scholarly journals Are We Creating Our Past?

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 508-521
Author(s):  
Chiara G. M. Girotto
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Settlement Pattern ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Density Estimates ◽  
Spatial Trends ◽  
Power Economic ◽  
Spatial Algorithms

Urnfield Culture hilltop settlements are often associated with a predominant function in the settlement pattern. This study challenged the idea of centrality by means of density estimates and spatial inhomogeneous explanatory statistics. Reflecting on the differences in spatial trends and material culture, no conclusive evidence for a consolidation of power, economic, or cultic dominance was observed. The dataset strongly points towards the inapplicability of commonly used parametric and/or homogenous spatial algorithms in archaeology. Tracer variables as well as the methodological and theoretical limitations are critically reviewed and a methodological framework to increase the reproducibility and reusability of archaeological research is proposed.

Bracketing the Copan Dynasty: Late Preclassic and Early Postclassic Settlements at Copan, Honduras

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Kam Manahan ◽  
Marcello A. Canuto
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Settlement Pattern ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Rural Regions ◽  
Early Postclassic ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Two Populations

AbstractArchaeological research within the Classic Maya center of Copan and in its surrounding rural regions has generated new data relating to the periods both preceding and following the center’s Classic period dynasty. Recent excavations at both Late Preclassic and Early Postclassic settlements have revealed more similarities between the inhabitants of these two “non-Classic” time periods than to the inhabitants of the intervening and better known Classic period. We explore this striking set of similarities in terms of settlement pattern, spatial organization, architecture, material culture, and ritual deposits and spaces. We suggest that the similarities between the Copan region’s Late Preclassic and Early Postclassic populations and their mutual differences with intervening Classic period peoples reflecta cultural connection between these two populations.

scholarly journals Kreatywność za drutem kolczastym: archeologia i sztuka okopowa z pierwszowojennego obozu jenieckiego w Czersku (woj. pomorskie)

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 105-136
Author(s):  
Dawid Kobiałka
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Special Category

This article discusses the results of archaeological and anthropological research concerning material remains of a prisoner of war camp in Czersk (Pomeranian province, Poland) (Kriegsgefangenenlager Czersk). In the first part, I sketch a broader historical context related to building and functioning of the camp in forests around Czersk between 1914–1919. After that, the role and meaning of  archaeological research on such type of archaeological sites are presented. In the third part, I focus on a very special category of the camp heritage which is called trench art. The last part of this paper is a case study where an assemblage of objects classified as trench art that was found at the camp is described and interpreted. This text aims at highlighting the value of such prisoners and camp’s heritage. Such material culture is a material memory of extraordinary prisoners’ creativity behind barbed wire. It makes one aware of how every piece of trash, rubbish was re-cycled during day-to-day life behind barbed wire.

Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica Childhoods

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Health Conditions ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm

Research on pre-Columbian childhood refers to all those studies that consider the different evidence and expressions of children in Mesoamerica, prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. Archaeology, understandably by its very focus, has been one of the most prolific disciplines that has approached this subject of study. Currently, archaeological research focuses on highlighting the different social experiences of the past (or multi-vocality) of social identities, such as gender and childhood, and its relationship with material culture. In addition, archaeologists recognize a modern stereotype that considers children as passive or dependent beings and therefore biases childhood research in the past. Consequently, it is necessary to critically evaluate the cultural specificity of past childhood since each culture has its own way of considering that stage of the life cycle. Another problem, in the archaeological study of childhood, is to consider that children are not socially important individuals. It has been said that their activities are not significant for the economy or the social realm of communities and societies of the past. From archaeology, there exists a general perception that children are virtually unrecognizable from the archaeological record because their behavior leaves few material traces, apart from child burials. It has been since feminist critiques within the discipline that the study of childhood became of vital importance in archaeology to understand the process of gender acquisition through enculturation. This process refers to the way children learn about their gender identity through the material world that surrounds them and the various rituals that prepare them to become persons. Thus, the intent of recent studies on childhood has been to call upon archaeologists to consider children as social actors capable of making meaningful decisions on their own behalf and that they make substantial contributions to their families and their communities. In this sense, studies on pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures have focused at the most basic sense on identifying the presence of children in the archaeological record or ethnohistoric sources. Its aim has been to document the different social ages that make up childhood, the ritual importance of Mesoamerican children, funerary practices, and health conditions marked in children’s bones as well as the different material and identity expressions of childhood through art and its associated material culture.

