Contextualising Technical Innovations in Prehistory

V. Gordon Childe saw cultural evolution as the successive inclusion of technologies, which first appeared in a central region and were diffused over several overlapping networks, into the European periphery. Childe’s model – while very elegant and elaborate – conflicted with the archaeological reality when calibrated radiocarbon data became available en masse in the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless many scholars stress that the diffusionistic approach is still possible, however, under completely new frame conditions.

Between 3,500 and 2,000 BC social systems in large parts of Europe and the Southwestern Asia are drastically changed. Not only do we see the appearance of large-scale communication networks as the Baden-style or the Corded Ware culture, but also the transformation of concentrations of power into the first city states in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Another perspective stresses the introduction of technical innovations and the use of secondary products which steadily change the relations of productions. The diffusion of many key-technologies like writing, weighing and sealing was made possible by early state societies, while other innovations like specialised weapons or wheeled vehicles had a much wider repartition.

Can we, therefore, go back from local traditions to a modified diffusionistic view in the tradition of Gordon Childe, Sophus Müller and Oscar Montelius? Or has archaeology moved far beyond both diffusion and localised histories of technique and must use completely new approaches to understand the past?

Understanding the specific archaeological as well as socio-political contexts and their local technological traditions is a key issue in our understanding. We want to analyse the contexts of technical innovations in Eurasia, Northern Africa and the American Continent. A special focus will be put on possible modes and routes in which these innovations were transferred between groups, cultures, time and regions. We aim to re-think their diffusion by close analysis of the archaeological record on the one hand and the specific methodology of a sociology of technique (Techniksoziologie). While there is a strong focus on the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, other regions and periods will be essential to question the models used and gain a wider understanding on the way in which technique shaped human histories.

In our understanding “context” does include the archaeological sources (grave, hoard, settlement, single-find) as well as the different ecological, economical and political contexts of societies adopting an innovation and its technical context, i.e. which techniques were necessary as prerequisites for an innovations successful diffusion. Finally, we want to understand the communicational context of the diffusion of prehistoric innovations.

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