Abstract
Unlike other social sciences, the archaeological discipline has been lacking a theoretical framework to discuss the mechanism of migration. Traditionally, patterns of population movements were denoted from material culture and interpreted within the context of ethnicity and the diffusion of ideas without considering underlying processes and incentives, despite active consideration of these issues by geographers and sociologists. It was not until the 1990s that a more integrated archaeological discussion on the various stimuli, influences, and mechanisms of why people choose to migrate was beginning to evolve. Since then, the debate on migration in archaeology has not only reflected on patterns of cultural and technological change but also increasingly on aspects of identity and self-realization; both in terms of how migrants themselves adapt and adjust to their new home environment, and how the host-communities themselves respond and interact with newcomers. Using four case studies, the current paper proposes a new theoretical model for how to assess patterns of group migrations. This new model considers the respective mode of agency related to both the intention and size of the group. “Very High and High Group Agency” represent situations where the migrant group is at a technological and quantitative advantage to the host community, while “Medium and Low Group Agency” represent situations where the newcomers are forced to respond to their new environment through adaptation and adjustment to their local host community.
Highlights
Introduction to Migration TheoryMigration is an established area of research across academic discourse and within archaeological study it has a history of use as a means of explaining cultural and Extended author information available on the last page of the articleInternational Journal of Historical Archaeology (2020) 24:219–232 economic change, such as the appearance of new technologies and material culture within the archaeological record
In recent decades theoretical developments made within subjects such as sociology and human geography have begun to impact on archaeology while, in turn, the value that archaeology can bring to migration studies has been increasingly recognized, given our subject’s unique time-depth perspective
The starting point for any consideration of migration theory is the work undertaken by the nineteenth-century German scholar Ernst Ravenstein who was the first researcher to examine in detail the nature and mechanisms of migration
Summary
Introduction to Migration TheoryMigration is an established area of research across academic discourse and within archaeological study it has a history of use as a means of explaining cultural and Extended author information available on the last page of the articleInternational Journal of Historical Archaeology (2020) 24:219–232 economic change, such as the appearance of new technologies and material culture within the archaeological record. To understand why this was the case it is necessary to examine at the history of nineteenthand early twentieth-century archaeology when there was a general view that innovation was rare in the past and it was suspected that ideas usually had a single place of origin and spread from that location either through migration or diffusion.
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