Download or read book The Archaeology of Darkness written by Marion Dowd and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through time people have lived with darkness. Archaeology shows us that over the whole human journey people have sought out dark places, for burials, for votive deposition and sometimes for retreat or religious ritual away from the wider community. Thirteen papers explore Palaeolithic use of deep caves in Europe and the orientation of mortuary monuments in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. It examines how the senses are affected in caves and monuments that were used for ritual activities, from Bronze Age miners in Wales working in dangerous subterranean settings, to initiands in Italian caves, to a modern caver’s experience of spending time in the one of the world’s deepest caves in Russia. We see how darkness was and is viewed at northern latitudes where parts of the year are spent in eternal night, and in Easter Island where darkness provided communal refuge from the pervasive sun. We know that spending extended periods in darkness and silence can affect one physically, emotionally and spiritually. How did interactions between people and darkness affect individuals in the past and how were regarded by their communities? And how did this interaction transform places in the landscape? As the ever-increasing electrification of the planet steadily minimizes the amount of darkness in our lives, curiously, darkness is coming more into focus. This first collection of papers on the subject begins a conversation about the role of darkness in human experience through time.
Download or read book Archaeology of the Night written by Nancy Gonlin and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did ancient peoples experience, view, and portray the night? What was it like to live in the past when total nocturnal darkness was the norm? Archaeology of the Night explores the archaeology, anthropology, mythology, iconography, and epigraphy of nocturnal practices and questions the dominant models of daily ancient life. A diverse team of experienced scholars uses a variety of methods and resources to reconstruct how ancient peoples navigated the night and what their associated daily—and nightly—practices were. This collection challenges modern ideas and misconceptions regarding the night and what darkness and night symbolized in the ancient world, and it highlights the inherent research bias in favor of “daytime” archaeology. Numerous case studies from around the world (including Oman, Mesoamerica, Scandinavia, Rome, Great Zimbabwe, Indus Valley, Peru, and Cahokia) illuminate subversive, social, ritual, domestic, and work activities, such as witchcraft, ceremonies, feasting, sleeping, nocturnal agriculture, and much more. Were there artifacts particularly associated with the night? Authors investigate individuals and groups (both real and mythological) who share a special connection to nighttime life. Reconsidering the archaeological record, Archaeology of the Night views sites, artifacts, features, and cultures from a unique perspective. This book is relevant to anthropologists and archaeologists and also to scholars of human geography, history, astronomy, sensory studies, human biology, folklore, and mythology. Contributors: Susan Alt, Anthony F. Aveni, Jane Eva Baxter, Shadreck Chirikure, Minette Church, Jeremy D. Coltman, Margaret Conkey, Tom Dillehay, Christine C. Dixon, Zenobie Garrett, Nancy Gonlin, Kathryn Kamp, Erin Halstad McGuire, Abigail Joy Moffett, Jerry D. Moore, Smiti Nathan, April Nowell, Scott C. Smith, Glenn R. Storey, Meghan Strong, Cynthia Van Gilder, Alexei Vranich, John C. Whittaker, Rita Wright
Download or read book Theoretical Archaeology written by K. R. Dark and published by Bristol Classical Press. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology uses material data to study the past, but material remains are unable to speak for themselves. They need to be interpreted. All archaeology depends upon the logical framework used to understand data: the theory which underlies interpretation. Yet archaeological theory often seems inaccessible or even irrelevant, wrapped up in jargon and filled with obscure allusions. Written especially for those with no previous knowledge of theory, this book aims to introduce the subject in a way which is both readable and which shows its relevance, and without a specific theoretical stance. The range of theoretical views on some of the themes and problems most often encountered in archaeology is outlined, introducing a wide variety of concepts and approaches equally relevant to the professional or amateur archaeologist, student, or non-specialist reader of archaeological work.
Download or read book The Dark Abyss of Time written by Laurent Olivier and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of archaeology continues to face a major crisis of interpretation. The traditional view is that the basic business of archaeology is to reconstruct the history of cultures and civilizations through their material productions. Olivier challenges this view with a new approach to archaeological remains based on the works of French theorists such as Foucault, de Certeaux, and Derrida, with insight from Darwin and Freud. His thesis is that archaeology does not study the past itself but rather what materially remains of the past in our present. Olivier also develops an interpretation of material culture based on Aby Warburg’s and Walter Benjamin’s work in the anthropology of art. With wider implications for history and all social sciences, The Dark Abyss of Time is a major contribution to the theory of time, memory, heritage, and archaeology. This flawless translation makes Olivier’s elegantly written work available in English for the first time.
