Currents and trends in the archaeological sciences

Here I use ISI Web of Knowledge to build on a recent paper by Butzer (2009) and track current trends in the archaeological sciences. I researched eight thematic keywords replete in the title, abstract, keywords and main body of archaeological science literature for the period 1970–2008. For all keywords investigated a steady rise in archaeological science research is evidenced after 1980, with pronounced growth occurring after 2000. I attribute this pattern to the standardisation of research production and academic evaluation, in addition to the democratisation of new information technologies, notably the Internet. The evolution of 10 leading archaeological science journals was also tracked. Since the 1970s, the bibliometric data show that nine of the ten journals have successfully expanded on an annual basis. I found that the biggest growers (the Journal of Archaeological Science [JAS], the Journal of Human Evolution and the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology) are all published by Elsevier. In 2008, the JAS was ranked first for five of the eight thematic keywords by ISI, underlining the popularity and interdisciplinary scope of the journal. According to the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, the JAS ranks second for total citations (4219) in archaeological science and third for its overall impact factor (1.779).