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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeological theory
The public's fascination with archaeology has meant that archaeologists have had to deal with media more regularly than other scholarly disciplines. How archaeologists communicate their research to the public through the media and how the media view archaeologists has become an important feature in the contemporary world of academic and professional archaeologists. In this volume, a group of archaeologists, many with media backgrounds, address the wide range of questions in this intersection of fields. An array of media forms are covered including television, film, photography, the popular press, art, video games, radio and digital media with a focus on the overriding question: What are the long-term implications of the increasing exposure through and reliance upon media forms for archaeology in the contemporary world? The volume will be of interest to archaeologists and those teaching public archaeology courses.
An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is the first concise introduction that lays out the epistemological foundations of evolutionary cognitive archaeology in a way that is accessible to students. The volume is divided into three sections. The first section situates cognitive archaeology in the pantheon of archaeological approaches and distinguishes between ideational cognitive archaeology and evolutionary cognitive archaeology. This is followed by a close look at the nature of cognitive archaeological inferences and concludes with brief summaries of the major methods of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The second section of the book introduces the reader to a variety of cognitive phenomena that are accessible using the methods of cognitive archaeology: memory, technical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition, art and aesthetics, and symbolism and language. The third section presents a brief outline of hominin cognitive evolution from the perspective of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The authors divide the archaeological record into three major phases: The Bipedal Apes-3.3 million-1.7 million years ago; The Axe Age-1.7 million-300,000 years ago; and The Emergence of Modern Thinking-300,000-12,000 years ago. An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is an essential text for undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars across the behavioral and social sciences interested in learning about cognitive archaeology, including psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and archaeologists.
If Levinas and Negarestani raised a child enchanted by the dark, then this is his debut. In this book, Rosen argues that current archaeological theoretic approaches are not up to the task of adequately theorizing exhumation in our present age of extinctions. Speculative Annihilationism attempts to "think thought's extinction," suggesting a new ontological ground for archaeology. Combining contemporary work in speculative philosophy, saprophytic dialectics, and Levinasian ethics, Rosen's "putrefied-thought" explores themes of the unthought and unthinkable, anonymity, otherness, and meaninglessness so that archaeology can be granted a new basis, a new avenue of inquiry at its intersection with extinction.
As researchers bring their analytic skills to bear on contemporary archaeological tourism, they find that it is as much about the present as the past. Philip Duke's study of tourists gazing at the remains of Bronze Age Crete highlights this nexus between past and present, between exotic and mundane. Using personal diaries, ethnographic interviews, site guidebooks, and tourist brochures, Duke helps us understand the impact that archaeological sites, museums and the constructed past have on tourists' view of their own culture, how it legitimizes class inequality at home as well as on the island of Crete, both Minoan and modern.
From massive nuclear test sites to the more subtle material realities of everyday life, the influence of the Cold War on modern culture has been profound and global. Fearsome Legacies unites innovative work on the interpretation and management of Cold War heritage from fields including archaeology, history, art and architecture, and cultural studies. Contributors understand material culture in its broadest sense, examining objects in outer space, domestic space, landscapes, and artistic spaces. They tackle interpretive challenges and controversies, including in museum exhibits, heritage sites, archaeological sites, and other historic and public venues. With over 150 color photos and illustrations, including a photographic essay, readers can feel the profound visual impact of this material culture.
What is archaeology, and why should we do it? Tom King, arguably the best-known heritage management consultant in the United States, answers the basic question of every introductory student from the unique perspective of one who actively uses archaeology for cultural resource management. Designed as a supplement for introduction to archaeology classes, this brief and breezy book runs the reader through the major principles of archaeology, using examples from the author's own field work and that of others. King shows how contemporary archaeology, as part of the larger cultural resource management endeavor, acts to help preserve and protect prehistoric and historic sites in the United States and elsewhere. Brief biographies of other CRM archaeologists help students envision career paths they might emulate. The bookends with an exploration of some of the thorny problems facing the contemporary archaeologist to help foster class discussion. An ideal ice-breaker for introductory college classes in archaeology, one that will get students engaged in the subject and thinking about its challenges.
This book aims to understand the process of the Bronze Age societies of Northern Europe which are often regarded as the periphery and a bleak contrast to the Central European Bronze Age. The Bronze Age is the first "globalised" period with new types of societies and new modes of exchange and trade. In this context there is considerable local variation and diversity within the Bronze Age societies of Northern Europe which is poorly understood, although there have been advances and changes in this research. Therefore this book challenges some of the mainstream opinions on the Bronze Age of Northern Europe, and focus on local and regional aspects. This is done by a series of articles from significant contributors that deal with these issues on theoretical and empirical levels, with regards to differences, cultural dualism, boundaries, regions and regionality in a period of increased "globalisation". The result is a movement away from local and regional aspects toward communications, travels and contacts between northern Europe and the greater world, not only towards Central Europe and the Near East but also towards the east. Northern/Arctic Europe is often left out in these discussions, and this book will contribute to this greater picture of the Bronze Age world.
