Download or read book Sentient Archaeologies written by Courtney Nimura and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-07-15 with total page 732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology in the past century has seen a major shift from theoretical frameworks that treat the remains of past societies as static snapshots of particular moments in time to interpretations that prioritize change and variability. Though established analytical concepts, such as typology, remain key parts of the archaeologist’s investigative toolkit, data-gathering strategies and interpretative frameworks have become infused progressively with the concept that archaeology is living, in the sense of both the objects of study and the discipline as a whole. The significance for the field is that researchers across the world are integrating ideas informed by relational epistemologies and mutually constructive ontologies into their work from the initial stage of project design all the way down to post-excavation interpretation. This volume showcases examples of such work, highlighting the utility of these ideas to exploring material both old and new. The illuminating research and novel explanations presented contribute to resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Oceania. In this way, this volume reinvigorates approaches taken towards older material but also acts as a springboard for future innovative discussions of theory in archaeology and related disciplines.

Download or read book Archaeologies of the Future written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson's most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age. The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness . alien life and alien worlds . and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson's essential essays, including "The Desire Called Utopia," conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.

Download or read book Visual Culture Histories archaeologies and genealogies of visual culture written by Joanne Morra and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These texts represent both the formation of visual culture, and the ways in which it has transformed, and continues to transform, our understanding and experience of the world as a visual domain.

Download or read book Sentient Archaeologies written by Courtney Nimura and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-07-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology in the past century has seen a major shift from theoretical frameworks that treat the remains of past societies as static snapshots of particular moments in time to interpretations that prioritize change and variability. Though established analytical concepts, such as typology, remain key parts of the archaeologist’s investigative toolkit, data-gathering strategies and interpretative frameworks have become infused progressively with the concept that archaeology is living, in the sense of both the objects of study and the discipline as a whole. The significance for the field is that researchers across the world are integrating ideas informed by relational epistemologies and mutually constructive ontologies into their work from the initial stage of project design all the way down to post-excavation interpretation. This volume showcases examples of such work, highlighting the utility of these ideas to exploring material both old and new. The illuminating research and novel explanations presented contribute to resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Oceania. In this way, this volume reinvigorates approaches taken towards older material but also acts as a springboard for future innovative discussions of theory in archaeology and related disciplines.

Download or read book Archaeologies of Rock Art written by Andrés Troncoso and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rock art in South America is as diverse as the continent itself. In this vast territory, different peoples produced engravings, paintings, and massive earthworks, from the Atacama to the Amazon. These marks on the landscape were made by all different kinds of peoples, from some of the earliest hunter-gatherers in the continent, to the very complex societies within the Inca Empire. This book brings together the work of specialists from throughout the continent, addressing this diversity, as well as the variety of approaches that the Archaeology of rock art has taken in South America. Constructed of eleven thought-provoking chapters and arranged in three thematic sections, the book presents different theoretical approaches that are currently being used to understand the roles rock art played in prehistoric communities. The editors have skillfully crafted a book that presents the contribution the study of South American rock art can offer to the global research of this materiality, both theoretically and methodologically. This book will interest a broad range of scholars researching in archaeology, anthropology, history of art, heritage and conservation, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students who will find interesting case studies showcasing the diverse ways in which rock art can be approached. Despite its focus on South America, the book is intended as a contribution towards the global study of rock art.

Download or read book Sentient Conceptualisations written by Cristian Simonetti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-10 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sentient Conceptualisations is about how scientists studying the past understand time in relation to space. Simonetti argues that the feelings for depths and surfaces, arising from the bodily movements and gestures of scientific practice, strongly influence conceptualisations of space and time. With an anthropological eye, Simonetti explores the ways archaeologists and those from related disciplines develop expert knowledge in varied environments. The book draws on ethnographic work carried out with Chilean and Scottish archaeologists, working both on land and underwater, to analyse in depth the visual language of science and what it reveals about the relation between thinking and feeling.

