Introduction to Archaeological Methods and Sources

Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell

Archaeology’s focus on material culture provides it with unparalleled opportunities to investigate the entire span of the human past. For periods for which historical records (verbal as well as textual) exist, this includes its ability to deliver insights into the lives of individuals and communities only partially represented, if at all, in those records. Its remit ranges from individual sites requiring excavation to surface scatters of artifacts, from upstanding monuments to entire landscapes. Interpreting archaeological observations depends upon establishing that they are in valid association with each other and can be accurately dated. In both cases the principles of stratigraphic superimposition, association, and context are key concerns. While analogies derived from ethnographic data sustain many archaeological interpretations, individual finds and assemblages of finds are also investigated using a wide range of scientific and other techniques.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Chris Fowler

A combination of new animism and new materialism has influenced recent interpretations of the Neolithic archaeology of Britain and Ireland, including decorative and figurative productions often referred to as ‘art’. This article critiques the appeal to animism in some of this work and considers four alternative ways to address the critique. First it considers contextualizing animism by discussing Descola’s identification of four kinds of ontologies—animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism–outlining examples of practices and material culture involved in each. After examining the effect of applying these to the Neolithic archaeology of Britain and Ireland, it then considers identifying Neolithic practices which seem at odds with animism without boxing these as indicative of other categories of ontology. After noting the wide range of Indigenous ontologies such models attempt to characterize, the article advocates an emphasis on ontological difference and attends to ontological diversity within the Neolithic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manek Kolhatkar

Describing cultural change and variability and inferring sociocultural dynamics about past people and communities may be among archaeology’s main goals as a field of practice. In this regard, the concept of skill has proved its usefulness to, time and again, expand the breath of archaeologists and lithic technologists’ analyses. It covers a wide range of applications, from apprenticeship, cognition, paleo-sociology, spatial organization. It is one of the main causes for material culture variability, up there with raw material constraints, design, technological organization or cultural norms. Yet, while skill has certainly been the focus of some research in the last decades, it remains quite peripheral, when considering how central the concept should be to technological inquiries. Whatever the reasons may be, this book, edited by Laurent Klaric and fully bilingual (French and English), aims at changing that, and argues for skill to become a central concern in lithic technology. Its chapters do so strongly and the end-result is a book that should become a reference for lithic technologists, whatever their research interests or schools of thought may be.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaojun Zhang

<div>This thesis researches the translation of Chinese culture-specific items in <em>Red Poppies</em> from the perspectives of Eco-translatology. Eco-translatology, which was put forward by Chinese scholar Hu Gengshen, adopts some concepts of ecology in translatology and provides a new perspective for translation study and practice. <em>Red Poppies</em> is a novel by Alai whose contents covers a wide range of Tibetan culture and history, which is praised as Tibetan encyclopedia. On one hand, the study focuses on the definition and features of culture-specific items, and their classification of in Red</div><div>Poppies. Based on Nida’s classification of five categories of sub-culture, those culture-specific items are classified into five groups, namely linguistic culture-specific items, material culture-specific items, ecological culture--specific items, social culture-specific items and religious culture-specific items. On the other hand, this thesis explores how Goldblatt deal with those culture-specific items from the perspective of three-dimension transformation in eco-translatology, and it finds translator adopts a combination of foreignization strategy and domestication strategy, and the former plays a dominating role. Besides, various translation methods are adopted such as free translation, transliteration, transliteration plus annotation, and amplification and so on.</div>


Author(s):  
Pavlo Nechytaylo ◽  
◽  
Olena Onohda ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  

The paper analyses ceramics and buildings remains of the second half 13th – first half 15th centuries, coming from excavations in Kamianets-Podilskyi. It aims to introduce materials into scientific circulation, to compare the collection with synchronous objects from adjacent territories, to trace interactions in the material culture development in late medieval towns. Ceramics of the Golden Horde and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania times began to be systematically researched relatively recently in Ukraine. Thus, the materials from Kamianets-Podilskyi contribute to deepening our knowledge of less-known periods in the history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Materials analyzed were obtained during rescue archaeological research on the Polish Market square in Kamianets. These were fragmented parts of underground and aboveground building structures, as well as a collection of various household items. Building materials were mostly local clays and loam, less often wood and stone were used. A set of clay ‘roll’ blocks set in one of the pits allows us to assume similarity with the Golden Horde building technologies. Finds of coins and Crimean polychrome bowls fragments also indicate the complex emerged during the Golden Horde period. However, certain groups of pottery and coins of European minting define the complex upper date within the first half 15th century. Diverse ceramic types range from the complex is an interesting local typological phenomenon. It reflects mutual influences of the pottery traditions development both in time and space. After processing artefacts collection, the main groups of pottery were identified according to technological features. Some of them are rooted in the local ancient Rus’ traditions, others were formed under the influence of Western trends, while samples of a ‘specific’ group were common for almost the entire territory of modern Ukraine during Late Middle Ages. Pots collection was preliminary systematized up to 5 most common types selection, based on rim profiles. Many of them have a wide range of analogies, locally from Kamianets, as well as from the Western Ukraine, in Poland, Moldova and Romania. In addition to pots, the collection includes other types of kitchen and tableware, such as makitras, lids, jars and other single samples of ceramics. The typological diversity correlates with the multi-layered processes which took place in Kamianets-Podilskyi life during the Golden Horde and the Lithuanian periods. Materials from the complex, as well as other finds from synchronous objects within the city, deepen our understanding of the city’s development large-scale picture, which, however, requires further research.