Archaeological interpretation is an imaginative act. Stratigraphy and artefacts do not tell us what the past was like; that is the task of the archaeologist. The diverse group of contributors to this volume address the relationship between archaeology and imagination through the medium of historical fiction and fictive techniques, both as consumers and as producers. The fictionalisation of archaeological research is often used to disseminate the results of scholarly or commercial archaeology projects for wider public outreach. Here, instead, the authors focus on the question of what benefits fiction and fictive techniques, as inspiration and method, can bring to the practice of archaeology itself. The contributors, a mix of archaeologists, novelists and other artists, advance a variety of theoretical arguments and examples to advance the case for the value of a reflexive engagement between archaeology and fiction. Themes include the similarities and differences in the motives and methods of archaeologists and novelists, translation, empathy, and the need to humanise the past and diversify archaeological narratives. The authors are sensitive to the epistemological and ethical issues surrounding the influence of fiction on researchers and the incorporation of fictive techniques in their work. Sometimes dismissed as distracting just-so stories, or even as dangerously relativistic narratives, the use of fictive techniques has a long history in archaeological research and examples from the scholarly literature on many varied periods and regions are considered. The volume sets out to bring together examples of these disparate applications and to focus attention on the need for explicit recognition of the problems and possibilities of such approaches, and on the value of further research about them.
This book investigates the complex relationship between funerary treatment and wider social dynamics through a contextual analysis of human skeletal remains and associated mortuary data from Voudeni, an important Mycenaean (1450-1050 BC) chamber tomb cemetery in Achaea, Greece. Voudeni is one of the most significant sites of Achaea, thoroughly investigated under the direction of the Honorary General Director of Antiquities, Dr Lazaros Kolonas. Over 60 chamber tombs, spanning the entire Late Helladic III period, have been excavated, yielding an unprecedented wealth of biocultural information. This study explores the post-mortem treatment of the body in the Voudeni cemetery, through a novel interpretive approach that transcends unproductive cross-disciplinary divisions. This biosocial approach integrates traditional archaeology, current reflections in mortuary archaeological theory and cutting-edge bioarchaeological methods, primarily focused on funerary taphonomy and archaeothanatology of commingled skeletal assemblages. The author proposes that the most effective route to explore the social dimensions of mortuary data is through an emic understanding of historically situated actions and experiences, both of the living actors, the mourners, and of the dead themselves. Human skeletal remains are used as the primary strand of evidence, both as the object of the acts of the living and the subject of their own lived experiences. Most importantly, this study aspires to show how reconciliation between abstract theoretical advances and empirical biocultural data may be possible, providing the most insightful path to a better understanding of the archaeological mortuary record. The book provides a thorough background on Mycenaean mortuary research and explores the topic in successive stages: a) theoretical and methodological framework, b) detailed taphonomic analysis and osteological results of 20 tombs, c) multivariate analysis of bio-cultural data across socio-temporal parameters (with special emphasis on the distinction between the palatial LHIIIA-B and the transitional post-palatial LHIIIC period), and d) final synthesis, addressing questions pertaining to changing social conditions in Achaea and key issues of current Mycenaean mortuary research. These include: tomb re-use; form, diversity, sequence and frequency of mortuary activities; mortality profiles; differential inclusion, visibility and funerary treatment of different groups/identities; changes in treatment of the dead body, reflecting shifts in notions of the self and social relationships. The results shed new light on social developments in Mycenaean Achaea, showing that the complex interaction between changing social conditions and mortuary practice is often reflected in subtle, yet meaningful, shifts of emphasis in the post-mortem treatment of bodies and bones, rather than in blatant radical changes.
Palaeopathology is an evidence-based guide to the principal types of pathological lesions often found in human remains and how to diagnose them. Tony Waldron presents an innovative method of arriving at a diagnosis in the skeleton by applying what he refers to as 'operational definitions'. The method ensures that those who study bones will use the same criteria for diagnosing disease, thereby enabling valid comparisons to be made between studies. Waldron's book is based on modern clinical knowledge and provides background information on the natural history of bone disease. In addition, the volume demonstrates how results from studies should be analysed, methods of determining the frequency of disease, and other types of epidemiological analysis. This edition includes new chapters on the development of palaeopathology, basic concepts, health and disease, diagnosis, and spinal pathology. Chapters on analysis and interpretation have been thoroughly revised and enlarged.
Henry Barrow and John Greenwood are the fathers of Elizabethan
Separatism. Unlike Robert Browne, they refused to compromise their
beliefs or conform to Anglicanism and as a consequence they died in
1593 - as martyrs for their steadfast adherence to the principles
of English Congregationalism.
