Entangled Prehistories: A Physics Idea and Culture Change in Chaco Canyon

Summary

Recent work by physicists on "entangled histories" offers archaeologists an alternative perspective for studying prehistoric culture change. The conventional wisdom of archaeology’s contribution to the broader discipline of anthropology is its ability to study change over long spans of time. In recent years, archaeologists have done this using increasingly precise dating techniques combined with processual, multi-scalar, and comparative approaches. The concept of entangled histories expands this repertoire. It says that any entity’s past cannot be described by a single chronology. Rather, the past is created by multiple chronologies intertwined with each other. This paper assesses the utility of this idea of entanglements for studying prehistoric culture change in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14412