Archaeologies of Complexity addresses the nature of contemporary archaeology and the study of social change, and debates the transition from perceived simple, egalitarian societies to the complex power structures and divisions of our modern world.
Since the eighteenth century, archaeologists have examined complexity in terms of successive types of societies, from early bands, tribes and chiefdoms to states; through stages of social evolution, including 'savagery', 'barbarism' and 'civilisation', to the present state of complexity and inequality. The book explains the often ambiguous terms of 'complexity', 'hierarchy' and inequality' and provides a critical account of the Anglo-American research of the last 40 years which has heavily influenced the subject.

Greeted with controversy on its publication, Answer to Job has long been neglected by many serious commentators on Jung. This book offers an intellectual and cultural context for C.G.Jung's 1952 publication.
In Jung's Answer to Job: A Commentary, the author argues that such neglect is due to a failure to understand Jung's objectives in this text and offers a new way of reading the work. The book places Answer to Job in the context of biblical commentary, and then examines the circumstances surrounding its compositions and immediate reception. A detailed commentary on the work discusses the major methodological presuppositions informing it and explains how key Jungian concepts operate in the text. Jung's Answer to Job: A Commentary unravels Jung's narrative by reading it in the chronological order of the biblical events it analyses and the book to which it refers, offering a comprehensive re-reading of Jung's text. An original argument put across in a scholarly and accessible style provides an essential framework for understanding the work.
Whilst taking account of the tenets of analytical psychology, this commentary underlines Answer to Job's more general significance in terms of cultural history. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of analytical psychology, the history of ideas, intercultural studies, comparative literature, religion and religious studies.

Related link: Free Email Alerting

Elements of Architecture explores new ways of engaging architecture in archaeology. It conceives of architecture both as the physical evidence of past societies and as existing beyond the physical environment, considering how people in the past have not just dwelled in buildings but have existed within them. The book engages with the meeting point between these two perspectives. For although archaeologists must deal with the presence and absence of physicality as a discipline, which studies humans through things, to understand humans they must also address the performances, as well as temporal and affective impacts, of these material remains. The contributions in this volume investigate the way time, performance and movement, both physically and emotionally, are central aspects of understanding architectural assemblages. It is a book about the constellations of people, places and things that emerge and dissolve as affective, mobile, performative and temporal engagements. This volume juxtaposes archaeological research with perspectives from anthropology, architecture, cultural geography and philosophy in order to explore the kaleidoscopic intersections of elements coming together in architecture. Documenting the ephemeral, relational, and emotional meeting points with a category of material objects that have defined much research into what it means to be human, Elements of Architecture elucidates and expands upon a crucial body of evidence which allows us to explore the lives and interactions of past societies.

Rock-art - the ancient images which still scatter the rocky landscapes of Europe - is a singular kind of archaeological evidence. Fixed in place, it does not move about as artefacts as trade objects do. Enigmatic in its meaning, it uniquely offers a direct record of how prehistoric Europeans saw and envisioned their own worlds.
European Landscapes of Rock-Art provides a number of case studies, covering arange of European locations including Ireland, Italy, Scandinavia, Scotland and Spain, which collectively address the chronology and geography of rock-art as well as providing an essential series of methodologies for future debate. Each author provides a synthesis that focuses on landscape as an essential part of rock-art construction. From the paintings and carved images of prehistoric Scandinavia to Second World War grafitti on the German Reichstag, this volume looks beyond the art to the society that made it.
The papers in this volume also challenge the traditional views of how rock-art is recorded. Throughout, there is an emphasis on informal and informed methodologies. The authors skilfully discuss subjectivity and its relationship with landscape since personal experience, from prehistoric times to the present day, plays an essential role in the interpretation of art itself. The emphasis is on location, on the intentionality of the artist, and on the needs of the audience.
This exciting volume is a crucial addition to rock-art literature and landscape archaeology. It will provide new material for a lively and greatly debated subject and as such will be essential for academics, non-academics and commentators of rock art in general.

