Archaeology At The Millennium

In this book an internationally distinguished roster of contributors considers the state of the art of the discipline of archaeology at the turn of the 21st century and charts an ambitious agenda for the future. The chapters address a wide range of topics including, paradigms, practice, and relevance of the discipline; paleoanthropology; fully modern humans; holocene hunter-gatherers; the transition to food and craft production; social inequality; warfare; state and empire formation; and the uneasy relationship between classical and anthropological archaeology.

Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium provides an account of the changing world of archaeological theory and a challenge to more traditional narratives of archaeological thought. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with other current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologists regularly employ. Bringing together different strands of global archaeological theory and placing them in dialogue, the book explores the similarities and differences between different contemporary trends in theory while also highlighting potential strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. Written in a way to maximise its accessibility, in direct contrast to many of the sources on which it draws, Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium is an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professionals wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field.

For a thousand years they flourished in the arid lands now part of Arizona. They built extensive waterworks, ballcourts, and platform mounds, made beautiful pottery and jewelry, and engaged in wide-ranging trade networks. Then, slowly, their civilization faded and transmuted into something no longer Hohokam. Are today's Tohono O'odham their heirs or their conquerors? The mystery and the beauty of Hohokam civilization are the subjects of the essays in this volume. Written by archaeologists who have led the effort to excavate, record, and preserve the remnants of this ancient culture, the chapters illuminate the way the Hohokam organized their households and their communities, their sophisticated pottery and textiles, their irrigation system, the huge ballcourts and platform mounds they built, and much more.

Modern archaeology, with its huge methodological repertoire, its interdisciplinary orientation and its rapidly expanding basis in excavations, is beginning to rewrite history, and to reshape our views of the development of Europe prior to the present millennium. Archaeological evidence draws attention to processes on which the written record is silent, or which were not fully appreciated by contemporaries in the literate centres. This book deals with the rise of medieval western Europe as the Roman Empire crumbled, and the integration of hitherto barbarian societies into the new mainstream of European society. Archaeological material is the main focus, but information derived from written sources, especially those illuminating the economic and the associated social circumstances, is also taken into account.

This book presents the current state of Maya archaeology by focusing on the history of the field for the last 100 years, present day research, and forward looking prescription for the direction of the field.

This collection explores the behavioral and social facets of funerary, mortuary, and burial rites in both past and present societies. By utilizing data from around the world and combining recent and ongoing concerns in anthropology, it takes the study of mortuary archaeology to a new and significant level of interdisciplinary research. Drawing inspiration from ethnohistory, ethnography, bioarchaeology, and sociocultural anthropology, the authors focus on themes of gender, ancestorhood, ritual violence, individual agency, space and placement, and extended and secondary mortuary ceremonialism. They also expand the interdisciplinary focus of mortuary practices and reassess previous anthropological theories. No previously published work on the archaeology of mortuary remains presents such a range of examples of ritual practices through time and around the globe. Because of its wide scope and interdisciplinary approach, Interacting with the Dead will be indispensable not only to archaeologists and anthropologists but also across the social sciences and humanities and to all who study cross-cultural rituals.

"This book examines the history of the Monacan Indians of Virginia from AD 1000 to the present day"--Provided by publisher.

The nineteen contributions to this volume approach the subject of Egyptian chronology of the Third Millennium BC from different perspectives: some of them concern the use of modern methods (14C) and natural sciences in Egyptology; others analyze the development of various aspects of the Egyptian culture during the whole period of the Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period, or try to specify the date of certain monuments and personalities. A study and interpretation of archaeological as well as textual sources and iconographical material is combined in the papers in order to attain a deeper knowledge and better understanding of the Egyptian chronology, archaeology and history of the Third Millennium BC. Contributions by: Hartwig Altenmueller, Tarek El Awady, Miroslav Barta, Ale Bezdek, Vivienne Gae Callender, Andrzej Cwiek, Michael Dee, Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Jaromir Krejci, Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia, John S. Nolan, Hratch Papazian, Patrizia Piacentini, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Joanne M. Rowland, Teodozja Rzeuska, Anthony Spalinger, Rainer Stadelmann, Miroslav Verner, Hana Vymazalova, and Anna Wodzinska.

Although history and archaeology each seek to elucidate the past, both sets of data are incomplete and ambiguous and thus open to multiple readings that invite contradictory interpretations of human activity. This is particularly true when scholars of each field ignore or fail to understand research in the other discipline. Excavating Asian History contains case studies and theoretical articles that show how archaeologists have been investigating historical, social, and economic organizations and that explore the relationship between history and archaeology in the study of pre-modern Asia. These contributions consider biases in both historical and archaeological data that have occasioned rival claims to knowledge in the two disciplines. Ranging widely across the region from the Levant to China and from the third millennium BC to the second millennium AD, they demonstrate that archaeological and historical studies can complement each other and should be used in tandem. The contributors are leading historians and archaeologists of Asia who present data, issues, and debates revolving around the most recent research on the ancient Near East, early Islam, India, China, and Southeast Asian states. Their chapters illustrate the benefits of interdisciplinary investigations and show in particular how archaeology is changing our understanding of history. Commentary chapters by Miriam Stark and Philip Kohl add new perspectives to the findings. By showing the evolving relationship between those who study archaeological material and those who investigate textual data, Excavating Asian History offers practical demonstrations of how research has been and must continue to be structured.

This major study reflects the increasing significance of careful model formation and testing in those academic subjects that are struggling from intuitive and aesthetic obscurantism toward a more disciplined and integrated approach to their fields of study. The twenty-six original contributions represent the carefully selected work of progressive archaeologists around the world, covering the use of models on archaeological material of all kinds and from all periods from Palaeolithic to Medieval. Their common theme is archaeological generalisation by means of explicit model building, testing, modification and reapplication. The contributors seek to show that it is the use of certain models in particular ways that defines archaeology as the practice of one discipline, with a set of general tenets that are as applicable in Peru as in Persia, Australia as Alaska, Sweden as Scotland, on material from the second millennium B.C. to the second millennium A.D. They assert that careful model formulation within archaeology and the cautious exchange and testing of models within and beyond the discipline provides the only route to the formation of the common, internationally valid body of theory which defines a vigorous and coherent discipline and distinguishes it from being a collection of merely regionally applicable special cases.