Archaeological science in southern South America: An introduction

Abstract

The approach that can be succinctly described as ‘archaeological science’ has grown beyond any predictions made during the last four decades. Recently published data helps to illustrate the magnitude of this evolution. In 1982 the Journal of Archaeological Science published four issues with 28 articles that occupied 409 pages, while in 2014 it published 12 issues containing 480 articles spanning 5128 pages (Torrence et al., 2015, 1–2). This is the historical context of the discipline where the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports emerged in 2015 as a sister publication aimed at disseminating the ever-growing “… results of the application of scientific methods to archaeological problems and debates, as well as providing a forum for reviews and discussion of issues in scientific archaeology and their impact in the wider subject” (Hunt and Howard, 2015, 1).