Download or read book Symbols in Action written by Ian Hodder and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1982-01-14 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material culture - the objects made by man - provides the primary data from which archaeologists have to infer the economies, technologies, social organization and ritual practices of extinct societies. The analysis and interpretation ofmaterial culture is therefore central to any concern with archaeological theory and methodology, and in order to understand better the relationship between material culture and human behaviour, archaeologists need to draw upon models derived from the study of ethnographic societies. First published in 1982, this book presents the results of a series of field investigations carried out in Kenya, Zambia and the Sudan into the 'archaeological' remains and material culture of contemporary small-scale societies, and demonstrates the way in which objects are used as symbols within social action and within particular world views and ideologies.
Download or read book Interpretive Archaeology written by Julian Thomas and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New forms of archaeology are emerging which position the discipline firmly within the social and cultural sciences. These approaches have been described as "post processual" or "interpretive" archaeology, and draw on a range of traditions of enquiry in the humanities, from Marxism and critical theory to hermeneutics, feminism, queer theory, phenomenology and post-colonial thinking. This volume gathers together a series of the canonical statements which have defined an interpretive archaeology. Many of these have been unavailable for some while, and others are drawn from inaccessible publications. In addition, a number of key articles are included which are drawn from other disciplines, but which have been influential and widely cited within archaeology. The collection is put into context by an editorial introduction and thematic notes for each section.
Download or read book Symbols of Excellence written by Grahame Clark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-04-24 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Clark explores the reasons of why humans value precious metals, gems, ivory and pearls so highly.
Download or read book Bodies and Other Objects written by Rob Ellis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes a unified framework for embodied cognition that reconciles sensorimotor and representational accounts of cognition, connecting currently disparate traditions.
Download or read book From Signal to Symbol written by Ronald Planer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel account of the evolution of language and the cognitive capacities on which language depends. In From Signal to Symbol, Ronald Planer and Kim Sterelny propose a novel theory of language: that modern language is the product of a long series of increasingly rich protolanguages evolving over the last two million years. Arguing that language and cognition coevolved, they give a central role to archaeological evidence and attempt to infer cognitive capacities on the basis of that evidence, which they link in turn to communicative capacities. Countering other accounts, which move directly from archaeological traces to language, Planer and Sterelny show that rudimentary forms of many of the elements on which language depends can be found in the great apes and were part of the equipment of the earliest species in our lineage. After outlining the constraints a theory of the evolution of language should satisfy and filling in the details of their model, they take up the evolution of words, composite utterances, and hierarchical structure. They consider the transition from a predominantly gestural to a predominantly vocal form of language and discuss the economic and social factors that led to language. Finally, they evaluate their theory in terms of the constraints previously laid out.
Download or read book A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World written by Rubina Raja and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World presents a comprehensive overview of a wide range of topics relating to the practices, expressions, and interactions of religion in antiquity, primarily in the Greco-Roman world. • Features readings that focus on religious experience and expression in the ancient world rather than solely on religious belief • Places a strong emphasis on domestic and individual religious practice • Represents the first time that the concept of “lived religion” is applied to the ancient history of religion and archaeology of religion • Includes cutting-edge data taken from top contemporary researchers and theorists in the field • Examines a large variety of themes and religious traditions across a wide geographical area and chronological span • Written to appeal equally to archaeologists and historians of religion
Download or read book Archaeological Theory Today written by Ian Hodder and published by Polity. This book was released on 2012-03-26 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title brings together some of the major exponents and innovators in the discipline to introduce their individual areas of specialism. It summarizes the latest developments in the field and looks to the future of the discipline.
Download or read book An Archaeology of Resistance written by Alfredo González-Ruibal and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Archaeology of Resistance: Materiality and Time in an African Borderland studies the tactics of resistance deployed by a variety of indigenous communities in the borderland between Sudan and Ethiopia. The Horn of Africa is an early area of state formation and at the same time the home of many egalitarian, small scale societies, which have lived in the buffer zone between states for the last three thousand years. For this reason, resistance is not something added to their sociopolitical structures: it is an inherent part of those structures—a mode of being. The main objective of the work is to understand the diverse forms of resistance that characterizes the borderland groups, with an emphasis on two essentially archaeological themes, materiality and time, by combining archaeological, political and social theory, ethnographic methods and historical data to examine different processes of resistance in the long term.
Download or read book The Present Past written by Ian Hodder and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition of Professor Ian Hodders original and classic work on the role which anthropology must play in the interpretation of the archaeological record.There has long been a need for archaeologists and anthropologists to correlate their ideas and methods for interpreting the material culture of past civilisations. Archaeological interpretation of the past is inevitably based on the ideas and experiences of the present and the use of such ethnographic analogy has been widely adapted and criticised, not least in Britain.In this challenging study, Ian Hodder questions the assumptions, values and methods which have been too readily accepted. At the same time, he shows how anthropology can be applied to archaeology. He examines the criteria for the proper use of analogy and, in particular, emphasises the need to consider the meaning and interpretation of material cultures within the total social and cultural contexts. He discusses anthropological models of refuse deposits, technology and production, subsistence, settlement, burial, trade exchange, art form and ritual; he then considers their application to comparable archaeological data.Throughout, Professor Hodder emphasises the need for a truly scientific approach and a critical self-awareness by archaeologists, who should be prepared to study their own social and cultural context, not least their own attitudes to the present-day material world.
