This article examines the effect of material evidence upon historiographic hypotheses. Through a series of successive Bayesian conditionalizations, I analyze the extended competition among several hypotheses that offered different accounts of the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Palestine and in particular to the “emergence of Israel”. The model reconstructs, with low sensitivity to initial assumptions, the actual outcomes including a complete alteration of the scientific consensus. Several known issues of Bayesian confirmation, including the problem (...) of old evidence, the introduction and confirmation of novel theories and the sensitivity of convergence to uncertain and disputed evidence are discussed in relation to the model’s result and the actual historical process. The most important result is that convergence of probabilities and of scientific opinion is indeed possible when advocates of rival hypotheses hold similar judgment about the factual content of evidence, even if they differ sharply in their historiographic interpretation. This speaks against the contention that understanding of present remains is so irrevocably biased by theoretical and cultural presumptions as to make an objective assessment impossible. (shrink)

Implementing sustainable development is one of the essential tasks in the current human activity in managing our planet's natural resources. It is a challenge not only for ecology, demography, anthropology and philosophy but also turns out to be a challenge for other disciplines supporting research on the nature of the human species and its changes. The practical implementation of this idea assumes a detailed knowledge of the factors determining the development of civilisation, as well as the factors that disturb this (...) development. In this article, we present arguments that, through modelling, illustrate the historical regularities of the development of the human race, starting from the Neolithic Age through the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and early Middle Ages (models 2–5), to the contemporary image of civilisation development (model 6). These arguments show that in the past, the history of civilisation was fundamentally influenced by three factors: biological, social and cultural. However, in the modern era, an important fourth factor emerges, which is the cognitive factor. Moreover, the historical approach to development (models 2–5) fits into the so-called Malthusian pattern of development, which follows an exponential curve (models 2–5). In contrast, the development of modern civilisation (model 6) follows the Volterra pattern, which is modelled on a logarithmic curve. We hypothesise that the transition from the Malthusian to the Volterra pattern took place precisely due to a new development factor—the cognitive factor. The increase in its rank in the history of civilisation development is presented using a four-factor model. We present the characteristics of this factor and place it in our model, showing how it will fundamentally determine the optimisation of the principles of sustainable civilisation development. In the conclusion of the given argumentation, we emphasise the need to promote various forms of education as the primary tool of humanity in pursuit of sustainable development. (shrink)

The conventional history of the ancient Near East at large, including Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean basin, contains several “Dark Ages,” poorly documented transitional periods of uncertain length. James et al. 1991 have argued that the most significant of these Dark Ages—the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age during the last two centuries of the second millennium BCE—is largely an artifact of an overly long reconstruction of the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, and that this Dark Age (...) presents itself in every chronology linked to the Egyptian. A wide variety of often seemingly contradictory scientific, archaeological, art-historical, and philological evidence has been adduced to argue for the status quo, or to lengthen or to shorten by up to several centuries the relative chronology for this period. This review article comments on the papers presented at the Third BICANE Colloquium held at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, summarizing a variety of recent positions taken in the ongoing evaluation of James et al. 1991, testing the specific proposition that the tenth century BCE biblical Egyptian King Shishak is to be distinguished from the historical Egyptian King Shoshenq I, who is now to be situated about a century later in the latter half of the ninth century BCE. the wider historical implications of this proposed distinction are examined in new detail. (shrink)

This book investigates the chaotic end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean through the lens of Homeric poetry, with an emphasis on the description of piratical activities described in the Odyssey’s “Second Cretan Lie,” and on the impact of revolutionary seafaring technology in this watershed period in Mediterranean history.

