Cite this as: Sinclair, A. 2022 Archaeological Research 2014 to 2021: an examination of its intellectual base, collaborative networks and conceptual language using science maps, Internet Archaeology 59. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.59.10
A series of six science maps have been created visualising the shape of archaeological research between 2014 and 2021, using metadata from more than 50,000 academic documents. These maps present the intellectual base of the discipline as co-citation networks of sources and of authors, the language of archaeological research as both terms extracted from titles and abstracts and as author keywords, and, lastly, the networks of collaboration created by co-authorship between individuals and institutions. Comparison is made between 2014-2021 and an earlier study examining archaeological research between 2004 and 2013. Archaeology is revealed as a consistently broad and developing subject drawing extensively on methods and approaches from the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities. It is intrinsically international in practice. Archaeological research is growing at a rate faster than the average for academic research. While there has been progress towards a more diverse community of researchers among those most highly cited, there remain significant issues in the observable diversity between different research areas within the same discipline and sometimes between similar research specialties. Classifications of archaeology by external bodies fail to grasp this diversity of archaeological research. Finally, diversity in terms variants suggests that there is a pressing need for the discipline to take control of its terminology.
Correspondence contact: Anthony Sinclair
sinclair@liverpool.ac.uk
Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology
University of Liverpool
Figure 1: The co-citation map of source titles referenced in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021
Figure 2: The co-citation map of source titles in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013
Figure 3: The co-citation map of authors referenced in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021
Figure 4: The co-citation map of authors in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013
Figure 5: The networks of co-occurring terms extracted from titles and abstracts of archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021
Figure 6: The networks of co-occurring terms extracted from titles and abstracts of archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013
Figure 7: The networks of co-occurring author keywords from archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021
Figure 8: The networks of co-occurring author keywords from archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013
Figure 9: Networks of collaboration between individuals as co-authors in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021
Figure 10: Networks of collaboration between individuals as co-authors in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013
Figure 11: Networks of collaboration between institutions derived from aggregated co-authorship relations in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021. Labels - in the same colour as cluster nodes - identify the most visible national clusters of institutions
Figure 12: Networks of collaboration between institutions derived from aggregated co-authorship relations in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013
Figure 13: The number of archaeological research outputs published each year between 1960 to 2021. Research outputs include the following document types: research articles, review articles, books, book chapters, and conference proceedings papers. (Data collected from Scopus in January 2022)
Figure 14: The growth in archaeological research outputs by document type 1960 to 2021. The apparent absence in books and book chapters prior to 2002 reflects the lack of indexing of these documents yet in Scopus. (Data collected from Scopus in January 2022)
Figure 15: The cumulative growth in archaeological research outputs by document type 1960 to 2021. The absence of books and book chapters prior to 2002 reflects the lack of indexing of these documents yet in Scopus. (Data collected from Scopus in January 2022)
Figure 16: The observed versus predicted growth in the annual publication of archaeological research outputs for different rates of growth
Figure 17: The observed versus the predicted growth in the mean number of cited references per article. (Data collected from the Web of Science January 2022)
Figure 18: The balance between women and men within the top 10% most highly cited authors by research specialty 2014-2021
Figure 19: The balance between women and men within the top 20% most highly cited authors by research specialty 2014-2021
Figure 20: The balance between women and men within the top 10% most highly cited authors by research specialty 2004-2013
Figure 21: The balance between women and men within the top 20% most highly cited authors by research specialty 2004-2013
Figure 22: The balance between women and men within the top 10% most highly cited authors by comparable research specialty 2004-2021
Table 1: Bibliometric metadata for archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021 available in Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions and Lens (Data collected 31 January 2022). Documents listed as ‘early access’ are not included
Table 2: Clusters and example nodes for the co-citation map of source titles referenced in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021.
Table 3: Clusters and example nodes for the co-citation map of source titles referenced in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013.
Table 4: Clusters and example nodes in the network of collaboration between authors derived from aggregated co-authorship relations in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021
Table 5: Clusters and example nodes in the network of collaboration between authors derived from aggregated co-authorship relations in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013.
Table 6: Clusters and example nodes in the networks of NLP-extracted terms from archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021.
Table 7: Clusters and example nodes in the networks of NLP-extracted terms from archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013.
Table 8: Clusters and example nodes for the co-citation map of author keywords referenced in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021.
Table 9: Clusters and example nodes for the co-citation map of author keywords referenced in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013.
Table 10: Clusters and example nodes in the network of collaboration between institutions derived from aggregated co-authorship relations in archaeological research outputs published between 2014 and 2021.
Table 11: Clusters and example nodes in the network of collaboration between institutions derived from aggregated co-authorship relations in archaeological research outputs published between 2004 and 2013.
Table 12: Types of archaeology recognised by Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions, and by archaeological researchers as discrete terms. ( *The number of geographically specific archaeologies is necessarily reduced by the elimination of most country and geographical region terms through the use of a thesaurus file for terms that identifies and eliminates most words identifying a geographical location)
2014-2021
2004-2013
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