Sentient Archaeologies

Global Perspectives on Places, Objects and Practice

Courtney Nimura, Rebecca O'Sullivan, Richard Bradley, Courtney Nimura, Rebecca O'Sullivan, Richard Bradley

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781789259339
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Histoire des sciences

Archaeology in the past century has seen a major shift from theoretical frameworks that treat the remains of past societies as static snapshots of particular moments in time to interpretations that prioritize change and variability. Though established analytical concepts, such as typology, remain key parts of the archaeologist's investigative toolkit, data-gathering strategies and interpretative frameworks have become infused progressively with the concept that archaeology is living, in the sense of both the objects of study and the discipline as a whole. The significance for the field is that researchers across the world are integrating ideas informed by relational epistemologies and mutually constructive ontologies into their work from the initial stage of project design all the way down to post-excavation interpretation. This volume showcases examples of such work, highlighting the utility of these ideas to exploring material both old and new. The illuminating research and novel explanations presented contribute to resolving long-standing problems in regional archaeologies across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Oceania. In this way, this volume reinvigorates approaches taken towards older material but also acts as a springboard for future innovative discussions of theory in archaeology and related disciplines.

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contributors
• List of Figures and Tables
• 1. Living Archaeology
• 2. Reflections on Populating the Western Pacific
• 3. Diversity and Difference in New Britain, Papua New Guinea: Seeking Indigenous Communities in the Archaeological Record
• 4. Why the Concept of Near and Remote Oceania Fails Island Melanesian Prehistory
• 5. Storied Landscapes in the Palaeolithic? The View from the Cave
• 6. A Circular Tomb with ‘Stones’ of Clay: The Tomb of Lord Bai of Zhongli, Anhui Province, Central China, Early 6th Century BC
• 7. Agricultural Places as Processes
• 8. A Viereckschanze in Oxfordshire, England? Enclosure and Memory at Marcham
• 9. A Landscape’s Memory: The Long-term Impact of Proto-industrial Salt Extraction in the Seille Valley in France
• 10. Taking, Using, and Giving Back Again: The Deposition of Living Matter in Ancient Europe
• 11. Rock Art: A Marker of Concepts and Practices
• 12. Celtic Art Beyond Metal: Material Matters in Iron Age and Early Roman Southern England
• 13. Jet and Gender in Late Roman Britain
• 14. Using Coinage and Die-Studies to Obtain Evidence about Society in the Late Iron Age
• 15. ‘Keep on Truckin’ – Thoughts from the Back of a Bus
• 16. Biography and Technology: A Bronze Ding Vessel of the Iron Age in China
• 17. Rewriting Global Histories of Human–Material Relations in Different Cultural Contexts
• 18. Collections of Aboriginal Ground Stone Tools from the Murray Darling Basin: Function, Temporality, and Social Context
• 19. Cultural and Landscape Change in Australia’s World Heritage Wet Tropics Bioregion, Northeast Queensland
• 20. What’s Involved in Technological Change? Aboriginal Marine Hunting in Tropical North Australia
• 21. The Yolŋu System as a Regional Polity
• 22. Anthropology and Archaeology: A Necessary Unity
• 23. On Ontological Impurity: Conceptualising Time in Archaeology
• 24. Archaeology, Heritage, and the Heritage of Archaeology
• 25. Selling Photographs: Collecting Archaeology
• 26. On the Origins of Khami: Evidence from the Henry Balfour Collection, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
• 27. In Dreams the Heart: Impermanence at the Museum
• 28. A Civil Servant Walks onto a Neolithic Barrow…: Sir Lindsay Scott and the Whiteleaf Oval Barrow
• 29. Redirecting the Field – Total Archaeologies, Flagships, and Sample Design
• 30. Oxford Intelligence
• Backcover