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Archaeology in current society. A Central European perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2011

Martin Gojda*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of West Bohemia, Sedlackova 15, Plzen 306 14, Czech Republic (Email: martin.gojda@seznam.cz)

Extract

In recent years, Central Europe has experienced an unprecedented acceleration in social development (especially due to the demise of the communist regimes), in streams of thought (for example the post-modern vision of truth and the relativity of scientific knowledge) and, above all, in the availability of new information and communication technologies. Like every discipline, archaeology has been obliged not only to react to the contemporary dynamic but also to adapt to it in a positive — i.e. creative — way. Among the resultant trends to be noted in the Czech Republic are a decreasing interest in a single general theoretical paradigm, coupled with an increasing demand for the conservation and mitigation of sites threatened by development and looting. As a possible consequence of these developments, the past two decades have seen a shift in the agenda of archaeological researchers towards landscape and a realignment of the discipline away from the humanities and towards environmental and geographical considerations.

Type
Research article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

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