How did our current society come into being and how is it similar to as well as different from its predecessors? These key questions have transfixed archaeologists, anthropologists and historians for decades and strike at the very heart of intellectual debate across a wide range of disciplines. Yet scant attention has been given to the key thinkers and theoretical traditions that have shaped these debates and the conclusions to which they have given rise.This pioneering book explores the profound influence of one such thinker - Karl Marx - on the course of twentieth-century archaeology. Patterson reveals how Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe in the late 1920s was the first to synthesize discourses from archaeologists, sociologists, and Marxists to produce a corpus of provocative ideas. He analyzes how these ideas were received and rejected, and moves on to consider such important developments as the emergence of a new archaeology in the 1960s and an explicitly Marxist strand of archaeology in the 1970s. Specific attention is given to the discussion arenas of the 1990s, where archaeologists of differing theoretical perspectives debated issues of historic specificity, social transformation, and inter-regional interaction. How did the debates in the 1990s pave the way for historical archaeologists to investigate the interconnections of class, gender, ethnicity, and race? In what ways did archaeologists make use of Marxist concepts such as contradiction and exploitation, and how did they apply Marxist analytical categories to their work? How did varying theoretical groups critique one another and how did they overturn or build upon past generational theories?"Marx's Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists" provides an accessible guide to the theoretical arguments that have influenced the development of Anglophone archaeology from the 1930s onwards. It will prove to be indispensable for archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and social and cultural theorists alike.
How did our current society come into being and how is it similar to as well as different from its predecessors? These key questions have transfixed archaeologists, anthropologists and historians for decades and strike at the very heart of intellectual debate across a wide range of disciplines. Yet scant attention has been given to the key thinkers and theoretical traditions that have shaped these debates and the conclusions to which they have given rise.This pioneering book explores the profound influence of one such thinker - Karl Marx - on the course of twentieth-century archaeology. Patterson reveals how Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe in the late 1920s was the first to synthesize discourses from archaeologists, sociologists, and Marxists to produce a corpus of provocative ideas. He analyzes how these ideas were received and rejected, and moves on to consider such important developments as the emergence of a new archaeology in the 1960s and an explicitly Marxist strand of archaeology in the 1970s. Specific attention is given to the discussion arenas of the 1990s, where archaeologists of differing theoretical perspectives debated issues of historic specificity, social transformation, and inter-regional interaction. How did the debates in the 1990s pave the way for historical archaeologists to investigate the interconnections of class, gender, ethnicity, and race? In what ways did archaeologists make use of Marxist concepts such as contradiction and exploitation, and how did they apply Marxist analytical categories to their work? How did varying theoretical groups critique one another and how did they overturn or build upon past generational theories?"Marx's Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists" provides an accessible guide to the theoretical arguments that have influenced the development of Anglophone archaeology from the 1930s onwards. It will prove to be indispensable for archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and social and cultural theorists alike.
Rethinking Global Governance argues that long-ignored, non-western political systems from the distant and more recent past can provide critical insights into improving global governance. These societies show how successful collection action can occur by dividing sovereignty, consensus building, power from below, and other mechanisms. For a better tomorrow, we need to free ourselves of the colonial constraints on our political imagination. A pandemic, war in Europe, and another year of climatic anomalies are among the many indications of the limits of global governance today. To meet these challenges, we must look far beyond the status quo to the thousands of successful mechanisms for collective action that have been cast aside a priori because they do not fit into Western traditions of how people should be organized. Coming from long past or still enduring societies often dismissed as "savages" and "primitives" until well into the twentieth century, the political systems in this book were often seen as too acephalous, compartmentalized, heterarchical, or anarchic to be of use. Yet as globalization makes international relations more chaotic, long-ignored governance alternatives may be better suited to today's changing realities. Understanding how the Zulu, Trypillian, Alur, and other collectives worked might be humanity's best hope for survival. This book will be of interest both to those seeking to apply archaeological and ethnographic data to issues of broad contemporary concern as well as to academics, politicians, policy makers, students, and the general public seeking possible alternatives to conventional thinking in global governance.
Winner of the Women in Psychology Jewish Caucus Award for 2000!Jewish Mothers Tell Their Stories: Acts of Love and Courage contains touching and personal essays written by contemporary Jewish mothers from different parts of the globe. Their stories reveal the choices that Jewish mothers make in our post-Holocaust, non-Jewish world--the many ways of being Jewish, the acts of loving, of preserving and celebrating Jewish traditions and spirituality, and of transmitting them to their children and families. The firsthand stories in this compelling book raises questions and provides you with insight into a variety of topics, including: The 'Jewish mother'stereotype and its impact on real Jewish mothers ethnic/historical connections between mothers and daughters moving acts of love, courage, and sacrifice in response to illness, war, or conflicting ideologies motherhood as a catalyst for personal evolutions of Jewish identity and values Orthodox to secular expressions of spirituality The impact of the 'Jewish motherhood imperative' positive experiences of conversion and interfaith families conveying Jewish history and tradition in a Christian worldJewish Mothers Tell Their Stories will draw you into an appreciation of the cultural, ethnic, and spiritual aspects of mothering. This remarkable collection explores the different meanings of today's concept of "Jewish mother" and "Jewish family."
