Shadow Sites

At certain times of the day - at sunrise, and sunset - the outlines of prehistoric fields, barrows and hill-forts in the British landscape may be thrown into relief. Such 'shadow sites', best seen from above, and captured by an airborne camera, are both examples of, and metaphors for, a particular way of seeing the landscape. At a time of rapid modernisation and urbanisation in mid-twentieth-century Britain, an archaeological vision of the British landscape reassured and enchanted a number of writers, artists, photographers, and film-makers. From John Piper, Eric Ravilious and Shell guide books, to photographs of bomb damage, aerial archaeology, and The Wizard of Oz, Kitty Hauser delves into evocative interpretations of the landscape and looks at the affinities between photography as a medium to capture traces of the past as well as their absence.

At certain times of the day - at sunrise, and sunset - the outlines of prehistoric fields, barrows and hill-forts in the British landscape may be thrown into relief. Such 'shadow sites', best seen from above, and captured by an airborne camera, are both examples of, and metaphors for, a particular way of seeing the landscape. At a time of rapid modernisation and urbanisation in mid-twentieth-century Britain, an archaeological vision of the British landscape reassured and enchanteda number of writers, artists, photographers, and film-makers. From John Piper, Eric Ravilious and Shell guide books, to photographs of bomb damage, aerial archaeology, and The Wizard of Oz, Kitty Hauser delves into evocative interpretations of the landscape and looks at the affinities betweenphotography as a medium to capture traces of the past as well as their absence.

This book presents archaeological research from places of war, violence, protest and oppression of the 20th and the 21st century; sites where the material relics give a deep insight to fateful events - a shadow of war. Alongside renewed interest in National Socialism and the Holocaust, archaeological interest started in former concentration camps of the Nazi dictatorship. The focus was on the central places of the camps, such as the gas chambers, the crematoria, or execution sites, as well as prisoners' barracks and the parade ground. In many cases, these sites revealed forgotten and vanished structures, where archaeological excavations can offer the possibility for commemorating the victims. The research has since widened and includes other sites of Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War, as well as the First World War, the Cold War and locations of civil wars and civilian protest against state authorities and against companies and corporations in many parts of the world. In order to come to a comprehensive understanding contemporary archaeology must take a global perspective. Archaeological finds often shed light on daily life, revealing survival conditions in the internment camps; the lives of people and their fighting and dying on battlefields and in trenches. Likewise, the relics of politically active people in protest camps give an impression of their commitment in civilian protest. Sometimes material remains can help to tell an alternative or balancing narrative to the state's official recorded history. The enormous volume and diverse range of material culture presents challenges and opportunities. Through careful archaeological investigation, we can present different and new perspectives that are not recorded clearly in existing written, pictorial or oral archives. The merging and examination of all sources together is what enables us to understand the complexity of the history. This book will also present future directions in contemporary archaeology that will help bring the study focus beyond sites and assemblages of war and protest.

Employing survey archaeology, excavation, ethnographic study, and multinational archival work, the Shala Valley Project uncovered the many powerful, creative ways whereby the men and women of Shala shaped their world: through dynamic, world-systemic relationships with the powers that surrounded but never fully conquered them. The Shala Valley Project presents the highlanders, the malesore, in the full complexity of their lives, while also unveiling a new, deeper history for the region--a history that reaches back to an unexpected fortified Iron Age site. Light and Shadow tells many stories. Archaeologists, historians, and students of tribes, of empires, of imperial-indigenous relations, of blood feud, of kinship, of the built landscape, of world-systems theory and sustainability science, and more, will find much here to digest. The people of Shala, to which Light and Shadow is dedicated, may serve as an example in our modern age, one in which persistent, tribal peoples still fight for their survival, and seek to preserve some degree of independence from capitalist economies bent on their incorporation.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “Altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature.”—Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone—Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic about Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century—were originally conceived as one vast, mysterious novel. Now, in this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has marvelously distilled a monumental work while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. Praise for Shadow Country “Magnificent . . . breathtaking . . . Finally now we have [this three-part saga] welded like a bell, and with Watson’s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate.”—Los Angeles Times “Peter Matthiessen has done great things with the Watson trilogy. It’s the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes.”—Don DeLillo “The fiction of Peter Ma­­tthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. Shadow Country lives up to anyone’s highest expectations for great writing.” —Richard Ford “Shadow Country, Matthiessen’s distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy.”—W. S. Merwin “[An] epic masterpiece . . . a great American novel.”—The Miami Herald

Images of Japanese and Japanese American women can teach us what it meant to be visible at specific moments in history. Elena Tajima Creef employs an Asian American feminist vantage point to examine ways of looking at indigenous Japanese Ainu women taking part in the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition; Japanese immigrant picture brides of the early twentieth century; interned Nisei women in World War II camps; and Japanese war brides who immigrated to the United States in the 1950s. Creef illustrates how an against-the-grain viewing of these images and other archival materials offers textual traces that invite us to reconsider the visual history of these women and other distinct historical groups. As she shows, using an archival collection’s range as a lens and frame helps us discover new intersections between race, class, gender, history, and photography. Innovative and engaging, Shadow Traces illuminates how photographs shape the history of marginalized people and outlines a method for using such materials in interdisciplinary research.

C.1, GENERAL FUNDS, PENWORTHY, 3/23/2010, $18.99.

Recasting the history of African American literature, Shadow Archives brings to life a slew of newly discovered texts—including Claude McKay’s Amiable with Big Teeth—to tell the stories of black special collections and their struggle for institutional recognition. Jean-Christophe Cloutier offers revelatory readings of major African American writers, including McKay, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, and Ralph Ellison, and provides a nuanced view of how archival methodology, access, and the power dynamics of acquisitions shape literary history. Shadow Archives argues that the notion of the archive is crucial to our understanding of postwar African American literary history. Cloutier combines his own experiences as a researcher and archivist with a theoretically rich account of the archive to offer a pioneering study of the importance of African American authors’ archival practices and how these shaped their writing. Given the lack of institutions dedicated to the black experience, the novel became an alternative site of historical preservation, a means to ensure both individual legacy and group survival. Such archivism manifests in the work of these authors through evolving lifecycles where documents undergo repurposing, revision, insertion, falsification, transformation, and fictionalization, sometimes across decades. An innovative interdisciplinary consideration of literary papers, Shadow Archives proposes new ways for literary scholars to engage with the archive.

A detailed account of labor corruption in the 1930s and the zealous journalist who railed against it