Download or read book An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era written by Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-21 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era approaches the contemporary age, between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, as an archaeological period defined by specific material processes. It reflects on the theory and practice of the archaeology of the contemporary past from epistemological, political, ethical and aesthetic viewpoints, and characterises the present based on archaeological traces from the spatial, temporal and material excesses that define it. The materiality of our era, the book argues, and particularly its ruins and rubbish, reveals something profound, original and disturbing about humanity. This is the first attempt at describing the contemporary era from an archaeological point of view. Global in scope, the book brings together case studies from every continent and considers sources from peripheral and rarely considered traditions, meanwhile engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophy, anthropology, history and geography. An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era will be essential reading for students and practitioners of the archaeology of the contemporary past, historical archaeology and archaeological theory. It will also be of interest to anybody concerned with globalisation, modernity and the Anthropocene.
Download or read book Contemporary Archaeology in Theory written by Robert W. Preucel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, has been thoroughly updated and revised, and features top scholars who redefine the theoretical and political agendas of the field, and challenge the usual distinctions between time, space, processes, and people. Defines the relevance of archaeology and the social sciences more generally to the modern world Challenges the traditional boundaries between prehistoric and historical archaeologies Discusses how archaeology articulates such contemporary topics and issues as landscape and natures; agency, meaning and practice; sexuality, embodiment and personhood; race, class, and ethnicity; materiality, memory, and historical silence; colonialism, nationalism, and empire; heritage, patrimony, and social justice; media, museums, and publics Examines the influence of American pragmatism on archaeology Offers 32 new chapters by leading archaeologists and cultural anthropologists
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World written by Paul Graves-Brown and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been clear for many years that the ways in which archaeology is practised have been a direct product of a particular set of social, cultural, and historical circumstances - archaeology is always carried out in the present. More recently, however, many have begun to consider how archaeological techniques might be used to reflect more directly on the contemporary world itself: how we might undertake archaeologies of, as well as in the present. This Handbook is the first comprehensive survey of an exciting and rapidly expanding sub-field and provides an authoritative overview of the newly emerging focus on the archaeology of the present and recent past. In addition to detailed archaeological case studies, it includes essays by scholars working on the relationships of different disciplines to the archaeology of the contemporary world, including anthropology, psychology, philosophy, historical geography, science and technology studies, communications and media, ethnoarchaeology, forensic archaeology, sociology, film, performance, and contemporary art. This volume seeks to explore the boundaries of an emerging sub-discipline, to develop a tool-kit of concepts and methods which are applicable to this new field, and to suggest important future trajectories for research. It makes a significant intervention by drawing together scholars working on a broad range of themes, approaches, methods, and case studies from diverse contexts in different parts of the world, which have not previously been considered collectively.
Download or read book Contemporary Issues in California Archaeology written by Society for American Archaeology. Meeting and published by Left Coast Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent archaeological research on California includes a greater diversity of models and approaches to the region’s past, as older literature on the subject struggles to stay relevant. This comprehensive volume offers an in-depth look at the most recent theoretical and empirical developments in the field including key controversies relevant to the Golden State: coastal colonization, impacts of comets and drought cycles, systems of power, Polynesian contacts, and the role of indigenous peoples in the research process, among others. With a specific emphasis on those aspects of California’s past that resonate with the state’s modern cultural identity, the editors and contributors—all leading figures in California archaeology—seek a new understanding of the myth and mystique of the Golden State.
Download or read book The New Nomadic Age written by Yannis Hamilakis and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most people on earth crossing national borders is risky, perilous, often lethal This is the first anthology to explore the diverse intellectual, methodological, ethical, and political frameworks for an archaeology of forced and undocumented migration in the present.
Download or read book Contemporary Archaeology and the City written by Laura McAtackney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues archaeology is uniquely placed to contribute a variety of perspectives on the current life-cycles of cities including processes of decay, revitalization, and transformation. It foregrounds the materialities of post-industrial, post-modern and other urban transformations through a diverse, international collection of case studies.
