Cognitive Archaeology
Mind, Ethnography, and the Past in South Africa and Beyond
- 342 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Cognitive Archaeology
Mind, Ethnography, and the Past in South Africa and Beyond
About this book
Cognitive Archaeology: Mind, Ethnography, and the Past in South Africa and B eyond aims to interpret the social and cultural lives of the past, in part by using ethnography to build informed models of past cultural and social systems and partly by using natural models to understand symbolism and belief.
How does an archaeologist interpret the past? Which theories are relevant, what kinds of data must be acquired, and how can interpretations be derived? One interpretive approach, developed in southern Africa in the 1980s, has been particularly successful even if still not widely known globally. With an expressed commitment to scientific method, it has resulted in deeper, well-tested understandings of belief, ritual, settlement patterns and social systems. This volume brings together a series of papers that demonstrate and illustrate this approach to archaeological interpretation, including contributions from North America, Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, in the process highlighting innovative methodological and substantive research that improves our understanding of the human past.
Professional archaeological researchers would be the primary audience of this book. Because of its theoretical and methodological emphasis, it will also be relevant to method and theory courses and postgraduate students.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Information
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- 1 The benefits of an ethnographically informed cognitive archaeology
- 2 Cognitive archaeology revisitedAgency, structure and the interpreted past
- 3 Ethnographic texts and rock art in southern AfricaA personal perspective
- 4 Cultural traditions on the High PlainsApishapa, Sopris, and High Plains Upper Republican
- 5 Paquimé’s appealThe creation of an elite pilgrimage site in the North American Southwest
- 6 Ntshekane and the Central Cattle PatternReconstructing settlement history
- 7 Homesteads, pots, and marriage in southeast southern AfricaCognitive models and the dynamic past
- 8 A cognitive approach to the ordering of the worldSome case studies from the Sotho- and Tswana-speaking people of South Africa
- 9 Anthropomorphic pottery effigies as guardian spirits in the Lower Mississippi Valley
- 10 Upemba archaeology, Luba ethnography, and vice versa
- 11 Gates between worldsEthnographically informed management and conservation of petroglyph boulders in the Blue Ridge Mountains
- 12 On the archaeology of elves
- 13 Cognitive continuities in placeAn exploration of enduring, site-specific ritual practices in the Shashe-Limpopo Confluence Area
- Index