YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS May 16 Written By Jonathan T. Thomas Click on the link below for full-text PDF: When V. Gordon Childe, at the time arguably the most famous prehistorian of the twentieth century, coined the terms “Neolithic Revolution” and “Urban Revolution” in the mid 1930s, he was likely unaware that he was inaugurating what was to become a time- honored tradition in our discipline: the archaeological revolution. Although the popular use of the term “revolution” to describe social, political, or technological turning points dates to the Enlightenment,1 archaeologists were slow to adopt the term to describe processes of cultural change (though Childe alluded to prehistoric revolutions in earlier works, its first official use was in 1936). Since this time, “revolutions” have flourished within the discipline, with archaeologists suggesting no fewer than nine revolutionary moments in prehistory. Jonathan T. Thomas
YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL REVOLUTIONS May 16 Written By Jonathan T. Thomas Click on the link below for full-text PDF: When V. Gordon Childe, at the time arguably the most famous prehistorian of the twentieth century, coined the terms “Neolithic Revolution” and “Urban Revolution” in the mid 1930s, he was likely unaware that he was inaugurating what was to become a time- honored tradition in our discipline: the archaeological revolution. Although the popular use of the term “revolution” to describe social, political, or technological turning points dates to the Enlightenment,1 archaeologists were slow to adopt the term to describe processes of cultural change (though Childe alluded to prehistoric revolutions in earlier works, its first official use was in 1936). Since this time, “revolutions” have flourished within the discipline, with archaeologists suggesting no fewer than nine revolutionary moments in prehistory. Jonathan T. Thomas
