Catherine J. Frieman's An Archaeology of Innovation (henceforth Innovation) is a noteworthy contribution that I benefited from reading. Thinking hard about concepts, theories, and assumptions—as well as their often-checkered histories—is important for scholars in any academic discipline. Here, Frieman interrogates the concept of “innovation.”
A major strength of Innovation is the deep multidisciplinary well—archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and history, among other fields—from which it draws. As readers imbibe a rich blend of theoretical waters, they are forced to confront and question important issues of power, colonialism, prejudice, racism, and sexism in themselves and their research. Indeed, as one who thinks and writes a lot about innovation (mostly in Pleistocene technologies), I was not aware of how much baggage the concept of “innovation” potentially carries. But through a plethora of examples from disparate geotemporal contexts ranging from the Paleolithic to historic periods, Frieman unpacks innovation and scrutinizes its contents: both the novel “thing,” as well as its invention, adoption, and transmission into eventual archaeological visibility. Her grilling is necessary and welcome. From the explicit identification of the Western presumption that “innovation” equates with “good” to the unsupported stance that only males are the innovators of the past, Frieman leaves few stones unturned.
In terms of production, Innovation is praiseworthy. Clear figures (n = 24) and tables (n = 2) and lucid chapter titles and section headings, end-of-chapter notes, and a comprehensive index all make for an enjoyable reading experience.
One issue I have is Innovation's depiction of cultural evolutionary theory, which is vastly different today than even a couple of decades ago, much less from the mid-twentieth century or the late 1800s (see Stephen J. Lycett, “Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Artifact Variation over Time and Space,” Journal of Archaeological Science 56, 2015; Alex Mesoudi, Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences, 2011). For example, Frieman writes that “the social element of technological systems means that technological change cannot be a product of evolutionary development or the steady improvement of functionality, but instead must reflect human choices, values, and the wider social context in which it occurs” (p. 24). In another instance, Frieman writes that “social factors” are “not narratives that dominate the field [of evolution-based research]” (p. 20). Yet when considering modern cultural evolutionary theory and its literature, such statements do not acknowledge cultural evolutionary theory's own evolution—not only because “culture” is today defined operationally and explicitly as “socially transmitted information” (e.g., Mesoudi, Cultural Evolution, 2011, 2–3; Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, 2005, 5) but also because modern cultural evolutionary theory eschews “progressive” or “linear” interpretations. Furthermore, rather than reducing understanding of human behavioral variation and diversity, there are now countless examples in which modern cultural evolutionary approaches regularly use or assess individual agents; human biases, values, and choices; and (nonfunctional) cultural drift as explanations. Modern cultural evolutionary studies also regularly acknowledge that functional and nonfunctional sources may or may not be simultaneously contributing to technological variation and change. There is little in Innovation that could not be profitably explored through a modern cultural evolutionary lens, and I think if Frieman and modern cultural evolutionary theorists sat down together, they would find more in common than not.
Whether one agrees with all of Innovation, some of it, or none of it, I recommend that it be read—if for nothing else than to spend time giving a good, hard think to a concept regularly used by archaeologists. But I suspect the reader will get much more out of Frieman's work than this. I certainly did, and I applaud her for her own innovative contribution.
