Kuhnian Paradigm Shift on the Question of Neolithic Revolution

Abstract

The question of Neolithic Revolution was posited by Gordon Childe in early 1930s along with its first answer in history of thought and Childe’s approaches have been theme or starting point of many historical theories, archaeological investigations and methodological propositions so far. Childe’s theory has become a Kuhnian paradigm since 1930’s. The approaches of asking and answering forms of Neolithic Revolution question had been written without any compulsion of accounting with anomalies which could cause any crisis and so they had been approved and discussed in archaelogical circles just as the paradigm of Childe. However the new discoveries made in South East Anatolian and Levant regions have made Childe’s paradigm encounter with some anomalies which it cannot explain. Therefore, particularly during the last three decades, the researchers who investigate the Late Epipaleolitic and Early Neolithic epoches of Anatolia and Levant seem to be in a crisis era. In this paper, the researches of Anatolian and Levantine neolithisation are examined specificly to paradigms of Childe and Cauvin, by the way of Kuhn’s scientific revolution and paradigm shift theories.