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Author: Barbara L. Stark
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
ISBN: 1950446190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438
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Book Description
In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period. The political analysis considers archaeological evidence related to several organizational principles: collective versus autocratic, corporate versus exclusionary/network, and segmentary (unspecialized versus specialized). Many variables related to these principles used by other scholars are either suited to historically documented states, not archaeological ones, or ambiguous. Many published studies either focus on a particular city or use documents or other evidence drawn from the top of the settlement hierarchy, characterizing the whole society politically from a biased sample. This political analysis is regional in scope and attentive to variation in the settlement hierarchy, providing a guidepost to analysis of political principles with archaeological data.
Author: Barbara L. Stark
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
ISBN: 1950446190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438
Get Book
Book Description
In this volume, Barbara Stark examines settlement in the coastal plain of lowland Mesoamerica, which was richly endowed with fertile soil and valued tropical resources such as jaguars, cacao, avian species with bright plumage, and cotton. The book provides basic archaeological data about regional settlement from three decades of survey research in south-central Veracruz in the western lower Papaloapan basin, a region with low density urbanism. The data reveals political and social change, with consolidation of wealth by elite families during the Late Classic period. The political analysis considers archaeological evidence related to several organizational principles: collective versus autocratic, corporate versus exclusionary/network, and segmentary (unspecialized versus specialized). Many variables related to these principles used by other scholars are either suited to historically documented states, not archaeological ones, or ambiguous. Many published studies either focus on a particular city or use documents or other evidence drawn from the top of the settlement hierarchy, characterizing the whole society politically from a biased sample. This political analysis is regional in scope and attentive to variation in the settlement hierarchy, providing a guidepost to analysis of political principles with archaeological data.
Author: Elías José Palti
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154247X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
In the past few decades, much political-philosophical reflection has been dedicated to the realm of "the political." Many of the key figures in contemporary political theory—Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Reinhart Koselleck, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj i ek, among others—have dedicated themselves to explaining power relations, but in many cases they take the concept of the political for granted, as if it were a given, an eternal essence. In An Archaeology of the Political, Elías José Palti argues that the dimension of reality known as the political is not a natural, transhistorical entity. Instead, he claims that the horizon of the political arose in the context of a series of changes that affirmed the power of absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe and was successively reconfigured from this period up to the present. Palti traces this series of redefinitions accompanying alterations in regimes of power, thus describing a genealogy of the concept of the political. Perhaps most important, An Archaeology of the Political brings to theoretical discussions a sound historical perspective, illuminating the complex influences of both theology and secularization on our understanding of the political in the contemporary world.
Author: Jorrit M. Kelder
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789088907982
Category : Aegean Sea
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In this book the much-debated problem of political organization in Mycenaean Greece (ca. 1400-1200 BC) is analyzed and contextualized through the prism of archaeology and contemporary textual (Linear B, Egyptian and Hittite) evidence. From the early 14th century BC onwards, Hittite texts refer to a land Ahhiya(wa). The exact geographic position of this land has been the focus of academic debate for more than a century, but most specialists nowadays agree that it must have been a Hittite designation for a part, or all of, the Mycenaean world. On at least two occasions, the ruler of Ahhiyawa is designated as LUGAL.GAL -'Great King'-; a title that was normally reserved for a select group of kings (such as the kings of Egypt, Assyria, Mitanni, Babylon and Hatti itself). The Hittite attribution of this title thus seems to signify the Ahhiyawan King's supra-regional importance: it indicates his power over other, 'lesser' kings, and suggests that his relation to these vassals must have been comparable to the relations between the Hittite King and his own vassal rulers. The apparent Hittite perception of such an important ruler in the Mycenaean world is, however, completely at odds with the prevailing view of the Mycenaean world as a patchwork of independent states, all of which were ruled by a local 'wanax' -King. The papers in this volume address this apparent dichotomy and discuss various interpretations of the available evidence, and contextualize the role of the ruler in the Mycenaean world through comparisons with the contemporary Near East.
Author: Andrew M. Bauer
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443831379
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
The Archaeology of Politics is a collection of essays that examines political action and practice in the past through studies and analyses of material culture from the perspective of anthropological archaeology. Contributors to this volume explore a variety of multi-scalar relationships between past peoples, places, objects and environments. At stake in this volume is what it is that constitutes politics, its social and cultural location, fields of analysis, its materiality and sociology and especially its position and possibilities as a conceptual and analytical category in archaeological investigations of past socio-cultural worlds. Our primary goals are twofold: the problematization and re-conceptualization of politics from its understanding as a reified essence or structure of political forms (e.g., a State) to a fluid, dynamic and culturally inflected set of practices; and, second, to consider politics’ entanglement with the materiality of socio-cultural worlds at multiple-scales through the demonstration of innovative analytical approaches to the material record. The volume is a tightly integrated group of essays exploring an assortment of case studies that offer new theoretical insight to archaeological and historical analyses of politics.
