Grounding Knowledge/walking Land

Grounding Knowledge/walking Land PDF Author: Christopher Evans
Publisher: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Tracking knowledge down to ground concerned with trail-based archaeology, journeys and histories, this is a volume of both firsts and thick context. At face-value it documents almost a decade of groundbreaking investigations within the Annapurna highlands of Nepal. Including survey recording of fort and settlement sites, from the outset the projects focus was the extraordinary ruins of Kohla Sombre Kohla, The Three Villages the ancestral settlement of the Tami-mai (Gurung) community, who hosted and instigated the fieldwork programme. Ultimately, only a single seasons excavation was conducted, before the project was cut short by the political insurgency within the country. It concluded with holding a great shamans meeting in Pokhara in 2002, at which their historical oral texts were presented. Narrating the long migration of the Tamu-mai into the region and down from a distant north, the present volume includes the full translation of one of these oral epics, the Lemako Roh Pye. The project represents a unique collaboration between archaeologists, anthropologists and a shaman. Including interviews with upland inhabitants, the volume encompasses the diverse voices of both its immediate participants and the local community. Fulsome in its presentation of the archaeological data and rich in ethnographic source-material, not only is this book crucial for Himalayan culture studies generally, but also relevant for any concerned with the construction and context of the past in the present, and the active forging of ethno-historical identities.

Grounding Knowledge/walking Land

Grounding Knowledge/walking Land PDF Author: Christopher Evans
Publisher: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tracking knowledge down to ground concerned with trail-based archaeology, journeys and histories, this is a volume of both firsts and thick context. At face-value it documents almost a decade of groundbreaking investigations within the Annapurna highlands of Nepal. Including survey recording of fort and settlement sites, from the outset the projects focus was the extraordinary ruins of Kohla Sombre Kohla, The Three Villages the ancestral settlement of the Tami-mai (Gurung) community, who hosted and instigated the fieldwork programme. Ultimately, only a single seasons excavation was conducted, before the project was cut short by the political insurgency within the country. It concluded with holding a great shamans meeting in Pokhara in 2002, at which their historical oral texts were presented. Narrating the long migration of the Tamu-mai into the region and down from a distant north, the present volume includes the full translation of one of these oral epics, the Lemako Roh Pye. The project represents a unique collaboration between archaeologists, anthropologists and a shaman. Including interviews with upland inhabitants, the volume encompasses the diverse voices of both its immediate participants and the local community. Fulsome in its presentation of the archaeological data and rich in ethnographic source-material, not only is this book crucial for Himalayan culture studies generally, but also relevant for any concerned with the construction and context of the past in the present, and the active forging of ethno-historical identities.

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.

The Old Ways

The Old Ways PDF Author: Robert Macfarlane
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101601078
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places and Underland, an exploration of walking and thinking In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive voice, The Old Ways folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His walks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird islands of the Scottish northwest, from Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he crosses paths with walkers of many kinds—wanderers, pilgrims, guides, and artists. Above all this is a book about walking as a journey inward and the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move. Macfarlane discovers that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but of feeling, knowing, and thinking.

Making One's Way in the World

Making One's Way in the World PDF Author: Martin Bell
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789254035
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
The book draws on the evidence of landscape archaeology, palaeoenvironmental studies, ethnohistory and animal tracking to address the neglected topic of how we identify and interpret past patterns of movement in the landscape. It challenges the pessimism of previous generations which regarded prehistoric routes such as hollow ways as generally undatable. The premise is that archaeologists tend to focus on ‘sites’ while neglecting the patterns of habitual movement that made them part of living landscapes. Evidence of past movement is considered in a multi-scalar way from the individual footprint to the long distance path including the traces created in vegetation by animal and human movement. It is argued that routes may be perpetuated over long timescales creating landscape structures which influence the activities of subsequent generations. In other instances radical changes of axes of communication and landscape structures provide evidence of upheaval and social change. Palaeoenvironmental and ethnohistorical evidence from the American North West coast sets the scene with evidence for the effects of burning, animal movement, faeces deposition and transplantation which can create readable routes along which are favoured resources. Evidence from European hunter-gatherer sites hints at similar practices of niche construction on a range of spatial scales. On a local scale, footprints help to establish axes of movement, the locations of lost settlements and activity areas. Wood trackways likewise provide evidence of favoured patterns of movement and past settlement location. Among early farming communities alignments of burial mounds, enclosure entrances and other monuments indicate axes of communication. From the middle Bronze Age in Europe there is more clearly defined evidence of trackways flanked by ditches and fields. Landscape scale survey and excavation enables the dating of trackways using spatial relationships with dated features and many examples indicate long-term continuity of routeways. Where fields flank routeways a range of methods, including scientific approaches, provide dates. Prehistorians have often assumed that Ridgeways provided the main axes of early movement but there is little evidence for their early origins and rather better evidence for early routes crossing topography and providing connections between different environmental zones. The book concludes with a case study of the Weald of South East England which demonstrates that some axes of cross topographic movement used as droveways, and generally considered as early medieval, can be shown to be of prehistoric origin. One reason that dryland routes have proved difficult to recognise is that insufficient attention has been paid to the parts played by riverine and maritime longer distance communication. It is argued that understanding the origins of the paths we use today contributes to appreciation of the distinctive qualities of landscapes. Appreciation will help to bring about effective strategies for conservation of mutual benefit to people and wildlife by maintaining and enhancing corridors of connectivity between different landscape zones including fragmented nature reserves and valued places. In these ways an understanding of past routeways can contribute to sustainable landscapes, communities and quality of life

