![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
One of the most critical ideas to bridge the theoretical and historiographical domains is the paradigm concept. From Thomas Kuhn’s highly influential studies on the history and philosophy of science in the 1960s, the paradigm concept was taken up in most if not all disciplinary discourses by the late 1970s and early 1980s, archaeology included. Historically, it provided a framework within which to understand the development of disciplinary questions; theoretically, it was used to frame what were considered to be deeply incompatible philosophies of archaeology, most notably expressed in the processual-postprocessual wars of the 1980s. Now that the dust of these wars has settled however, now that we have had numerous expressions of a consensual pluralism, is the paradigm concept still useful? This paper aims to take a new look at the paradigm concept, and explore it in relation to the intersection of historiography and theoretical debate.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tim Murray for inviting me to contribute to this issue of World Archaeology and suggesting the topic of paradigms. I would also like to thank Alison Wylie for her supportive and insightful comments on a draft of this paper and to Mark Leone and an anonymous reviewer for their critical feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gavin Lucas
Gavin Lucas is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Iceland. His main research interests are in archaeological method and theory and the archaeology of the modern world. His most recent book was Understanding the Archaeological Record (2012).