Archaeology and Memory

Archaeology and Memory PDF Author: Dušan Borić
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN: 9781842173633
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Memory can be both a horrifying trauma and an empowering resource. From the Ancient Greeks to Nietzsche and Derrida, the dilemma about the relationship between history and memory has filled many pages, with one important question singled out: is the writing of history to memory a remedy or a poison? Recently, a growing interest in and preoccupation with the issue of memory, remembering and forgetting has resulted in a proliferation of published works, in various disciplines, that have memory as their focus. This trend, to which the present volume contributes, has started to occupy the dominant discourses of disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, history, anthropology and archaeology, and has also disseminated into the wider public discourse of society and culture today. Such a condition may perhaps echo the phenomenon of a melancholic experience at the turn of the millennium. Archaeology and Memory seeks to examine the diversity of mnemonic systems and their significance in different past contexts as well as the epistemological and ontological importance of archaeological practice and narratives in constituting the human historical condition. The twelve substantial contributions in this volume cover a diverse set of regional examples and focus on a range of prehistoric and classical case studies in Eurasian regional contexts as well as on the predicaments of memory in examples of the archaeologies of 'contemporary past'. From the Mesolithic and Neolithic burial chambers to the trenches of World War I and the role of materiality in international criminal courts, a number of contributors examine how people in the past have thought about their own pasts, while others reflect on our own present-day sensibilities in dealing with the material testimonies of recent history. Both kinds of papers offer wider theoretical reflections on materiality, archaeological methodologies and the ethical responsibilities of archaeological narration about the past.

Archaeology and Memory

Archaeology and Memory PDF Author: Dušan Borić
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN: 9781842173633
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Memory can be both a horrifying trauma and an empowering resource. From the Ancient Greeks to Nietzsche and Derrida, the dilemma about the relationship between history and memory has filled many pages, with one important question singled out: is the writing of history to memory a remedy or a poison? Recently, a growing interest in and preoccupation with the issue of memory, remembering and forgetting has resulted in a proliferation of published works, in various disciplines, that have memory as their focus. This trend, to which the present volume contributes, has started to occupy the dominant discourses of disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, history, anthropology and archaeology, and has also disseminated into the wider public discourse of society and culture today. Such a condition may perhaps echo the phenomenon of a melancholic experience at the turn of the millennium. Archaeology and Memory seeks to examine the diversity of mnemonic systems and their significance in different past contexts as well as the epistemological and ontological importance of archaeological practice and narratives in constituting the human historical condition. The twelve substantial contributions in this volume cover a diverse set of regional examples and focus on a range of prehistoric and classical case studies in Eurasian regional contexts as well as on the predicaments of memory in examples of the archaeologies of 'contemporary past'. From the Mesolithic and Neolithic burial chambers to the trenches of World War I and the role of materiality in international criminal courts, a number of contributors examine how people in the past have thought about their own pasts, while others reflect on our own present-day sensibilities in dealing with the material testimonies of recent history. Both kinds of papers offer wider theoretical reflections on materiality, archaeological methodologies and the ethical responsibilities of archaeological narration about the past.

Archaeologies of Memory

Archaeologies of Memory PDF Author: Ruth M. Van Dyke
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405143304
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A unique collection of newly written essays by archaeologistsworking in a variety of contexts and geographical areas,Archaeologies of Memory is a groundbreaking text thatpresents a coherent framework for the study of memory in pastsocieties. Serves as an accessible introduction to central issues in thestudy of memory, including authority and identity, and the rolememory plays in their creation and transformation. Presents a collection of newly commissioned essays that providea coherent framework for the study of memory in pastsocieties. Brings together essays from both anthropological and classicalarchaeologists. Includes contributions drawn from a variety of cultures andtime periods, including New Kingdom Egypt and the prehistoricAmerican Southwest.

The Dark Abyss of Time

The Dark Abyss of Time PDF Author: Laurent Olivier
Publisher: Archaeology in Society
ISBN: 9780759120464
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Olivier's ambitious work, newly translated into English from the French, brilliantly explicates the new approach to archaeological remains based on the theory that archaeology is the science of constantly reconstituted memory.

