Gender and Society on the Margins of Bronze Age Europe

Gender and Society on the Margins of Bronze Age Europe PDF Author: Mark Haughton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040186106
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
This book explores and critiques the underlying assumption that a binary gender system and patriarchal norms were universal in Bronze Age Europe through a careful analysis of burial practice in Ireland and Scotland. Gender and Society on the Margins of Bronze Age Europe makes a decisive and critical intervention in the debate around the nature of gender in the European Bronze Age. Tacking between scales, from the detail of local practice to a major analysis of recently excavated and analysed skeletons, it argues that binary gender was far from universal in Bronze Age Europe, and consequently questions its broader importance. Unlike bronze technology, shared widely between communities across Europe, binary gender was an optional or negotiable part of Bronze Age life. The book goes on to assess the huge implications of this evidence firstly, for the history of gender, as it indicates that there was no simple linear trajectory to binary gender and patriarchy and secondly, by demonstrating that interconnectivity in Bronze Age Europe did not result in fundamental social and ideological agreement, undermining the idea of a shared Bronze Age society. At its core, the book reimagines how gender archaeology can be conducted, inspired by the sub-discipline’s radical origins and following a method rooted in the detail of local practice. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of the European Bronze Age, gender (pre)history, and gender archaeology. It connects with major themes in theoretical thinking across the humanities, particularly relating to posthumanism, assemblage theory, embodiment and gender.

Gender and Society on the Margins of Bronze Age Europe

Gender and Society on the Margins of Bronze Age Europe PDF Author: Mark Haughton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040186106
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores and critiques the underlying assumption that a binary gender system and patriarchal norms were universal in Bronze Age Europe through a careful analysis of burial practice in Ireland and Scotland. Gender and Society on the Margins of Bronze Age Europe makes a decisive and critical intervention in the debate around the nature of gender in the European Bronze Age. Tacking between scales, from the detail of local practice to a major analysis of recently excavated and analysed skeletons, it argues that binary gender was far from universal in Bronze Age Europe, and consequently questions its broader importance. Unlike bronze technology, shared widely between communities across Europe, binary gender was an optional or negotiable part of Bronze Age life. The book goes on to assess the huge implications of this evidence firstly, for the history of gender, as it indicates that there was no simple linear trajectory to binary gender and patriarchy and secondly, by demonstrating that interconnectivity in Bronze Age Europe did not result in fundamental social and ideological agreement, undermining the idea of a shared Bronze Age society. At its core, the book reimagines how gender archaeology can be conducted, inspired by the sub-discipline’s radical origins and following a method rooted in the detail of local practice. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of the European Bronze Age, gender (pre)history, and gender archaeology. It connects with major themes in theoretical thinking across the humanities, particularly relating to posthumanism, assemblage theory, embodiment and gender.

Death and Changing Rituals

Death and Changing Rituals PDF Author: J. Rasmus Brandt
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782976396
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
The forms by which a deceased person may be brought to rest are as many as there are causes of death. In most societies the disposal of the corpse is accompanied by some form of celebration or ritual which may range from a simple act of deportment in solitude to the engagement of large masses of people in laborious and creative festivities. In a funerary context the term ritual may be taken to represent a process that incorporates all the actions performed and thoughts expressed in connection with a dying and dead person, from the preparatory pre-death stages to the final deposition of the corpse and the post-mortem stages of grief and commemoration. The contributions presented here are focused not on the examination of different funerary practices, their function and meaning, but on the changes of such rituals _ how and when they occurred and how they may be explained. Based on case studies from a range of geographical regions and from different prehistoric and historical periods, a range of key themes are examined concerning belief and ritual, body and deposition, place, performance and commemoration, exploring a complex web of practices.