Author Biography:
George Nash is a part-time Lecturer in European prehistory at the Centre of the Historic Environment, University of Bristol, and Senior Archaeologist with Border Archaeology.
Christopher Chippindale is a Curator in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

This work explores the relationship between, and the contribution archaeology can make to the study of what are today termed "World Religions", namely Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Divided into two parts, it first surveys each of the religions in question and then goes on to address the important themes of ethics, gender and death. The contributors consider a number of questions: can religious (sacred) texts be treated as historical documents, or do they merit special treatment?; does archaeology with its emphasis on material culture dispel notions of the ideal/divine within religious texts and what are the implications of this possible conflict?; and does the study of archaeology and religion lead to differing interpretations of the same event?;In what ways does the notion of a uniform religious identity exist, the ideal Muslim or Christian for example, and is this recognisable in the archaeological record through diet, dress, sacred buildings, burials, art and iconography, landscapes and personal possessions? Clearly written and up-to-date, this volume should be of especial significance to anyone interested in archaeology and religion.

Archaeology and World Religion is an important new work, being the first to examine these two vast topics together. The volume explores the relationship between, and the contribution archaeology can make to the study of 'World Religions'.
The contributors consider a number of questions:
* can religious (sacred) texts be treated as historical documents, or do they merit special treatment?
* Does archaeology with its emphasis on material culture dispel notions of the ideal/divine?
* Does the study of archaeology and religion lead to differing interpretations of the same event?
* In what ways does the notion of a uniform religious identity exist and is this recognisable in the archaeological record?
Clearly written and up-to-date, this volume will be an indispensable research tool for academics and specialists in these fields.

Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past turns what is usually seen as a method for investigating the distant past onto the present. In doing so, it reveals fresh ways of looking both at ourselves and modern society as well as the discipline of archaeology.
This volume represents the most recent research in this area and examines a variety of contexts including:
* Art Deco
* landfills
* miner strikes
* college fraternities
* an abandoned council house.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203185102

Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past turns what is usually seen as a method for investigating the distant past onto the present. In doing so, it reveals fresh ways of looking both at ourselves and modern society as well as the discipline of archaeology.
This volume represents the most recent research in this area and examines a variety of contexts including:
* Art Deco
* landfills
* miner strikes
* college fraternities
* an abandoned council house.

The Science and Archaeology of Materials is set to become the definitive work in the archaeology of materials. Henderson's highly illustrated work is an accessible and fascinating textbook which will be essential reading for all practical archaeologists. With clear sections on a wide range of materials including ceramics, glass, metals and stone, this work examines the very foundations of archaeological study. Anyone interested in ancient technologies, especially those involving high temperatures, kilns and furnaces will be able to follow in each chapter how raw materials are refined, transformed and shaped into objects. This description is then followed by appropriate case studies which provide a new chronological and geographical example of how scientific and archaeological aspects can and do interact. They include:
*Roman pale green and highly decorated glass
*17th Century glass in Britain and Europe
*the effect of the introduction of the wheel on pottery technology
*the technology of Celadon ceramics
*early copper metallurgy in the Middle East
*chemical analysis and lead isotope analysis of British Bronzes
*early copper alloy metallurgy in Thailand
*the chemical analysis of obsidian and its distribution
*the origins of the Stonehenge bluestones
This book shows how archaeology and science intersect and fe ed off each other. Modern scientific techniques have provided data which, when set within a fully integrated archaeological context, have the potential of contributing to mainstream archaeology. This holistic approach generates a range of connections which benefits both areas and will enrich archaeological study in the future.

In October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted and destroyed one of the most important palace complexes in imperial China-the Yuanmingyuan. Known in the West as the "Summer Palace," this site consisted of thousands of buildings housing a vast art collection. It is estimated that over a million objects may have been taken from the palaces in the Yuanmingyuan-and many of these are now scattered around the world, in private collections and public museums. With contributions from leading specialists, this is the first book to focus on the collecting and display of "Summer Palace" material over the past 150 years in museums in Britain and France. It examines the way museums placed their own cultural, political and aesthetic concerns upon Yuanmingyuan material, and how displays-especially those at the Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, the National Museum of Scotland and the Musee Chinois at the Chateau of Fontainebleau-tell us more about European representations and images of China, than they do about the Yuanmingyuan itself.

