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Memories from Darkness
By Andres Zarankin, Melissa Salerno, Pedro Funari. 2010
The study of Archaeology in Latin America has been strongly affected by the socio-political setting of the region. The history…
of military repression in Latin America in the 1960s-1980s has been particularly challenging to study, with many holes in the historic accounts. Several Latin American dictatorships emerged during this period, particularly during the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution. Military regimes remained in power for decades, until internal and international changes allowed democracy to take over a firm hold. Due to military and governmental upheaval, written sources on clandestine repression are scarce and fragmentary, with many of these sources destroyed deliberately by repressive governments. New archaeological methods must be employed to reconstruct the true history of this period, helping shed light on repressive mechanisms, to recover missing history. Not only will the contributions of this important volume shed light on the specific case of Repression in Latin America, but the techniques described will be a valuable resources of information for archaeologists working to reconstruct other historical periods without reliable written sources, and shed light on the nature of political repression worldwide.Integrating Zooarchaeology and Paleoethnobotany
By Amber Vanderwarker, Tanya M. Peres. 2010
In recent years, scholars have emphasized the need for more holistic subsistence analyses, and collaborative publications towards this endeavor have…
become more numerous in the literature. However, there are relatively few attempts to qualitatively integrate zooarchaeological (animal) and paleoethnobotanical (plant) data, and even fewer attempts to quantitatively integrate these two types of subsistence evidence. Given the vastly different methods used in recovering and quantifying these data, not to mention their different preservational histories, it is no wonder that so few have undertaken this problem. Integrating Zooarchaeology and Paleoethnobotany takes the lead in tackling this important issue by addressing the methodological limitations of data integration, proposing new methods and innovative ways of using established methods, and highlighting case studies that successfully employ these methods to shed new light on ancient foodways. The volume challenges the perception that plant and animal foodways are distinct and contends that the separation of the analysis of archaeological plant and animal remains sets up a false dichotomy between these portions of the diet. In advocating qualitative and quantitative data integration, the volume establishes a clear set of methods for (1) determining the suitability of data integration in any particular case, and (2) carrying out an integrated qualitative or quantitative approach.The Materiality of Individuality
By Carolyn L. White. 2009
Generally individuals in history are known for a particular reason - they somehow influenced history. Very little is known about…
the ordinary person who lived in the past. But historical archaeologists - through their interpretation of the material culture and historic record - can study the past on an individual level. This brings archaeological interpretation from a micro to a macro level - as opposed to the traditional level of society to community to individual interpretation. The cases presented in this volume engage material culture that is owned or used by a single person and is thus associated with an individual at some point in its uselife. The volume takes bodkins, shoes, beads, cloth, religious items, grave goods, as well as subassemblages from well-defined contexts from New England, the Chesapeake, New Orleans, Hawaii, Spanish colonial America, and London in the pursuit of the individual and the textured interpretation this analytical scale provides. This volume promises to present innovative approaches to a host of archaeological materials, drawing widely on the range of archaeological research for the historical period today. Capitalizing on several topics and research threads with great currency, such as the examination of material culture and interest in various and intersecting lines of identity construction, as well as presenting an international and multiregional approach to these topics, this volume will be of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, material culture scholars, and social historians interested in a wide variety of time periods and subfields.Te Puna - A New Zealand Mission Station
By Angela Middleton. 2008
Evangelical missionary societies have been associated with the processes of colonisation throughout the globe, from India to Africa and into…
the Pacific. In late 18th-century Britain, the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East (CMS) began its missionary ventures, and in the first decade of the 19th-century, sent three of its members to New South Wales, Australia, and then on to New Zealand, an unknown, little-explored part of the world. Across the globe, a common material culture travelled with its evangelizing (and later colonizing) settlers, with artefacts appearing as cultural markers from Cape Town in South Africa, to Tasmania in Australia and the even more remote Bay of Islands in New Zealand. After missionization, colonization occurred. Additionally, common themes of interaction with indigenous peoples, household economy, the development of commerce, and social and gender relations also played out in these communities. This work is unique in that it provides the first archaeological examination of a New Zealand mission station, and as such, makes an important contribution to New Zealand historical archaeology and history. It also situates the case study in a global context, making a significant contribution to the international field of mission archaeology. It informs a wider audience about the processes of colonization and culture contact in New Zealand, along with the details of the material culture of the country's first European settlers, providing a point of comparison with other outposts of British colonization.The Architecture of the Roman Triumph
