Join the ANU Responsible Innovation Lab and CPAS for an engaging discussion on the social archaeology of innovation.

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Title: Responsible Innovation Forum: A View From The Deep Past 

Innovation—at its basic level an anthropocentric process of change over time—looms large in the contemporary world, being bound up in the core economic, social and political relations of the capitalist world. Unsurprisingly, this fascination has inspired research into and critical of innovation and innovative practices across myriad academic fields, archaeology among them. We archaeologists have a longstanding and probably inescapable fascination with the temporality of change. From biblical and evolutionary models to scientific dating methods, change over time has been a continuing focus of our research. Even as archaeological thought has fragmented over the last several decades – with new interpretative approaches emerging almost as fast as new scientific methods – how and why new ideas emerge and spread has remained a central concern of archaeologists around the world. 

Despite this persistent fascination, I argue that we have rarely engaged with innovation as a social phenomenon—and even more rarely considered the social processes of non-innovation: conservatism, tradition, and resistance. In this discussion, I outline a social archaeology of innovation that sees both innovation and non-innovation as emergent from the complex relationships between people, technologies and the wider world. This model gives us fertile ground to revisit old debates, pose new questions, and side step the old evolutionary approaches in order to envision a more complicated, more human past.

About the speaker:
Dr Catherine J. Frieman obtained her BA In archaeological studies from Yale University in 2005, her M.st in European archaeology from the University of Oxford in 2006 and a Dphil in archaeology from the University of Oxford in 2011. She is currently an associate professor in European Archaeology at the Australian National University and an ARC Future Fellow. Her research concerns the relationships between people, technology, and material culture. Her particular interests include prehistoric mobility, innovation, and ancient genetics. She is a specialist in ancient technology studies, especially prehistoric Eurasian stone and flint technology; skeuomorphism; the spread of metal and metal technology; flint daggers; and the maintenance of technological traditions. Her research crosses numerous periods and regions, including the archaeology of prehistoric and Roman Europe; Australian historic archaeology, including rock art produced by Aboriginal Australian people over the last 200 years; and technological developments in prehistoric Southeast Asia. Her current publications explore cross-disciplinary approaches to archaeological data and meaning making, including the impact of genetic data on archaeological narratives and models, as well as the methodological and ethical implications of this research. Her monograph An Archaeology of Innovation was published by Manchester University Press in 2021, with a paperback edition released in 2023.

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This is a hybrid event: 

• Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS), Green couch room, #42a Linnaeus Way

• You can also join online: 
  Zoom link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/85475374932?pwd=aUNNdmFkK2pnK01UaGRzcEJDSjU3Zz09

Meeting ID: 854 7537 4932 | Password: CPASsem23