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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > General
Restoring the historicity and plurality of archaeological ethics is
a task to which this book is devoted; its emphasis on praxis mends
the historical condition of ethics. In doing so, it shows that
nowadays a multicultural (sometimes also called "public") ethic
looms large in the discipline. By engaging communities
"differently," archaeology has explicitly adopted an ethical
outlook, purportedly striving to overcome its colonial ontology and
metaphysics. In this new scenario, respect for other historical
systems/worldviews and social accountability appear to be
prominent. Being ethical in archaeological terms in the
multicultural context has become mandatory, so much that most
professional, international and national archaeological
associations have ethical principles as guiding forces behind their
openness towards social sectors traditionally ignored or
marginalized by their practices. This powerful new ethics-its
newness is based, to a large extent, in that it is the first time
that archaeological ethics is explicitly stated, as if it didn't
exist before-emanates from metropolitan centers, only to be adopted
elsewhere. In this regard, it is worth probing the very nature of
the dominant multicultural ethics in disciplinary practices because
(a) it is at least suspicious that at the same time archaeology has
tuned up with postmodern capitalist/market needs, and (b) the
discipline (along with its ethical principles) is contested
worldwide by grass-roots organizations and social movements. Can
archaeology have socially committed ethical principles at the same
time that it strengthens its relationship with the market and
capitalism? Is this coincidence just merely haphazard or does it
obey more structural rules? The papers in this book try to answer
these two questions by examining praxis-based contexts in which
archaeological ethics unfolds.
The establishment of a consumer society in Australia has not been a
particularly well explored area of academic inquiry. My interests
lie in the concepts and meanings that underlie the material world;
ideas like, in the words of Madonna, "I am a material girl and I
live in a material world" (terminology taken to be not gender
specific), the classic graffiti paraphrasing of Descartes: I shop
therefore I am or perhaps simply in the "world of goods" in the
more academically respectable terms of Douglas and Isherwood
(1979). This book arises out of my longstanding interest in the
early colonial period in Australia. In part it represents an
extension of the purely "historical" research conducted for my
Master's thesis in the Department of History at the University of
Sydney which explored aspects of the diet, health and lived
experience of con victs and immigrants during their voyages to the
Australian colonies within the timeframe 1837 to 1839 (Staniforth,
1993a). More importantly, it is the culmina tion of more than
twenty-five years involvement in the excavation of shipwreck sites
in Australia starting with James Matthews (1841) in 1974, through
the test excavation of William Salthouse in 1982, continuing with
my involvement between 1985 and 1994 in the excavation of Sydney
Cove (1797) and most recently with shore-based whaling stations and
whaling shipwreck sites. In this respect, this book may be seen as
an example of what Ian Hodder (1986, p."
Andrea Fulvio's Illustrium imagines and the Beginnings of Classical
Archaeology is a study of the book recognized by contemporaries as
the first attempt (1517) to publish artifacts from Classical
Antiquity in the form of a chronology of portraits appearing on
coins. By studying correspondences between the illustrated coins
and genuine, ancient coins, Madigan parses Fulvio's methodology,
showing how he attempted to exploit coins as historical documents.
Situated within humanist literary and historical studies of ancient
Rome, his numismatic project required visual artists closely to
study and assimilate the conventions of ancient portraiture. The
Illustrium imagines exemplifies the range and complexity of early
modern responses to ancient artifacts.
"Archaeology of Spiritualties "provides a fresh exploration of
the interface between archaeology and religion/spirituality.
Archaeological approaches to the study of religion have typically
and often unconsciously, drawn on western paradigms, especially
Judaeo-Christian (mono) theistic frameworks and academic
rationalisations. Archaeologists have rarely reflected on how these
approaches have framed and constrained their choices of
methodologies, research questions, hypotheses, definitions,
interpretations and analyses and have neglected an important
dimension of religion: the human experience of the numinous - the
power, presence or experience of the supernatural.
Within the religions of many of the world s peoples, sacred
experiences particularly in relation to sacred landscapes and
beings connected with those landscapes are often given greater
emphasis, while doctrine and beliefs are relatively less important.
Archaeology of Spiritualities asks how such experiences might be
discerned in the archaeological record; how do we recognize and
investigate other forms of religious or spiritual experience in the
remains of the past?.
