An Archaeological Perspective on the History of Technology

Download or read book An Archaeological Perspective on the History of Technology written by A. Mark Pollard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents an introduction to a new world-wide attempt to review the history of technology, which is one of few since the pioneering publications of the 1960s. It takes an explicit archaeological focus to the study of the history of technology and adopts a more explicit socially-embedded view of technology than has commonly been the case in mainstream histories of technology. In doing so, it attempts to introduce a more radical element to explanations of technological change, involving magic, alchemy, animism – in other words, attempting to consider technological change in terms of the 'world view' of those involved in such change rather than from an exclusively western scientific perspective.