Sander E. Leeuw / James McGlade (eds.)

Time, Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology

Herausgeber: Mcglade, James; Leeuw, Sander E van der

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Is 'chaos theory' relevant to archaeology? In a discipline which essentially studies how human beings came to be, it is remarkable that there are hardly any conceptual tools to describe change. The western intellectual and scientific tradition has for a long time favoured mechanics over dynamics, and the study of stability, over that of change. In the case of archaeology, change has been primarily viewed in terms of external climatic and 'environmental' events. Revolutionary innovations in the natural and life sciences, often erroneously referred to as 'chaos theory', suggest that there are ways to overcome this problem. A wide range of processes can be described in terms of these dynamical systems, and modern computing methods enable us to investigate many of their properties. This volume presents a cogent argument for the use of such approaches, and a discussion of a number of its aspects, by a range of scientists from the humanities, social and natural sciences, and archaeology.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)
• Seitenzahl: 508
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Januar 1997
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 237mm x 166mm x 37mm
• Gewicht: 980g
• ISBN-13: 9780415117883
• ISBN-10: 0415117887
• Artikelnr.: 21290026

Autorenporträt

James McGlade, Sander E. van der Leeuw

Inhaltsangabe

Preface 1 Introduction: Archaeology and non-linear dynamics -new approaches
to long-term change Part I Dynamical approaches to social processes 2
Models of creativity: towards a new science of history 3 The dynamics of
peer polities 4 City-size dynamics in urban systems 5 Expectations and
social outcomes Part II Models for archaeology 6 Archaeological
interpretation and non-linear dynamic modelling: between metaphor and
simulation 7 Simulating mammoth hunting and extinctions: implications for
North America 8 Clusters of death, pockets of survival: dynamic modelling
and GIS 9 Fractal environmental changes and the evolution of culture 10 Why
does cultural evolution proceed at a faster rate than biological evolution?
11 Distributed artificial intelligence and emergent social complexity 12
The limits of social control: coherence and chaos in a prestige-goods
economy 13 Structural change and bifurcation in urban evolution: a
non-linear dynamical perspective Part III Issues in modelling 14 Are our
modelling paradigms non-generic? 15 On wholeness, reflexive complexity,
hierarchies, structures and system dynamics 16 Towards an 'appropriate
metrology' of human action in archaeology 17 Dynamic modelling and new
social theory of the mid- to long term