The volume opens up a space to explore critically and
reflexively the encounter between archaeology and diverse cultural
expressions of spirituality. It showcases experiential and
experimental methodologies in this area of the discipline, an
unconventional approach within the archaeology of religion.
Thus"Archaeology of Spiritualities "offers a unique, timely and
innovative contribution, one that is alsochallenging and
stimulating. It is a great resource to archaeologists, historians,
religious scholars and others interested in cultural and religious
heritage."
This vital book is a collection on the various ways
archaeologists and resource managers have devised to make available
and interpret submerged cultural resources for the public, such as
underwater archaeological preserves, shipwreck trails, and
land-based interpretive media and literature. This volume is an
invaluable resource to underwater archaeologists, cultural and
heritage resource managers, museum and heritage educators and those
studying these professions.
An attempt to render Chinese archaeology more accessible to Western
readers through a detailed case study of approximately 16,000 years
of cultural development in northeastern China. The author addresses
prehistoric sociopolitical processes in the Dongbei region through
an analysis of both his and other researchers' field data and
demonstrates the potential contribution of conducting
archaeological research into anthropology-related issues in China.
The multidisciplinary research program at Akrotiri Aetokremnos is
important, in my op- ion, for three reasons: two empirical and one
conceptual. Quite apart from the archaeology, work at the site is a
major contribution to island biogeography, in that the Phanourios
sample-certainly the best from Cyprus and probably the best
anywhere in the world-has already provided, and will continue to
provide, important ecological and behavioral data on these
intriguing creatures. Dwarfed island faunas are important to our
understanding of the complex factors that shape natural selection
in ecologically closed environments over the evolutionary long
term. At Aetokremnos, we seem to have the "end" of a long sequence
of hippo evolution on the island. With comparative studies of other
Cypriot hippo faunas, we should be able to pin down the interval of
initial colonization by what were, pres- ably, normal-sized hippos,
and-if the other sites can be dated-document the dwarfing process
in considerable detail. Aetokremnos would still be a significant
paleontological - cality, even in the absence of evidence of a
human presence there. While reading the text of the monograph, a
number of questions strictly related to the paleontology occurred
to me. One was how to model the colonization process. There seems
to be little question that the large mammals colonized the island
by swimming to it (because, I gather, Cyprus has not been connected
to the mainland for roughly 5-6 m- lion years).
Lithic analysts have been criticized for being atheoretical in
their approach, or at least for not contributing to building
archaeological theory. This volume redresses that balance. In Stone
Tools, renowned lithic analysts employ explicitly theoretical
constructs to explore the archaeological record and use the lithic
database to establish its points. Chapters discuss curation, design
theory, replacement of stone with metal, piece refitting, and
projectile point style.
This book gives an overview of different factors involved in the
emergence and change in early urban societies in fourth-millennium
Mesopotamia and Egypt; pre-Shang China; Classie horizon Central
Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya Area; and Middle Horizon societies in
the Andean Region. These factors range from centralized storage and
redistributive econo mies, agromanagerial models, mercantile
network control, confliet and conquest, conversion of military
commanders into administrators, political power through monumental
cosmic reproduction, and elite power through ideological change. It
discusses specific archaeological data useful in theoretieal
construction. In the Introduction, a discussion of different
developmental processes of urban societies is made. The Eastern
Anatolian example emphasizes the role played by interregional
exchange networks linking the Mesopotamian plains with the
Syro-Anatolian regions. The emergence of an elite is related with
the control of the movement of craft goods and raw materials, more
than with the appropriation of subsistence goods. The Chinese
example stresses the importance of conflict provoked by demographie
pressures on resources. The Mesoamerican cases relate to vast urban
developments and manu facturing centers, ideological importance of
monumental planning, and changing behavior of elites. The Andean
cases are related either to the transformation of theocratie
leadership into military administrators oe to the agricultural
intensification model."
Feast! Throughout human history, and in all parts of the world,
feasts have been at the heart of life. The great museums of the
world are full of the remains of countless ghostly feasts - dishes
that once bore rich meats, pitchers used to pour choice wines, tall
jars that held beer sipped through long straws of gold and lapis,
immense cauldrons from which hundreds of people could be served.