The Emergent Past

The Emergent Past PDF Author: Chris Fowler
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199656371
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The Emergent Past approaches archaeological research as an engagement within an assemblage - a particular configuration of materials, things, places, humans, animals, plants, techniques, technologies, forces, and ideas. Fowler develops a new interpretative method for that engagement, exploring how archaeological research can, and does, reconfigure each assemblage. Recognising the successive relationships that give rise to and reshaped assemblages overtime, he proposes a relational realist understanding of archaeological evidence based on a reading of relational and non-representational theories. The volume explores this new approach through the first eversynthesis of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices in Northeast England (c.2500-1500 BC). His study moves from analyses of changing types of mortuary practices and associated things and places, to a vivid discussion of how past relationships unfolded over time and gave rise to specific patterns in the material remains we have today.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age

The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age PDF Author: Harry Fokkens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199572860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1012

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age is a wide-ranging survey of a crucial period in prehistory during which many social, economic, and technological changes took place. Written by expert specialists in the field, the book provides coverage both of the themes that characterize the period, and of the specific developments that took place in the various countries of Europe. After an introduction and a discussion of chronology, successive chapters deal with settlement studies, burial analysis, hoards and hoarding, monumentality, rock art, cosmology, gender, and trade, as well as a series of articles on specific technologies and crafts (such as transport, metals, glass, salt, textiles, and weighing). The second half of the book covers each country in turn. From Ireland to Russia, Scandinavia to Sicily, every area is considered, and up to date information on important recent finds is discussed in detail. The book is the first to consider the whole of the European Bronze Age in both geographical and thematic terms, and will be the standard book on the subject for the foreseeable future.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers PDF Author: Vicki Cummings
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191025275
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1361

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Book Description
For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

Transformation by Fire

Transformation by Fire PDF Author: Gabriel Cooney
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816531145
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Transformation by Fire offers a current assessment of the archaeological research on the widespread social practice of cremation. Editors Ian Kuijt, Colin P. Quinn, and Gabriel Cooney chart a path for the development of interpretive archaeology surrounding this complex social process.

Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland

Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland PDF Author: Gabriel Cooney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135108552
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland is the first volume to be devoted solely to the Irish Neolithic, using an innovative landscape and anthropological perspective to provide significant new insights on the period. Gabriel Cooney argues that the archaeological evidence demonstrates a much more complex picture than the current orthodoxy on Neolithic Europe, with its assumption of mobile lifestyles, suggests. He integrates the study of landscape, settlement, agriculture, material culture and burial practice to offer a rounded, realistic picture of the complexities and the realities of Neolithic lives and societies in Ireland.

Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece

Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece PDF Author: Helène Whittaker von Hofsten
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107049873
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This book argues that religious beliefs played a significant role in the social changes that occurred in Middle Helladic Greece.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial PDF Author: Sarah Tarlow
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191650390
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 921

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial reviews the current state of mortuary archaeology and its practice, highlighting its often contentious place in the modern socio-politics of archaeology. It contains forty-four chapters which focus on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading, international scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods, such as the middle palaeolithic to the twentieth century, and geographical areas which include Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Combining up-to-date knowledge of relevant archaeological research with critical assessments of the theme and an evaluation of future research trajectories, it draws attention to the social, symbolic, and theoretical aspects of interpreting mortuary archaeology. The volume is well-illustrated with maps, plans, photographs, and illustrations and is ideally suited for students and researchers.

Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece

Religion and Society in Middle Bronze Age Greece PDF Author: Helène Whittaker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113995265X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
The Middle Helladic period has received little attention, partially because of scholars' view of it as merely the prelude to the Mycenaean period and partially because of the dearth of archaeological evidence from the period. In this book, Helène Whittaker demonstrates that Middle Helladic Greece is far more interesting than its material culture might at first suggest. Whittaker comprehensively reviews and discusses the archaeological evidence for religion on the Greek mainland, focusing on the relationship between religious expression and ideology. The book argues that religious beliefs and rituals played a significant role in the social changes that were occurring at the time. The arguments and conclusions of this book will be relevant beyond the Greek Bronze Age and will contribute to the general archaeological debate on prehistoric religion.