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Who is deterministic? On the nature of interdisciplinary research in archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2019

Kristian Kristiansen
Kristian Kristiansen*
Affiliation:
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
*
Email: kristian.kristiansen@archaeology.gu.se
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Extract

Arponen et al.’s paper is a timely discussion paper which raises basic issues about the relationship between environmental science and archaeology, and thus about the relationship between science and archaeology more broadly. My comments will therefore begin with a discussion of the nature of interdisciplinary research, as a background for re-evaluating the question of determinism in environmental research. Thus more recently we have seen a critical concern or even anxiety emerge over how to reconcile science-based and humanistic traditions of interpretation in a period of expanding importance of science-based knowledge in aDNA studies (Callaway 2018; Sørensen 2017; Kristiansen 2017). It raises the question of their relationship and of what provides good practice.

Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , June 2019 , pp. 12 - 14
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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