A research-historical and bibliometric perspective on Neanderthal occupation in Scandinavia
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-04-08

History of research has the potential to distort the archaeological empirical record through biased approaches and self-perpetuating assumptions. In this way, regional paradigms are formed through the historical attention given to the specific topic in question. Whilst we may long since have left the eolith debate behind us, debates about the earliest Pleistocene occupation emerge regularly across Europe. Examples can be found in Scotland, Lithuania and the Greek islands such as Crete – and in Scandinavia. These debates often centre on particular actors, on problematic empirical material and are played out across publication media from websites to peer-reviewed papers. Also,
conflicting acceptance-criteria for autodidact and professional archaeological communities often result in bipartite epistemological frameworks. In our presentation, we focus on a case-study from Scandinavia, addressing how publication strategies and author status have shaped current notions on Neanderthal occupation in this region. We use citation network analysis to investigate the dynamics of the research field using publications as a proxy. This novel analysis allows us to investigate author clusters, time of publication, position in the debate, regional focus and status of main author. Further, the method allows for the visualisation of these structures in intuitive graphs.
We supplement this with a qualitative analysis of the, at times, harsh rhetoric of this debate. Our analysis reveals remarkable patterns and structures in the Scandinavian debate, which is argued to be highly influential for the formation of current paradigms regarding Neanderthal occupation in Scandinavia. Similarly detailed studies could be envisioned for other regions.

Trine Kellberg Nielsen, Aarhus University, Denmark; and Felix Riede, Aarhus University, Denmark