Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeological theory
The third edition of this classic introduction to archaeological theory and method has been fully updated to address the rapid development of theoretical debate throughout the discipline. Ian Hodder and Scott Hutson argue that archaeologists must consider a variety of perspectives in the complex and uncertain task of "translating the meaning of past texts into their own contemporary language". While remaining centered on the importance of meaning, agency and history, the authors explore the latest developments in post-structuralism, neo-evolutionary theory and phenomenology. Previous Edition Hb (1991): 0-521-40142-9 Previous Edition Pb (1991): 0-521-40957-8
Near Eastern archaeology is generally represented as a succession of empires with little attention paid to the individuals, labelled as terrorists at the time, that brought them down. Their stories, when viewed against the backdrop of current violent extremism in the Middle East, can provide a unique long-term perspective. Extremism, Ancient and Modern brings long-forgotten pasts to bear on the narratives of radical groups today, recognizing the historical bases and specific cultural contexts for their highly charged ideologies. The author, with expertise in Middle Eastern archaeology and counter-terrorism work, provides a unique viewpoint on a relatively under-researched subject. This timely volume will interest a wide readership, from undergraduate and graduate students of archaeology, history and politics, to a general audience with an interest in the deep historical narratives of extremism and their impact on today's political climate.
Contemporary archaeology is polarized between the technically competent excavators, who have sophisticated ways of recording, analyzing, classifying and describing their sites, and the social theorists, influenced by sceptical sociologies in science and cultural studies. This book defines the contours of each faction and argues that conflict between their aims and procedures is unnecessary. Andrew Jones instead emphasizes the process of interpretations, which is, in his view, the real concern of archaeologists.
Artifacts are hybrids, both natural and cultural. They are also an essential component in the process of human evolution. In recent years, a wide range of disciplines, including cognitive science, sociology, art history, and anthropology, have all grappled with the nature of artifacts, leading to the emergence of a renewed interdisciplinary focus on material culture. The Reality of Artifacts: An Archaeological Perspective develops an argument for the artifact as a status conferred by human engagement with material. On this basis, artifacts are considered first in terms of their relationship to concepts and cognitive functions, and then to the physical body and sense of self. The book builds on and incorporates the latest developments in archaeological research, particularly from the archaeology of human evolution, and integrates this wealth of new archaeological data with new research in fields such as cognitive science, haptics, and material culture studies. Making the latest research available for the general reader interested in material culture, while also providing archaeologists with new theoretical perspectives built on a synthesis of interdisciplinary research, this book is suitable for courses taught at both graduate and undergraduate students, and is broadly accessible.
Archaeology has often been put to political use, particularly by nationalists. This timely collection ranges from propaganda purposes served by archaeology in the Nazi state to lesser-known instances of ideological archaeology elsewhere. A distinguished group of international scholars highlights common threads in these experiences, arguing that archaeologists need to be more sophisticated about the use and abuse of their studies. The book raises cogent questions concerning not only archaeology, but also history and anthropology in general.
Archaeology has often been put to political use, particularly by nationalists. The case studies in this timely collection range from the propaganda purposes served by archaeology in the Nazi state, through the complex interplay of official dogma and academic prehistory in the former Soviet Union, to lesser-known instances of ideological archaeology in other European countries, in China, Japan, Korea and the Near East. The introductory and concluding chapters draw out some of the common threads in these experiences, and argue that archaeologists need to be more sophisticated about the use and abuse of their studies. The editors have brought together a distinguished international group of scholars. Whilst archaeologists will find that this book raises cogent questions about their own work, these problems also go beyond archaeology to implicate history and anthropology more generally.
