Refrain from Standards? French, Cavemen and Computers: A (Short) Story of Multidimensional Analysis in French Prehistoric Archaeology

In 1981, Françoise Audouze and André Leroi-Gourhan published a critical overview of the evolution and current state of prehistoric and classical archaeology in France. This paper had an explicit message, summed up in its title, 'France: A Continental Insularity'. 1 According to the authors...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inStandardization in Measurement pp. 39 - 52
Main Author Plutniak, Sébastien
Format Book Chapter
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 2015
Edition1
Subjects
Target Papers
French Archaeology
Correspondence Analysis
Vice Versa
Equal Arm Balance
Graphical Synthesis
Prehistoric Rock Art
Lithic Remains
Interstitial Areas
Archaeological Processes
Quantity Equations
BIPM
Breeding Context
Paper III
Archaeological Field
Personal Intentionality
Syntactic Aspect
Pattern Finder Method
Multidimensional Patterns
Multiple Correspondence Analysis
Synthetic Biology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Hubble Constant
Methodology References
Mathematical Expression
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Summary:In 1981, Françoise Audouze and André Leroi-Gourhan published a critical overview of the evolution and current state of prehistoric and classical archaeology in France. This paper had an explicit message, summed up in its title, 'France: A Continental Insularity'. 1 According to the authors, this insularity was mainly due to the weak theoretical developments in French archaeology compared to English-speaking archaeology. The New Archaeology had been flourishing in the US and the UK since the beginning of the 1960s. Pioneered by Lewis Binford, 2 the novelty of this archaeology lay in an ambitious scientific strengthening of the discipline. Controlled sampling, statistics and the use of models were considered the best ways to reach this aim, and prehistorians tried to standardize their implementation into the archaeological processes. Françoise Audouze and André Leroi-Gourhan emphasized that, in contrast, French archaeology during these decades was characterized by weakness in theorization and formalization. Insularity is a matter of boundaries, and, therefore, I propose to examine their definitions, starting with attempts at formalization.
ISBN:0367598760
9781848935716
9780367598761
1848935714
DOI:10.4324/9781315653648-5