Create the Pastoral Care Center that your flock needs Contract Pastoral Care and Education: The Trend of the Future? provides clergy of all faiths and pastoral care students with insight into the shifting role of chaplains in today's health care environment and explains why many of these positions are disappearing. Examining alternatives to working at hospitals and health care agencies, such as establishing independent contract centers that are commissioned by health care organizations, this book examines the many questions that chaplains are more frequently asking about the stability of their profession. Comprehensive and current, Contract Pastoral Care and Education offers suggestions and models to help you plan your own pastoral care center and continue serving individuals with spiritual care. This honest and informative book contains discussions with chaplains and educators about nine of these care centers in operation, as well as the responses of five chaplains who offer compliments and constructive criticism of these organizations. Exploring the reasons for the decrease in opportunities for pastoral caregivers, such as the decrease of rural populations and the increase of community-based services, Contract Pastoral Care and Education provides you with tips and suggestions that other centers use in order to be effective and successful, including: raising funds from the community, state, and government for operational fees appointing internal, structure-diversified board members who serve without compensation and officers and memberships with specific terms and functions responding to the growing numbers of patients by training lay persons under clinical supervision generating support groups consisting of patients and family members from multiple bereavement groups or organizations to offer comfort and care to othersFull of insight and immediately useful techniques, Contract Pastoral Care and Education will help you keep serving patients and assist you in pursuing a growing facet of the pastoral care field.
"Forbidden Archaeology's Impact" offers readers an inside look at how mainstream science reacts with ridicule, threats, and intimidation to any challenge to its deeply held beliefs. Since 1993 the controversial book "Forbidden Archaeology" has shocked the scientific world with its extensive evidence for extreme human antiquity. "Forbidden Archaeology's" Impact documents the explosive reactions to this underground classic. It includes proactive compilation of reviews, correspondence, and media interviews.
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.
Many students view archaeological theory as a subject distinct from field research. This division is reinforced by the way theory is taught, often in stand-alone courses that focus more on logic and reasoning than on the application of ideas to fieldwork. Divorcing thought from action does not convey how archaeologists go about understanding the past. This book bridges the gap between theory and practice by looking in detail at how the authors and their colleagues used theory to interpret what they found while conducting research in northwest Honduras. This is not a linear narrative. Rather, the book highlights the open-ended nature of archaeological investigations in which theories guide research whose findings may challenge these initial interpretations and lead in unexpected directions. Pursuing those novel investigations requires new theories that are themselves subject to refutation by newly gathered data. The central case study is the writers' work in Honduras. The interrelations of fieldwork, data, theory, and interpretation are also illustrated with two long-running archaeological debates, the emergence of inequality in southern Mesopotamia and inferring the ancient meanings of Stonehenge. The book is of special interest to undergraduate Anthropology/Archaeology majors and first- and second-year graduate students, along with anyone interested in how archaeologists convert the static materials we find into dynamic histories of long-vanished people.
Interest in the Turin Shroud continues to the present day even
though it was finally carbon dated in 1988 and shown not to be of
an age consistent with Christ's burial. Scientifically, the age of
the shroud cloth is of little consequence, but to the general
public, it is of considerable significance.
Making Time grapples with a range of issues that have crystallized in the wake of 15 years of discussion on time in archaeology, since the author's seminal volume The Archaeology of Time, synthesizing them for a new generation of scholars. The general understanding of time held by both archaeologists and non-archaeologists is often very simple: a linear notion where time flows along a single path from the past into the future. This book sets out to complicate this image, to draw out the key problems and issues with time that impact archaeological interpretation. Using concrete examples drawn from different periods and places, the book challenges the reader to think again. Ultimately, the book will suggest that if we want to understand what archaeological time is, then we need to accept that things do not exist in time, they make time. The crucial question then becomes: what kinds of time do archaeological materialities produce? Written for upper level undergraduates and researchers in archaeology, the book is also accessible to non-academics with an interest in the topic. The book is relevant for cognate disciplines, especially history, heritage studies and philosophy.
Gerontology in Theological Education: Local Program Development provides a source book for administrators and faculty in theological schools who are concerned about the increasing number of older persons in congregations and communities. Theoretical, theological, and practical chapters offer guidance to those interested in adventuring into aging for the first time or in revising present commitments. |
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