This book helps readers to see the value of archaeological theory and beyond what is sometimes thought to be just the use of indigestible jargon. Key theories and concepts are introduced to the reader. Among the main questions discussed are the following: What is theory and why do we need it? What major areas of theory are, and have been, used and debated in archaeology? What do they tell us about themes including human society, evolution, culture, identity and agency? How might archaeological theory change in the future? This book is written mainly for readers new to archaeology and will help them to understand archaeological theory. It assumes no prior knowledge of archaeological theory and presents it in a selective and clear way, with case studies showing how theory is used in practice
Dogs in the North offers an interdisciplinary in-depth consideration of the multiple roles that dogs have played in the North. Spanning the deep history of humans and dogs in the North, the volume examines a variety of contexts in North America and Eurasia. The case studies build on archaeological, ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and anthropological research to illuminate the diversity and similarities in canine-human relationships across this vast region. The book sheds additional light on how dogs figure in the story of domestication, and how they have participated in partnerships with people across time. With contributions from a wide selection of authors, Dogs in the North is aimed at students and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, and history, as well as all those with interests in human-animal studies and northern societies.
This collection of essays explores the history, implications, and usefulness of phenomenology for the study of real and virtual places. While the influence of phenomenology on architecture and urban design has been widely acknowledged, its effect on the design of virtual places and environments has yet to be exposed to critical reflection. These essays from philosophers, cultural geographers, designers, architects, and archaeologists advance the connection between phenomenology and the study of place. The book features historical interpretations on this topic, as well as context-specific and place-centric applications that will appeal to a wide range of scholars across disciplinary boundaries. The ultimate aim of this book is to provide more helpful and precise definitions of phenomenology that shed light on its growth as a philosophical framework and on its development in other disciplines concerned with the experience of place.
This volume assesses the real achievements of archaeology in increasing an understanding of the past. Without rejecting the insights either of traditional or more recent approaches, it considers the issues raised in current claims and controversies about what is appropriate theory for archaeology. The first section looks at the process of theory building and at the sources of the ideas employed. The following studies examine questions such as the interplay between expectation and evidence in ideas of human origins, social role and material practice in the formation of the archaeological record, and how the rise of states should be conceptualised; further papers cover issues of ethnoarchaeology, visual symbols, and conflicting claims to ownership of the past. The conclusion is that archaeologists need to be equally wary of naive positivism in the guise of scientific procedure, and of speculation about the unrecorded intentions of prehistoric actors.
Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium provides an account of the changing world of archaeological theory and a challenge to more traditional narratives of archaeological thought. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with other current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologists regularly employ. Bringing together different strands of global archaeological theory and placing them in dialogue, the book explores the similarities and differences between different contemporary trends in theory while also highlighting potential strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. Written in a way to maximise its accessibility, in direct contrast to many of the sources on which it draws, Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium is an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professionals wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field.
American archaeology today encompasses a huge range of approaches and draws eclectically on a multitude of academic disciplines. Until now, however, there has been no book seeking to separate the main strands and traditions of research and present a rounded picture of American archaeological thought in all its diversity. The seventeen essays in Archaeological Thought in America describe recent theoretical advances and present substantive interpretations of prehistoric data drawn from a variety of cultures and time-frames, including Mesoamerica, Central Asia, India and China. The contributors include many of the leading North American archaeologists of this generation.
In recent years scholars have re-evaluated the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity, reaching new understandings of the ways shared origins gave way to two distinct and sometimes inimical religious traditions. But this has been a profoundly textual task, relying on the writings of rabbis, bishops, and other text-producing elites to map the terrain of the "parting." This book takes up the question of the divergence of Judaism and Christianity in terms of material--the stuff made, used, and left behind by the persons that lived in and between these religions as they were developing. Considering the glass, clay, stone, paint, vellum, and papyrus of ancient Jews and Christians, this book maps the "parting" in new ways, and argues for a greater role for material and materialism in our reconstructions of the past.
Archaeologists and the public at large have long been fascinated by monumental architecture built by past societies. Whether considering the earthworks in the Ohio Valley or the grandest pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, people have been curious as to how pre-modern societies with limited technology were capable of constructing monuments of such outstanding scale and quality. Architectural energetics is a methodology within archaeology that generates estimates of the amount of labor and time allocated to construct these past monuments. This methodology allows for detailed analyses of architecture and especially the analysis of the social power underlying such projects. Architectural Energetics in Archaeology assembles an international array of scholars who have analyzed architecture from archaeological and historic societies using architectural energetics. It is the first such volume of its kind. In addition to applying architectural energetics to a global range of architectural works, it outlines in detail the estimates of costs that can be used in future architectural analyses. This volume will serve archaeology and classics researchers, and lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses related to social power and architecture. It also will interest architects examining past construction and engineering projects.