Download or read book The Sentient Archive written by Bill Bissell and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sentient Archive gathers the work of scholars and practitioners in dance, performance, science, and the visual arts. Its twenty-eight rich and challenging essays cross boundaries within and between disciplines, and illustrate how the body serves as a repository for knowledge. Contributors include Nancy Goldner, Marcia B. Siegel, Jenn Joy, Alain Platel, Catherine J. Stevens, Meg Stuart, André Lepecki, Ralph Lemon, and other notable scholars and artists. Hardcover is un-jacketed.

Download or read book Archaeological Investigation written by Martin Carver and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-12-18 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thoroughly updated second edition of Archaeological Investigation reviews and explains the practices of field archaeology in the world today. Now co-authored by Madeleine Hummler, the book’s scope has been enlarged in time and space, reaching out to the different methods and strategies applied in both the academic and commercial sectors in diverse terrain on land and under the sea. Archaeological Investigation accompanies the reader on a journey from absolute beginner to professional. Part 1 (Principles) sets the scene for newcomers, showing the axial role of fieldwork in rediscovering the past. Part 2 (In the Field) is aimed at those setting out to collect primary data by the diverse methods of modern survey and excavation. Word pictures on "First day in the field" and "First day on a dig" provide friendly introductions to the high-tech enterprise that fieldwork has become. Now fully engaged in the process, newcomers to archaeology are ready, in Part 3 (Writing Up), to take part in the process of making the discoveries known. Here the findings of fieldwork are marshalled to analyse the assemblage, the use of space and the chronology of what happened. The results are then combined in a synthesis and communicated through websites, museums, the display of sites and above all through publication. Part 4 (Design) engages the reader in archaeology’s primary action: how to design projects that conserve, rediscover and explain the human past, beginning with a review of some landmark examples (Chapter 13). The final chapter (The Profession) reviews the role of the state, the academy, the commercial sector and the public in making archaeology happen – and why it matters. Building on the authors’ extensive experience, Archaeological Investigation remains an inspiring, provocative, informative and entertaining book for students and professionals, arguing that the investigation of the human and environmental past is highly relevant to contemporary society and its future.

Download or read book Relational Archaeologies written by Christopher Watts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-11 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us accept as uncontroversial the belief that the world is comprised of detached and disparate products, all of which are reducible to certain substances. Of those things that are alive, we acknowledge that some have agency while others, such as humans, have more advanced qualities such as consciousness, reason and intentionality. So deeply-seated is this metaphysical belief, along with the related distinctions we draw between subject/object, mind/body and nature/culture that many of us tacitly assume past groups approached and apprehended the world in a similar fashion. Relational Archaeologies questions how such a view of human beings, ‘other-than-human’ creatures and things affects our reconstruction of past beliefs and practices. It proceeds from the position that, in many cases, past societies understood their place in the world as positional rather than categorical, as persons bound up in reticular arrangements with similar and not so similar forms regardless of their substantive qualities. Relational Archaeologies explores this idea by emphasizing how humans, animals and things come to exist by virtue of the dynamic and fluid processes of connection and transaction. In highlighting various counter-Modern notions of what it means ‘to be’ and how these can be teased apart using archaeological materials, contributors provide a range of approaches from primarily theoretical/historicized treatments of the topic to practical applications or case studies from the Americas, the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Download or read book Incomplete Archaeologies written by Emily Miller Bonney and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incomplete Archaeologies takes a familiar archaeological concept – assemblages – and reconsiders such groupings, collections and sets of things from the perspective of the work required to assemble them. The discussions presented here engage with the practices of collection, construction, performance and creation in the past (and present) which constitute the things and groups of things studied by archaeologists – and examine as well how these things and thing-groups are dismantled, rearranged, and even destroyed, only to be rebuilt and recreated. The ultimate aim is to reassert an awareness of the incompleteness of assemblage, and thus the importance of practices of assembling (whether they seem at first creative or destructive) for understanding social life in the past as well as the present. The individual chapters represent critical engagements with this aim by archaeologists presenting a broad scope of case studies from Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Case studies include discussions of mortuary practice from numerous angles, the sociopolitics of metallurgy, human-animal relationships, landscape and memory, the assembly of political subjectivity and the curation of sovereignty. These studies emphasize the incomplete and ongoing nature of social action in the past, and stress the critical significance of a deeper understanding of formation processes as well as contextual archaeologies to practices of archaeology, museology, art history, and other related disciplines. Contributors challenge archaeologists and others to think past the objects in the assemblage to the practices of assembling, enabling us to consider not only plural modes of interacting with and perceiving things, spaces, human bodies and temporalities in the past, but also to perhaps discover alternate modes of framing these interactions and relationships in our analyses. Ultimately then, Incomplete Archaeologies takes aim at the perceived totality not only of assemblages of artifacts on shelves and desks, but also that of some of archaeology’s seeming-seamless epistemological objects.