By Maggie L. Popkin. 2016
This book offers the first critical study of the architecture of the Roman triumph, ancient Rome's most important victory ritual.…
Through case studies ranging from the republican to imperial periods, it demonstrates how powerfully monuments shaped how Romans performed, experienced, and remembered triumphs and, consequently, how Romans conceived of an urban identity for their city. Monuments highlighted Roman conquests of foreign peoples, enabled Romans to envision future triumphs, made triumphs more memorable through emotional arousal of spectators, and even generated distorted memories of triumphs that might never have occurred. This book illustrates the far-reaching impact of the architecture of the triumph on how Romans thought about this ritual and, ultimately, their own place within the Mediterranean world. In doing so, it offers a new model for historicizing the interrelations between monuments, individual and shared memory, and collective identities.Sourcebook of Paleolithic Transitions
By Parth Chauhan, Marta Camps. 2009
As the study of Palaeolithic technologies moves towards a more analytical approach, it is necessary to determine a consistent procedural…
framework. The contributions to this timely and comprehensive volume do just that. This volume incorporates a broad chronological and geographical range of Palaeolithic material from the Lower to Upper Palaeolithic. The focus of this volume is to provide an analysis of Palaeolithic technologies from a quantitative, empirical perspective. As new techniques, particularly quantitative methods, for analyzing Palaeolithic technologies gain popularity, this work provides case studies particularly showcasing these new techniques. Employing diverse case studies, and utilizing multivariate approaches, morphometrics, model-based approaches, phylogenetics, cultural transmission studies, and experimentation, this volume provides insights from international contributors at the forefront of recent methodological advances.Interpreting the Early Modern World
By Mary C. Beaudry, James Symonds. 2011
This volume is based on a session at a 2005 Society for Historical Archaeology meeting. The organizers assembled historical archaeologists…
from the UK and the US, whose work arises out of differing intellectual traditions. The authors exchange ideas about what their colleagues have written, and construct dialogues about theories and practices that inform interpretive archaeology on either side of the Atlantic, ending with commentary by two well-known names in interpretive archaeology.Seals, Craft and Community in Bronze Age Crete
By Anderson, Emily S. K.. 2016
Generations of scholars have grappled with the origins of palace society on Minoan Crete seeking to explain…
when and how life on the island altered monumentally Emily Anderson turns light on the moment just before the palaces recognizing it as a remarkably vibrant phase of socio-cultural innovation Exploring the role of craftspersons travelers and powerful objects she argues that social change resulted from creative work that forged connections at new scales and in novel ways This study focuses on an extraordinary corpus of sealstones which have been excavated across Crete Fashioned of imported ivory and engraved with images of dashing lions these distinctive objects linked the identities of their distant owners Anderson argues that it was the repeated but pioneering actions of such diverse figures people and objects alike that dramatically changed the shape of social life in the Aegean at the turn of the second millennium BCENew Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society
By Andrea Cucina, Vera Tiesler. 2007
This book examines Maya sacrifice and related posthumous body manipulation. The editors bring together an international group of contributors from…
the area studied: archaeologists as well as anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, art historians and bioarchaeologists. This interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive perspective on these sites as well as the material culture and biological evidence found thereRoman Slavery and Roman Material Culture
By Michele George. 2013
Replete now with its own scholarly traditions and controversies, Roman slavery as a field of study is no longer limited…
to the economic sphere, but is recognized as a fundamental social institution with multiple implications for Roman society and culture. The essays in this collection explore how material culture - namely, art, architecture, and inscriptions - can illustrate Roman attitudes towards the institution of slavery and towards slaves themselves in ways that significantly augment conventional textual accounts.Providing the first interdisciplinary approach to the study of Roman slavery, the volume brings together diverse specialists in history, art history, and archaeology. The contributors engage with questions concerning the slave trade, manumission, slave education, containment and movement, and the use of slaves in the Roman army.Settlement, society and cognition in human evolution