This volume provides a powerful alternative to the Western paradigms that have governed archaeological inquiry and heritage studies in Africa. Community-based Heritage Research in Africa boldly shifts focus away from top-down community engagements, usually instigated by elite academic and heritage institutions, to examine locally initiated projects. Schmidt explores how and why local research initiatives, which are often motivated by rapid culture change caused by globalization, arose among the Haya people of western Tanzania. In particular, the trauma of HIV/AIDS resulted in the loss of elders who had performed oral traditions and rituals at sacred places, the two most recognized forms of heritage among the Haya as well as distinct alternatives to the authorized heritage discourse favored around the globe. Examining three local initiatives, Schmidt draws on his experience as an anthropologist invited to collaborate and co-produce with the Haya to provide a poignant rendering of the successes, conflicts, and failures that punctuated their participatory community research efforts. This frank appraisal privileges local voices and focuses attention on the unique and important contributions that such projects can make to the preservation of regional history. Through this blend of personalized narrative and analytical examination, the book provides fresh insights into African archaeology and heritage studies.
Hunter-gatherer societies are constrained by their environment and the technologies available to them. However, until now the role of culture in foraging communities has not been widely considered. 'Structured Worlds' examines the role of cosmology, values, and perceptions in the archaeological histories of hunter-fisher-gatherers. The essays examine a range of cultures - Mesolithic Europe, Siberia, Jomon Japan, the Northwest Coast, the northern Plains, and High Arctic of North America - to show the role of conceptual frameworks in subsistence and settlement, technology, mobility, migration, demography, and social organization. Spanning from the early Holocene period to the present day, 'Structured Worlds' draws on archaeology and ethnography to explore the role of beliefs, ritual, and social values in the interaction between foragers and their physical and social landscape. Material culture, animal bones and settlement patterns show that the behaviours of hunter-gatherers were shaped as much by cultural concepts as by material need.
Large-scale disasters mobilize heritage professionals to a narrative of heritage-at-risk and a standardized set of processes to counter that risk. Trinidad Rico's critical ethnography analyses heritage practices in the aftermath of the tsunami that swamped Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in 2004 and the post-destruction narratives that accompanied it, showing the sociocultural, historical, and political agendas these discourses raise. Countering the typical Western ideology and practice of ameliorating heritage-at-risk were local, post-colonial trajectories that permitted the community to construct its own meaning of heritage. This book documents the emergence of local heritage places, practices, and debates countering the globalized versions embraced by the heritage professions offering a critical paradigm for post-destruction planning and practice that incorporates alternative models of heritage. Constructing Deconstruction will be of value to scholars, professionals, and advanced students in Heritage Studies, Anthropology, Geography, and Disaster Studies.
Care-giving is an activity that has been practiced by all human societies. From the earliest societies through to the present, all humans have faced choices regarding how people in positions of dependency are to be treated. As such, care-giving, and the form it takes, is a central experience of being a human and one that is culturally mediated. Archaeology has tended to marginalise the study of care, and debates surrounding our ability to recognise it within the archaeological record have often remained implicit rather than a focus of discussion. In order to address this, the 12 papers in this volume bring together archaeological, historical, and philosophical perspectives to examine the topic of care in past societies, and how we might recognise the provision of care in archaeological contexts. The topic of care is examined through three different strands: care throughout the life course, namely that provided to the youngest and oldest members of society; care-giving and attitudes towards impairment and disability; and the role of animals as both recipients of care and as tools for its provision.
