Events, narrative and data: why new chronologies or ethically Bayesian approaches should change how we write archaeology

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss how the history of our discipline continues to shape how we think with material culture to produce narratives. We argue that recent developments in scientific dating—in combination with New Materialist and Big Data approaches—offer the potential to produce radical new interpretations. However, we can only achieve this if we adopt ‘ethically Bayesian’ approaches which recognise that some of the most fundamental aspects of our epistemological structures are highly situated, reflecting a Eurocentric, colonial legacy. This legacy is especially important when we study societies that did/do not produce texts—so-called ‘prehistoric’ societies. We suggest that the revolutionary potential of radiocarbon dating on archaeology has not been fully achieved, precisely because chronometric data have not yet been made sufficiently independent from materials-determined narrative structures. We outline the importance of ethically Bayesian approaches as means to challenge this disciplinary inheritance. We argue that we need to describe the richness and specificity of the pasts we bring into being in ways that take better account of the historical processes through which heterogeneous assemblages emerge, rather than to search for preconfigured entities (like ‘the Bronze Age’). Times have changed; we need our approaches to time to catch up.

Stepping on shells. An experimental archaeological soil micromorphology study of trampling on a modern shell midden at Swifterkamp

“…Finally, we come to the study of micromorphology in relation to understanding past events, and the relevance of our soil micromorphological work in, for instance, the Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates (e.g. Kleijne and Huisman, 2023b;Gri ths et al, 2023;Bayliss, 2015, 689), where understanding and separating events is critical. Our study has shown that the three chronologically separate events studied here (the formation of the subsoil, the dumping of the shells and the trampling of the shells) are effectively spatially compressed into a single microfacies of "shells within sediment", through the act of trampling.…”

Resilience, innovation and collapse of settlement networks in later Bronze Age Europe: New survey data from the southern Carpathian Basin

“…Research in the Carpathian Basin and Balkans has often been dominated by culture history / typo-chronological frameworks. It is important to avoid slippage between speaking of ceramic groups as material culture categories with spatial and temporal relevance and the people who made the pots [63,64]. Ceramic groups cannot viewed as direct proxies for ethnic or cultural identity and political boundaries, but represent expressions of choice and knowledge [65].…”

Thinking Megalithism Beyond Prehistory: A Berquean Critique of the Idea of Reuse

“…To go beyond periodisations and aim at a trans-chronological megalithism contributes to overpass modernity in Archaeology and their time models, whose usage also poses ethical problems (Griffiths et al, 2023). It also aims at changing linear timelines in Prehistory, where "[…] unrelenting change of the modern era is focused and directional."…”