretive nature of the creation of these datasets in the first place: Acknowledging the value-laden and context-specific nature of datasets does not stymie us from moving forward, but it does present a challenge — especially as larger and larger datasets are com- bined from multiple sources and contexts.

The problem is to give a systematic account of how researchers make such judgments. Most often archaeologists are portrayed as scientists alongside paleontologists. I am most often asked to speak to various schools and museums about how archaeologists conduct excavations and labora- tory analyses — and about what really happened in the past. Heritage as a concept and field of research — and even as a word — in the U. I believe this is in part because of the colonial nature of U. As such, of course, it is not archaeology at all. To conclude on a personal note, as a child of the s I optimisti- cally consider humans to be capable of using scientific and technologi- cal methods to solve any number of pressing global problems disease, war, violence, food stress, global warming, etc.

But as a social scien- tist I also strongly believe that we need to first work on issues that will not be solved with data alone: This is certainly not a call for hyperrelativism. These types of public engagements will keep archaeology relevant, grounded, and innovative.

About Marcus van der Erve - European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities

A Call for a Social Science of the Past. Of Paradigms and Ways of Seeing: Archaeological Variability as if People Mattered. Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of Material Culture. University of Utah Press. The Heritage of Heritage. Journal of Archaeological Research. Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism 2nd Ed. The Archaeology of Inequality. Heritage Management as Postprocessual Archaeology?

Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology. A History of Archaeological Thought. Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology. Gone are the days when archaeometry was associated with a narrow, functionalist agenda. I hate the concept, though: I also agree with his plea for a return to the production of grand narratives. In fact, I have always been a great fan of his masterful grand narrative: Europe before History Kristian- sen The approach proposed in this article, however, does not re- ject the small and the local.

On the contrary, it tries to bridge the gap between the micro and the macro, bypassing an unhelpful dichotomy.

I also find very revealing the historiographic analysis proposed by the author. Nevertheless, I have some misgivings about his paradigmatic enthusiasm that I will try to flesh out in this comment. My first question has to do with the real relevance and novelty of the present archaeological revolution described by Kristiansen.

The two previous scientific revolutions in archaeology were indeed decisive for the development of the discipline. The first one in the mid-nineteenth century actually allowed for the emergence of archaeology as a science, finally separating it from antiquarianism. Although I do see the potential of archaeometry for the transformation of our knowledge of the past, I do not think that it is actually promot- ing a different understanding of it, at least not on a revolutionary scale.

The first two scientific revolutions implied radically new sets of ideas regarding society, time and the archaeological record. I find it hard to see any of this in the coupling of cutting-edge natural science methods and archaeology today. Jones ; Llobera , my impression is that archaeometry has made many people lazy — and justified their la- ziness. Why should we try to think deeper and in a different way when all these methods tell us how the past actually was? They tell us exactly what they ate, where they came from, which diseases they suffered from. What else do we need?

The author puts a lot of emphasis on a totally different understand- ing of mobility and connections in the past made possible by archaeo- metric procedures. I would contend that it is not archaeometry that has made this understanding possible. It is the esprit du temps. We live in the network society Castells , a world where time and space have collapsed, where mobility is greater than ever and economic, cultural and political globalization mark the rhythms of each and every society.

Networks, connectivity and mobility are the buzzwords of the social sciences and the humanities: As archaeologists, I am sure that we would be finding mobility with- out isotopes as well. In fact, we do: What Kristiansen sees with excitement, I see with some concern.

The 4 industrial revolutions

I fear that we may end up finding again a past modelled on our own present. My impression is that we are finding too much movement in the past or at least that we are making too much fuss out of the movement that we find. Of course people and things, and ideas moved: We knew that already without hard sciences even if some processualists tried to deny mobility for a while. But the network-globalization paradigm prevents us, in my opinion, from grasping the actual nature of movement in the deep past as well as in many non-Western societies in the present.

This is a per- spective that could be shared by two historians that understood well the alterity of the past and its different rhythms — Braudel and Leroy Ladurie Jonathan Friedman has noted how the mobility paradigm is very much in tune with both the ideology of global capital- ism and the lives of cosmopolitan academics. There is nothing strange, therefore, in archaeologists finding mobility in Prehistory today.

In fact, they found it before.

Interestingly, during the second half of the nine- teenth century and the early twentieth-century movement was all over the place. Australians travelled to Eastern Africa with their boomerangs, African hunters arrived to Iberia with their arrowheads, Mycenaean ar- chitecture influenced the monuments of Wessex. Is it a coincidence that evolutionary and diffusionist archaeology saw their heyday during the Age of Empire and the first cycle of globalization? The situation that he describes is presented as the great revolution in archaeology. For me it is not the revolution; at best, a revolution.