Change and Archaeology explores how archaeologists have historically described, interpreted, and explained change, and argues that change has been under-theorised. The study of change is central to the discipline of archaeology, but change is complex, and this makes it challenging to write about in nuanced ways that effectively capture the nature of our world. Relational approaches offer archaeologists more scope to explore change in complex and subtle ways. Change and Archaeology presents a posthumanist, post-anthropocentric, new materialist approach to change. It argues that our world is constantly in the process of becoming and always on the move. By recasting change as the norm rather than the exception and distributing it between both humans and non-humans, this book offers a new theoretical framework for exploring change in the past that allows us to move beyond block-time approaches where change is located only in transitional moments and periods are characterised by blocks of stasis. Archaeologists, scholars, anthropologists and historians interested in the theoretical frameworks we use to interpret the past will find this book a fascinating new insight into the way our world changes and evolves. The approaches presented within will be of use to anyone studying and writing about the way societies and their environs move through time.
Evaluating the success of hospital chaplaincy has been a difficult task, but finally an effective approach has been developed. Ministry of Hospital Chaplains: Patient Satisfaction presents the Patient Satisfaction Instrument for Pastoral Care (PSI) which measures the quality and character of spiritual care and can contribute to the establishment of professional norms. To find out whether specific changes in pastoral practices lead to increased satisfaction among patients, this test can be used periodically. As you will see, this allows managers and department heads to identify and monitor specific functions and areas in which improvement is needed.Ministry of Hospital Chaplains will help you analyze the background variables that are associated with patient satisfaction, the styles of pastoral care that are linked to better hospital outcomes, and the usefulness of different pastoral activities. In the end, you will be able to use empirical evidence to demonstrate to hospital administrators that patients appreciate pastoral care and that chaplains are helping patients recuperate, experience an easier time at the hospital, and get home more quickly. Besides discussing how to evaluate the effectiveness of chaplains, this insightful book explores: enacting continuous improvement efforts pastoral care characteristics that predict a patient's readiness to return home how attention to details can build protocols that respond to patients questionnaire responses from 2,000 discharged hospital patients in the U.S. and Canada why the need to evaluate the benefits of pastoral care exists the aspects of pastoral care most important to patientsChaplains in general and those in psychiatric hospitals, hospital administrators, managed care directors, and seminary professors of pastoral care will be glad to know that a technique for evaluating pastoral services has finally arrived. The guessing game is over. Now, you will know what your patients think of the services your hospital offers, and you can measure alternative approaches to pastoral care delivery when discontent is registered.
Archaeologists and archaeology students have long since needed an authoritative account of the techniques now available to them, designed to be understood by non-scientists. This book fills the gap and it offers a two-tier approach to the subject. The main text is a coherent introduction to the whole field of science-based dating, written in plain langauge for non-scientists. Additional end-notes, however, offer a a more technical understanding, and cater for those who have a scientific and mathematical background.
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.
Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Confederate statues, Egyptian pyramids, and medieval cathedrals: these are some of the places that are the subject of Making Sense of Monuments, an analysis of how the built environment molds human experiences and perceptions via bodily comparison. Drawing from recent research in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and semiotics, Michael J. Kolb explores the mechanics of the mind, the material world, and the spatialization process of monumental architecture. Three distinct spatial-cognitive metaphors-time, movement, and scale-comprise strands of knowledge that when interwoven create embodied contours of meaning of how human interact with monumental spaces. Comprehensive, lucidly written, and thoroughly illustrated, Making Sense of Monuments is a vibrant, extraordinary journey of the monuments we have constructed and inhabited.
An original, interdisciplinary work with a global scope |
You may like...
Archaeology of Entanglement
Lindsay Der, Francesca Fernandini
Hardcover
R4,148
Discovery Miles 41 480
A Material History of Medieval and Early…
Susan Kim, Katherine Ellison
Hardcover
R4,440
Discovery Miles 44 400
Archaeology - Theories, Methods and…
Colin Renfrew, Paul Bahn
Paperback
(1)
Indo-European Fire Rituals - Cattle and…
Anders Kaliff, Terje Oestigaard
Paperback
R1,148
Discovery Miles 11 480
|