The present article contains observations on the invasion of Lycia by the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV as described in the Yalburt inscription. The author questions the commonly found identification of the land of vitis /Wiyanwanda with the city of Oinoanda on account of the problems raised by the reading of the sign vitis as well as of archaeological and strategical observations. With the aid of Lycian and Greek inscriptions the author argues that the original Wiyanawanda/Oinoanda was located further south than (...) the city commonly known as Oinoanda situated above İncealiler. These insights lead to a reassessment of the Hittite-Luwian sources concerning the conquest of Lycia. (shrink)

In The Knowledge Machine, Michael Strevens challenges traditional views of the scientific method and defends the “iron rule of explanation.” This commentary introduces an evolutionary game perspective to explore the emergence and sustainability of the iron rule. Modeling the dynamics of theory-competing strategies in a population of theorists demonstrates that whether following the iron rule is rational depends on the frequency of iron-rule players one encounters. The study suggests that the social constraints of localized networks for iron-rule followers are critical (...) factors in transitioning from a philosophical-dispute equilibrium to a scientific-dispute equilibrium. (shrink)

This paper interprets the relation between justice and legitimacy found in John Rawls's Political Liberalism and then applies it to the field of transitional justice. The author argues that transitional mechanisms can be better defended in terms of “legitimacy” than in “justice,” because the circumstances of transitional justice admit of reasonable disagreement over “just” public policy. In such circumstances, policy recommendations can always be construed as falling short of justice, thus raising plausible concerns over their normative justification. This paper attempts (...) to answer such concerns by justifying transitional mechanisms as morally appropriate yet less than fully just. The author explains how the concept of legitimacy facilitates such a justification and how such a justification can secure the normative grounds that are ironically threatened by investigations relying on a concept of justice. (shrink)

Despite its title and stated objectives this edited volume does not provide a broad and inclusive survey of post-apartheid South African historiographical developments. Its main topic is the unexpected demise in the post-apartheid context of the radical or revisionist approach that had invigorated and transformed the humanities and social studies during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of the anti-apartheid struggle the radical historians had developed a plausible model of praxis for progressive scholarship, yet in the new post-apartheid democratic (...) South Africa radical historical scholarship itself encountered a crisis of survival. This should not be confused with a general “crisis” of historical scholarship in South Africa, as some of the uneven contributions to this volume contend, as that remains an active and diversely productive field due also to substantial contributions by historians not based in South Africa. If the dramatic and ironic fate of radical historical scholarship in the context of the transition to a post-apartheid democracy is the volume's primary topic, then it unfortunately fails to provide serious and sustained critical reflection on the origins and possible explanations for that crisis. A marked feature of the accounts of “history making” provided in this volume is the radical historians' lack of self-reflexivity and the scant interest shown in the underlying history of their own intellectual trajectories. (shrink)

Among the most influential and enigmatic thinkers of the modern age, Nietzsche and Heidegger have become pivotal in the struggle to define postmodernism. In this work, Gregory Smith offers the most comprehensive examination to date of the turn to postmodernity in the writings of these philosophers. Smith argues that, while much of postmodern thought is rooted in Nietzsche and Heidegger, it has ironically attempted, whether unwittingly or by design, to deflect their philosophy back onto a modern path. Other alternative paths (...) emanating from both Nietzschean and Heideggerian thought that might more powerfully speak to postmodern culture have been ignored. Nietzsche and Heidegger, Smith suggests, have made possible a far more revolutionary critique of modernity then even their most ardent postmodern admirers have realized. Smith contends that the influences on the postmodern in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger are founded in a new vision of praxis liberated from theory. Ultimately, these philosophers do transcend the nihilism often found in the guise of postmodernism. Their thought is, moreover, consistent with the possibility of limited constitutional government and the rule of law. Smith's book takes the first step toward recovering these possibilities and posing the fundamental questions of politics and ethics in ways that have heretofore been closed off by late-modern thought. (shrink)

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the “Kindleberger trap,” a term coined by Joseph Nye Jr. referring to the situation in which no country takes the lead to maintain international institutions in the international system. President Trump's destructive policies toward many international institutions seem to push the current international order to the brink of the Kindleberger trap. Ironically, China has pledged, at least rhetorically, to support and even save these existing international institutions. (...) Based on an institutional-balancing perspective, we suggest that the worry about the Kindleberger trap is unwarranted because the international institutional order will not easily collapse after the decline of U.S. hegemony. Institutional competition among great powers and institutional changes within the institutional order have become two remedies to maintain international institutions and to avoid the Kindleberger trap during the international order transition. What states, including the United States and China, should do is to reembrace and reinvigorate the role of multilateralism in world politics so that the dynamics of institutional balancing and consequential institutional changes in the context of U.S.-China competition do not deprive international society of the public goods and normative values of international institutions. The future international order should not be led by a single country, but by dynamic and balanced international institutions. (shrink)

