In this paper I hope that I have been able to fulfil the brief I set myself. From the time when I first read of chaos (Gleick, 1988), I felt that it could valuably be applied to my chosen subject of study, archaeology. I hope that in this paper I have at least managed to show that there is value to this particular interdisciplinary approach.
In the chapter 'What is chaos?' I hope that I have given a understandable and concise introduction to the emergence of chaos as a subject, to its principles and to put it into a context where it can be understood as part of a wider paradigm shift in the sciences towards a more holistic approach, where the world is no longer simplified until it no longer means anything, but appreciated for its beautiful complexity.
The chapter reviewing what others have contributed to the field reassures one that others have had similar thoughts before, and have tentatively explored this particularly interdisciplinary avenue before. The path is, however, not well-trodden, and all the attempts to bring the insights of chaos (with the possible exception of McGlade and Van der Leeuw, 1997) have stumbled, either in their understanding of the disciplines involved, or because the sheer abstraction of their models makes them useless.
There is a lot of insight to be gained from the application of chaos theory to the social sciences in general, but it will require an entirely new approach to be able to reap the benefits. In the past twenty years archaeology has benefited greatly from the writings of philosophers, but to my mind this particular cross-pollination has served its purpose and it is time for us to move on.
Academia is not used to interdisciplinary approaches: archaeology is done by archaeologists, mathematics is done by mathematicians. Perhaps if the mathematicians could spend a little time doing archaeology, and the archaeologists a little time doing maths then we might be able to dig our selves out of this post-modern interpretative quagmire before we loose all grip on the reality with which we deal.
© Joe MacLeod-Iredale 1998