Sander E Van Der Leeuw
Biographic Data
| ID | 338557 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sander E Van Der Leeuw |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sander E |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Der Leeuw |
| SIGNATURE | VAN DER LEEUW S E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 250 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
What?????????s New?
Sustainability, culture and personal responsibility
Tropical Landscapes and the Ancient Maya
Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE-Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present-day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to mode…
Transforming Lessons from the Past into Lessons for the Future
This paper argues that we would massively increase the value of our archaeological understanding of the past for the present if we cast it differently. Rather than use a reductionist, ex-post approach (which explains the present by invoking the past, looking for origins), we should be using an "ex ante" approach that looks at the emergence of change, linking past and present to the future. This would allow us to learn from the past for the future…
Time, Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology
Urban Transitions
Agency, Networks, Past and Future
Climate and Society
This paper distinguishes three major "revolutions" in the socio-environmental interactions that reflect growth in the extent to which human beings invest in and modify their environments. As people settled in villages during the Neolithic, interactions between more people became an important element in survival strategies, shifting the emphasis in survival strategies from mobility to sociality. The emergence of cities changed human societies by: …
Cognitive aspects of ‘technique’
Introduction In trying to isolate reasons for the fact that archaeology has, for so long, ignored the cognitive aspects of material culture studies, one can point to the following - not necessarily in order of appearance or importance: - The once dominant determinist streak in archaeology often saw ‘us humans’ as forever trying to adapt to circumstances beyond our control. This attitude has wilfully ignored the reciprocal nature of the relationsh…
Gérard Chouquer & François Favory. Les arpenteurs Romains
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Whispers from the context of real life
We live in the dark, we do what we can, the rest is the madness of art.' (Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons)'We must again become a people making our own history. To be able to make our own history is to be able to mould our own future, to build our society that preserves the best of our past and our traditions, while enabling us to grow and develop as a whole people.' (Robert Andre
Technical traditions and unquestioned assumptions
La question posee est celle du maintien d'une tradition ceramique dans un contexte de changement economique et social. A partir de l'exemple de la fabrication de la poterie au Michoacan (Mexique), il est montre que la nature et le developpement de la tradition sont dictes par les « limites » de la sphere cognitive du potier. Les aspects de la tradition technique qui ne sont jamais remis en question semblent diriger l'imagination des potiers et le…
Archaeology, Material Culture and Innovation
EARLIER IN THESE PAGES, Rene Girard beautifully sketches the history of the concept At the same time, it becomes clear that innovation is an historical concept; only when there is a sense of history can one imagine a sense of the opposite, of innovation. Use of the concept implies at least a nascent sense of distance from society and time. I would argue that, with respect to innovation, much of the discipline of archaeology has the same attitude …
Transformations in a Dutch estuary
This paper discusses recent research on an estuarine area in the Netherlands. It argues a shift in focus towards multiple levels of research, the monitoring of information processing aspects to past societies and their environments, and the use of flow structure models to conceptualize cultural transformations. It describes the palaeogeography and palaeoecology of the area, and the mutual interactions between dead matter, living matter and humans…
Evolution of Specialized Pottery Production
Craft specialization, a concomitant of evolving social complexity, is regarded as a process of regulating variety in extractive or productive activities. A trial model for the evolution of specialization in pottery production is presented, together with test implications for the archaeological recognition of specialized production. Emphasis is on standardization vs. variability or diversity in decorative, technological, and formal pottery attribu…
Descriptive Statements, Covering Laws, and Theories in Archaeology [and Comments and Reply]
The paradigm for explanation in archaeology presented by the "new archaeologists" is reviewed and shown to need further elaboration. It is argued that that presentation has overemphasized the form of explanatory arguments and insufficiently considered their content. Not all explanatory arguments provide intuitively satisfactory explanations of particular observations. Instead, intuitively satisfactory explanations require general theories which s…
Evolution of Specialized Pottery Production
Craft specialization, a concomitant of evolving social complexity, is regarded as a process of regulating variety in extractive or productive activities. A trial model for the evolution of specialization in pottery production is presented, together with test implications for the archaeological recognition of specialized production. Emphasis is on standardization vs. variability or diversity in decorative, technological, and formal pottery attribu…
Urban Transitions
Time, Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology
Transformations in a Dutch estuary
This paper discusses recent research on an estuarine area in the Netherlands. It argues a shift in focus towards multiple levels of research, the monitoring of information processing aspects to past societies and their environments, and the use of flow structure models to conceptualize cultural transformations. It describes the palaeogeography and palaeoecology of the area, and the mutual interactions between dead matter, living matter and humans…
Descriptive Statements, Covering Laws, and Theories in Archaeology [and Comments and Reply]
The paradigm for explanation in archaeology presented by the "new archaeologists" is reviewed and shown to need further elaboration. It is argued that that presentation has overemphasized the form of explanatory arguments and insufficiently considered their content. Not all explanatory arguments provide intuitively satisfactory explanations of particular observations. Instead, intuitively satisfactory explanations require general theories which s…
Tropical Landscapes and the Ancient Maya
Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE-Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present-day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to mode…
Archaeology, Material Culture and Innovation