Download or read book Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature written by Philip Schwyzer and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-02-22 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study draws on the theory and practice of archaeology to develop a new perspective on the literature of the Renaissance. Philip Schwyzer explores the fascination with images of excavation, exhumation, and ruin that runs through literary texts including Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, Donne's sermons and lyrics, and Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall. Miraculously preserved corpses, ruined monasteries, Egyptian mummies, and Yorick's skull all figure in this study of the early modern archaeological imagination. The pessimism of the period is summed up in the haunting motif of the beautiful corpse that, once touched, crumbles to dust. Archaeology and literary studies are themselves products of the Renaissance. Although the two disciplines have sometimes viewed one another as rivals, they share a unique and unsettling intimacy with the traces of past life - with the words the dead wrote, sang, or heard, with the objects they made, held, or lived within. Schwyzer argues that at the root of both forms of scholarship lies the forbidden desire to awaken (and speak with) the dead. However impossible or absurd this desire may be, it remains a fundamental source of both ethical responsibility and aesthetic pleasure.

Download or read book Archaeologies of Us and Them written by Charlotta Hillerdal and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeologies of “Us” and “Them” explores the concept of indigeneity within the field of archaeology and heritage and in particular examines the shifts in power that occur when ‘we’ define ‘the other’ by categorizing ‘them’ as indigenous. Recognizing the complex and shifting distinctions between indigenous and non-indigenous pasts and presents, this volume gives a nuanced analysis of the underlying definitions, concepts and ethics associated with this field in order to explore Indigenous archaeology as a theoretical, ethical and political concept. Indigenous archaeology is an increasingly important topic discussed worldwide, and as such critical analyses must be applied to debates which are often surrounded by political correctness and consensus views. Drawing on an international range of global case studies, this timely and sensitive collection significantly contributes to the development of archaeological critical theory.

Download or read book Archaeologies of Consciousness written by Gyrus and published by Dreamflesh. This book was released on 2008-02-03 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected for the first time, these essays delve into the mysteries of the prehistoric human mind with intelligence, passion and a radical approach to the unknowability of the evocative but obscure early chapters of the human story. Starting from personal experiences with megalithic monuments and sites of ancient rock art, Gyrus unfolds implications and speculations that keep one eye on the latest academic research, the other on the unproven possibilities that intimacy with prehistoric relics affords. Also includes a foreword by acclaimed antiquarian, Julian Cope.

Download or read book Sentient Archaeologies written by Courtney Nimura and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2023-05-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major new re-examination of established theories concerning past societies on a global scale, presenting innovative research and new explanations towards resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies.

