Archaeological Artefacts As Material Culture

This book is an introduction to the study of artefacts, setting them in a social context rather than using a purely scientific approach. Drawing on a range of different cultures and extensively illustrated, Archaeological Artefacts and Material Culture covers everything from recovery strategies and recording procedures to interpretation through typology, ethnography and experiment, and every type of material including wood, fibers, bones, hides and adhesives, stone, clay, and metals. With over seventy illustrations with almost fifty in full colour, this book not only provides the tools an archaeologist will need to interpret past societies from their artefacts, but also a keen appreciation of the beauty and tactility involved in working with these fascinating objects. This is a book no archaeologist should be without, but it will also appeal to anybody interested in the interaction between people and objects.

Modern Material Culture

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.

This unique and fascinating book concentrates on the varying roles and functions that material culture may play in almost all aspects of the social fabric of a given culture. The contributors, from Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea, India, South America, the USA, and both Eastern and Western Europe, provide a rich variety of views and experience in a worldwide perspective. Several of the authors focus on essential points of principle and methodology that must be carefully considered before any particular approach to material culture is adopted. One of the many fundamental questions posed in the book is whether or not all material culture is equivalent to documents which can be 'read' and interpreted by the outside observer. If it is, what is the nature of the 'messages' or meanings conveyed in this way? The book also questions the extent to which acceptance, and subsequent diffusion, of a religious belief or symbol may be qualified by the status of the individuals concerned in transmitting the innovation, as well as by the stratification of the society involved. Several authors deal with 'works of art' and the most effective means of reaching an understanding of their past significance. In some chapters semiotics is seen as the most appropriate technique to apply to the decoding of the assumed rules and grammars of material culture expression.

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.

Writing Material Culture History 2e examines the methodologies used in the historical study of material culture. Looking at archaeology, anthropology, art history and literary studies, the book provides students with a fundamental understanding of the relationship between artefacts and historical narratives. The book addresses the role of museums, the impact of the digital age and the representations of objects in public history, bringing together students and specialists from around the world. This new edition includes: A new substantive introduction from the editors, providing a useful roadmap for students and specialists. A more balanced and easy-to-use structure, including methodological chapters and 'object in focus' chapters consisting of case studies for classroom discussion. New chapters showing greater engagement with 20th-century material culture, non-European artefacts and the definitions and limits of material culture as a discipline. Offers global coverage and discussion of both the early modern and modern periods. Writing Material Culture History 2e is an essential tool for students seeking to understand the potential of objects to re-cast established historical narratives in new and exciting ways.

The present book explores the complexity of the past, by analysing the relationships between place, territory, the material value of objects and landscapes, time and ritual, during archaeological investigations. It presents the archaeology of place as a series of interconnecting and interactive relationships. It is clear that things and places do not emerge without some form of agency, usually through the concept of material manipulation, coupled with elaboration, innovation and time. Depending on the raw material used and the process of manipulation and its relationship with the environment, materiality gains value. How do we as modern humans work within the complexity of place, materiality, time, and ritual? Traditional in archaeological discourse is the need to describe place, albeit in an empiricist and banal way. Discourse is sometimes followed by a more fruitful and interpretive account. However, these accounts tend to ignore human emotion that is bound-up in place, for example the ritualized and symbolic meanings that place holds. This book explores the significance of geography, place and the materiality that place holds, and challenges many of the tradition norms that in the past have trivialized landscape archaeology. The book is divided into 14 thought-provoking and crafted chapters and will be an ideal companion to anyone involved in the social sciences.