Download or read book Memories from Darkness written by Pedro Funari and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-09-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Write What one Could Not Tell Anyone You who live in all tranquility So warm and comfortable in your houses, You who come home at night to find The table laid and friendly faces around you, Consider if this is a man, He who toils in the mud, Who knows no rest, Who fights for a crust of bread, Who dies for the slightest reason. Consider if this is a woman, She who has lost her name and her hair, And even the strength to remember, Her gaze blank and her bosom chilled, Like a frog in winter. Do not forget that this happened, No, do not forget it: Engrave these words in your heart. Think of them in your home, in the street, When you sleep, when you rise; Repeat them to your children. Or else your house will crumble, You will be overcome by illness, And your children will turn away from you (Levi 1987:9, the translations is mine). At Auschwitz, Filip Müller was assigned to the Sonderkommando. Every day, with his fellow prisoners, he emptied the gas chambers of their piles of defiled corpses and loaded them into the crematorium furnaces of the extermination camp.
Download or read book Passage of Darkness written by Wade Davis and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1982, Harvard-trained ethnobotanist Wade Davis traveled into the Haitian countryside to research reports of zombies--the infamous living dead of Haitian folklore. A report by a team of physicians of a verifiable case of zombification led him to try to obtain the poison associated with the process and examine it for potential medical use. Interdisciplinary in nature, this study reveals a network of power relations reaching all levels of Haitian political life. It sheds light on recent Haitian political history, including the meteoric rise under Duvalier of the Tonton Macoute. By explaining zombification as a rational process within the context of traditional Vodoun society, Davis demystifies one of the most exploited of folk beliefs, one that has been used to denigrate an entire people and their religion.
Download or read book Archaeology Heritage and Ethics in the Western Wall Plaza Jerusalem written by Raz Kletter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a critical study of recent archaeology in the Western Wall Plaza area, Jerusalem. Considered one of the holiest places on Earth for Jews and Muslims, it is also a place of controversy, where the State marks ‘our’ remains for preservation and adoration and ‘theirs’ for silencing. Based on thousands of documents from the Israel Antiquities Authority and other sources, such as protocols of planning committees, readers can explore for the first time this archaeological ‘heart of darkness’ in East Jerusalem. The book follows a series of unique discoveries, reviewing the approval and execution of development plans and excavations, and the use of the areas once excavation has finished. Who decides what and how to excavate, what to preserve – or ‘remove’? Who pays for the archaeology, for what aims? The professional, scientific archaeology of the past happens now: it modifies the present and is modified by it. This book ‘excavates’ the archaeology of East Jerusalem to reveal its social and political contexts, power structures and ethics. Readers interested in the history, archaeology and politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will find this book useful, as well as scholars and students of the history and ethics of Archaeology, Jerusalem, conservation, nationalism, and heritage.
Download or read book Sacred Darkness written by Holley Moyes and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caves have been used in various ways across human society but despite the persistence within popular culture of the iconic caveman, deep caves were never used primarily as habitation sites for early humans. Rather, in both ancient and contemporary contexts, caves have served primarily as ritual spaces. In Sacred Darkness, contributors use archaeological evidence as well as ethnographic studies of modern ritual practices to envision the cave as place of spiritual and ideological power and a potent venue for ritual practice. Covering the ritual use of caves in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest and Eastern woodlands, this book brings together case studies by prominent scholars whose research spans from the Paleolithic period to the present day. These contributions demonstrate that cave sites are as fruitful as surface contexts in promoting the understanding of both ancient and modern religious beliefs and practices. This state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use will be one of the most valuable resources for understanding the role of caves in studies of religion, sacred landscape, or cosmology and a must-read for any archaeologist interested in caves.
