Experiencing Archaeology

Today, many general-education archaeology courses are large, lecture-style class formats that present a challenge to providing students, particularly non-majors, with opportunities to learn experientially. This laboratory-style manual compiles a wide variety of uniquely designed, hands-on classroom activities to acquaint advanced high school and introductory college students to the field of archaeology. Ranging in length from five to thirty minutes, activities created by archaeologists are designed to break up traditional classroom lectures, engage students of all learning styles, and easily integrate into large classes and/or short class periods that do not easily accommodate traditional laboratory work.

In Experiencing the Past Michael Shanks presents an animated exploration of the character of archaeology and reclaims the sentiment and feeling which are so often lost in purely academic approaches.

There is a growing trend among archaeologists to re-create artefacts and actions at a 1:1 scale in order to answer questions and gain new insights into the past. In November 2007, the University of Exeter hosted a one-day conference on experimental archaeology, and it was soon discovered that experience is a key issue in understanding the use of materials and past processes. Papers presented in this volume consider both theoretical issues and practical case studies. The scope ranges from skinning animals or dyeing wool the Roman way, to producing sound with flint tools, carving stone on Chalcolithic Cyprus, or casting bronze objects both as art and science in Ireland. The eight chapters in this book demonstrate the myriad possibilities of archaeology by experiment. Experimental archaeology is multi-disciplinary by nature, with examples from anthropology, ethnography, taxidermy, finite element analysis and manufacturing systems theory all being present in this volume. Not only does this sub-discipline have a colourful and meaningful past, but it will surely have a significant future.

InRe-Constructing Archaeology, Shanks and Tilley aim to challenge the disciplinary practices of both traditional and the `new' archaeology and to present a radical alternative - a critically self-consious archaeology aware of itself as pracitce in the present, and equally a social archaeology that appreciates artefacts not merely as ovjects of analysis but as part of a social world of past and present that is charged with meaning. It is a fresh and invigorating contribution to the emergence of a philosophically and politically informed archaeology.

Light plays a crucial role in mediating relationships between people, things, and spaces, yet lightscapes have been largely neglected in archaeology study. This volume offers a full consideration of light in archaeology and beyond, exploring diverse aspects of illumination in different spatial and temporal contexts from prehistory to the present.

The Archaeology of Identities brings together seventeen seminal articles from this exciting new discipline in one indispensable volume for the first time. Editor Timothy Insoll expertly selects a cross-section of contributions by leading authorities to form a comprehensive and balanced representation of approaches and interests. Issues covered include: gender and sexuality ethnicity, nationalism and caste age ideology disability. Chapters are thematically arranged and are contextualized with lucid summaries and an introductory chapter, providing an accessible introduction to the varied selection of case studies included and archaeological materials considered from global sources. The study of identity is increasingly recognized as a fundamental division of archaeological enquiry, and has recently become the focus of a variety of new and challenging developments. As such, this volume will fast become the definitive sourcebook in archaeology of identities, making it essential reading for students, lecturers and researchers in the field.

Dean Saitta examines archaeology's success in reconstructing collective social actions of the past - mass protests, labor strikes, slave uprisings on plantations - and considers the implications of such reconstructions for society today. Framing key issues and definitions in a clear and accessible style, Saitta reviews some of the progress archaeologists have made in illuminating race-, gender-, and class-based forms of collective action and how those actions have shaped the American experience. Saitta argues that archaeology is not only a source of historical truth but also a comment on the contemporary human condition.

This book is an exciting new look at how archaeology has dealt with the bodily senses and offers an argument for how the discipline can offer a richer glimpse into the human sensory experience. Yannis Hamilakis shows how, despite its intensely physical engagement with the material traces of the past, archaeology has mostly neglected multi-sensory experience, instead prioritising isolated vision and relying on the Western hierarchy of the five senses. In place of this limited view of experience, Hamilakis proposes a sensorial archaeology that can unearth the lost, suppressed, and forgotten sensory and affective modalities of humans. Using Bronze Age Crete as a case study, Hamilakis shows how sensorial memory can help us rethink questions ranging from the production of ancestral heritage to large-scale social change, and the cultural significance of monuments. Hamilakis points the way to reconstituting archaeology as a sensorial and affective multi-temporal practice.