Slaves without Shackles: An Archaeology of Everyday Life on Gorée Island, Senegal

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahima Thiaw
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Settlement Pattern ◽  
Heterogeneous Population ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Transnational Community ◽  
Changing Patterns

This chapter examines how slavery was imprinted on material culture and settlement at Gorée Island. It evaluates the changing patterns of settlement, access to materials, and emerging novel tastes to gain insights into everyday life and cultural interactions on the island. By the eighteenth century, Gorée grew rapidly as an urban settlement with a heterogeneous population including free and enslaved Africans as well as different European identities. Interaction between these different identities was punctuated with intense negotiations resulting in the emergence of a truly transnational community. While these significant changes were noted in the settlement pattern and material culture recovered, the issue of slavery — critical to most oral and documentary narratives about the island — remains relatively opaque in the archaeological record. Despite this, the chapter attempts to tease out from available documentary and archaeological evidence some illumination on interaction between the different communities on the island, including indigenous slaves.

Material Culture and Daily Life

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHERINE HEZSER
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Early Byzantine

This chapter evaluates the use of rabbinic literature in the study of Jewish daily life and material culture. It explains that one of the main problems associated with research on material culture and daily life is the establishment of a proper relationship between rabbinic literary references and archaeological data, between text and object. It suggests that these problems can be resolved by approaching the issues on the basis of a historical-critical study of rabbinic sources in a broad interdisciplinary framework, which takes account of archaeological research within the Graeco-Roman and early Byzantine context and which uses tools, methods and models developed by the social sciences.

Introduction: the sea is ‘good to think’

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Van de Noort
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Principal Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
Alternative Space

The locale of nearly all archaeological research is land. Whether one studies landscapes, excavates sites such as monuments, cemeteries or settlements, or analyses material culture, the basis for study and debate comes nearly always from terrestrial contexts. Most land-locked archaeologists simply disregard the seas and the oceans, and where land is bordered by a saltwater landscape, this is all too often eagerly adopted as the convenient boundary of the study areas. Others, studying exotic material culture, are more interested in the terrestrial find spots than the maritime journeys of objects that have travelled long distances. Some archaeologists have studied the exploitation of the sea from the land, but rarely stray beyond the functional utilization of the sea and coast for food. A small number of archaeologists work on ships and waterside structures directly related to shipping activities, but this group of maritime archaeologists, with their own conferences and journals, have had very little impact on the thinking of their land-locked colleagues. The principal reason for choosing a sea over a landmass as the geographical centre for this archaeological study is that it provides an alternative space in which to explore the ways that people related with, and connected to, the world around them. As a part of the world that is physically unmodified and unalterable by humanity (at least until very recently), the sea offers an alluring contrast to the terrestrial landscape, with its imprint of human existence visible everywhere. This inability to change and to control the sea has, and had, profound impacts on how people engage with it. Gilles Deleuze developed this concept furthest, most notably in his study of Desert islands (1953), in which the sea is very much seen as a different space, the ‘realm of the unbound, unconstricted, and free’. The sea has since come to be seen as ‘the Deleuzian Ocean’ (Connery 2006: 497). One could say that this study offers a ‘maritime turn’ in terrestrial-dominated archaeology and, by doing so, sets out to investigate aspects of human behaviour that have been, to varying extents, disregarded, overlooked or ignored.

scholarly journals Metal Detecting in Finland - An Ongoing Debate

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wessman ◽  
Leena Koivisto ◽  
Suzie Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Archaeological Heritage ◽  
Engagement Strategies ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractThis outline article presents and critiques legislation as it affects the metal detecting hobby and the archaeological profession. It considers some of the ways in which metal detectorists themselves have caused controversy but also positive news in relation to archaeological heritage in Finland. A selection of examples of collaboration based on the authors own experiences is presented, also the impact of metal detecting on material culture and archaeological research. The continuing object-oriented focus of both metal detectorists and the media is identified. New collection and engagement strategies could enhance archaeological research, while engaging this particular section of the wider public.