Download or read book The Treasures of Darkness written by Thorkild Jacobsen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1976-01-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... No one can plausibly deny that the religious development of the peoples of Canaan (and indeed of all the ancient world around the eastern Mediterranean to the Indus river) were affected by the cultural and religious developments in Mesopotamia, the centre of the region, and a fertile region second to none known in the world, on a par with the Nile, around which another major civilization arose. This is a text of history of Mesopotamia in its own right. By the time history gets back this far, the lines become very blurred, rather like parallel lines intersecting on the horizon. Literature, religion, archaeology, sociology, psychology -- all of these disciplines become intertwined in Jacobsen's text as he looks at Sumerian society. The book is organized with an introduction, then according to time divisions of fourth, third, and second millennia, then concludes with an epilogue into the first millennium, during which the Bible as we know it (and most ancient history such as is commonly known occurred) came to be"--Amazon.com.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology written by Costas Papadopoulos and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-09 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Light has a fundamental role to play in our perception of the world. Natural or artificial lightscapes orchestrate uses and experiences of space and, in turn, influence how people construct and negotiate their identities, form social relationships, and attribute meaning to (im)material practices. Archaeological practice seeks to analyse the material culture of past societies by examining the interaction between people, things, and spaces. As light is a crucial factor that mediates these relationships, understanding its principles and addressing illumination's impact on sensory experience and perception should be a fundamental pursuit in archaeology. However, in archaeological reasoning, studies of lightscapes have remained largely neglected and understudied. This volume provides a comprehensive and accessible consideration of light in archaeology and beyond by including dedicated and fully illustrated chapters covering diverse aspects of illumination in different spatial and temporal contexts, from prehistory to the present. Written by leading international scholars, it interrogates the qualities and affordances of light in different contexts and (im)material environments, explores its manipulation, and problematises its elusive properties. The result is a synthesis of invaluable insights into sensory experience and perception, demonstrating illumination's vital impact on social, cultural, and artistic contexts.
Download or read book Digging Through Darkness written by Carmel Schrire and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Digging through Darkness, Carmel Schrire interweaves art and fact to recreate a distant world. She combines autobiography, historical archaeology, and fictional reconstructions to explore the roots and consequences of colonial conquest in Africa, Australia, and the Pacific. The book takes its unique shape from Schrire's intimate connection with her subject - she is a native white South African, the Jewish descendant of a colonist who arrived at the Cape of Good Hope over a hundred years ago. Tracking the broad sweep of European expansion into Africa, Australia, and the Pacific, Schrire focuses on the evidence unearthed in archaeological sites, leading the reader through a wealth of strata and artifacts, to see how inferences may be drawn from heaps of broken bones and stones. These findings are then interwoven with historical sources to present an integrated picture of the past. When evidence is insufficient to propel the inference, the author constructs a fictional account, inventing scenes that relate archaeological sites to historical documents. This interweaving gives voice not only to the literate colonists but also to illiterate native people who endured dispossession in silence.
Download or read book Artificial Darkness written by Noam M. Elcott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-05-30 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious study explores how important darkness--artificial darkness--was, as an actual technology, in producing not just photographs but visual novelties and experiments in cinema in the nineteenth century. The study plays out against a backdrop of urban history, where most scholars have focused on the growth of artificial light and the electrification of cities. Elcott’s study challenges that approach. In considering zones of darkness, it ranges from the sites of production (darkrooms, studios) to those of reception (theaters/cinemas/arcades) that shaped modern media and perceptions. He argues that, in the nineteenth century, the avant-garde was often less interested in the filmed image than in everything surrounding it: the screen, the projected light, the darkness, the experience of disembodiment. He argues that darkness has a history separate from night, evil, or the color black, and has a specifically modern manifestation as a media technology. We are all aware of the "velvet light trap” in photography, but at the heart of this book are technologies of darkness crucial to cinema that were commonly known as "the black screen,” but have, over time, faded from the storied discourse.
Download or read book Candle in the Darkness Refiner s Fire Book 1 written by Lynn Austin and published by Bethany House. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A gripping tale told by a gifted writer."--Beverly Lewis Caroline Fletcher is caught in a nation split apart and torn between the ones she loves and a truth she can't deny The daughter of a wealthy slave-holding family from Richmond, Virginia, Caroline Fletcher is raised to believe slavery is God-ordained and acceptable. But on awakening to its cruelty and injustice, her eyes are opened to the men and women who have cared tirelessly for her. At the same time, her father and her fiance, Charles St. John, are fighting for the Confederacy and their beloved way of life and traditions. Where does Caroline's loyalty lie? Emboldened by her passion to make a difference and her growing faith, will she risk everything she holds dear?
