Investigating Archaeological Cultures

Author : Benjamin W. Roberts,Marc Vander Linden
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2011-06-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781441969705

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Investigating Archaeological Cultures by Benjamin W. Roberts,Marc Vander Linden Pdf

Defining "culture" is an important step in undertaking archaeological research. Any thorough study of a particular culture first has to determine what that culture contains-- what particular time period, geographic region, and group of people make up that culture. The study of archaeology has many accepted definitions of particular cultures, but recently these accepted definitions have come into question. As archaeologists struggle to define cultures, they also seek to define the components of culture. This volume brings together 21 international case studies to explore the meaning of "culture" for regions around the globe and periods from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age and beyond. Taking lessons and overarching themes from these studies, the contributors draw important conclusions about cultural transmission, technology development, and cultural development. The result is a comprehensive model for approaching the study of culture, broken down into regions (Russia, Continental Europe, North America, Britain, and Africa), materials (Lithics, Ceramics, Metals) and time periods. This work will be valuable to all archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, particularly those studying material culture.

Author : Benjamin W. Roberts,Marc Vander Linden
Publisher : Springer
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2011-06-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1441969713

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Investigating Archaeological Cultures by Benjamin W. Roberts,Marc Vander Linden Pdf

Defining "culture" is an important step in undertaking archaeological research. Any thorough study of a particular culture first has to determine what that culture contains-- what particular time period, geographic region, and group of people make up that culture. The study of archaeology has many accepted definitions of particular cultures, but recently these accepted definitions have come into question. As archaeologists struggle to define cultures, they also seek to define the components of culture. This volume brings together 21 international case studies to explore the meaning of "culture" for regions around the globe and periods from the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age and beyond. Taking lessons and overarching themes from these studies, the contributors draw important conclusions about cultural transmission, technology development, and cultural development. The result is a comprehensive model for approaching the study of culture, broken down into regions (Russia, Continental Europe, North America, Britain, and Africa), materials (Lithics, Ceramics, Metals) and time periods. This work will be valuable to all archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, particularly those studying material culture.

Author : Linda M. Hurcombe
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2014-04-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317814559

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Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory by Linda M. Hurcombe Pdf

Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory provides new approaches and integrates a broad range of data to address a neglected topic, organic material in the prehistoric record. Providing news ideas and connections and suggesting revisionist ways of thinking about broad themes in the past, this book demonstrates the efficacy of an holistic approach by using examples and cases studies. No other book covers such a broad range of organic materials from a social and object biography perspective, or concentrates so fully on approaches to the missing components of prehistoric material culture. This book will be an essential addition for those people wishing to understand better the nature and importance of organic materials as the ’missing majority’ of prehistoric material culture.

Author : Susan M. Pearce
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 132 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Antiquities
ISBN : UOM:39015063681004

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Researching Material Culture by Susan M. Pearce Pdf

Author : James G. Cusick
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 511 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2015-03-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780809334100

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Studies in Culture Contact by James G. Cusick Pdf

People have long been fascinated about times in human history when different cultures and societies first came into contact with each other, how they reacted to that contact, and why it sometimes occurred peacefully and at other times was violent or catastrophic. Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change, and Archaeology, edited by James G. Cusick,seeks to define the role of culture contact in human history, to identify issues in the study of culture contact in archaeology, and to provide a critical overview of the major theoretical approaches to the study of culture and contact. In this collection of essays, anthropologists and archaeologists working in Europe and the Americas consider three forms of culture contact—colonization, cultural entanglement, and symmetrical exchange. Part I provides a critical overview of theoretical approaches to the study of culture contact, offering assessments of older concepts in anthropology, such as acculturation, as well as more recently formed concepts, including world systems and center-periphery models of contact. Part II contains eleven case studies of specific contact situations and their relationships to the archaeological record, with times and places as varied as pre- and post-Hispanic Mexico, Iron Age France, Jamaican sugar plantations, European provinces in the Roman Empire, and the missions of Spanish Florida. Studies in Culture Contact provides an extensive review of the history of culture contact in anthropological studies and develops a broad framework for studying culture contact’s role, moving beyond a simple formulation of contact and change to a more complex understanding of the amalgam of change and continuity in contact situations.

Author : Martijn M. Van den Bel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 752 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2015-09-02
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9088903301

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Archaeological Investigations Between Cayenne Island and the Maroni River by Martijn M. Van den Bel Pdf

Stratigraphic archaeological research in French Guiana is barely 50 years old and has been conducted primarily in the coastal zone, stretching approximately between 5 and 50 kilometres from the Atlantic coast to the Precambrian Shield. This bias, mainly caused by means of modern infrastructure, has sketched an archaeological record concerning pre-Columbian French Guiana focussing on the Late Ceramic Age (AD 900-1500) of Cayenne Island as well as the western Holocene coastal plains. The present study contains the results of six archaeological investigations, conducted from a compliance archaeological perspective, in order to enhance our knowledge of the afore-mentioned coastal area. It not only presents us with fresh archaeological data on the (Late) Archaic and Early Ceramic Age, a hiatus that is now partially filled up, but also sheds new light on the Late Ceramic Age of this specific region concerning funerary rites, ceramic series and subsistence economy. Martijn van den Bel studied History and Archaeology of Indigenous America at Leiden University and graduated in 1995 with an ethnoarchaeological study on the Palikur potters of French Guiana. Currently he works as a project leader for Inrap in French Guiana. He carries out compliance archaeological research in the French Guiana and the French Lesser Antilles. Next to archaeology, Martijn is interested in the early history of the Guianas and the Lesser Antilles, notably the encounter between Amerindians and Europeans during the 16th and 17th century, resulting in various publications.