Heritage Studies

Heritage Studies PDF Author: Marie Louise Stig Sørensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135249490
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
This is the first volume specifically dedicated to the consolidation and clarification of Heritage Studies as a distinct field with its own means of investigation. It presents the range of methods that can be used and illustrates their application through case studies from different parts of the world, including the UK and USA. The challenge that the collection makes explicit is that Heritage Studies must develop a stronger recognition of the scope and nature of its data and a concise yet explorative understanding of its analytical methods. The methods considered fall within three broad categories: textual/discourse analysis, methods for investigating people’s attitudes and behaviour; and methods for exploring the material qualities of heritage. The methods discussed and illustrated range from techniques such as text analysis, interviews, participant observation, to semiotic analysis of heritage sites and the use of GIS. Each paper discusses the ways in which methods used in social analysis generally are explored and adapted to the specific demands that arise when applied to the investigation of heritage in its many forms. Heritage Studies is a seminal volume that will help to define the field. The global perspective and the shared focus upon the development of reflexive methodologies ensure that the volume explores these central issues in a manner that is simultaneously case-specific and of general relevance.

Maoists at the Hearth

Maoists at the Hearth PDF Author: Judith Pettigrew
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812244923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Based on ethnographic research, this book provides insights on the Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006, the impact of the war on every day life in the villages and the effect the conflict had on the area even after the war ended.

Gaining Ground

Gaining Ground PDF Author: Nancy S. Seasholes
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262350211
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
Why and how Boston was transformed by landmaking. Fully one-sixth of Boston is built on made land. Although other waterfront cities also have substantial areas that are built on fill, Boston probably has more than any city in North America. In Gaining Ground historian Nancy Seasholes has given us the first complete account of when, why, and how this land was created.The story of landmaking in Boston is presented geographically; each chapter traces landmaking in a different part of the city from its first permanent settlement to the present. Seasholes introduces findings from recent archaeological investigations in Boston, and relates landmaking to the major historical developments that shaped it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, landmaking in Boston was spurred by the rapid growth that resulted from the burgeoning China trade. The influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century prompted several large projects to create residential land—not for the Irish, but to keep the taxpaying Yankees from fleeing to the suburbs. Many landmaking projects were undertaken to cover tidal flats that had been polluted by raw sewage discharged directly onto them, removing the "pestilential exhalations" thought to cause illness. Land was also added for port developments, public parks, and transportation facilities, including the largest landmaking project of all, the airport. A separate chapter discusses the technology of landmaking in Boston, explaining the basic method used to make land and the changes in its various components over time. The book is copiously illustrated with maps that show the original shoreline in relation to today's streets, details from historical maps that trace the progress of landmaking, and historical drawings and photographs.

Library of Universal Knowledge

Library of Universal Knowledge PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Languages : en
Pages : 842

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Book Description


Oral Literature in Africa

Oral Literature in Africa PDF Author: Ruth Finnegan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1906924708
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

The Ground Beneath Us

The Ground Beneath Us PDF Author: Paul Bogard
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316342289
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
When a teaspoon of soil contains millions of species, and when we pave over the earth on a daily basis, what does that mean for our future? What is the risk to our food supply, the planet's wildlife, the soil on which every life-form depends? How much undeveloped, untrodden ground do we even have left? Paul Bogard set out to answer these questions in The Ground Beneath Us, and what he discovered is astounding. From New York (where more than 118,000,000 tons of human development rest on top of Manhattan Island) to Mexico City (which sinks inches each year into the Aztec ruins beneath it), Bogard shows us the weight of our cities' footprints. And as we see hallowed ground coughing up bullets at a Civil War battlefield; long-hidden remains emerging from below the sites of concentration camps; the dangerous, alluring power of fracking; the fragility of the giant redwoods, our planet's oldest living things; the surprises hidden under a Major League ballpark's grass; and the sublime beauty of our few remaining wildest places, one truth becomes blazingly clear: The ground is the easiest resource to forget, and the last we should. Bogard's The Ground Beneath Us is deeply transporting reading that introduces farmers, geologists, ecologists, cartographers, and others in a quest to understand the importance of something too many of us take for granted: dirt. From growth and life to death and loss, and from the subsurface technologies that run our cities to the dwindling number of idyllic Edens that remain, this is the fascinating story of the ground beneath our feet.