Spatial Approaches In African Archaeology

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Spatial Approaches in African Archaeology

Author : Cameron Gokee,Carla Klehm
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2023-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789811973802

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Spatial Approaches in African Archaeology by Cameron Gokee,Carla Klehm Pdf

This book explores the interplay between African archaeology and geospatial methods from three broad perspectives. First, several contributors examine the technical possibilities and limits of using satellite imagery to detect archaeological sites and model their physical environs. A second perspective is the integration of new geospatial data and methods into site- and landscape-scale analyses to better address questions about social organization and subjective experience in African pasts. A final perspective considers the interplay between geospatial technologies and community archaeology in Africa. Recognizing that GIS and RS supersede traditional divisions in African archaeology, such as different periods, geographic regions, and theoretical orientations, the chapters aim to be widely applicable. Arranged by methodological emphasis, the case studies move from technical discussions of specific geospatial tools to general applications for addressing specific sociohistorical topics. Each chapter clearly explains the links between their archaeological questions and analytical methods, as well as how their results advance our understanding of African pasts and heritage resources. Many of the chapters can serve as learning models for archaeologists who are new to GIS or curious about its applications to their work. Others represent recent advances in geospatial applications of greater interest to more seasoned GIS practitioners, demonstrating the potential for African scholarship to contribute to methodological innovations. This book is of interest to students and researchers of African and historical archaeology and anthropology. Previously published in African Archaeological Review Volume 37, issue 1, March 2020

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory

Author : Stephanie Wynne-Jones,Jeffrey Fleisher
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2015-06-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317506836

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Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory by Stephanie Wynne-Jones,Jeffrey Fleisher Pdf

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory explores the place of Africa in archaeological theory, and the place of theory in African archaeology. The centrality of Africa to global archaeological thinking is highlighted, with a particular focus on materiality and agency in contemporary interpretation. As a means to explore the nature of theory itself, the volume also addresses differences between how African models are used in western theoretical discourse and the use of that theory within Africa. Providing a key contribution to theoretical discourse through a focus on the context of theory-building, this volume explores how African modes of thought have shaped our approaches to a meaningful past outside of Africa. A timely intervention into archaeological thought, Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory deconstructs the conventional ways we approach the past, positioning the continent within a global theoretical discourse and blending Western and African scholarship. This volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in the archaeology of Africa, as well as providing fresh perspectives to those interested in archaeological theory more generally.

Archaeological Spatial Analysis

Author : Mark Gillings,Piraye Hacıgüzeller,Gary Lock
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 484 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2020-01-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351243841

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Archaeological Spatial Analysis by Mark Gillings,Piraye Hacıgüzeller,Gary Lock Pdf

Effective spatial analysis is an essential element of archaeological research; this book is a unique guide to choosing the appropriate technique, applying it correctly and understanding its implications both theoretically and practically. Focusing upon the key techniques used in archaeological spatial analysis, this book provides the authoritative, yet accessible, methodological guide to the subject which has thus far been missing from the corpus. Each chapter tackles a specific technique or application area and follows a clear and coherent structure. First is a richly referenced introduction to the particular technique, followed by a detailed description of the methodology, then an archaeological case study to illustrate the application of the technique, and conclusions that point to the implications and potential of the technique within archaeology. The book is designed to function as the main textbook for archaeological spatial analysis courses at undergraduate and post-graduate level, while its user-friendly structure makes it also suitable for self-learning by archaeology students as well as researchers and professionals.

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology

Author : Peter Mitchell,Paul Lane
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 1080 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2013-07-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780191626142

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The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology by Peter Mitchell,Paul Lane Pdf

Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.

Computational Approaches to Archaeological Spaces

Author : Andrew Bevan,Mark Lake
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2016-06-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781315431925

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Computational Approaches to Archaeological Spaces by Andrew Bevan,Mark Lake Pdf

This volume of original chapters written by experts in the field offers a snapshot of how historical built spaces, past cultural landscapes, and archaeological distributions are currently being explored through computational social science. It focuses on the continuing importance of spatial and spatio-temporal pattern recognition in the archaeological record, considers more wholly model-based approaches that fix ideas and build theory, and addresses those applications where situated human experience and perception are a core interest. Reflecting the changes in computational technology over the past decade, the authors bring in examples from historic and prehistoric sites in Europe, Asia, and the Americas to demonstrate the variety of applications available to the contemporary researcher.