Author : Adam T. Smith,Karen Sydney Rubinson
Publisher : Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015059577166

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Archaeology in the Borderlands by Adam T. Smith,Karen Sydney Rubinson Pdf

Set on a broad isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas, Caucasia has traditionally been portrayed as either a well-trod highway linking southwest Asia and the Eurasian Steppe or an isolated periphery of the political and cultural centers of the ancient world. Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond critically re-examines traditional archaeological work in the region, assembling accounts of recent investigations by an international group of scholars from the Caucasus, its neighbors, Europe, and the United States. The twelve chapters in this book address the ways archaeologists must re-conceptualize the region within our larger historical and anthropological frameworks of thought, presenting critical new materials from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age. Challenging traditional models of economic, political, cultural, and social marginality that read the past through Cold War geographies, Archaeology in the Borderlands provides a new challenge to long dominant interpretations of the pre-, proto-, and early history of Eurasia, opening new possibilities for understanding a region that is critical to regional order in the post-Soviet era. This collection represents the first attempt to grapple with the problems and possibilities for archaeology in the Caucasus and its neighboring regions sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent states.

Author : Tianlong Jiao
Publisher : Cambria Press
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : History
ISBN : 9781934043165

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The Neolithic of Southeast China by Tianlong Jiao Pdf

Leading archaeologist Tianlong Jiao takes readers on an archaeological investigation into the patterns and processes involved in the cultural changes on the coast of Southeast China during the Neolithic period. (Archeology/Anthropology)

Author : Eric Jones,John Creese
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2017-01-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781607325109

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Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology by Eric Jones,John Creese Pdf

Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology examines Northern Iroquoian archaeology through various lenses at multiple spatial levels, including individual households, village constructions, relationships between villages in a local region, and relationships between various Iroquoian nations and their territorial homelands. The volume includes scholars and scholarship from both sides of the US-Canadian border, presenting a contextualized analysis of settlement and landscape for a broad range of past Northern Iroquoian societies. The research in this volume represents a new wave of spatial research—exploring beyond settlement patterning to the process and the meaning behind spatial arrangement of past communities and people—and describes new approaches being used for better understanding of past Northern Iroquoian societies. Addressing topics ranging from household task-scapes and gender relations to bioarchaeology and social network analysis, Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology demonstrates the vitality of current archaeological research into ancestral Northern Iroquoian societies and its growing contribution to wider debates in North American archaeology. This cutting-edge research will be of interest to archaeologists globally, as well as academics and graduate students studying Northern Iroquoian societies and cultures, geography, and spatial analysis. Contributors: Kathleen M. S. Allen, Jennifer A. Birch, William Engelbrecht, Crystal Forrest, John P. Hart, Sandra Katz, Robert H. Pihl, Aleksandra Pradzynski, Erin C. Rodriguez, Dean R. Snow, Ronald F. Williamson, Rob Wojtowicz

Author : Alan P. Sullivan
Publisher : Foundations of Archaeological
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Social Science
ISBN : UCSC:32106019486650

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Archaeological Concepts for the Study of the Cultural Past by Alan P. Sullivan Pdf

An assembly of rhetoric on the tension between archaeology and cultural anthropology, the former often considered merely a sub-field of the latter, and an examination of the degree to which the relationship between the two studies may have actually inhibited archaeological investigations.

Author : Teresita Majewski,David Gaimster
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 689 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2009-06-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780387720715

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International Handbook of Historical Archaeology by Teresita Majewski,David Gaimster Pdf

In studying the past, archaeologists have focused on the material remains of our ancestors. Prehistorians generally have only artifacts to study and rely on the diverse material record for their understanding of past societies and their behavior. Those involved in studying historically documented cultures not only have extensive material remains but also contemporary texts, images, and a range of investigative technologies to enable them to build a broader and more reflexive picture of how past societies, communities, and individuals operated and behaved. Increasingly, historical archaeology refers not to a particular period, place, or a method, but rather an approach that interrogates the tensions between artifacts and texts irrespective of context. In short, historical archaeology provides direct evidence for how humans have shaped the world we live in today. Historical archaeology is a branch of global archaeology that has grown in the last 40 years from its North American base into an increasingly global community of archaeologists each studying their area of the world in a historical context. Where historical archaeology started as part of the study of the post-Columbian societies of the United States and Canada, it has now expanded to interface with the post-medieval archaeologies of Europe and the diverse post-imperial experiences of Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The 36 essays in the International Handbook of Historical Archaeology have been specially commissioned from the leading researchers in their fields, creating a wide-ranging digest of the increasingly global field of historical archaeology. The volume is divided into two sections, the first reviewing the key themes, issues, and approaches of historical archaeology today, and the second containing a series of case studies charting the development and current state of historical archaeological practice around the world. This key reference work captures the energy and diversity of this global discipline today.