Download or read book Consumerism written by Steven Miles and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1998-07-28 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to the historical and theoretical foundations of consumerism. It then moves on to examine the experience of consumption in the areas of space and place, technology, fashion, `popular′ music and sport. Throughout, the author brings a critical perspective to bear upon the subject, thus providing a reliable and stimulating guide to a complex and many-sided field.
Download or read book Social Intelligence and Interaction written by Esther N. Goody and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-03-23 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a growing view that intelligence evolved as a product of social interdependence. The unique development of human intelligence was probably linked to the use of spoken language, but language itself evolved in the context of social interaction, and in its development it has shaped - and been shaped by - social institutions. Taking as their starting-point the social production of intelligence and of language, scholars across a range of disciplines are beginning to rethink fundamental questions about human evolution, language and social institutions. This volume brings together anthropologists, linguists, primatologists and psychologists, all working on this new frontier of research.
Download or read book Act and Image written by Warren Colman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did humans develop the capacity for symbolic imagination? In this ground-breaking book, Warren Colman provides a reformulation of archetypal symbols as emergent from humans’ embodied and affective engagement with their social and material environment. Beginning with the oldest known figurative image in the world, the 40,000-year-old Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany, he traces the emergence of symbolic imagination through the origins of language, the growth of human sociality and co-operation, and the creative use of material objects, from the earliest stone tools through the cave paintings and figures of Upper Paleolithic Europe and beyond. This leads to a consideration of how the imaginal world of the spirit may have come into being, not as separate from the material world but through active participation within a world alive with meaning.
Download or read book The Theater of God s Glory written by W. David O. Taylor and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theological framework for the liturgical arts rooted in John Calvin Both detractors and supporters of John Calvin have deemed him an enemy of the physical body, a pessimist toward creation, and a negative influence on the liturgical arts. But, says W. David O. Taylor, that only tells half of the story. Taylor examines Calvin's trinitarian theology as it intersects his doctrine of the physical creation in order to argue for a positive theological account of the liturgical arts. He does so believing that Calvin's theology can serve, perhaps surprisingly, as a rich resource for understanding the theological purposes of the arts in corporate worship. Drawing on Calvin's Institutes, biblical commentaries, sermons, catechisms, treatises, and worship orders, this book represents one of the most thorough investigations available of John Calvin's theology of the physical creation—and the promising possibilities it opens up for the formative role of the arts in worship.
Download or read book The Golden Atlantean Book of Healing written by Juliet Clare Pankhurst and published by Author House. This book was released on 2007-05-03 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we become ill, depressed or stressed and how can we heal illnesses which the doctors seem unable to cure? Many are searching for something, not knowing what because our lives feel empty and meaningless, resulting in many using drugs or alcohol as a temporary relief from this feeling, a means of escape. This book helps us to read the "sign posts" that should not be switched off by pain killers, anti depressants, or drugs but which can be used to guide us to the root cause of physical, mental or emotional illnesses, to listen to our bodies, to understand the underlying cause of their problems and provides the solutions to really turn our lives around. It uses psychology, meditation, visualisation and prayer, enabling the harnessing of healing powers to remove the blockages preventing complete abundance in every area of our lives. This book provides the tools to find self love, personal growth, happiness, success, physical health and emotional healing and can be used to remove negative karma, whether in this life or previous lives, entrenched habits, negative characteristics or anxieties. It shows how to use ancient symbols such as those in Egypt, sacred geometry, the sacred names of the Angels and God and the teachings of the great Atlantean Thoth. It enables enlightenment and the reaching of "heaven on earth" by using the gifted Ancient Knowledge, regardless of denomination, faith, belief, colour or creed. Documented case studies show the reduction of symptoms in Multiple Sclerosis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and how these techniques reduced these symptoms. The act of reading this book enables healing to start. True peace and happiness can be found in the pages of this book.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination written by Anna Abraham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined - what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.
Download or read book Linguistic Bodies written by Ezequiel A. Di Paolo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy.
Download or read book Distributed Language written by Stephen J. Cowley and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume presents language as fully integrated with human existence. On this view, language is not essentially ‘symbolic’, not represented inside minds or brains, and most certainly not determined by micro-social rules and norms. Rather, language is part of our ecology. It emerges when bodies co-ordinate vocal and visible gesture to integrate events with different histories. Enacting feeling, expression and wordings, language permeates the collective, individual and affective life of living beings. It is a profoundly distributed, multi-centric activity that binds people together as they go about their lives. Distributed Language pursues this perspective both theoretically and in relation to empirical work. Empirically, it reports studies on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, its socio-cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke (in brain and word), and solving insight problems. Theoretically, the volume challenges linguistic autonomy from overlapping theoretical positions. First, it is argued that language exploits a species specific form of semiotic cognition. Second, it is suggested that the central function of language lies in realizing values that derive from our ecosystemic existence. Third, this is ascribed to how cultural and biological symbols co-regulate the dynamics that shape human activity. Fourth, it is argued that language, far from being organism-centred, gives us an extended ecology in which our co-ordination is saturated by values and norms that are derived from our sociocultural environment. The contributions to this volume expand on those originally published in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3 (2009).