Urban Public Space in Colonial Transformations

Author : Monika Baumanova
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2022-09-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783031146978

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Urban Public Space in Colonial Transformations by Monika Baumanova Pdf

This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the precolonial to colonial transition in an urban context, by focusing on the changing distribution, character and role of public spaces and buildings. The volume focuses on three case study regions: East African coast, North-West Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula. The regions are selected to provide a novel perspective on the socio-spatial impact of colonialism on the public life of urban settlements, driven by different political forces, in different geographical contexts and time periods. The three study areas are also linked by sharing several features of urban lifestyle such as the role of trade and the influence of religion, Islam in particular. The intertwined influence of socio-spatial urban characteristics on public life is presented on a range of case studies selected from Africa and southern Europe. The approaches are rooted in archaeological thinking on the built environment as material culture and incorporate critical interpretation of ethnographies and historical accounts on both the precolonial and colonial eras. This volume is of interest to archaeologists and researchers working in urban history, anthropology, and heritage.

New Geospatial Approaches to the Anthropological Sciences

Author : Robert L. Anemone,Glenn C. Conroy
Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780826359674

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New Geospatial Approaches to the Anthropological Sciences by Robert L. Anemone,Glenn C. Conroy Pdf

Arguing that geospatial analysis holds great promise for much anthropological inquiry, the contributors have designed this volume to show how the powerful tools of GIScience can be used to benefit a variety of research programs.

Metals in Past Societies

Author : Shadreck Chirikure
Publisher : Springer
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2015-03-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783319116419

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Metals in Past Societies by Shadreck Chirikure Pdf

This book seeks to communicate to both a global and local audience, the key attributes of pre-industrial African metallurgy such as technological variation across space and time, methods of mining and extractive metallurgy and the fabrication of metal objects. These processes were transformative in a physical and metaphoric sense, which made them total social facts. Because the production and use of metals was an accretion of various categories of practice, a chaine operatoire conceptual and theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the embedded technological and anthropological factors was used. The book focuses on Africa’s different regions as roughly defined by cultural geography. On the one hand there is North Africa, Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan, and the Horn of Africa which share cultural inheritances with the Middle East and on the other is Africa south of the Sahara and the Sudan which despite interacting with the former is remarkably different in terms of technological practice. For example, not only is the timing of metallurgy different but so is the infrastructure for working metals and the associated symbolic and sociological factors. The cultural valuation of metals and the social positions of metal workers were different too although there is evidence of some values transfer and multi-directional technological cross borrowing. The multitude of permutations associated with metals production and use amply demonstrates that metals participated in the production and reproduction of society. Despite huge temporal and spatial differences there are so many common factors between African metallurgy and that of other regions of the world. For example, the role of magic and ritual in metal working is almost universal be it in Bolivia, Nepal, Malawi, Timna, Togo or Zimbabwe. Similarly, techniques of mining were constrained by the underlying geology but this should not in any way suggest that Africa’s metallurgy was derivative or that the continent had no initiative. Rather it demonstrates that when confronted with similar challenges, humanity in different regions of the world responded to identical challenges in predictable ways mediated as mediated by the prevailing cultural context. The success of the use of historical and ethnographic data in understanding variation and improvisation in African metallurgical practices flags the potential utility of these sources in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Some nuance is however needed because it is simply naïve to assume that everything depicted in the history or ethnography has a parallel in the past and vice versa. Rather, the confluence of archaeology, history and ethnography becomes a pedestal for dialogue between different sources, subjects and ideas that is important for broadening our knowledge of global categories of metallurgical practice.

Material Explorations in African Archaeology

Author : Timothy Insoll
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2015-10-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191062223

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Material Explorations in African Archaeology by Timothy Insoll Pdf

How people engaged with materials such as clay or stone, why people dug features such as pits, why they decorated their bodies, or treated their dead in certain ways, were all meaningful in the African past. However, these are subjects that have been generally neglected by archaeologists working in Africa until recently. Material Explorations in African Archaeology examines materiality in African archaeology by exploring concepts of material agency and material engagement and entanglement in relation to their manifest presence in persons, animals, objects, substances, and contexts. It investigates the magnificent and complex world of past African materiality by considering a range of case studies. These include, for example, why standing stones were erected, the potential meanings of bodily alteration practices such as scarification and dental modification, and why, recurrently, Africans in the past gave ritual importance to objects, materials, and locations thought of as exotic or different. Adopting a multidisciplinary focus, the volume draws not only on archaeology but also, among other areas, ethnography and history, discussing themes such as bodies, landscape, healing and medicine, and divination, as well as concepts such as memory and biography, transformation, and metaphor and metonym.

Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa

Author : Peter R. Schmidt,Innocent Pikirayi
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2016-06-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317220749

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Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa by Peter R. Schmidt,Innocent Pikirayi Pdf

This volume provides new insights into the distinctive contributions that community archaeology and heritage make to the decolonization of archaeological practice. Using innovative approaches, the contributors explore important initiatives which have protected and revitalized local heritage, initiatives that involved archaeologists as co-producers rather than leaders. These case studies underline the need completely reshape archaeological practice, engaging local and indigenous communities in regular dialogue and recognizing their distinctive needs, in order to break away from the top-down power relationships that have previously characterized archaeology in Africa. Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa reflects a determined effort to change how archaeology is taught to future generations. Through community-based participatory approaches, archaeologists and heritage professionals can benefit from shared resources and local knowledge; and by sharing decision-making with members of local communities, archaeological inquiry can enhance their way of life, ameliorate their human rights concerns, and meet their daily needs to build better futures. Exchanging traditional power structures for research design and implementation, the examples outlined in this volume demonstrate the discipline’s exciting capacity to move forward to achieve its potential as a broader, more accessible, and more inclusive field.

The Archaeology of Slavery

Author : Lydia Wilson Marshall
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 427 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780809333974

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The Archaeology of Slavery by Lydia Wilson Marshall Pdf

Develops an interregional and cross-temporal framework for the interpretation of slavery. Essays cover the potential material representations of slavery, slave owners' strategies of coercion and enslaved people's methods of resisting this coercion, and the legacies of slavery as confronted by formerly enslaved people and their descendants.

The Interpretation of Archaeological Spatial Patterning

Author : Ellen M. Kroll,T. Douglas Price
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2013-06-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781489926029

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The Interpretation of Archaeological Spatial Patterning by Ellen M. Kroll,T. Douglas Price Pdf

Investigations of archaeological intrasite spatial patterns have generally taken one of two directions: studies that introduced and explored methods for the analysis of archaeological spatial patterns or those that described and analyzed the for mation of spatial patterns in actuaiistic-ethnographic, experimental, or natu ral-contexts. The archaeological studies were largely quantitative in nature, concerned with the recognition and definition of patterns; the actualistic efforts were often oriented more toward interpretation, dealing with how patterns formed and what they meant. Our research group on archaeological spatial analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been working for several years on both quantitative and interpretive problems. Both lines of investigation are closely related and are important complements. In order to demonstrate the convergence of archaeological and actualistic studies for the understanding of intrasite spatial patterns, we organized a sympo sium at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology in Toronto, Canada, in May 1987. The symposium, titled "The Interpretation of Stone Age Archaeological Spatial Patterns," was organized into two sessions. The six papers presented in the morning session, five of which comprise Part I of this volume, focused on ethnoarchaeological and experimental research. Michael Schiffer was the discussant for this half of the symposium. Our intention for the ethnoarchaeological contributions to the symposium and volume was the delin eation of some of the significant accomplishments achieved thus far by actualistic studies regarding the formation of spatial patterns.

Architectures of Fire: Processes, Space and Agency in Pyrotechnologies

Author : Dragos Gheorghiu
Publisher : Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Page : 107 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2019-10-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781789693683

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Architectures of Fire: Processes, Space and Agency in Pyrotechnologies by Dragos Gheorghiu Pdf

Papers presented here originate from a session held during the 2015 Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (Glasgow). The contributors attempt to present the entanglement between the physical phenomenon of fire, the pyro-technological instrument that it is, its material supports, and the human being.

African Landscapes

Author : Michael Bollig,Olaf Bubenzer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 520 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2009-06-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780387786827

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African Landscapes by Michael Bollig,Olaf Bubenzer Pdf

Landscape studies provide a crucial perspective into the interaction between humans and their environment, shedding insight on social, cultural, and economic topics. The research explores both the way that natural processes have affected the development of culture and society, as well as the ways that natural landscapes themselves are the product of historical and cultural processes. Most previous studies of the landscape selectively focused on either the natural sciences or the social sciences, but the research presented in African Landscapes bridges that gap. This work is unique in its interdisciplinary scope. Over the past twelve years, the contributors to this volume have participated in the collaborative research center ACACIA (Arid Climate Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa), which deals with the relationship between cultural processes and ecological dynamics in Africa’s arid areas. The case studies presented here come from mainly Sahara/Sahel and southwestern Africa, and are all linked to broader discussions on the concept of landscape, and themes of cultural, anthropological, geographical, botanical, sociological, and archaeological interest. The contributions in this work are enhanced by full color photographs that put the discussion in context visually.

Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space

Author : Sharon R Steadman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 395 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2016-06-16
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781315433967

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Archaeology of Domestic Architecture and the Human Use of Space by Sharon R Steadman Pdf

This volume is the first text to focus specifically on the archaeology of domestic architecture. Covering major theoretical and methodological developments over recent decades in areas like social institutions, settlement types, gender, status, and power, this book addresses the developing understanding of where and how people in the past created and used domestic space. It will be a useful synthesis for scholars and an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in archaeology and architecture. The book-covers the relationship of architectural decisions of ancient peoples with our understanding of social and cultural institutions;-includes cases from every continent and all time periods-- from the Paleolithic of Europe to present-day African villages;-is ideal for the growing number of courses on household archaeology, social archaeology, and historical and vernacular architecture.