The post-communist revolutions of 1989 triggered parallel transformation in the ideological landscape on both sides of the former Iron Curtain. The geo-political opening after the end of the Cold War made global integration a highly salient factor in political mobilization, opting out to replace the capital-versus-labor dynamics of conflict that had shaped the ideological families of Europe during the 20th century. This has resulted in splitting the traditional constituencies of the Left and the Right and reorganizing them along new fault-lines: (...) those shaped by attitudes to globalization and EU enlargement (in the West) and by attitudes to EU accession and global economic competition (in the East). Thus, an ideational convergence between East and West is taking place in Europe, radically altering the structure of political competition in the early 21st century. As the new political cleavage cuts across, rather than runs along, the left—right ideological continuum, it is eroding the societal alliances that had supported the post-war European Social Model. The emerging structure of political competition enables substantive changes in the European Social Model in the direction of deepening labor commodification, thus defeating the emancipatory potential that earlier labor-market policies had contained. (shrink)

The article presents the results of analysis of nine wooden utensils of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages in comparison with previous analysis of different authors. In eight cases remains were represented by deciduous trees. Comparison of this results with data from other investigators allowed to conclude that for making objects from wood used mainly local breeds. When selecting trees for making utensils, old masters have used certain principles such as ease of cutting and aesthetic preferences. For the manufacture of (...) wooden utensils, pastoral nomads used mostly local wood that grew in gullies and floodplains. Most often for the manufacture of wooden utensils used maple, which is recorded in the Catacomb monuments, Zrubna, Scythian and Sarmatian burials. The generally accepted view is of the greatest accessibility of oak as a material for the manufacture of wooden utensils. However, our analysis and findings of other studies suggest limited use of wood for making utensils. Only in one case, for making fixed tray was used oak bark. However, generally we have to assume that the old masters avoided the use of oak wood for cutting wooden utensils due to its physical properties and considering that the tools were quite simple for working with brittle kinds of wood. In two cases the data shows that for producing of the bowl chestnut wood was utilized. In the Steppe zone the willow and birch bark were broadly widespread. They could be used to make baskets and birch products, however, we do not have the results of relevant analyzes to talk about it with confidence. (shrink)

The construction and use of space is highly structuring in the lives of household members of both human and non-human animals. The choice of social practice is embedded in the ways in which both human and non-human animals physically organize the world around them. The architectural vestiges of houses—both in terms of the distribution of material culture within and surrounding them, and architectural choices—provide frameworks for a social practice that was shared between humans and living, domestic animals, or animal materiality. (...) The notion of meeting points is explored via both its tangible and metaphorical aspects to approach the meetings—the physical performances and their significance—of humans and animals in the past. To gauge the potential likenesses and differences, two case studies are compared from the Late Bronze Age in Scandinavia and Early Iron Age in Sicily. Both case studies represent societies where domestic animals were present and formed part of the household subsistence. A framework is presented that takes into consideration the spatial potential of allowing human-animal relationships to unfold within the framework of the everyday social practice of the household. (shrink)

It appears likely that at its peak the classical economy was almost as large as that of Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution. The following review of the archeological and document evidence indicates that three events occurring in the first half of the first millennium BC trigger the emergence of a specialized and integrated classical economy after 500 BC: (i) growth in demand for silver as a medium of exchange in economies in the Near East; (ii) technical breakthroughs in hull (...) construction and sailing rig in merchant shipping of the late Bronze Age; (iii) perfection of ferrous metallurgy into the European hinterland. This last event raised agricultural productivity to a level capable of supporting the occupational specialization needed to sustain a vigorous trading economy. To these initial causes may be added the diffusion of alphabetic writing. While it did not create opportunities for long-distance trade, the diffusion of writing supplied the means of responding on a scale large enough economically to matter. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of classification of wooden utensils from burials of Catacomb culture. The classification of this type of artifacts meets the problem of their persistence in ground. The information about most artifacts is limited to "reminds of wood from wooden utensil'. Nevertheless, there is representative selection of undamaged or archaeologically undamaged wooden utensils of Catacomb culture which allows to build classification scheme. Analysis of historiography showed that previously the classification of wooden utensils of Catacomb culture have (...) not been provided. But there are classifications for the utensils of other nomadic cultures of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages. We studied the works of G. Pjatyh, S. Mahortyh, O. Dudin, S. Ljashko, R. Litvinenko. For the development of the classification, the main features of wooden utensils were distinguished. They were organized into four groups: morphological, technological, functional and stylistic. Our typological scheme is based on the principles of morphological classification. All wooden utensils were divided into two groups: container and table-ware. The scientific novelty of the work consist in systematization of the information on the findings of wooden utensils in burials of Catacomb culture, clarifying of the the terminology for different types of wooden utensils and developing of unitary classificational scheme for this type of artifacts. (shrink)