scholarly journals A view from the margin? Roman commonwares and patterns of distribution and consumption at Interamna Lirenas (Lazio)

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 323-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Launaro ◽  
Ninetta Leone
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Economic Performance ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Widespread Distribution ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Trade And Exchange

There can hardly be any doubt that goods moved in large quantities and over great distances under the Roman empire. This awareness is borne out of a long tradition of archaeological research attesting to the widespread distribution of specific categories of material culture across the full expanse of the Mediterranean and beyond. This phenomenon has been interpreted as a more or less direct result of Rome's military expansion and the fundamental political unification which came with it, bringing about unprecedented conditions which favoured trade and exchange. Scholarship has often stressed the rôle played in this by ‘institutions’: the spread and adoption of a common set of laws, currency and units of measure, fostered by a relatively long period of internal peace and political stability, would have boosted the economic performance of the empire to levels that had not been witnessed before and would not be seen again for many centuries. Indeed, the notion of ‘efflorescence’ has sometimes been employed to describe and explain the kind of economic growth to which this process might have contributed.

Ancient Tajikistan Studies in History, Archaeology and Culture (1980-1991)

1995 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-304
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Ww Ii ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Written Sources

AbstractSystematic archaeological research began immediately after WW II with work on Iran Age monuments at Kala-i-mir, Boldai-tepe and Baidudasht IV. Of recently studied Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic monuments, the most important is Takhti-Sangin (thought to be the source of the Oxus treasure). More than 5000 votive objects have now been recovered from the temple here (now completely excavated and dated to the first quarter of the 1st c. B.C.). Excavations at Ai-Khanoum prove that the strength and persistence of Hellenic culture seen at the Oxus temple was not unique in Bactria, while a complex now being studied at Dushanbe pushes the range of Greco-Bactrian culture far further to the north than was hitherto thought. Investigation of burial monuments at Tup-khana testifies to the acceptance of Bactrian material culture by incoming nomad groups, whereas study of a Buddhist complex of the 3rd-4th c. A.D. at Ushurmullo shows its continued use down to the 7th-8th c. Ancient written sources on the history of Central Asia have been studied by I.V. Pyankov, whilst E.V. Zeimal has produced a description, classification and analysis of the coin series of the region. Finally, T.P. Kiyatkina has written a series of works on palaeo-anthropological material from Tajikistan and Turkmenia.

Archaeology of Oceania

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan E. Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Oceanic Islands ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Political Complexity ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Late Start

Oceania comprises the islands of the Pacific Ocean and nearby seas originally settled from Island Southeast Asia by variably related populations over the last 50,000 years. The region is commonly divided into Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia, but much archaeological research also references the biogeographic regions Near and Remote Oceania. Near Oceania includes New Guinea and the neighboring Admiralty, Bismarck, and Solomon Islands, all inhabited in the Pleistocene and early Holocene, while Remote Oceania includes the remaining Oceanic islands to the north and east of the Solomons that were settled in two waves beginning approximately 3,000 and 1,000 years ago. Modern archaeology in Oceania has its roots in the comparative ethnology of the region at the beginning of the 20th century, an ethnology influenced by the accounts of European explorers and missionaries from the previous 200 years. This ethnological research described archaeologically relevant behavior, material culture, and landscapes, but it was not until 1947 that the first archaeological excavations were conducted—a late start on the world stage owing to the mistaken belief that there was little time-depth to Oceanic cultures. In the second half of the 20th century, the pace of archaeology in Oceania quickened, with research focused on the chronological sequences of various islands and archipelagos, the geographic origins of particular groups, and changes in political complexity over time. Archaeologists still investigate many of these issues, but the diversity of research topics has increased. Theoretically, archaeological research in Oceania is solidly processual (although additional frameworks are beginning to appear) and this is born out of a decades-old approach to islands as laboratories for comparisons of cultural variation and attendant explanatory processes, particularly evolutionary and ecological ones. More recently, historical archaeology and indigenous archaeology have become prominent perspectives.

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