Category: Philosophy of Archaeology
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Why Archaeologists Couldn’t Respond to SETI in 2014
The Unanswered Question In 2014, NASA published “Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication,” edited by Douglas Vakoch. The initiative called for archaeologists to contribute their expertise in understanding past cultures to help SETI researchers design communication strategies for extraterrestrial contact. It was a reasonable request—archaeologists spend careers interpreting artifacts from societies separated from us by time,…
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Are We the Transmission?: The Archaeological Record Future Civilizations Will Discover
Introduction Four billion years of planetary history, the complete evolutionary record of life on Earth, from single-celled organisms to technological civilization. The geological transformations of a living world. The extinctions, the radiations, the slow accumulation of atmospheric oxygen. The emergence of language, art, and science. All of it will vanish without a trace, like tears…
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SETI is Archaeology: Signal Science Across Spacetime
Dylan Foley – Archaeological SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Philosophy of Archaeology Series Words:1823 Time to read:10 minutes We Know Exactly One Thing About SETI In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, we face a lot of uncertainties. Although we can make educated guesses, we don’t know if life commonly emerges on other worlds. We don’t…
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The Persistence of Dualism: Why a Decade of Theoretical Innovation Has Failed to Advance Archaeological Science
Update of 2014 article Dualism: The “Great Divide” in the Philosophy of Archaeology. “They made up their minds to name two forms, of which they must not name one—in this they have gone astray.” Parmenides of Elea Archaeology is a discipline in philosophical crisis, charged with creating a narrative, the story of our species evolution,…
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Beyond Typologies: Why Archaeology Needs a Signal Processing Revolution
First in a three-part series introducing a groundbreaking approach to archaeological data science The Hidden Patterns in Ancient Landscapes Imagine standing in a field in County Roscommon, looking at what appears to be just another Irish pasture crossed by modern fence lines. But beneath your feet and etched into the landscape around you lie the…