Since the nineteenth century, hominid palaeontology has offered critical information about prehistoric humans and evidence for human evolution. Human fossils discovered at a time when there was growing agreement that humans existed during the Ice Age became especially significant but also controversial. This paper argues that the techniques used to study human fossils from the 1850s to the 1870s and the way that these specimens were interpreted owed much to the anthropological examination of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age skeletons retrieved (...) by archaeologists from prehistoric tombs throughout Europe. What emerged was the idea that a succession of distinct human races, which were identified using techniques such as craniometry, had occupied and migrated into Europe beginning in the Ice Age and continuing into the historic period. This marks a phase in the history of human palaeontology that gradually gave way to a science of palaeoanthropology that viewed hominid fossils more from the perspective of evolutionary theory and hominid phylogeny. (shrink)

Today's industrial society is having an encounter with ecology: in April, 1976 the French government presented the National Assembly with documents on the dumping and burning of waste in the sea, as well as on the protection of nature. Electoral campaigns, discussions and demonstrations are centered about the theme of pollution and environment. In the last century the accumulation of waste had already become a problem : “ One of the most important duties of industry is to find a useful (...) employment for waste,” wrote P. L. Simmons in 1875. The advice was heeded if we may believe what J. Gottmann wrote on the matter nearly a century later: “ If our era is to be defined by its most important raw material and one that is truly proper to it, as is done for the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, we may no longer speak of a Steel or Petroleum Age, nor of an Atomic Age (which may come in the future) but of the Garbage Age.” The extraordinary demographic expansion of humanity that has gone from a population of five million in the Paleolithic Age to four billion today gives rise to a monstrous abundance of refuse resulting as much from the natural mechanisms of living as from industrial activity (factory waste) or from the present attitude haunted by the idea of obsolescence (the throw-away society of Alvin Toffler). The outline of a universe submerged in waste matter appears, similar to that evoked by Italo Calvino in Città Invisibili apropos of the town of Leonia: “The refuse of Leonia would gradually invade the world if the interminable garbage heaps were not pressed upon, beyond the last crest, by the refuse of other towns that also push mountains of refuse far away from themselves. Perhaps the entire world beyond the borders of Leonia is covered with craters of trash, each with a continually erupting metropolis in its center. The borders between foreign or enemy towns are thus contaminated bastions in which the detritus of the one and the other serves as mutual support, menacing and mixing together.” The world of Metamorphosis is approaching in which man, transformed into an insect, covered with dust and remains of food, gnaws on the cores and parings of half-rotten vegetables. Science fiction invents a remedy to fit the problem : a planet specialized in storing all the garbage unloaded by an entire galaxy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Technology and Our Relationship with GodAnselm Ramelow O.P.God's Original Plan and the FallTechnology may appear to be a very secular thing, but to assume that technology can be understood without God would be a mistake. Technology is deeply involved in our relationship with God. This involvement is, moreover, profoundly ambivalent.1To begin with the positive side of this ambivalence: the growing awareness of the dangers of technology should not lead (...) Christians to think that technology is necessarily a bad thing. It is, in fact, not even merely a "necessary evil." Rather, we can find in the use of technology an unfolding of our God-given rational nature. If we believe that God "made us in his image and likeness," then this quite directly implies two things: (1) God is a maker (he made us), and (2) since he made us in his image and likeness, we are makers as well. The making of technology thus reflects our dignity as made in the image and likeness of God.2 Accordingly, the Church has been more positive towards the development of technology than one might expect, and some of our technologies (e.g., agricultural, architectural, and time-keeping technologies) have their roots in medieval monasteries.3 [End Page 159]We should therefore expect that Adam and Eve, had they not fallen, nevertheless would have become makers of technology in some form or other. They would have exhibited inventiveness and tool use, though perhaps not a tool use focused on warding off evil (which did not exist in Eden), but concerned with promoting positive forms life, such as tools of art and communication. Art and communication technologies are, like all tools, means to an end; but these in particular contain their ends in themselves. In Aristotelian terms, their making (poiesis) concerns a praxis (such as "making conversation"). That is why we sometimes forget to list such technologies among our typical examples of technologies. We forget, for example, that, among the technologies of communication, language as a physical tool (sounds or written marks) is an obvious example. And it is a prelapsarian feature: the book of Genesis has Adam naming things before the Fall. In doing so, Adam echoes God's own creative "technique" of speaking or calling things into being.4 Even in its oral form, language is a matter of human making and a technology of communication. In paradise, communication would not have been merely instrumental, not merely a means, but an intrinsic good, embodying knowledge and intersubjective communion.Other forms of prelapsarian technology, however, are a matter of speculation. And whether or not one agrees with Jacques Ellul's thesis that there was no such prelapsarian technology,5 the ambivalence of technology is clear from the very beginning as well. This is at least what we see in the book of Genesis. For, as a matter of biblical record, it was Cain and his descendants who founded cities and developed technology (e.g., Tubal-Cain as the "forger of all instruments of bronze and iron" in Gen 4:22). And the history [End Page 160] of these urban civilizations does not display the best part of human behavior. But if, as we have said, technology is not necessarily a bad thing, then this must be a corruption of technology. What might this corruption consist in?I want to suggest that it consists precisely in the corruption of our relationship with God, from which technology can never abstract and in which it is, for better or for worse, embedded. Unsurprisingly, therefore, as technology progresses, this relationship becomes more and more explicit, and it does so in a paradoxical way: initially, it is an attempt to put humanity in charge and control, to replace our need for reliance on God by allowing us to play God ourselves. But in our current situation, particularly with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the roles appear reversed: rather than putting humanity in charge, technology in turn is increasingly in control—to the point of becoming itself a god or idol that rules human life. As a result, we only end up having replaced one God with another... (shrink)

