Interdisciplinarity and archaeology : scientific interactions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology

This book explores the history of interdisciplinary relationships between archaeology and other branches of knowledge in Europe and elsewhere. This is a largely untold history that needs to be unpacked. This book brings to light some of the events leading towards interdisciplinary relations in archaeology from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. It encompasses ten scholarly contributions that offer a critical overview of this complex, dynamic and long-lasting transformative process. This is a pioneering project in the field of the history of archaeology, as it is the first to examine the inclusion into archaeological practice of various disciplines categorized under the umbrella of hard, natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities.

The authors of this volume include internationally acknowledged scholars of the history of archaeology, such as Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Nathan Schlanger and Oscar Moro, as well as other well-established authors in the field from Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Switzerland. The chapters cover a wide range of topics. Several of them deal with interdisciplinarity in archaeology on a more general level by analyzing its relationship with other sciences in specific countries. Other chapters discuss the incorporation of disciplines such as palynology and zoology into archaeology, either on a wider scale or using certain countries as case studies. Some authors focus on the work of scholars as starting points for examining the intersection between antiquarianism, archaeology, the natural sciences and numismatics, while others theorize on the influence of epistemology and philosophy of science on archaeological theory and practice. Finally, the influence of the army is also discussed in the development of archaeology.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
Interdisciplinarity and archaeology – a historical introduction
Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Laura Coltofean-Arizancu

Chapter 2
Two sides to the coin: erudition and natural history from antiquarianism to archaeology in the work of John Evans
Nathan Schlanger

Chapter 3
Non-spectacular exceptions: faunal remains and bone artefacts in nineteenth-century Hungarian archaeology
Laura Coltofean-Arizancu

Chapter 4
From plants to pollen, from Europe to Spain: looking at interdisciplinarity in archaeology
Margarita Díaz-Andreu

Chapter 5
Archaeology and interdisciplinarity in the Irish Free State in the 1930s: the role of the Committee for Quaternary Research
Mairéad Carew

Chapter 6
Interdisciplinarity? The word and the thing in the history of Swiss wetland archaeology
Géraldine Delley

Chapter 7
In search of interdisciplinarity in Portuguese archaeology: notes on the 1960s
Ana Cristina Martins

Chapter 8
Science and archaeology in Italy: a difficult marriage
Alessandro Guidi

Chapter 9
Archaeology and the Armed Forces in Spain from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century
Francisco Gracia Alonso

Chapter 10
The decline of epistemology in archaeology: comments on an ongoing discussion
Oscar Moro Abadía and Emma Lewis-Sing