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Catherine J. Frieman. an archaeology of innovation: approaching social and technological change in human society

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Innovation and change are some of the most recurrent themes addressed not only in archaeological research but also through social, economic, environmental, or biological sciences (among others). This interest can be justified since transitional moments are those which we usually know least, or because they are traditionally seen as structural in our shared past, and crucial for understanding the social trajectories that came afterwards. These transformative episodes have primarily been approached through a ‘scientific’ and even political lens that leads to sometimes direct transpositions from current points of view to the past. Only more recently have social considerations that try to accomplish archaeology’s primary goal— which includes understanding the practices of past individuals and communities, materialities, or biographies—been fruitfully explored. An Archaeology of Innovation by Catherine J. Frieman succeeds, in an exceptionally easy to read and sometimes humorous way, in giving us an overview of different approaches to innovation, combining them from an archaeological perspective, and backing them up with multiple theories and examples fromdifferent times and regions. What this book provides is an updated archaeological take on the study of innovation, change, and resistance in the past and present, not reducing these subjects to ‘“Do-Need” fra meworks’ (p. 159), but instead highlighting archaeology’s social nature.

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Cambridge

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