EARLIER IN THESE PAGES, Rene Girard beautifully sketches the history of the concept At the same time, it becomes clear that innovation is an historical concept; only when there is a sense of history can one imagine a sense of the opposite, of innovation. Use of the concept implies at least a nascent sense of distance from society and time. I would argue that, with respect to innovation, much of the discipline of archaeology has the same attitude …
Transforming Lessons from the Past into Lessons for the Future
This paper argues that we would massively increase the value of our archaeological understanding of the past for the present if we cast it differently. Rather than use a reductionist, ex-post approach (which explains the present by invoking the past, looking for origins), we should be using an "ex ante" approach that looks at the emergence of change, linking past and present to the future. This would allow us to learn from the past for the future…
Climate and Society
This paper distinguishes three major "revolutions" in the socio-environmental interactions that reflect growth in the extent to which human beings invest in and modify their environments. As people settled in villages during the Neolithic, interactions between more people became an important element in survival strategies, shifting the emphasis in survival strategies from mobility to sociality. The emergence of cities changed human societies by: …
Gérard Chouquer & François Favory. Les arpenteurs Romains
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Technical traditions and unquestioned assumptions
La question posee est celle du maintien d'une tradition ceramique dans un contexte de changement economique et social. A partir de l'exemple de la fabrication de la poterie au Michoacan (Mexique), il est montre que la nature et le developpement de la tradition sont dictes par les « limites » de la sphere cognitive du potier. Les aspects de la tradition technique qui ne sont jamais remis en question semblent diriger l'imagination des potiers et le…
Descriptive Statements, Covering Laws, and Theories in Archaeology [and Comments and Reply]
The paradigm for explanation in archaeology presented by the "new archaeologists" is reviewed and shown to need further elaboration. It is argued that that presentation has overemphasized the form of explanatory arguments and insufficiently considered their content. Not all explanatory arguments provide intuitively satisfactory explanations of particular observations. Instead, intuitively satisfactory explanations require general theories which s…
Evolution of Specialized Pottery Production
Craft specialization, a concomitant of evolving social complexity, is regarded as a process of regulating variety in extractive or productive activities. A trial model for the evolution of specialization in pottery production is presented, together with test implications for the archaeological recognition of specialized production. Emphasis is on standardization vs. variability or diversity in decorative, technological, and formal pottery attribu…
Transformations in a Dutch estuary
This paper discusses recent research on an estuarine area in the Netherlands. It argues a shift in focus towards multiple levels of research, the monitoring of information processing aspects to past societies and their environments, and the use of flow structure models to conceptualize cultural transformations. It describes the palaeogeography and palaeoecology of the area, and the mutual interactions between dead matter, living matter and humans…
Archaeology, Material Culture and Innovation
EARLIER IN THESE PAGES, Rene Girard beautifully sketches the history of the concept At the same time, it becomes clear that innovation is an historical concept; only when there is a sense of history can one imagine a sense of the opposite, of innovation. Use of the concept implies at least a nascent sense of distance from society and time. I would argue that, with respect to innovation, much of the discipline of archaeology has the same attitude …
Technical traditions and unquestioned assumptions
La question posee est celle du maintien d'une tradition ceramique dans un contexte de changement economique et social. A partir de l'exemple de la fabrication de la poterie au Michoacan (Mexique), il est montre que la nature et le developpement de la tradition sont dictes par les « limites » de la sphere cognitive du potier. Les aspects de la tradition technique qui ne sont jamais remis en question semblent diriger l'imagination des potiers et le…
Cognitive aspects of ‘technique’
Introduction In trying to isolate reasons for the fact that archaeology has, for so long, ignored the cognitive aspects of material culture studies, one can point to the following - not necessarily in order of appearance or importance: - The once dominant determinist streak in archaeology often saw ‘us humans’ as forever trying to adapt to circumstances beyond our control. This attitude has wilfully ignored the reciprocal nature of the relationsh…
Gérard Chouquer & François Favory. Les arpenteurs Romains
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Whispers from the context of real life
We live in the dark, we do what we can, the rest is the madness of art.' (Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons)'We must again become a people making our own history. To be able to make our own history is to be able to mould our own future, to build our society that preserves the best of our past and our traditions, while enabling us to grow and develop as a whole people.' (Robert Andre
Agency, Networks, Past and Future
Climate and Society
This paper distinguishes three major "revolutions" in the socio-environmental interactions that reflect growth in the extent to which human beings invest in and modify their environments. As people settled in villages during the Neolithic, interactions between more people became an important element in survival strategies, shifting the emphasis in survival strategies from mobility to sociality. The emergence of cities changed human societies by: …
Urban Transitions
Time, Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology
Sustainability, culture and personal responsibility
Tropical Landscapes and the Ancient Maya
Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE-Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present-day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to mode…
Transforming Lessons from the Past into Lessons for the Future
This paper argues that we would massively increase the value of our archaeological understanding of the past for the present if we cast it differently. Rather than use a reductionist, ex-post approach (which explains the present by invoking the past, looking for origins), we should be using an "ex ante" approach that looks at the emergence of change, linking past and present to the future. This would allow us to learn from the past for the future…
What?????????s New?
History (9 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (6 works) · Ecology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Geography (5 works) · History (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Biology (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works)