Download or read book Forty Years in the South Seas written by Anne Ford and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2024-05-09 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This edited volume of invited chapters honours the four decades of fundamental research by archaeologist Glenn Summerhayes into the human prehistory of the islands of the western Pacific, especially New Guinea and its offshore islands. This area helped to shape and direct many ancient dispersal events associated with Homo sapiens, initially from Africa more than 50,000 years ago, through the lower latitudes of Asia, into Australia, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and possibly the Solomon Islands. Around 3000 years ago, coastal regions of northern and eastern New Guinea, and the islands of Melanesia beyond, played a major role in the Oceanic migrations of Austronesian-speaking peoples from southern China and Southeast Asia, migrations that have recently attained new levels of genetic complexity through the analysis of ancient DNA from human remains. For the first time, humans of both Southeast Asian and New Guinea/Bismarck genetic origin reached the islands of Remote Oceania, beyond the Solomons. Many of the chapters in this book deal with archaeological aspects of this Austronesian maritime expansion (which never seriously impacted the populations of the New Guinea Highlands), especially as revealed through the analysis of Lapita pottery and associated artefacts. Other chapters offer archaeological perspectives on trade and exchange, and on related topics that extend into the ethnographic era. The research of Glenn Summerhayes stands centrally amongst all these offerings, ranging from the discovery of some of the oldest traces of Pleistocene human settlement in Papua New Guinea to documentation of the remarkable phenomenon of Lapita expansion through Melanesia into western Polynesia around 3000 years ago. This volume is a fitting celebration of a remarkable career in western Pacific archaeology and population history.” ­— Emeritus Professor Peter Bellwood, The Australian National University

Download or read book Archaeologies of Animal Movement Animals on the Move written by Anna-Kaisa Salmi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-28 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the state-of-the art in the analysis of animal movements in the past and its implications for human societies. It also addresses the importance of animal activity and mobility for understanding past human societies and past human-animal relationships through cases studies from different periods and areas. It is the first book to focus on the archaeology of animal movement on different scales – from fine-tuned muscle movements of working animals to feeding behavior and to long-distance movements across landscapes and regions. With the recent development of fine-tuned methodologies such as stable isotope analysis and physical activity assessment, the potential to understand how animals moved about in the past has increased substantially. While the chapters in the volume utilize a wide range of archaeological methods, they are all united by an emphasis on understanding animal activity and mobility patterns as something that has a major impact on human societies and human-animal relationships. Chapters in this volume show that animal activity patterns provide information on multiple aspects of human-animal relationships, including analysis of animal management practices, transhumance, global and regional trade networks, and animal domestication. This volume is of interest to scholars working in zooarchaeology and early human societies.

Download or read book Monumental Times written by Richard Bradley and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Bradley's latest thought provoking re-examination of familiar monumental archaeology drawing on latest discussions of multi-temporality and the implications of new levels of analysis afforded by developments in archaeological sciences such as DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotopes. This book is concerned with the origins, uses and subsequent histories of monuments. It emphasises the time scales illustrated by these structures, and their implications for archaeological research. It is concerned with the archaeology of Western and Northern Europe, with an emphasis on structures in Britain and Ireland, and the period between the Mesolithic and the Viking Age. It begins with two famous groups of monuments and introduces the problem of multiple time scales. It also considers how they influence the display of those sites today – they belong to both the present and the past. Monuments played a role from the moment they were created, but approaches to their archaeology led in opposite directions. They might have been directed to a future that their builders could not control. These structures could be adapted, destroyed, or left to decay once their significance was lost. Another perspective was to claim them as relics of a forgotten past. In that case they had to be reinterpreted. The first part of this book considers the rarity of monumental structures among hunter-gatherers, and the choice of building materials for Neolithic houses and tombs. It emphasises the difference between structures whose erection ended the use of significant places, and those whose histories could extend into the future. It also discusses ‘megalithic astronomy’ and ancient notions of time. Part Two is concerned with the reuse of ancient monuments and asks whether they really were expressions of social memory. Did links with an ‘ancestral past’ have much factual basis? It contrasts developments during the Beaker phase with those of the early medieval period. The development of monumental architecture is compared with the composition of oral literature.