By Francis Wenban-Smith, Fiona Coward, Robert Hosfield, Matt Pope. 2015
This volume provides a landscape narrative of early hominin evolution, linking conventional material and geographic aspects of the early archaeological…
record with wider and more elusive social, cognitive and symbolic landscapes. It seeks to move beyond a limiting notion of early hominin culture and behavior as dictated solely by the environment to present the early hominin world as the outcome of a dynamic dialogue between the physical environment and its perception and habitation by active agents. This international group of contributors presents theoretically informed yet empirically based perspectives on hominin and human landscapes.Han Material Culture
By Sophia-Karin Psarras. 2015
Han Material Culture is an analysis of Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) Chinese archaeology based on a comparison of the…
forms of vessels found in positively dated tombs. The resultant chronological framework allows for the cross dating of tombs across China, of which approximately one thousand are documented here. In the context of this body of data, the development of not only vessel types but also tomb structure and decor is reevaluated, together with the pervasive intercultural exchange visible in all areas of this material. The Han dynasty emerges as a creative, surprisingly open society, heir to the Bronze Age and herald of what might be called the Age of Ceramics.Iconographic Method in New World Prehistory
By Vernon James Knight. 1990
This book offers an overview of iconographic methods and their application to archaeological analysis. It offers a truly interdisciplinary approach…
that draws equally from art history and anthropology. Vernon James Knight, Jr begins with an historiographical overview, addressing the methodologies and theories that underpin both archaeology and art history. He then demonstrates how iconographic methods can be integrated with the scientific methods that are at the core of much archaeological inquiry. Focusing on artifacts from the pre-Columbian civilizations of North and Meso-American sites, Knight shows how the use of iconographic analysis yields new insights into these objects and civilizations.Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World
By Sue Ann Mccarty, Benjamin S. Arbuckle. 2014
Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World explores the current trends in the social archaeology of human-animal relationships, focusing on…
the ways in which animals are used to structure, create, support, and even deconstruct social inequalities. The authors provide a global range of case studies from both New and Old World archaeology--a royal Aztec dog burial, the monumental horse tombs of Central Asia, and the ceremonial macaw cages of ancient Mexico among them. They explore the complex relationships between people and animals in social, economic, political, and ritual contexts, incorporating animal remains from archaeological sites with artifacts, texts, and iconography to develop their interpretations.Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World presents new data and interpretations that reveal the role of animals, their products, and their symbolism in structuring social inequalities in the ancient world. The volume will be of interest to archaeologists, especially zooarchaeologists, and classical scholars of pre-modern civilizations and societies.Ancient Central China
By Rowan K. Flad, Pochan Chen. 2013
Ancient Central China provides an up-to-date synthesis of archaeological discoveries in the upper and middle Yangzi River region of China,…
including the Three Gorges Dam reservoir zone. It focuses on the Late Neolithic (late third millennium BC) through the end of the Bronze Age (late first millennium BC) and considers regional and interregional cultural relationships in light of anthropological models of landscape. Rowan K. Flad and Pochan Chen show that centers and peripheries of political, economic, and ritual activities were not coincident, and that politically peripheral regions such as the Three Gorges were crucial hubs in interregional economic networks, particularly related to prehistoric salt production. The book provides detailed discussions of recent archaeological discoveries and data from the Chengdu Plain, Three Gorges, and Hubei to illustrate how these various components of regional landscape were configured across Central China.Lithic Technological Systems and Evolutionary Theory
By Nathan Goodale, William Andrefsky. 2015
Stone tool analysis relies on a strong background in analytical and methodological techniques. However, lithic technological analysis has not been…
well integrated with a theoretically-informed approach to understanding how humans procured, made, and used stone tools. Evolutionary theory has great potential to fill this gap. This collection of essays brings together several different evolutionary perspectives to demonstrate how lithic technological systems are a byproduct of human behavior. The essays cover a range of topics, including human behavioral ecology, cultural transmission, phylogenetic analysis, risk management, macroevolution, dual inheritance theory, cladistics, central place foraging, costly signaling, selection, drift, and various applications of evolutionary ecology.In Search of the Phoenicians (Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures in Ancient History and Archaeology)
By Josephine Quinn. 2018