Download or read book Archaeology Matters written by Jeremy A Sabloff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology is perceived to study the people of long ago and far away. How could archaeology matter in the modern world? Well-known archaeologist Jeremy Sabloff points to ways in which archaeology might be important to the understanding and amelioration of contemporary problems. Though archaeologists have commonly been associated with efforts to uncover cultural identity, to restore the past of underrepresented peoples, and to preserve historical sites, their knowledge and skills can be used in many other ways. Archaeologists help Peruvian farmers increase crop yields, aid city planners in reducing landfills, and guide local communities in tourism development and water management. This brief volume, aimed at students and other prospective archaeologists, challenges the field to go beyond merely understanding the past and actively engage in making a difference in the today’s world.
Download or read book Critical Public Archaeology written by Camille Westmont and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical approaches to public archaeology have been in use since the 1980s, however only recently have archaeologists begun using critical theory in conjunction with public archaeology to challenge dominant narratives of the past. This volume brings together current work on the theory and practice of critical public archaeology from Europe and the United States to illustrate the ways that implementing critical approaches can introduce new understandings of the past and reveal new insights on the present. Contributors to this volume explore public perceptions of museum interpretations as well as public archaeology projects related to changing perceptions of immigration, the working classes, and race.
Download or read book Modern Material Culture written by Richard A. Gould and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Material Culture
Download or read book Petrification Processes in Matter and Society written by Sophie Hüglin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petrification is a process, but it also can be understood as a concept. This volume takes the first steps to manifest, materialize or “petrify” the concept of “petrification” and turn it into a tool for analyzing material and social processes. The wide array of approaches to petrification as a process assembled here is more of a collection of possibilities than an attempt to establish a firm, law-generating theory. Divided into three parts, this volume’s twenty-plus authors explore petrification both as a theoretical concept and as a contextualized material and social process across geological, prehistoric and historic periods. Topics connecting the various papers are properties of materials, preferences and choices of actors, the temporality of matter, being and becoming, the relationality between actors, matter, things and space (landscape, urban space, built space), and perceptions of the following generations dealing with the petrified matter, practices, and social relations. Contributors to this volume study specifically whether particular processes of petrification are confined to the material world or can be seen as mirroring, following, triggering, or contradicting changes in social life and general world views. Each of the authors explores – for a period or a specific feature – practices and changes that led to increased conformity and regularity. Some authors additionally focus on the methods and scrutinize them and their applications for their potential to create objects of investigation: things, people, periods, in order to raise awareness for these or to shape or “invent” categories. This volume is of interest to archaeologists, geologists, architectural historians, conservationists, and historians.
Download or read book A Contemporary Archaeology of London s Mega Events written by Jonathan Gardner and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2022-05-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Contemporary Archaeology of London’s Mega Events explores the traces of London’s most significant modern ‘mega events’. Though only open for a few weeks or months, mega events permanently and disruptively reshape their host cities and societies: they demolish and rebuild whole districts, they draw in materials and participants from around the globe and their organisers self-consciously seek to leave a ‘legacy’ that will endure for decades or more. With London as his case study, Jonathan Gardner argues that these spectacles must be seen as long-lived and persistent, rather than simply a transient or short-term phenomena. Using a novel methodology drawn from the subfield of contemporary archaeology – the archaeology of the recent past and present-day – a broad range of comparative studies are used to explore the long-term history of each event. These include the contents and building materials of the Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace and their extraordinary ‘afterlife’ at Sydenham, South London; how the Festival of Britain’s South Bank Exhibition employed displays of ancient history to construct a new post-war British identity; and how London 2012, as the latest of London’s mega events, dealt with competing visions of the past as archaeology, waste and ‘heritage’ in creating a vision of the future.