Download or read book The Archaeology of Wak as written by Tamara L. Bray and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2015-02-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this edited volume, Andean wak'as—idols, statues, sacred places, images, and oratories—play a central role in understanding Andean social philosophies, cosmologies, materialities, temporalities, and constructions of personhood. Top Andean scholars from a variety of disciplines cross regional, theoretical, and material boundaries in their chapters, offering innovative methods and theoretical frameworks for interpreting the cultural particulars of Andean ontologies and notions of the sacred. Wak'as were understood as agentive, nonhuman persons within many Andean communities and were fundamental to conceptions of place, alimentation, fertility, identity, and memory and the political construction of ecology and life cycles. The ethnohistoric record indicates that wak'as were thought to speak, hear, and communicate, both among themselves and with humans. In their capacity as nonhuman persons, they shared familial relations with members of the community, for instance, young women were wed to local wak'as made of stone and wak'as had sons and daughters who were identified as the mummified remains of the community's revered ancestors. Integrating linguistic, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archaeological data, The Archaeology of Wak'as advances our understanding of the nature and culture of wak'as and contributes to the larger theoretical discussions on the meaning and role of–"the sacred” in ancient contexts.
Download or read book Magical House Protection written by Brian Hoggard and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-04-22 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in magic and particularly the power of witchcraft was once a deep and enduring presence in popular culture. “Diving into Brian Hoggard’s Magical House Protection is a remarkable experience... [It] provides an immersive and fascinating read.”—Fortean Times People created and concealed many objects to protect themselves from harmful magic. Detailed are the principal forms of magical house protection in Britain and beyond from the fourteenth century to the present day. Witch-bottles, dried cats, horse skulls, written charms, protection marks and concealed shoes were all used widely as methods of repelling, diverting or trapping negative energies. Many of these practices and symbols can be found around the globe, demonstrating the universal nature of efforts by people to protect themselves from witchcraft. From the introduction: The most popular locations to conceal objects within buildings are usually at portals such as the hearth, the threshold and also voids or dead spaces. This suggests that people believed it was possible for dark forces to travel through the landscape and attack them in their homes. Whether these forces were emanations from a witch in the form of a spell, a witch’s familiar pestering their property, an actual witch flying in spirit or a combination of all of those is difficult to tell. Additional sources of danger could be ghosts, fairies and demons. People went to great lengths to ensure their homes and property were protected, highlighting the fact that these beliefs and fears were visceral and, as far as they were concerned, literally terrifying.
Download or read book Turning Darkness Into Light written by Marie Brennan and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marie Brennan's Turning Darkness Into Light is a delightful fantasy of manners, the heir to the award-winning Natural History of Dragons series, a perfect stepping stone into an alternate Victorian-esque fantasy landscape. "Overwhelmingly fun."—io9 on The Tropic of Serpents As the renowned granddaughter of Isabella Camherst (Lady Trent, of the riveting and daring Draconic adventure memoirs) Audrey Camherst has always known she, too, would want to make her scholarly mark upon a chosen field of study. When Lord Gleinheigh recruits Audrey to decipher a series of ancient tablets holding the secrets of the ancient Draconean civilization, she has no idea that her research will plunge her into an intricate conspiracy, one meant to incite rebellion and invoke war. Alongside dearest childhood friend and fellow archeologist Kudshayn, must find proof of the conspiracy before it’s too late. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Archaeology of Caves in Ireland written by Marion Dowd and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-01-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archaeology of caves in Ireland is a ground-breaking and unique study of the enigmatic, unseen and dark silent world of caves. People have engaged with caves for the duration of human occupation of the island, spanning 10,000 years. In prehistory, subterranean landscapes were associated with the dead and the spirit world, with evidence for burials, funerary rituals and votive deposition. The advent of Christianity saw the adaptation of caves as homes and places of storage, yet they also continued to feature in religious practice. Medieval mythology and modern folklore indicate that caves were considered places of the supernatural, being particularly associated with otherworldly women. Through a combination of archaeology, mythology and popular religion, this book takes the reader on a fascinating journey that sheds new light on a hitherto neglected area of research. It encourages us to consider what underground activities might reveal about the lives lived aboveground, and leaves us in no doubt as to the cultural significance of caves in the past. Marion Dowd is Lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology at the Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland. Her doctoral research examined the role of caves in Irish prehistoric ritual and religion. She has directed excavations in many caves, and has published and lectured widely on the subject.
