The aim of this book is to explore the interdisciplinary relationships between archaeology and other branches of knowledge in Europe and elsewhere. Interdisciplinary cooperation has been essential in the development of archaeology as we know it today, although until now its role and influence have been largely ignored in the histories of the discipline. This book brings to light the processes that led to interdisciplinary relations in archaeology from the 19th to the 20th centuries, with scholarly contributions that offer a critical overview of this complex, dynamic and long-lasting transformative process. This is a pioneering project in the field of the history of archaeology, as it is the first to examine the inclusion into archaeological practice of various disciplines categorised under the umbrella of hard, natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities. This insertion led to ground-breaking interdisciplinary collaborations and, ultimately, to the birth of new branches within archaeology, including, for example, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, geoarchaeology and archaeometallurgy.

The authors of this volume include internationally acknowledged scholars of the history of archaeology. Chapters cover a wide range of topics, looking at interdisciplinarity in archaeology at a general level by analysing its relationship with a number of other sciences in specific countries such as Portugal and Italy, to the incorporation of particular disciplines such as geology, palynology and zoology into archaeology using case studies. Several authors focus on the work of influential scholars as starting points for examining the intersection between antiquarianism, archaeology, the natural sciences and numismatics or between archaeology, art history, architecture and natural sciences. Other chapters theorise on the influence of epistemology and philosophy of science and even positivism on archaeological theory and practice. The influence of the army is also discussed in the development of underwater and aerial archaeology.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• 1. Interdisciplinarity in archaeology – a historical introduction : Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Laura Coltofean-Arizancu
• 2. Two sides to the coin: erudition and natural history from antiquarianism to archaeology in the work of John Evans : Nathan Schlanger
• 3. Non-spectacular exceptions: faunal remains and bone artefacts in nineteenth-century Hungarian archaeology : Laura Coltofean-Arizancu
• 4. From plants to pollen, from Europe to Spain: looking at interdisciplinarity in archaeology : Margarita Díaz-Andreu
• 5. Archaeology and interdisciplinarity in the Irish Free State in the 1930s: the role of the Committee for Quaternary Research : Mairéad Carew
• 6. Interdisciplinarity? The word and the practice in the history of Swiss wetland archaeology : Géraldine Delley
• 7. In search of interdisciplinarity in Portuguese archaeology: notes on the 1960s : Ana Cristina Martins
• 8. Science and archaeology in Italy: a difficult marriage : Alessandro Guidi
• 9. Archaeology and the Armed Forces in Spain from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century : Francisco Gracia Alonso
• 10. The decline of epistemology in archaeology: comments on an ongoing discussion : Oscar Moro Abadía and Emma Lewis-Sing