Archaeological Science and COVID-19

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

“Archaeological Science” is a big tent often thought to have a common entry portal and ease in traversing its major approaches. In reality, the tents are often quite separate due to the training and interests of the investigators, as well as the information content and utility of the data. What binds the exploration is an understanding by practitioners that the highest level of analytical competence coupled with a flexible, interdisciplinary interpretive structure is necessary for progress. In the last few decades, we have witnessed remarkable additions to the archaeological science toolkit. The overuse of some approaches, however, often follows a beaten path. Utilizing the examples of light and heavy stable isotopes, I will illustrate the overuse phenomenon and highlight some of the paths forward. We have seen recently that “following the science” is an easy sound bite, but when faced with a complicated issue such as COVID-19, the scientific data production is slow, error-prone, incomplete, and often irritatingly confusing. The knowledge added by archaeological science approaches to the history of human life has been and will be many things: iterative, contradictory, mundane, transformative, and frustrating for the consumer. It is the nature of the scientific enterprise.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36135.0