Trickle down innovation? Creativity and innovation at the margins

This paper explores the entanglement of the innovation discourse with discourses of power. Innovation is a frequent topic of archaeological research, but its implications for how we understand flows of power between individuals, groups, and regions has seen little attention. Here, we argue that our...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWorld archaeology Vol. 53; no. 5; pp. 723 - 740
Main Authors Frieman, Catherine J., Lewis, James
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Routledge 20.10.2021
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Subjects
Archaeological research
Creativity
Discourses
Innovation
Innovations
Narratives
Power
Resilience
Roman Cornwall
technological change
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Summary:This paper explores the entanglement of the innovation discourse with discourses of power. Innovation is a frequent topic of archaeological research, but its implications for how we understand flows of power between individuals, groups, and regions has seen little attention. Here, we argue that our innovation narratives often blindly reproduce hierarchical relations which place dynamic cores in positions of power over their more passive peripheries and margins. In doing so, they obscure the complex and creative processes which occur in these marginal zones. We illustrate this discussion with an exploration of southwestern Britain and the resilience of people living at the margins of the Roman world. We argue that more attentiveness to these creative margins allows us to challenge the flattening hierarchies embedded in traditional innovation narratives, creating space for more complex and multi-layered stories of past innovation.
ISSN:0043-8243
1470-1375
DOI:10.1080/00438243.2021.2014948