The identification of two Mycenaean terracotta centaurs from the excavations at Ras Shamra-Ugarit suggests a Bronze Age origin for the centaurs known from the historic periods of Greece. The Mycenaean centaurs from Ras Shamra-Ugarit are compared to the later examples from the Greek mainland. No continuous artistic tradition can be identified among the preserved examples. Since writing ceased to be used in Greece in the Iron Age and no artistic trend connecting the different representations of centaurs can be seen, it (...) is suggested here that the concept of centaurs was transmitted by way of the oral tradition. (shrink)

What effects do archaeological discoveries, and in particular some of the new archaeological discoveries, have on research into ancient history and culture, and especially on the research into [ancient] intellectual culture that all of us present today are concerned about? This is a subject that very much deserves to be studied. Archaeological discoveries have a very substantial effect on research into history. I believe everyone recognizes this fact today. This is probably a matter of common knowledge. However, very few people (...) give any thought to its effect on research into intellectual culture. People do not attach sufficient importance to this. Very few people realize that it has such an effect. Why is that? I believe that one of the reasons is that the archaeology of earlier times did not emphasize research into intellectual culture. For a very long period of time we were, in particular, influenced by Britain's Gordon Childe. As we all know, Childe was, in a certain sense, a Marxist. For instance, we can see in his books, such as What Happened in History and others, that he was basically a Marxist. However, we also note that he brought with him the influence of the Danish school of thought in early archaeology. The Danish school of thought started out by operating museums, and its founder was the person who invented such terms as "Stone Age," "Bronze Age," and "Iron Age." They operated museums and displayed objects but did little explaining. Nor was it possible in those times to talk about ideology and culture. That is why Childe's books brought that kind of an influence. We all know that for a long time in the former Soviet Union, the archaeological research institutes were not called "archaeological institutes," nor did they use the term "archaeology." Their institutes were called "institutes of material culture." What is "material culture?" This term is unclear, because the things discovered by archaeology cannot be defined simply as "material culture." How can one call all the things dug up by archaeology "material culture?" I myself have never looked at the matter that way. That is why I wrote that pamphlet "Dong Zhou yu Qin dai wenming" , and especially put in that particular statement. Many people have since quoted that statement, and fortunately everyone seems to think it is all right. What I meant to say is that the things discovered by archaeology are, of course, material things, but many of them also reflect spiritual things. Actually, the reason is simple. A tomb, for example, always has to do with certain funerary ceremonies and certain rites, and all of these reflect things of the spirit. A bronze vessel, or a pottery vessel—such things reflect the society and the customs and habits of those times. If you are only looking at it from the material side, then the effects of this [other] sort of archaeology are worth considering. This is my view of the matter, and I hope everyone will comment on it. So, today I would like to talk about the influence of archaeological culture on things of the spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Recovering the Vestiges of Primeval Europe: Archaeology and the Significance of Stone Implements, 1750–1800Matthew R. GoodrumFor the antiquaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who studied the few broken monuments and obscure artifacts that survived from the earliest periods of human history there was a dawning realization that these remote epochs were not as inaccessible as