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Books > Humanities > Archaeology
World Prehistory and Archaeology provides an integrated discussion
of world prehistory and archaeological methods, presenting an
up-to-date perspective on what we know about our human prehistory
and how we come to know it. A cornerstone of World Prehistory and
Archaeology is the discussion of prehistory as an active process of
discovery. Methodological issues are addressed throughout the text
to engage readers. Archaeological methods are introduced, following
which the question of how we know the past is discussed. This fifth
edition involves readers in the current state of archaeological
research, revealing how archaeologists work and interpret what they
find. Through the coverage of various new research, author Michael
Chazan shows that archaeology is truly a global discipline. In this
edition there is a particular emphasis on the relevance of
archaeology to contemporary society and to the major issues that
face us today. This edition will provide students with a necessary
grounding in the fundamentals of archaeology, before engaging them
with the work that goes into understanding world prehistory. They
will be given the tools to place this knowledge in the context of
the modern world, acknowledging the relevance of archaeology to the
concerns of today.
Aelius Aristides' Hieroi Logoi present a unique first-person
narrative from the ancient world-a narrative that seems at once
public and private, artful and naive. While scholars have embraced
the Logoi as a rich source for Imperial-era religion, politics, and
elite culture, the style of the text has presented a persistent
stumbling block to literary analysis. Setting this dream-memoir of
illness and divine healing in the context of Aristides'
professional concerns as an orator, this book investigates the
text's rhetorical aims and literary aspirations. At the Limits of
Art argues that the Hieroi Logoi are an experimental work.
Incorporating numerous dream accounts and narratives of divine cure
in a multi-layered and open text, Aristides works at the limits of
rhetorical convention to fashion an authorial voice that is
transparent to the divine. Reading the Logoi in the context of
contemporary oratorical practices, and in tandem with Aristides'
polemical orations and prose hymns, the book uncovers the
professional agendas motivating this unusual self-portrait.
Aristides' sober view of oratory as a sacred pursuit was in
conflict with a widespread contemporary preference for spectacular
public performance. In the Hieroi Logoi, Aristides claims a place
in the world of the Second Sophistic on his own terms, offering a
vision of his professional inspiration in a style that pushes the
limits of literary convention.
The development of key methodologies for the study of battlefields
in the USA in the 1980s inspired a generation of British and
European archaeologists to turn their attention to sites in their
own countries. The end of the Cold War and key anniversaries of the
World Wars inspired others, especially in the UK, to examine the
material legacy of those conflicts before they disappeared. By 2000
the study of war was again firmly on the archaeological agenda. The
overall purpose of the book is to encourage proponents and
practitioners of Conflict Archaeology to consider what it is for
and how to develop it in the future.The central argument is that,
at present, Conflict Archaeology is effectively divided into closed
communities who do not interact to any large extent. These separate
communities are divided by period and by nationality, so that a
truly international Conflict Archaeology has yet to emerge. These
divisions prevent the exchange of information and ideas across
boundaries and thereby limit the scope of the field. This book
discusses these issues in detail, clearly outlining how they affect
the development of Conflict Archaeology as a coherent branch of
archaeology.
A comprehensive edition and commentary of 77 ostraka Ostraka in the
Collection of New York University is a comprehensive edition and
commentary of 77 ostraka, or potsherds with ancient texts written
on them, from Greco-Roman and late antique Egypt. Seventy-two of
these ostraca are housed in NYU Special Collections, originally
purchased by Caspar Kraemer in 1932, then the chair of the NYU
Classics Department. Although Kraemer advertised the imminent
publication of the texts in 1934 and later collaborated with the
famed papyrologist Herbert Youtie, neither completed the project.
