Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective

Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective
Author: Alan P. Sullivan
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607324946

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In Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective, contributors illustrate the virtues of various ecological, experimental, statistical, typological, technological, and cognitive/social approaches for understanding the origins, formation histories, and inferential potential of a wide range of archaeological phenomena. As archaeologists worldwide create theoretically inspired and methodologically robust narratives of the cultural past, their research pivots on the principle that determining the origins and histories of archaeological phenomena is essential in understanding their relevance for a variety of anthropological problems. The chapters explore how the analysis of artifact, assemblage, and site distributions at different spatial and temporal scales provides new insights into how mobility strategies affect lithic assemblage composition, what causes unstable interaction patterns in complex societies, and which factors promote a sense of “place” in landscapes of abandoned structures. In addition, several chapters illustrate how new theoretical approaches and innovative methods promote reinterpretations of the regional significance of historically important archaeological sites such as Myrtos-Pyrgos (Crete, Greece), Aztalan (Wisconsin, USA), Tabun Cave (Israel), and Casas Grandes (Chihuahua, Mexico). The studies presented in Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective challenge orthodoxy, raise research-worthy controversies, and develop strong inferences about the diverse evolutionary pathways of humankind using theoretical perspectives that consider both new information and preexisting archaeological data. Contributors: C. Michael Barton, Brian F. Byrd, Gerald Cadogan, Philip G. Chase, Harold L. Dibble, Matthew J. Douglass, Patricia C. Fanning, Lynne Goldstein, Simon J. Holdaway, Kathryn A. Kamp, Sam Lin, Emilia Oddo, Zeljko Rezek, Julien Riel-Salvatore, Gary O. Rollefson, Jeffrey Rosenthal, Barbara J. Roth, Sissel Schroeder, Justin I. Shiner, John C. Whittaker, David R. Wilcox

Global Archaeological Theory

Global Archaeological Theory
Author: Pedro Paulo Funari
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2006-04-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0306486520

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Archaeological theory has gone through a great upheaval in the last 50 years – from the processual theory, which wanted to make archaeology more "scientific" to post-processual theory, which understands that interpreting human behavior (even of past cultures) is a subjective study. This subjective approach incorporates a plurality of readings, thereby implying that different interpretations are always possible, allowing us to modify and change our ideas under the light of new information and/or interpretive frameworks. In this way, interpretations form a continuous flow of transformation and change, and thus archaeologists do not uncover a real past but rather construct a historical past or a narrative of the past. Post-processual theory also incorporates a conscious and explicit political interest on the past of the scholar and the subject. This includes fields and topics such as gender issues, ethnicity, class, landscapes, and consumption. This reflects a conscious attempt to also decentralize the discipline, from an imperialist point of view to an empowering one. Method and theory also means being politically aware and engaged to incorporate diverse critical approaches to improve understanding of the past and the present. This book focuses on the fundamental theoretical issues found in the discipline and thus both engages and represents the very rich plurality of the post-processual approach to archaeology. The book is divided into four sections: Issues in Archaeological Theory, Archaeological Theory and Method in Action, Space and Power in Material Culture, and Images as Material Discourse.

Consumption, Status, and Sustainability

Consumption, Status, and Sustainability
Author: Paul Roscoe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2021-08-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108836046

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Focuses information from across time and culture on the relationships among status competition, consumption, and planetary sustainability.

Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest

Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest
Author: Robert J. Stokes
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2019-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607328852

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Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest presents new research on human organization in the American Southwest, examining families, households, and communities in the Ancestral Puebloan, Mogollon, and Hohokam major cultural areas, as well as the Fremont, Jornada Mogollon, and Lipan Apache areas, from the time of earliest habitation to the twenty-first century. Using historical data, dialectic approaches, problem-oriented and data-driven analysis, and ethnographic and gender studies methodologies, the contributors offer diverse interpretations of what constitutes a site, village, and community; how families and households organized their domestic space; and how this organization has influenced researchers’ interpretations of spatially derived archaeological data. Today’s archaeologists and anthropologists understand that communities operate as a multi-level, -organizational, -contextual, and -referential human creation, which informs their understanding of how people actively negotiate their way through and around community constraints. The chapters in this book creatively examine these interactions, revealing the dynamic nature of ancient and modern groups in the American Southwest. The book has two broad complementary themes: one focusing on household decision-making, identity, and structural relations with the greater community; the other concerned with community organization and integration, household roles within the community, and changes in community organization—violence and destabilization, coalescence and cooperation—over time. Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest weaves a rich tapestry of ancient and modern life through innovative approaches that will be of interest not only to Southwestern archaeologists but to all researchers and students interested in social organization at the household and community levels. Contributors: James R. Allison, Andrew Duff, Lindsay Johansson, Michael Lindeman, Myles Miller, James Potter, Alison E. Rautman, J. Jefferson Reid, Katie Richards, Oscar Rodriguez, Barbara Roth, Kristin Safi, Deni Seymour, Robert J. Stokes, Richard K. Talbot, Scott Ure, Henry Wallace, Stephanie M. Whittlesey

Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation

Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation
Author: Charles E. Orser, Jr.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-04-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812203259

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Scholars who investigate race—a label based upon real or perceived physical differences—realize that they face a formidable task. The concept has been contested and condoned, debated and denied throughout modern history. Presented with the full understanding of the complexity of the issue, Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation concentrates on the archaeological analysis of race and how race is determined in the archaeological record. Most archaeologists, even those dealing with recent history, have usually avoided the subject of race, yet Charles E. Orser, Jr., contends that its study and its implications are extremely important for the science of archaeology. Drawing upon his considerable experience as an archaeologist, and using a combination of practice theory as interpreted by Pierre Bourdieu and spatial theory as presented by Henri Lefebvre, Orser argues for an explicit archaeology of race and its interpretation. The author reviews past archaeological usages of race, including a case study from early nineteenth-century Ireland, and explores the way race was used to form ideas about the Mound Builders, the Celts, and Atlantis. He concludes with a proposal that historical archaeology—cast as modern-world archaeology—should take the lead in the archaeological analysis of race because its purview is the recent past, that period during which our conceptions of race developed.

The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies

The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies
Author: Steven L. Kuhn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2020-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317281764

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The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers. Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than 3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of change in hominin behaviour. To draw this picture together, the concluding section explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the Pleistocene. Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.

The Usage of Ochre at the Verge of Neolithisation from the Near East to the Carpathian Basin

The Usage of Ochre at the Verge of Neolithisation from the Near East to the Carpathian Basin
Author: Julia Kościuk-Załupka
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2023-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1803273372

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This volume explores the cultural meaning of ochre among the societies of the Late Epipalaeolithic/Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic from the Levant to the Carpathian Basin.

The Archaeology of Native North America

The Archaeology of Native North America
Author: Dean R. Snow
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351588249

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The Archaeology of Native North America presents the ideas, evidence, and debates regarding the initial peopling of the continent by mobile bands of hunters and gatherers and the cultural evolution of their many lines of descent over the ensuing millennia. The emergence of farming, urban centers, and complex political organization paralleled similar developments in other world areas. With the arrival of Europeans to North America and the inevitable clashes of culture, colonizers and colonists were forever changed, which is also represented in the archaeological heritage of the continent. Unlike others, this book includes Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, thus addressing broad regional interactions and the circulation of people, things, and ideas. This edition incorporates results of new archaeological research since the publication of the first edition a decade earlier. Fifty-four new box features highlight selected archaeological sites, which are publicly accessible gateways into the study of North American archaeology. The features were authored by specialists with direct knowledge of the sites and their broad importance. Glossaries are provided at the end of every chapter to clarify specialized terminology. The book is directed to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students taking survey courses in American archaeology, as well as other advanced readers. It is extensively illustrated and includes citations to sources with their own robust bibliographies, leading diligent readers deeper into the professional literature. The Archaeology of Native North America is the ideal text for courses in North American archaeology.

The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology
Author: Barbara Mills
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 929
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199978433

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The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with many of the best-studied examples of hunter-gatherer and village-based societies. Research has been carried out in the region for well over a century, and during this time the Southwest has repeatedly stood at the forefront of the development of new archaeological methods and theories. Moreover, research in the Southwest has long been a key site of collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, linguists, biological anthropologists, and indigenous intellectuals. This volume marks the most ambitious effort to take stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of the American Southwest. Over seventy top scholars have joined forces to produce an unparalleled survey of state of archaeological knowledge in the region. Themed chapters on particular methods and theories are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of the culture histories of particular archaeological sequences, from the initial Paleoindian occupation, to the rise of a major ritual center in Chaco Canyon, to the onset of the Spanish and American imperial projects. The result is an essential volume for any researcher working in the region as well as any archaeologist looking to take the pulse of contemporary trends in this key research tradition.

The Routledge Handbook of Archaeothanatology

The Routledge Handbook of Archaeothanatology
Author: Christopher J. Knüsel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 768
Release: 2022-04-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351030612

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The Routledge Handbook of Archaeothanatology spans the gap between archaeology and biological anthropology, the field and laboratory, and between francophone and anglophone funerary archaeological approaches to the remains of the dead and the understanding of societies, past and present. Interest in archaeothanatology has grown considerably in recent years in English-language scholarship. This timely publication moves away from anecdotal case studies to offer syntheses of archaeothanatological approaches with an eye to higher-level inferences about funerary behaviour and its meaning in the past. Written by francophone scholars who have contributed to the development of the field and anglophone scholars inspired by the approach, this volume offers detailed insight into the background and development of archaeothanatology, its theory, methods, applications, and its most recent advances, with a lexicon of related vocabulary. This volume is a key source for archaeo-anthropologists and bioarchaeologists. It will benefit researchers, lecturers, practitioners and students in biological anthropology, archaeology, taphonomy and forensic science. Given the interdisciplinary nature of these disciplines, and the emphasis placed on analysis in situ, this book will also be of interest to specialists in entomology, (micro)biology and soil science.