Author(s):  
Adam Fracchia

The small industrial town of Texas, Maryland, employed hundreds of Irish immigrants in the quarrying and burning of limestone during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This chapter by Adam Fracchia examines patterns of value based on categories of class, ethnicity, and race that were influenced by and necessary to ensure the profitability of the quarry industry. Historical records in combination with material culture illustrate shifts in these values over time and the patterns of marginalization that led to the removal of Texans and the destruction of their property. Ultimately, the preservation of the town is governed by similar notions of value tied to the current mode of production and a static perception of the town’s heritage that indirectly supports its continued destruction.


Author(s):  
Anna Hickey-Moody ◽  
Marissa Willcox

Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives of people whose voices are silenced, or left off historical records. Material cultures provide indirect archives of such social histories, values and feelings. Examining the expressive qualities of material culture, we draw on data from the trans-national research project ‘Interfaith Childhoods’. This project generates and documents community perspectives on faith, identity and belonging. In response to our data generated through arts workshops with children and focus group discussions with parents, we develop a theoretical framework which observes how the materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents build relationships with those from different religions. Here, we theorise how our empirical evidence makes a case for thinking through visual and material cultures of religion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 893-909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica C. Robbins

This article belongs to the special cluster, “Politics and Current Demographic Challenges in Central and Eastern Europe,” guest-edited by Tsveta Petrova and Tomasz Inglot. Like other countries in Europe, Poland’s population is growing older, because of a combination of increasing life expectancies and decreasing birth rates. Such demographic change poses challenges for policy makers, who often understand population aging to put strain on social-service, health care, and pension systems. In response, governments and civil society often emphasize “active aging,” a rubric encompassing a wide range of policies and programs meant to promote health, workforce participation, lifelong learning, and social engagement. Although active aging is often part of neoliberal policies that focus on individual responsibility, recent anthropological theory shows that neoliberal ideals of self-care cannot fully explain contemporary forms of responsibility and social relations. Anthropological theory and ethnographic data can thus help to analyze the effects of demographic change as evident in social policy and programs. In this article, I integrate an analysis of Polish governmental documents meant to promote active aging with an analysis of ethnographic data of older Poles’ experiences of active aging. This article provides an ethnographically grounded perspective on the concept of active aging that focuses on how people actually experience such policies by exploring the meanings such programs and activities take on in the lives of individual and groups. Ethnographic data reveal that the past has multiple emotional valences that shape people’s experiences of these programs, stemming from histories of violence and rupture in the region. This suggests that making explicit the multiple, complex meanings of the past could shape active aging policy and thus civil society to be more inclusive.


Author(s):  
Laura Varnam

The church as sacred space places the reader at the heart of medieval religious life, standing inside the church with the medieval laity in order to ask what the church meant to them and why. It examines the church as a building, idea, and community, and explores the ways in which the sanctity of the church was crucial to its place at the centre of lay devotion and parish life. At a time when the parish church was facing competition for lay attention, and dissenting movements such as Lollardy were challenging the relevance of the material church, the book examines what was at stake in discussions of sanctity and its manifestations. Exploring a range of Middle English literature alongside liturgy, architecture, and material culture, the book explores the ways in which the sanctity of the church was constructed and maintained for the edification of the laity. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theoretical approaches, the book offers a reading of the church as continually produced and negotiated by the rituals, performances, and practices of its lay communities, who were constantly being asked to attend to its material form, visual decorations, and significance. The meaning of the church was a dominant question in late-medieval religious culture and this book provides an invaluable context for students and academics working on lay religious experience and canonical Middle English texts.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-94
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Pieńczak

Abstract In 1998, the source materials of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas - collected over many decades with the participation of the Institute of History of Material Culture (a unit of the Polish Academy of Sciences) and several leading ethnological centres - were moved to the Cieszyn Branch of the University of Silesia (currently the Faculty of Ethnology and Education). It was then that Z. Kłodnicki, the editor of the PEA, came up with the idea to continue and finish the atlas studies. However, the work on fulfilling the PEA, the biggest project in the history of Polish ethnology, is still going on. Nowadays, the materials of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas constitute a precious, unique in the national scale, documentary base. For several years, a lively cooperation has taken place between the PEA staff (representing the Faculty of Ethnology and Education of the University of Silesia) and various cultural institutions, government and non-government organizations. The discussed projects are usually aimed at the preservation and protection of the cultural heritage of the Polish village as well as the broadly related promotion actions for activating local communities. The workers of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas since 2014 have been also implementing the Ministry grant entitled The Polish Ethnographic Atlas - scientific elaboration, electronic database, publication of the sources in the Internet, stage I (scientific supervision: Ph.D. Agnieszka Pieńczak). What is an integral assumption of the discussed project is the scientific elaboration of three electronic catalogues, presenting the PEA resources: 1) field photographs (1955-1971) 2) the questionnaires concerning folk collecting (1948-1952), 3. the published maps (1958-2013). These materials have been selected due to their documentary value. The undertaking has brought about some measurable effects, mostly the special digital platform www.archiwumpae.us.edu.pl. This material database of ethnographic data might become the basis for designing various non-material activities aimed at preserving the cultural heritage of the Polish village.


Author(s):  
C. Kurt Dewhurst ◽  
Marsha MacDowell

This chapter addresses the wide range of folk art and crafts related to the study of those who make, use, and find meaning in the handmade object in America. The definitions of folk, popular, visionary, outsider, and fine arts have long been challenged and reassessed by scholarly and public communities, communities that sometimes but not always overlap. Debates have raged over the boundaries between art and craft, the viability of the handmade traditional object in the digital, postmodern age, and the discernible distinctive aesthetic characteristics of this body of American expressive culture. This chapter presents a flexible, interdisciplinary perspective on defining folk art and craft in America. It also offers avenues for folk art and craft scholarship such as relationships of aging, human rights, migration, sexuality and gender, and health to the study of folk artists and their communities, and encourages building on the legacy of material culture scholarship from the collections and research of museums and governmental agencies in addition to higher education institutions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document