Author : Lin Foxhall
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2021-06-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789256284

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Interrogating Networks by Lin Foxhall Pdf

Network theory and methodologies have become central to exploring and explaining social, economic, and political relationships and connections in past societies. However, in archaeology, the deployment of networks has sometimes been more descriptive than analytical. Methodologies have often depended upon underlying assumptions which inevitably simplify relationships that were complex and multi-faceted. However, the fragmentary, heterogenous, and usually proxy data we possess are not always amenable to reconstructing that complexity. In ancient societies, we must infer the movement of knowledge about ‘how to make things’ largely from objects themselves. This is because we usually lack direct evidence of the human relationships that entwined people with objects and their makers, and hence have only imperfect understanding of the full range of diverse factors that shaped the relationships that constituted these networks. The chapters in this volume aim to interrogate the interpretative potential of network concepts for understanding the movement over time and space of ideas about making, using and moving things through a range of archaeological case studies, which reveal both functional and dysfunctional relationships. The purpose is to consider how more broadly contextualized and multi-faceted studies can both enhance, and be enhanced by, network and related approaches. The volume contributes to the search for greater understanding of the movement and transmission of knowledge (or in some cases their absence), and to debates about how best to expand the utility of network concepts and approaches.

Author : James G. Cusick
Publisher : Southern Illinois Univ
Page : 501 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0881040827

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Studies in Culture Contact by James G. Cusick Pdf

This volume builds on the platform erected during the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial but also seeks to redress some of the inadequacies of that platform. It broadens the topic of culture contact to its most appropriate field of inquiry--human world history. Essays by 20 authors explicitly address different frameworks for the study of culture contact and apply those frameworks to the interpretation of archaeological data.

Author : Martin Carver
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781136616839

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Archaeological Investigation by Martin Carver Pdf

Drawing its numerous examples from Britain and beyond, Archaeological Investigation explores the procedures used in field archaeology travelling over the whole process from discovery to publication. Divided into four parts, it argues for a set of principles in part one, describes work in the field in part two and how to write up in part three. Part four describes the modern world in which all types of archaeologist operate, academic and professional. The central chapter ‘Projects Galore’ takes the reader on a whirlwind tour through different kinds of investigation including in caves, gravel quarries, towns, historic buildings and underwater. Archaeological Investigation intends to be a companion for a newcomer to professional archaeology – from a student introduction (part one), to first practical work (part two) to the first responsibilities for producing reports (part three) and, in part four, to the tasks of project design and heritage curation that provide the meat and drink of the fully fledged professional. The book also proposes new ways of doing things, tried out over the author’s thirty years in the field and brought together here for the first time. This is no plodding manual but an inspiring, provocative, informative and entertaining book, urging that archaeological investigation is one of the most important things society does.

Author : Jeb J. Card
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 495 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2013-10-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780809333165

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The Archaeology of Hybrid Material Culture by Jeb J. Card Pdf

In recent years, archaeologists have used the terms hybrid and hybridity with increasing frequency to describe and interpret forms of material culture. Hybridity is a way of viewing culture and human action that addresses the issue of power differentials between peoples and cultures. This approach suggests that cultures are not discrete pure entities but rather are continuously transforming and recombining. The Archaeology of Hybrid Material Culture discusses this concept and its relationship to archaeological classification and the emergence of new ethnic group identities. This collection of essays provides readers with theoretical and concrete tools for investigating objects and architecture with discernible multiple influences. The twenty-one essays are organized into four parts: ceramic change in colonial Latin America and the Caribbean; ethnicity and material culture in pre-Hispanic and colonial Latin America; culture contact and transformation in technological style; and materiality and identity. The media examined include ceramics, stone and glass implements, textiles, bone, architecture, and mortuary and bioarchaeological artifacts from North, South, and Central America, Hawai‘i, the Caribbean, Europe, and Mesopotamia. Case studies include Bronze Age Britain, Iron Age and Roman Europe, Uruk-era Turkey, African diasporic communities in the Caribbean, pre-Spanish and Pueblo revolt era Southwest, Spanish colonial impacts in the American Southeast, Central America, and the Andes, ethnographic Amazonia, historic-era New England and the Plains, the Classic Maya, nineteenth-century Hawai‘i, and Upper Paleolithic Europe. The volume is carefully detailed with more than forty maps and figures and over twenty tables. The work presented in The Archaeology of Hybrid Material Culture comes from researchers whose questions and investigations recognized the role of multiple influences on the people and material they study. Case studies include experiments in bone working in middle Missouri; images and social relationships in prehistoric and Roman Europe; technological and material hybridity in colonial Peruvian textiles; ceramic change in colonial Latin America and the Caribbean; and flaked glass tools from the leprosarium at Kalawao, Moloka‘i. The essays provide examples and approaches that may serve as a guide for other researchers dealing with similar issues.