The ostraka in this small collection span the 2nd century BCE to
the 8th century CE and include both Greek and Coptic texts. The
majority, however, form a coherent dossier of tax receipts related
to mortuary activities in Upper Egypt during the reign of Augustus
(texts 7-70, dated from roughly the last quarter of the 1st century
BCE to 12 CE). The five ostraka published in this volume not held
by NYU include one that had been part of Kraemer's original
purchase but was subsequently lost (thankfully preserved in a
photograph in Youtie's archive at the University of Michigan), and
four ostraka now held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The
latter four texts were purchased separately and published
previously, but clearly belong to the same group of texts. They are
included in this volume both for the sake of completeness and
because the present authors were able to improve the readings in
light of the context provided by the dossier as a whole. In
addition to the scholarly edition of these texts, the volume
contains a full discussion of their provenance, the taxes involved,
the taxpayers and tax-collectors, and a ceramological analysis of
the sherds as media for these texts. The book will be of interest
primarily to specialists in papyrology and scholars who study the
economic history of the ancient Mediterranean, Hellenistic Egypt,
the Roman empire, and papyrology.
This title presents a vision of Israel as an epistemological rather
than an ontological entity; a perspective on the world rather than
an entity in it. "Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity"
breaks new ground in the study of ethnic identity in the ancient
world through the articulation of an explicitly cognitive
perspective. In presenting a view of ethnicity as an
epistemological rather than an ontological entity, this work seeks
to correct the pronounced tendency towards 'analytical groupism' in
the academic literature. Challenging what Pierre Bourdieu has
called 'our primary inclination to think the world in a
substantialist manner', this study seeks to break with the
vernacular categories and 'commonsense primordialisms' encoded
within the Biblical texts, whilst at the same time accounting for
their tenacious hold on our social and political imagination. It is
the recognition of the performative and reifying potential of these
categories of ethno-political practice that disqualifies their
appropriation as categories of social analysis. Because ethnicity
is fundamentally a perspective on the world then, a schema for
representing and organizing social knowledge, and a frame through
which social comparisons are articulated, any archaeological
endeavor predicated on the search for an 'ethnic group', and
particularly an 'ethnic group' resurrected from the essentializing
categories encoded within the pages of the Hebrew Bible, is doomed
to failure. Over the last 30 years this pioneering series has
established an unrivaled reputation for cutting-edge international
scholarship in Biblical Studies and has attracted leading authors
and editors in the field. The series takes many original and
creative approaches to its subjects, including innovative work from
historical and theological perspectives, social-scientific and
literary theory, and more recent developments in cultural studies
and reception history.
The Islands of the Sun and the Moon in Bolivia's Lake Titicaca
were two of the most sacred locations in the Inca empire. A
pan-Andean belief held that they marked the origin place of the Sun
and the Moon, and pilgrims from across the Inca realm made ritual
journeys to the sacred shrines there. In this book, Brian Bauer and
Charles Stanish explore the extent to which this use of the islands
as a pilgrimage center during Inca times was founded on and
developed from earlier religious traditions of the Lake Titicaca
region.
Drawing on a systematic archaeological survey and test
excavations in the islands, as well as data from historical texts
and ethnography, the authors document a succession of complex
polities in the islands from 2000 BC to the time of European
contact in the 1530s AD. They uncover significant evidence of
pre-Inca ritual use of the islands, which raises the compelling
possibility that the religious significance of the islands is of
great antiquity. The authors also use these data to address broader
anthropological questions on the role of pilgrimage centers in the
development of pre-modern states.
Peter Karavites presents a revisionist overview of Homeric
scholarship, whose purpose is to bridge the gap between the
"positivist" and "negativist" theories dominant in the greater part
of the twentieth century. His investigation derives new insights
from Homer's text and solves the age old question of the
relationship between Homer and the Mycenaean age.
Food and feasting are key themes in the Hebrew Bible and the
culture it represents. The contributors to this handbook draw on a
multitude of disciplines to offer an overview of food in the Hebrew
Bible and ancient Israel. Archaeological materials from biblical
lands, along with the recent interest in ethnographic data, a new
focus in anthropology, and emerging technologies provide valuable
information about ancient foodways. The contributors examine not
only the textual materials of the Hebrew Bible and related
epigraphic works, but also engage in a wider archaeological,
environmental, and historical understanding of ancient Israel as it
pertains to food. Divided into five parts, this handbook examines
and considers environmental and socio-economic issues such as
climate and trade, the production of raw materials, and the
technology of harvesting and food processing. The cultural role of
food and meals in festivals, holidays, and biblical regulations is
also discussed, as is the way food and drink are treated in
biblical texts, in related epigraphic materials, and in
iconography.
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