Place, Memory, and Healing

Place, Memory, and Healing PDF Author: Ömür Harmanşah
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317575725
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Place, Memory, and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments investigates the complex and deep histories of places, how they served as sites of memory and belonging for local communities over the centuries, and how they were appropriated and monumentalized in the hands of the political elites. Focusing on Anatolian rock monuments carved into the living rock at watery landscapes during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, this book develops an archaeology of place as a theory of cultural landscapes and as an engaged methodology of fieldwork in order to excavate the genealogies of places. Advocating that archaeology can contribute substantively to the study of places in many fields of research and engagement within the humanities and the social sciences, this book seeks to move beyond the oft-conceived notion of places as fixed and unchanging, and argues that places are always unfinished, emergent, and hybrid. Rock cut monuments of Anatolian antiquity are discussed in the historical and micro-regional context of their making at the time of the Hittite Empire and its aftermath, while the book also investigates how such rock-cut places, springs, and caves are associated with new forms of storytelling, holy figures, miracles, and healing in their post-antique life. Anybody wishing to understand places of cultural significance both archaeologically as well as through current theoretical lenses such as heritage studies, ethnography of landscapes, social memory, embodied and sensory experience of the world, post-colonialism, political ecology, cultural geography, sustainability, and globalization will find the case studies and research within this book a doorway to exploring places in new and rewarding ways.

Archaeology and the Senses

Archaeology and the Senses PDF Author: Yannis Hamilakis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107728940
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
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.

Excavating Memory

Excavating Memory PDF Author: Elizabeth Mosier
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780898233827
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. The strings of a violin have to be held in place on both ends, and the two poles of Elizabeth Mosier's book are memory (as archaeology) and forgetting (in the very moving passages about the author's mother and her descent into the blankness of Alzheimer's). The music of this book is very fine indeed, and its passion is for the preservation of objects, moments, persons, and places that Elizabeth Mosier has loved. In its clear-sighted lyric eloquence, this book is unforgettable.--Charles Baxter

The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology

The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology PDF Author: Dan Hicks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107495172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology provides an overview of the international field of historical archaeology (c.AD 1500 to the present) through seventeen specially-commissioned essays from leading researchers in the field. The volume explores key themes in historical archaeology including documentary archaeology, the writing of historical archaeology, colonialism, capitalism, industrial archaeology, maritime archaeology, cultural resource management and urban archaeology. Three special sections explore the distinctive contributions of material culture studies, landscape archaeology and the archaeology of buildings and the household. Drawing on case studies from North America, Europe, Australasia, Africa and around the world, the volume captures the breadth and diversity of contemporary historical archaeology, considers archaeology's relationship with history, cultural anthropology and other periods of archaeological study, and provides clear introductions to alternative conceptions of the field. This book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching the material remains of the recent past.

Memory and Material Culture

Memory and Material Culture PDF Author: Andrew Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139465600
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We take for granted the survival into the present of artifacts from the past. Indeed the discipline of archaeology would be impossible without the survival of such artifacts. What is the implication of the durability or ephemerality of past material culture for the reproduction of societies in the past? In this book, Andrew Jones argues that the material world offers a vital framework for the formation of collective memory. He uses the topic of memory to critique the treatment of artifacts as symbols by interpretative archaeologists and artifacts as units of information (or memes) by behavioral archaeologists, instead arguing for a treatment of artifacts as forms of mnemonic trace that have an impact on the senses. Using detailed case studies from prehistoric Europe, he further argues that archaeologists can study the relationship between mnemonic traces in the form of networks of reference in artifactual and architectural forms.

Slavery in Africa

Slavery in Africa PDF Author: Paul Lane
Publisher: OUP/British Academy
ISBN: 9780197264782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Leading archaeologists and historians provide new studies of slavery, slave resistance and the economic, environmental and political consequences of slave trading in Africa, from the first millennium AD through to the nineteenth century.

Archaeology at El Perú-Waka'

Archaeology at El Perú-Waka' PDF Author: Olivia C. Navarro-Farr
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816532419
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Archaeology at El Perú-Waka’ is the first book to summarize long-term research at this major Maya site. The results of fieldwork and subsequent analyses conducted by members of the El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project are coupled with theoretical approaches treating the topics of ritual, memory, and power as deciphered through material remains discovered at Waka’. The book is site-centered, yet the fifteen wide-ranging contributions offer readers greater insight to the richness and complexity of Classic-period Maya culture, as well as to the ways in which archaeologists believe ancient peoples negotiated their ritual lives and comprehended their own pasts. El Perú-Waka’ is an ancient Maya city located in present-day northwestern Petén, Guatemala. Rediscovered by petroleum exploration workers in the mid-1960s, it is the largest known archaeological site in the Laguna del Tigre National Park in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. The El Perú-Waka’ Regional Archaeological Project initiated scientific investigations in 2003, and through excavation and survey, researchers established that Waka’ was a key political and economic center well integrated into Classic-period lowland Maya civilization, and reconstructed many aspects of Maya life and ritual activity in this ancient community. The research detailed in this volume provides a wealth of new, substantive, and scientifically excavated data, which contributors approach with fresh theoretical insights. In the process, they lay out sound strategies for understanding the ritual manipulation of monuments, landscapes, buildings, objects, and memories, as well as related topics encompassing the performance and negotiation of power throughout the city’s extensive sociopolitical history.