had previously been believed. This attitude was mirrored in geological research where natural (...) historians were using fossils and geological formations to reconstruct the history of the earth, which was turning out to be considerably longer and more dynamic than had previously been thought.1 Antiquarianism and natural history shared many features and problems in common during this period and their fates would become more intertwined than either discipline realized at the time.2Despite the growing hope that archaeological monuments could illuminate the past, a great deal of early human history remained hidden, enveloped in a fog that the antiquary could only occasionally peer through.3 Yet [End Page 51] the nascent science of archaeology made great strides during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Antiquaries throughout Europe were investigating field monuments, collecting artifacts, and excavating barrows in an attempt to throw some light on the original inhabitants of the continent. 4 Antiquarianism, a scholarly discipline dedicated to the study of antiquities and other historical documents, had close links with natural history during this period and many antiquaries employed methods and a mode of reasoning drawn from the sciences.5 By By the late eighteenth century, antiquarianism itself was changing and a new science of archaeology was emerging and defining its own professional identity.6Among the objects investigated by these antiquaries was a particularly curious class of artifacts that had long been collected and examined in Europe. Natural historians throughout the early modern period had collected a type of stone called ceraunia, or thunderstones. It was not until the end of the seventeenth century that antiquaries and natural historians suggested that these stones were not produced in clouds by natural processes but instead were stone arrowheads, axe-heads, and other implements fabricated by early Europeans. Once these objects were accepted as ancient human artifacts, entirely new sets of questions arose: for example, why would early Europeans make tools out of stone instead of metal, what were these objects used for, and what could they tell us about the culture of ancient peoples.7 The latter question was all the more disturbing since it [End Page 52] was apparent that the stone artifacts found in Europe were very similar to the stone implements and weapons used by the so-called “savages” of the New World and the South Pacific. By the middle of the eighteenth century there was an increasing amount of evidence and a growing consensus that the inhabitants of many parts of northern Europe prior to the Roman era possessed only stone implements and culturally were rude and barbarous peoples. This idea that early Europeans had been barbarians was not new; Roman historians had asserted as much, but what was new was the quantity of archaeological evidence for this idea and the way it was understood within the context of European contact with the indigenous peoples of the New World and the South Pacific who still used stone tools.Antiquaries and natural historians during the first half of the eighteenth century were still accumulating evidence to support the idea that so-called thunderstones were in fact archaeological artifacts. They were also attempting to understand what they meant as historical and cultural artifacts, and importantly they were trying to integrate this new understanding within the traditional biblical view of human history.8 A great deal has been written about the study of prehistoric stone artifacts in the early nineteenth century, especially since it was during this period that Scandinavian archaeologists formulated the Three Age System that organized prehistory into a succession of periods from the Stone Age through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.9 In addition, the important theoretical breakthroughs of the early nineteenth century, combined with the expansion and professionalization of archaeology as a discipline during this period, have tended to focus the attention of historians of archaeology... (shrink)