Who were the ancient Phoenicians, and did they actually exist?The Phoenicians traveled the Mediterranean long before the Greeks and Romans,…
trading, establishing settlements, and refining the art of navigation. But who these legendary sailors really were has long remained a mystery. In Search of the Phoenicians makes the startling claim that the “Phoenicians” never actually existed. Taking readers from the ancient world to today, this monumental book argues that the notion of these sailors as a coherent people with a shared identity, history, and culture is a product of modern nationalist ideologies—and a notion very much at odds with the ancient sources.Josephine Quinn shows how the belief in this historical mirage has blinded us to the compelling identities and communities these people really constructed for themselves in the ancient Mediterranean, based not on ethnicity or nationhood but on cities, family, colonial ties, and religious practices. She traces how the idea of “being Phoenician” first emerged in support of the imperial ambitions of Carthage and then Rome, and only crystallized as a component of modern national identities in contexts as far-flung as Ireland and Lebanon.In Search of the Phoenicians delves into the ancient literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and artistic evidence for the construction of identities by and for the Phoenicians, ranging from the Levant to the Atlantic, and from the Bronze Age to late antiquity and beyond. A momentous scholarly achievement, this book also explores the prose, poetry, plays, painting, and polemic that have enshrined these fabled seafarers in nationalist histories from sixteenth-century England to twenty-first century Tunisia.First Migrants: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective
By Peter Bellwood. 2013
The first publication to outline the complex global story of human migration and dispersal throughout the whole of human prehistory.…
Utilizing archaeological, linguistic and biological evidence, Peter Bellwood traces the journeys of the earliest hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist migrants as critical elements in the evolution of human lifeways. The first volume to chart global human migration and population dispersal throughout the whole of human prehistory, in all regions of the world An archaeological odyssey that details the initial spread of early humans out of Africa approximately two million years ago, through the Ice Ages, and down to the continental and island migrations of agricultural populations within the past 10,000 years Employs archaeological, linguistic and biological evidence to demonstrate how migration has always been a vital and complex element in explaining the evolution of the human species Outlines how significant migrations have affected population diversity in every region of the world Clarifies the importance of the development of agriculture as a migratory imperative in later prehistory Fully referenced with detailed maps throughoutHomer in Stone
By David Petrain. 2014
The Tabulae Iliacae are a group of carved stone plaques created in the context of early Imperial Rome that use…
miniature images and text to retell stories from Greek myth and history - chief among them Homer's Iliad and the fall of Troy. In this book, Professor Petrain moves beyond the narrow focus on the literary and iconographic sources of the Tabulae that has characterized earlier scholarship. Drawing on ancient and modern theories of narrative, he explores instead how the tablets transfer the Troy saga across both medium and culture as they create a system of visual storytelling that relies on the values and viewing habits of Roman viewers. The book comprehensively situates the tablets in the urban fabric of Augustan Rome. New photographs of the tablets, together with re-editions and translations of key inscriptions, offer a new, clearer view of these remarkable documents of the Roman appropriation of Greek epic.From Pompeii
By Ingrid D. Rowland. 2014
When Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the force of the explosion blew the top right off the mountain, burying nearby…
Pompeii in a shower of volcanic ash. Ironically, the calamity that proved so lethal for Pompeii's inhabitants preserved the city for centuries, leaving behind a snapshot of Roman daily life that has captured the imagination of generations. The experience of Pompeii always reflects a particular time and sensibility, says Ingrid Rowland. From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town explores the fascinating variety of these different experiences, as described by the artists, writers, actors, and others who have toured the excavated site. The city's houses, temples, gardens--and traces of Vesuvius's human victims--have elicited responses ranging from awe to embarrassment, with shifting cultural tastes playing an important role. The erotic frescoes that appalled eighteenth-century viewers inspired Renoir to change the way he painted. For Freud, visiting Pompeii was as therapeutic as a session of psychoanalysis. Crown Prince Hirohito, arriving in the Bay of Naples by battleship, found Pompeii interesting, but Vesuvius, to his eyes, was just an ugly version of Mount Fuji. Rowland treats readers to the distinctive, often quirky responses of visitors ranging from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain to Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman. Interwoven throughout a narrative lush with detail and insight is the thread of Rowland's own impressions of Pompeii, where she has returned many times since first visiting in 1962.