Between variability and singularity

Crossing theoretical, qualitative and computer-based approaches to types and typologies in archaeology
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-94-6427-159-1
Verlag: Sidestone Press

Buch, Englisch, 260 Seiten, Format (B × H): 210 mm x 280 mm

Typology is a core method and practice in archaeology. As a particular form of classification first developed during the infancy of the discipline itself, typology has remained an archaeological staple despite countless twists and turns. Rarely taught explicitly, and often critiqued, typology refuses to loosen its grip on archaeological practice.

In 14 chapters, this book explores how typology as a method and typologies as specific practices have developed, how typology is situated in contemporary theoretical thinking, and how typologies relate to the rapidly unfolding computational revolution that is reshaping the discipline. The volume offers state-of-the-art perspectives on typology grounded in all periods and across numerous artefact classes – ceramics, lithics, coins – as well as experimental articulations between typological thinking and mapping practices. Together, the chapters making up this volume challenge naïve typologizing and bring the topic of what we call things and how we classify them to the fore of archaeological debates. The volume is essential reading for graduate students and professionals alike; it offers critical perspectives on core principles of archaeological classification but also provides visionary signposts for how theory and computational methods engage with classification practices now and in the years to come.

Notably, this book is not only experimental in its content but also in its form: All chapters contained in it have been peer-assessed in their preprint forms such that earlier versions, all peer reviews and editorial recommendations are available as rich metadata. In this way, the volume sets new standards for bibliodiverse scholarly publishing at the interface between the digital and the physical.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Plutniak, Sébastien

Hussain, Shumon T.

Riede, Felix

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Typologising archaeological typologies: Motivation, structure and the making of a digitally augmented edited volume
Sébastien Plutniak, Shumon T. Hussain and Felix Riede

Part I: The epistemology and theory of types and typologies

Research perspectives and their influence on typologies
Enrico Giannichedda

On the physics and metaphysics of classification in archaeology
Mercedes Okumura and Astolfo G.M. Araujo

The loss of typological innocence: Pluralism in the epistemology and ontology of archaeological typo-praxis
Shumon T. Hussain

Archaeology, typology and machine epistemology
Gavin Lucas

Part II: Research legacies, digital infrastructures and computer-based approaches

Tool types and the establishment of the Late Palaeolithic (Later Stone Age) cultural taxonomic system in the Nile Valley
Alice Leplongeon

The role of heritage databases in typological reification: A case study from the Final Palaeolithic of southern Scandinavia
Felix Riede

From paper to byte: An interim report on the digital transformation of two thing editions
Frederic Auth, Katja Rösler, Wenke Domscheit and Kerstin P. Hofmann

The density of types and the dignity of the fragment: A website approach to archaeological typology
Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati

IT- and machine learning-based methods of classification: The cooperative project ClaReNet (Classification and Representation for Networks)
Chrisowalandis Deligio, Caroline von Nicolai, Markus Möller, Katja Rösler, Julia Tietz, Robin Krause, Kerstin P. Hofmann, Karsten Tolle and David Wigg-Wolf

Part III: New perspectives and themes in type-thinking

What is a form? On the classification of archaeological pottery
Philippe Boissinot

A return to function as the basis of lithic classification
Radu Iovita

Speaking types into being: Language acts, typological persistence and performing archaeological space
Piraye Hacigüzeller

Hypercultural types: Archaeological objects in fast time
Artur S.P. Ribeiro

Postscript
Do we need (more) humble typologies?
Shumon T. Hussain

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Sébastien Plutniak:

Sébastien Plutniak is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), working at the CITERES-LAT laboratory (Tours, France), and a former fellow of the École française de Rome. Trained as a prehistoric archaeologist and a sociologist and historian of science, his research focuses on contemporary and past uses of formal and computer-based methods in the humanities and social sciences –and archaeology in particular–, studied from practical, socio-historical, and epistemological perspectives.
Dr. Shumon T. Hussain:

Shumon T. Hussain is a cross-disciplinary archaeologist with a research focus on Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies, in particular their stone artefact technologies and animal relationships. He is broadly interested in theoretical innovation and synthesis beyond archaeology as a disciplinary specialism, to better integrate data and perspectives across the humanities and sciences vis-à-vis questions of the human deep past, and the epistemology and practice of science. He is currently based at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he is Junior Research Group Leader at the Department for Prehistoric Archaeology and the newly established research hub MESH – Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities.
Prof. Dr. Felix Riede:

Felix Riede is professor of archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has been visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology, the Department of Geography in Cambridge, and the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research at Bern University.