This work takes as its starting point the role of fieldwork and how this has changed over the past 150 years. The author argues against progressive accounts of fieldwork and instead places it in its broader intellectual context to critically examine the relationship between theoretical paradigms and everyday archaeological practice.
In providing a much-needed historical and critical evaluation of current practice in archaeology, this book opens up a topic of debate which affects all archaeologists, whatever their particular interests.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203132254

This work takes as its starting point, the role of fieldwork and how this has changed over the past 150 years. The author argues against progressive accounts of fieldwork and instead places it in its broader intellectual context to critically examine the relationship between theoretical paradigms and everyday archaeological practice.
In providing a much-needed historical and critical evaluation of current practice in archaeology, this book opens up a topic of debate which affects all archaeologists, whatever their particular interests.

The future of humanity is urban, and knowledge of urbanism's deep past is critical for us all to navigate that future. The time has come for archaeologists to rethink this global phenomenon by asking what urbanism is and, more to the point, was. Can we truly understand ancient urbanism by only asking after the human element, or are the properties and qualities of landscapes, materials, and atmospheres equally causal? The nine authors of New Materialisms Ancient Urbanisms seek less anthropocentric answers to questions about the historical relationships between urbanism and humanity in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They analyze the movements and flows of materials, things, phenomena, and beings-human and otherwise-as these were assembled to produce the kinds of complex, dense, and stratified relationships that we today label urban. In so doing, the book emerges as a work of both theory and historical anthropology. It breaks new ground in the archaeology of urbanism, building on the latest 'New Materialist', 'relational-ontological', and 'realist' trends in social theory. This book challenges a new generation of students to think outside the box, and provides scholars of urbanism, archaeology, and anthropology with a fresh perspective on the development of urban society.

Agency in Archaeology is the first critical volume to scrutinise the concept of agency and to examine in-depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past. Theories of agency recognise that human beings make choices, hold intentions and take action. This offers archaeologists scope to move beyond looking at broad structural or environmental change and instead to consider the individual and the group
Agency in Archaeology brings together nineteen internationally renowned scholars who have very different, and often conflicting, stances on the meaning and use of agency theory to archaeology. The volume is composed of five theoretically-based discussions and nine case studies, drawing on regions from North America and Mesoamerica to Western and central Europe, and ranging in subject from the late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers to the restructuring of gender relations in the north-eastern US.

Agency in Archaeology is the first critical volume to scrutinise the concept of agency and to examine in-depth its potential to inform our understanding of the past. Theories of agency recognise that human beings make choices, hold intentions and take action. This offers archaeologists scope to move beyond looking at broad structural or environmental change and instead to consider the individual and the group
Agency in Archaeology brings together nineteen internationally renowned scholars who have very different, and often conflicting, stances on the meaning and use of agency theory to archaeology. The volume is composed of five theoretically-based discussions and nine case studies, drawing on regions from North America and Mesoamerica to Western and central Europe, and ranging in subject from the late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers to the restructuring of gender relations in the north-eastern US.

Series Information:
One World Archaeology

This unique collection applies globalization concepts to the discipline of archaeology, using a wide range of global case studies from a group of international specialists. The volume spans from as early as 10,000 cal. bp to the modern era, analysing the relationship between material culture, cultural change, and the complex connectivities between communities and groups. In considering social practices shared between different historic groups, and also the expression of their respective identities, the papers in this volume illustrate the potential of globalization thinking to bridge the local and global in material culture analysis. The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization is the first such volume to take a world archaeology approach, on a multi-period basis, in order to bring together the scope of evidence for the significance of material culture in the processes of globalization. This work thus also provides a means to understand how material culture studies can be utilised to assess the impact of global engagement in our contemporary world. As such, it will appeal to archaeologists and historians as well as social science researchers interested in the origins of globalization.

This edited collection presents a group of images of the past, termed in the book construction sites. At these sites, full scale, three-dimensional images for the past have been created for a variety of reasons including archaeological experimentation, tourism and education. The various case studies explore the relationship between the sites' aims and discuss their constant friction. Contributions frankly discuss the problems and mistakes experienced with reconstruction, encourage the need for on-going experimentation and examine the various uses of the sites; political, economical and educational. The book affords a detailed and extensive discussion of such sites and should provide a valuable reference tool for archaeologists and professionals in heritage management.