Download or read book Critical Traditions in Contemporary Archaeology written by Valerie Pinsky and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1989 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Contemporary Archaeology of Post Displacement Resettlement written by Erin P. Riggs and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the archaeology of the 1947 Partition, the largest mass migration in human history, and the resulting resettlement of half a million refugees in Delhi, India’s capital city. Interweaving material analysis with oral history collection and archival sources, this book considers how Delhi’s Partition refugees have interacted with the city's built landscapes through time. It demonstrates how government-built refugee colonies, influenced by both socialist and capitalist design philosophies, provided an effective and adaptable setting for resettlement. In contrast, it illustrates how Delhi’s pre-Partition landscapes—including ‘evacuee properties’ vacated by out-migrating Muslims and sections of the planned, colonial capital—have proven more problematic venues for rehousing. In these contexts, refugee families navigated life within homes shaped by past occupants and colonial-era wealth disparities. The book highlights that despite such difficulties and the unprecedented scale of Partition’s impact on Delhi, refugees have obtained an impressive degree of material success and social acceptance in the city. This example challenges assumptions about the aid-dependency of refugee communities, the potential effectiveness of public housing, and the mutability of national belonging. This interdisciplinary case study will be of interest to scholars in varied fields of study, including archaeology, architectural history, cultural anthropology, human geography, and South Asian studies.
Download or read book Archaeology and the Senses written by Yannis Hamilakis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-20 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exciting new look at how archaeology has dealt with the bodily senses and offers an argument for how the discipline can offer a richer glimpse into the human sensory experience. Yannis Hamilakis shows how, despite its intensely physical engagement with the material traces of the past, archaeology has mostly neglected multi-sensory experience, instead prioritising isolated vision and relying on the Western hierarchy of the five senses. In place of this limited view of experience, Hamilakis proposes a sensorial archaeology that can unearth the lost, suppressed, and forgotten sensory and affective modalities of humans. Using Bronze Age Crete as a case study, Hamilakis shows how sensorial memory can help us rethink questions ranging from the production of ancestral heritage to large-scale social change, and the cultural significance of monuments. Hamilakis points the way to reconstituting archaeology as a sensorial and affective multi-temporal practice.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Seeing written by Liliana Janik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Archaeology of Seeing provides readers with a new and provocative understanding of material culture through exploring visual narratives captured in cave and rock art, sculpture, paintings, and more. The engaging argument draws on current thinking in archaeology, on how we can interpret the behaviour of people in the past through their use of material culture, and how this affects our understanding of how we create and see art in the present. Exploring themes of gender, identity, and story-telling in visual material culture, this book forces a radical reassessment of how the ability to see makes us and our ancestors human; as such, it will interest lovers of both art and archaeology. Illustrated with examples from around the world, from the earliest art from hundreds of thousands of years ago, to the contemporary art scene, including street art and advertising, Janik cogently argues that the human capacity for art, which we share with our most ancient ancestors and cousins, is rooted in our common neurophysiology. The ways in which our brains allow us to see is a common heritage that shapes the creative process; what changes, according to time and place, are the cultural contexts in which art is produced and consumed. The book argues for an innovative understanding of art through the interplay between the way the human brain works and the culturally specific creation and interpretation of meaning, making an important contribution to the debate on art/archaeology.
Download or read book From Ancient to Modern written by Chi, Jennifer Y., and Pedro Azara, eds. and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-22 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catalog of an exhibition held at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, New York, February 12-June 7, 2015.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Kinship written by Bradley E. Ensor and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology has been subjected to a wide range of misunderstandings of kinship theory and many of its central concepts. Demonstrating that kinship is the foundation for past societies’ social organization, particularly in non-state societies, Bradley E. Ensor offers a lucid presentation of kinship principles and theories accessible to a broad audience. He provides not only descriptions of what the principles entail but also an understanding of their relevance to past and present topics of interest to archaeologists. His overall goal is always clear: to illustrate how kinship analysis can advance archaeological interpretation and how archaeology can advance kinship theory. The Archaeology of Kinship supports Ensor’s objectives: to demonstrate the relevance of kinship to major archaeological questions, to describe archaeological methods for kinship analysis independent of ethnological interpretation, to illustrate the use of those techniques with a case study, and to provide specific examples of how diachronic analyses address broader theory. As Ensor shows, archaeological diachronic analyses of kinship are independently possible, necessary, and capable of providing new insights into past cultures and broader anthropological theory. Although it is an old subject in anthropology, The Archaeology of Kinship can offer new and exciting frontiers for inquiry. Kinship research in general—and prehistoric kinship in particular—is rapidly reemerging as a topical subject in anthropology. This book is a timely archaeological contribution to that growing literature otherwise dominated by ethnology.