Author: Charles W. Hartley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139789384
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 489
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Book Description
For thousands of years, the geography of Eurasia has facilitated travel, conquest and colonization by various groups, from the Huns in ancient times to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the past century. This book brings together archaeological investigations of Eurasian regimes and revolutions ranging from the Bronze Age to the modern day, from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in the west to the Mongolian steppe and the Korean Peninsula in the east. The authors examine a wide-ranging series of archaeological studies in order to better understand the role of politics in the history and prehistory of the region. This book re-evaluates the significance of power, authority and ideology in the emergence and transformation of ancient and modern societies in this vast continent.
Author: Sarah B. Barber
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131744082X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
This exciting collection explores the interplay of religion and politics in the precolumbian Americas. Each thought-provoking contribution positions religion as a primary factor influencing political innovations in this period, reinterpreting major changes through an examination of how religion both facilitated and constrained transformations in political organization and status relations. Offering unparalleled geographic and temporal coverage of this subject, Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas spans the entire precolumbian period, from Preceramic Peru to the Contact period in eastern North America, with case studies from North, Middle, and South America. Religion and Politics in the Ancient Americas considers the ways in which religion itself generated political innovation and thus enabled political centralization to occur. It moves beyond a "Great Tradition" focus on elite religion to understand how local political authority was negotiated, contested, bolstered, and undermined within diverse constituencies, demonstrating how religion has transformed non-Western societies. As well as offering readers fresh perspectives on specific archaeological cases, this book breaks new ground in the archaeological examination of religion and society.
Author: Dries Daems
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000344738
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology turns to complex systems thinking in search of a suitable framework to explore social complexity in Archaeology. Social complexity in archaeology is commonly related to properties of complex societies such as states, as opposed to so-called simple societies such as tribes or chiefdoms. These conceptualisations of complexity are ultimately rooted in Eurocentric perspectives with problematic implications for the field of archaeology. This book provides an in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity as the core concept in archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of the past, integrating approaches from complex systems thinking, archaeological theory, social practice theory, and sustainability and resilience science. The book covers a long-term perspective of social change and stability, tracing the full cycle of complexity trajectories, from emergence and development to collapse, regeneration and transformation of communities and societies. It offers a broad vision on social complexity as a core concept for the present and future development of archaeology. This book is intended to be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of archaeology and related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, as well as the natural sciences studying human-environment interactions in the past.
Author: Christopher A. Pool
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
This volume presents new information from a program of intensive archaeological survey and surface collection at an important Olmec and Epi-Olmec center. A dual strategy of systematic interval transect sampling and full-coverage survey of architectural features and artifact concentrations permits an evaluation of the relative effectiveness of these commonly employed methods. Auger testing in floodplain areas yielded evidence of extensive buried deposits. Distributional analysis of the surface and subsurface data documents the site's growth and decline from 900 BC to AD 900 in radiocarbon years and confirm that Tres Zapotes achieved its apogee during the Late and Terminal Formative periods (400 BC--AD 300). An attribute analysis of burned earthen artifacts discriminates between daub and probable kiln remains, helping to define ceramic production loci. Interpretive chapters discuss the organization of ceramic and obsidian craft production, concluding that craft activities were mainly household based with little elite control over production. The concluding synthesis argues for weak centralization of authority of Tres Zapotes and highlights variability in the political and economic processes affecting forms of urbanism in the lowlands of Mesoamerica.
Author: Randall H. McGuire
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520254910
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313
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Book Description
“It is rare to read an archaeological book that has the capacity to inspire, as this one has.”—Mark P. Leone, author of The Archaeology of Liberty in an American Capital “Archaeology as Political Action is a highly original work that will be important for archaeologists and others concerned with processes of social change in the world today and, more importantly, with making a difference.”—Thomas C. Patterson, coeditor of Foundations of Social Archaeology “This powerful statement by a leading archaeological thinker has profound implications for rigorous archaeological interpretation, community collaboration, and political intervention.”—Stephen W. Silliman, coeditor of Historical Archaeology
Author: Jonathan Haas
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461512972
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
What is the role of leadership in society? Why do people surrender their political autonomy to the decision-making authority of leaders and rulers? Why do people follow the commands of their leaders? Who gets to be king/chief/emperor and why? Why are some societies centralized while others are not? The papers in this volume draw on the archaeological record of societies from around the world to address these critical issues in contemporary social science.
