Pleistocene and early Holocene sea levels and archaeology

Abstract

The renewed interest in archaeology following the post-war period allowed the discipline to evolve into the giant subject we are acquainted with in the twenty-first century. Never more than now can we realise how realistic David Clarke's observation was in identifying a disciplinary evolution from consciousness to critical self-consciousness, 1 and how this phenomenon would inevitably bring about specialization on, and therefore fragmentation of the discipline. Undoubtedly, specialization gave way to in-depth studies in given fields, which yielded fruits far more bountiful than ever before; however, our need to increase in-depth knowledge opened up an inefficiency to understand general norms. Indeed, it seems increasingly evident that the disciplinary challenge to the twenty-first century archaeologist is to piece together the enormous volume of data available and produce a comprehensible, up-to-date text regarding a general topic.