I do not have any problem with people fighting for their paradigm and utopias, as long as they do not try to impose them as the single possible way of doing archaeology —or rather, the only way of doing good archaeology. My archaeology is different, although it can perfectly cohabit indeed coalesce! I am not so sure, however, that he or his colleagues, in his desire to find scientific conver- gence and consensus, will be so magnanimous with other approaches.

It is an archaeol- ogy that is more interested in opening the range of questions that we ask of the archaeological record, than with the devices that we use to make those questions answerable. Not only the new materialisms Witmore forthcoming that Kristiansen is eager to accept, but also alternative ontologies, indigenous archaeologies, deco- lonial thinking, feminism, queer theory, political archaeologies, Criti- cal Theory capitalized or the archaeologies that reflect on the relation- ship between the discipline and the arts. The archaeology in which I believe overflows disciplinary limits as well, not just to walk together with biology and physics, but also with philosophy, anthropology, geography, history and cultural studies.

And when I say walk together, I envisage an archaeology that instead of pas- sively foraging from other fields, enlightens them. An archaeology that is relevant, therefore, not just because it manages heritage, works with communities and is conscious of its public role, but that is relevant be- cause it is intellectually powerful.

Because it helps us think and prob- lematize society past and present as much as anthropology or philoso- phy, but in its own way. To be sure, Big Data can contribute much this archaeology, as do isotopes and radiocarbon, but it can also be done without them. My questions also include a practical worry: This is not a mere rhetorical question. Will there be po- sitions opened in universities and research institutions? Postgraduate and postdoctoral fellowships for those who take a different path? Fur- thermore, what happens with those of us who fail to attract the large and scarce amount of funding needed for systematic DNA analyses or isotope databases?

Are we condemned to do second-rate archaeology? Or even worse, what happens with those thousands of archaeologists who do not even have the chance to apply for funding in places like Af- rica, the Middle East, or Latin America? In my archaeology, there is no problem with one working in a provincial university or tiny museum in a bankrupt country. One can still do first-class science. This is a pity: I wonder, then, what is the political economy behind the paradigm proposed in this article? Will it aggravate the divide between North and South, the poor and the rich?

Methods of communication were also revolutionized with the invention of the telegraph and the telephone and so were transportation methods with the emergence of the automobile and the plane at the beginning of the 20th century. Nearly a century later, in the second half of the 20th century, a third industrial revolution appeared with the emergence of a new type of energy whose potential surpassed its predecessors: This revolution witnessed the rise of electronics —with the transistor and microprocessor—but also the rise of telecommunications and computers.

This new technology led to the production of miniaturized material which would open doors, most notably to space research and biotechnology. For industry, this revolution gave rise to the era of high-level automation in production thanks to two major inventions: The first industrial revolution used water and steam to mechanize production, the second used electric energy to create mass production and the third used electronics and information technology to automate production.

Today a fourth industrial revolution is underway which builds upon the third revolution and the digital revolution that has been taking place since the middle of the last century. This fourth revolution with exponential expansion is characterized by merging technology that blurs the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres to completely uproot industries all over the world.

The extent and depth of these changes are a sign of transformations to entire production, management and governance systems. Here we are…the fourth revolution is unfolding before our eyes. Its genesis is situated at the dawn of the third millennium with the emergence of the Internet. This is the first industrial revolution rooted in a new technological phenomenon—digitalization—rather than in the emergence of a new type of energy.

This digitalization enables us to build a new virtual world from which we can steer the physical world. The industry of today and tomorrow aim to connect all production means to enable their interaction in real time. The applications for the industrial sector are already enormous: Day after day, all these improvements are gradually optimizing production tools and revealing endless possibilities for the future of industry 4. However, this fourth industrial revolution could be the first to deviate from the energy-greed trend—in terms of nonrenewable resources—because we have been integrating more and more possibilities to power our production processes with alternative resources.

Within this context of profound technological and societal changes—because the two always go hand in hand during industrial revolutions—which is taking us towards global digitalization, industrial cybersecurity will become a leading sector. Positioned at the heart of this sector, Sentryo is proud to be seen as pioneers. Visit our Youtube channel. The 4 industrial revolutions Since Prometheus stole the fire of knowledge from right under the noses of the gods on Mount Olympus and bestowed it upon mankind, humans have not stopped fiddling with it and creating striking innovations all throughout their evolution.