Setting the Scene

Abstract

In 2008, the Danish prehistorian Kristian Kristiansen considered the need for an ‘archaeology of Europe’. The article was one of a series in which he discussed intellectual developments in the discipline. His argument is directly relevant to our project. Kristiansen (2008) identified a series of changes in the practice of archaeology and, in particular, in the scale at which research has been conducted. Such changes reflected broader theoretical trends in the discipline. There was the alternation between ‘rational’ and ‘romantic’ approaches that had been identified by Andrew Sherratt (1997). It operated on a twenty-five to thirty-year cycle and extended from the nineteenth century to the present day. There was a political cycle in which prehistoric archaeology was influenced to varying extents by broader developments in contemporary society. In particular, it was coloured by different conceptions of cultural heritage, beginning with the rise of the nation-state. Finally, there was a funding cycle to which these features were closely related. At different times research was confined within modern borders, or scholars were encouraged to work in larger teams and over a more extensive area. All these trends could be illustrated by the scope of regional, national, and international journals and by the languages in which the results of the research were published. Such issues were particularly relevant to intellectual history. Kristiansen suggested that the adoption of particular theoretical perspectives was closely related to that question of scale. Approaches which looked for general patterns among prehistoric societies tended to discuss large regions, as might be expected of projects which adopted a comparative approach. They were characterized by rationalism, and in Britain, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia were influenced by American processual archaeology. At the same time the emphasis on large-scale regularities existed in a certain tension with approaches coloured by romanticism. They showed a greater concern with the practices and beliefs of individual communities and are sometimes described as post-processual. Because these different approaches were favoured at different times, it was hard to bring them into alignment, so that the work of one generation might be geographically extensive, while its successors would focus on a single region.