Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017

Abstract

Histories of innovation are prototypical success stories. The advent of the wheel, of writing, printing, the steam engine or computers: where would we be without these path-breaking technological innovations and their global consequences? At least retrospectively, innovations appear as linear, straightforward processes. However, this view is too simplistic. Innovations are not self-evident new elements of life but meet social and technological resistance. In accounts of past innovations, we also often forget that their price is always an irremediable loss of knowledge and practical skills. This collection of essays shows that innovations, both ancient and more recent ones, are located in a network of pre-existing life-worlds. The authors elucidate the wide and often unrecognized impacts of innovations on social structures and cultural practices. Case studies from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, central Europe and the modern world highlight the preconditions and oft-ignored secondary effects of innovation. They address the complex social negotiations and the multitude of unforeseen and unplanned changes which accompany the New, rather than focusing on intended changes, which are usually understood as improvements and ways to broaden possibilities for action. Our ultimate goal is to investigate the complex entanglements of innovations in past and present worlds and deepen our understanding of mechanisms of cultural change.

Content

7–19 Reinhard Bernbeck and Stefan Burmeister, "Archaeology and Innovation: Remarks on Approaches and Concepts", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 7–19
21–42 Stefan Burmeister, "Innovation as a Possibility. Technological and Social Determinism in Their Dialectical Resolution", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 21–42
43–60 Hans Peter Hahn, "Innovation and Inertia: Questioning Paradigms of Consumerist Object Fetishism", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 43–60
61–103 Anett Dittrich, "Neolithization in Progress – The Advent of Domesticates in Northeastern Africa", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 61–103
105–139 Florian Klimscha, "What Makes the World Go Round? Silenced Consequences of the Introduction of Metallurgy", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 105–139
141–159 Michael Meyer, "Iron and Consequences of the Introduction of its Technologies in Northern Central Europe", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 141–159
161–203 Sabine Reinhold, "Sedentism as a Process of Innovation. Technological and Social Perspectives on the Architectural Development of a Bronze Age Settlement System", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 161–203
205–224 Susan Pollock, "Working Lives in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Uruk-Period Mesopotamia", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 205–224
225–249 Constance von Rüden, "Producing Aegeanness – An Innovation and Its Impact in Middle and Late Bronze Age Syria/Northern Levant", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 225–249
251–276 Reinhard Bernbeck, "The Documentary Gaze as a Mesopotamian Innovation", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 251–276
277–294 Sayuri de Zilva and Matthias Jung, "Innovations That Failed to Materialize: Why Was There No Copper Metallurgy in the Central European Early and Middle Neolithic?", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 277–294