Why were feasts so important, and is there more to feasting than
abundance and enjoyment? The Never-Ending Feast is a pioneering
work that draws on anthropology, archaeology and history to look at
the dynamics of feasting among the great societies of antiquity
renowned for their magnificence and might. Reflecting new
directions in academic study, the focus shifts beyond the medieval
and early modern periods in Western Europe, eastwards to
Mesopotamia, Assyria and Achaemenid Persia, early Greece, the
Mongol Empire, Shang China and Heian Japan. The past speaks through
texts and artefacts. We see how feasts were the primary arena for
displays of hierarchy, status and power; a stage upon which
loyalties and alliances were negotiated; the occasion for the
mobilization and distribution of resources, a means of pleasing the
gods, and the place where identities were created, consolidated -
and destroyed. The Never-Ending Feast transforms our understanding
of feasting past and present, revitalising the fields of
anthropology, archaeology, history, museum studies, material
culture and food studies, for all of which it is essential reading.
An archaeological analysis of the centrality of race and racism in
American culture. Using a broad range of material, historical, and
ethnographic resources from Annapolis, Maryland, during the period
1850 to 1930, the author probes distinctive African-American
consumption patterns and examines how those patterns resisted the
racist assumptions of the dominant culture while also attempting to
demonstrate African-Americans' suitability to full citizenship
privileges.
In this first ever collection of Sakha poems in our English
language, the highly talented poet Natalia Kharlampieva weaves
openly neo-Impressionistic threads of common heritage, communal
faith and shared ethnicity, into an overall tapestry of cultural
optimism. Indeed, to Kharlampieva's mind, the unique significance
played by independent women (willing to endure every hardship) in
these restorative endeavours clearly signals the spiritual strength
of Central Asia. A lesson, moreover, she obliquely suggests the
West itself still needs to learn. Of course, in Kharlampieva's
case, these powerful declamations are set against the grinding
impact of icy expanses on Sakha psyches. And as such, Kharlampieva
invites the readers of Foremother Asia into a hardy, but delicate
world: a narratorial sphere characterised by the need to survive
against all odds. Indeed, once her reader's grasp that the capital
city of the Sakha Republic is located a mere 450 kilometres south
of the Arctic Circle, they will begin to accept the insights of
this crisp and original volume as a singular contribution to Global
Text. Unanimously applauded as an impassioned book revealing the
delights of a recovered national identity, Kharlampieva also
captures Natures savage beauty, as well as the harsh existential
truths of life in the far North. QUOTES: While in Yakutia, a local
legend mesmerized me: afiery Viking warrior sailed up the Lena
river to the land of permafrost and melted the heart of an
indigenous woman. Their child was the first Yakut; her voice echoes
through the ages in Foremother Asia, leaving no one untouched. S
lvi Fannar Vi arsson, actor, poet, author of A Poet Trapped in a
Caveman's Body and Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Iceland "Whether
she writes about love, about friendship, about the fate of her
people, or of the entirety of Russia, her words (as if in her
hands), hold life. She saves it from a lack of spirituality,
hatred, disintegration and chaos, as well as self-destruction ...
Happy and rich is the ethnic group that has such people." Sergei
Glovyuk, member of the Union of Writers of Russia, Honorable Member
of the Union of Writers of Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro Poems
by Natalia Kharlampieva are like a fine rain falling onto the
ground, whereon it becomes water giving life to germinating seeds
of kindness, forgiveness, understanding and love ..... "in any
country, in any century ..." Lenifer Mambetova, Poet and winner of
the best female work OEBF-2014 Republic of Crimea
Highlighting the latest research on Actualistic Taphonomy (AT),
this book presents the outcomes of a meeting that took place in
Montevideo, Uruguay, in October 2017. Its respective chapters offer
valuable insights into South American archaeology, invertebrate and
vertebrate fauna, and flora. In recent years, there has been a
surge of new research on AT, as evidenced by numerous papers,
talks, theses, etc. However, there are still very few AT books or
even dedicated journal articles. Reflecting the discipline's
newfound maturity, this book, written by South American authors,
offers a unique resource for academics and students of
Paleontology, Geology, and Biology around the world.
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