New publication: “What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the ‘Structural and Analytical Typology’ in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s)”

This recent paper is the first in-depth examination of Georges Laplace’s “analytical typology” published in English, the approach he developed with his collaborators in the Dialektikê journal. Drawing on history of science scholarship, this case allows to discuss the question of what makes the unity and identity of a scientific method. This paper was published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, in the collection “Cultural taxonomies in the Palaeolithic – old questions, novel perspectives” edited by Felix Riede and Shumon Hussain.

Reference

  • Sébastien Plutniak. 2022. “What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the ‘Structural and Analytical Typology’ in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s)”. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 5 (1), DOI: 10.1007/s41982-022-00119-7. HAL: hal-03765568.

Abstract

Usual narratives among prehistoric archaeologists consider typological approaches as part of a past and outdated episode in the history of research, subsequently replaced by technological, functional, chemical, and cognitive approaches. From a historical and conceptual perspective, this paper addresses several limits of these narratives, which (1) assume a linear, exclusive, and additive conception of scientific change, neglecting the persistence of typological problems; (2) reduce collective developments to personal work (e.g. the “Bordes’” and “Laplace’s” methods in France); and (3) presuppose the coherence and identity of these “methods” over time. It explores the case of the “Structural and analytical typology” method, developed in France, Spain, and Italy from the 1950s to the 2000s by Georges Laplace and his collaborators for lithic implements. This paper (1) provides a detailed historical account of the evolving content of this collective endeavour over five decades; (2) it addresses the epistemological question of what makes the identity and unity of a scientific method, demonstrating that the core component of the “analytical typology” lies in its particular way to represent real-world phenomena through its notation system; and (3) it reveals how this little known but significant episode of advances in the methods and theory of archaeology, contemporary but independent of the “New Archaeology” trend in English-speaking archaeology, was instrumental in the continuation of evolutionary perspectives in France and in the development of quantitative and formal methods in archaeology in southwestern Europe, foreseeing crucial knowledge representation issues raised today by digital methods in archaeology and data curation.

CfP EAA 2021 Conference: “Between variability and singularity: crossing theoretical, qualitative and computer-based approaches to types and typologies in archaeology”

Call for paper for the session “Between variability and singularity: crossing theoretical, qualitative and computer-based approaches to types and typologies in archaeology” to be held at the 2021 Conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in Kiel / virtually (8-11 sept. 2021).

Convenors

  • Shumon Hussain, Aarhus University, Denmark
  • Sébastien Plutniak, TRACES laboratory, Toulouse, France
  • Felix Riede, Aarhus University, Denmark

Abstract

While the notion of the “type” and the integration of such types into typological systems played a vital role in the development of archaeology as a discipline, there has been a recent loss of innocence. Either deemed boring or practically fetishized, types and typologies continue to form important cornerstones of many culture-historical schemes and practices; they are used vicariously for inference-based dating, are often attributed cultural, historical or even quasi-ethnic meaning and typological change is read to imply societal transformation. Promoting the type concept and mobilising typologies is undoubedtly value-laden as well as theory-laden, even if only implicitly so. For many, the very term “typology” has thus become a battleground of seemingly incompatible archaeological research epistemologies, for instance reflected in a persistent rhetoric pitching so-called “typologists” against “technologists” in lithic studies and beyond. There is good reason to believe, however, that such inflammations have clouded our view of the utility and diversity of types in archaeology. A similar rhetoric also undermines any true community effort of developing and refining type concepts and type-based approaches to the past. Yet, recent developments both in computational archaeology and archaeological theory have begun to challenge some of these premises, opening up promising avenues of reflection, inquiry and interdisciplinary research.

This session seeks to identify, review and discuss these emerging perspectives. It is based on the ambition to revisit the “type” as an analytical and theoretical concept in order to re-activate type-sensitive archaeological research or to develop genuine alternatives. We invite scholars from varying backgrounds to interrogate our apprehension of types, and to re-consider the basic explanatory value of types and typologies, especially so vis-à-vis computer-based methods, emerging theoretical frameworks and, more generally, the consequences of such approaches and research frameworks for our understanding of types and typological thinking as core concepts of archaeological practice.

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