How To Use

The Digital Atlas of Innovations As A Working Tool — Options For Use

The Digital Atlas of Innovations is a new working tool. It consists of an interactive, interoperable map that is linked to a continually growing data bank of archeological finds. For a long time now, archeology has gathered the material remains of many innovations, from the first use of fire in the Paleolithic Age and the first use of pottery vessels in the Neolithic Age to the invention of the screw in Antiquity. The Digital Atlas of Innovations presents the oldest evidence for innovations over a long time period. In the case of wheeled vehicles, for example, that is more than 2,000 years! This reveals the relationships in time and space and allows us to read rhythms of development from the maps. This, in turn, enables us to distinguish between more intense phases of technical innovations and those periods when no changes, or only a few changes, are discernible. Similarly, regions that welcome innovations and those that reject them can be identified, and the knowledge stocks of individual regions can be reconstructed. As a result the maps can generate new types of scientific questioning.

Follow this link to the glossary and extended bibliography can be found at the end of each article.