Series Information:
One World Archaeology

Using language to date the origin and spread of food production, Archaeology and Language II represents groundbreaking work in synthesizing two disciplines that are now seen as interlinked: linguistics and archaeology. This volume is the second part of a three-part survey of innovative results emerging from their combination. Archaeology and historical linguistics have largely pursued separate tracks until recently, although their goals can be very similar. While there is a new awareness that these disciplines can be used to complement one another, both rigorous methodological awareness and detailed case-studies are still lacking in the literature. This three-part survey is the first study to address this. Archaeology and Language II examines in some detail how archaeological data can be interpreted through linguistic hypotheses. This collection demonstrates the possibility that, where archaeological sequences are reasonably well-known, they might be tied into evidence of language diversification and thus produce absolute chronologies. Where there is evidence for migrations and expansions these can be explored through both disciplines to produce a richer interpretation of prehistory. An important part of this is the origin and spread of food production which can be modelled through the spread of both plants and words for them. Archaeology and Language II will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, archaeologists and anthropologists.

This volume brings together a series of papers which define the relevance of archaeology to the study of long term change and to the understanding of our contemporary world. It re-evaluates the premises and epistemologies which underlie the study of archaeology and looks at the ways discoveries about the past have a direct bearing oncontemporary beliefs and actions. The major theoretical ideologies which have influenced archaeology since the mid-1970s are considered: functionalism, determinism, structural Marxism, world systems theory, postmodernism and postprocessual archaeology. The papers in this volume, however, concentrate on the study of structures as far as the archaeological record brings new or different insight to their functioning in the long term. The volume also remains committed to the possibility of an historical reconstruction of social realities. The text is a compilation of papers in theoretical archaeology and should appeal to academics and postgraduates in archaeology, anthropology and history.

Now in a revised and updated second edition, this volume provides an authoritative account of the current status of archaeological theory, as presented by some of its major exponents and innovators over recent decades. It summarizes the latest developments in the field and looks to its future, exploring some of the cutting-edge ideas at the forefront of the discipline. The volume captures the diversity of contemporary archaeological theory. Some authors argue for an approach close to the natural sciences, others for an engagement with cultural debate about representation of the past. Some minimize the relevance of culture to societal change, while others see it as central; some focus on the contingent and the local, others on long-term evolution. While few practitioners in theoretical archaeology would today argue for a unified disciplinary approach, the authors in this volume increasingly see links and convergences between their perspectives. The volume also reflects archaeology's new openness to external influences, as well as the desire to contribute to wider debates. The contributors examine ways in which archaeological evidence contributes to theories of evolutionary psychology, as well as to the social sciences in general, where theories of social relationships, agency, landscape and identity are informed by the long-term perspective of archaeology. The new edition of Archaeological Theory Today will continue to be essential reading for students and scholars in archaeology and in the social sciences more generally.

This Reader in Archaeological Theory presents sixteen articles of key theoretical significance, in a format which makes this notoriously complex area easier for students to understand.
This volume:
* provides an intellectual history of different approaches to archaeology which contextualizes the complex traditions of cognitive archaeology and postprocessualism on which it focuses
* organizes theories of archaeology, the meanings of things, the prehistoric mind and cognition, gender, ideology and social theory and archaeology's relationship to today's society and politics
* includes lucid section introductions to each section which provide context, explain why the papers are so significant and summarize their key points
* emphasizes research from the 'New World', making archaeological theory especially relevant and accessible to students in North America.

The study of ethnicity is a highly controversial area in contemporary archaeology. It has been argued that the traditional identification of 'cultures' from archaeological remains and their association with past ethnic groups is hopelessly inadequate. Yet such an approach continues to play a significant role in archaeological enquiry, and in the legitimation of contemporary ethnic and national claims.
Siân Jones responds to the need for a radical reassessment of the ways in which past cultural groups are reconstructed from archaeological evidence with a comprehensive and critical synthesis of recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences. In doing so, she develops a new framework for the analysis of ethnicity in archaeology which takes into account the dynamic and situational nature of ethnic identification, a framework which has important methodological, interpretive and political implications.
Opening up the important issues of ethnicity and identity, this book will provide invaluable reading for the student of archaeology and other disciplines in the human sciences.