Global Perspectives On Archaeological Field Schools

Archaeological field schools, notably in North America but also across the world, are seminal student experiences. They are also important vehicles by which research students and academic staff carry out fieldwork research, often away from the environs of their home institution. Field schools are teaching and research projects, but they also take place within a contemporary local context. This is the first ever collection of studies examining the tensions between teaching, research and local socio-cultural conditions, and explores the range of experiences associated with field schools. It will be of interest to all those wishing to attend a field school, whether as student or junior staff member, and for novice and experienced field school directors who can gain fresh insights from others’ experiences.

This volume presents over 90 papers from the 13th International Conference on Archaeological Prospection 2019, Sligo. Papers address archaeological prospection techniques, methodologies and case studies from 33 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America, reflecting current and global trends in archaeological prospection.

This book addresses the topic of humanities education fieldwork using the Singapore context as its primary focus. It explores how the thought processes behind and techniques of various humanities and social sciences subjects can be applied to fieldwork in a variety of school and training settings. In addition, it discusses how humanities students and educators could stand to benefit from utilizing fieldwork techniques and skills used in archaeology and anthropology, beyond undergraduates majoring in that discipline. Finally, the adoption of multidisciplinary approaches in fieldwork incorporating history, geography, literature and social studies demonstrate how these subjects can collaborate together in actual case studies to facilitate participants’ learning in the field.

This volume provides the results of a 30-year excavation, reconstruction, and public interpretation campaign at the late prehistoric inland promontory settlement of Castell Henllys, here focusing on the defensive sequence and the role of monumentality in later prehistory. The site has international significance because of the extensive excavations of the Iron Age palisaded settlement and later earthen ramparts, complex gateway, and chevaux-de-frise of upright stones. It is now widely recognised that the Iron Age consisted of many regional cultural traditions, and the excavations at Castell Henllys provide a vital contrast to the well-known large hillfort communities in other parts of England and Wales as well as across Europe. As such, it is a unique window into a widespread but largely ignored site category and form of social and economic organisation. The publication will provide a case study for the construction and use of the earthworks of a major European late prehistoric settlement type – the Iron Age hillfort; the monumental construction is compared with other communal investments such as the Mississippian mounds. It will also offer an innovative form of site reporting, including alternative interpretations of the earthworks as either military defences or the community-binding symbols. Along with Excavation, Experiment and Heritage Interpretation: Castell Henllys Hillfort Then and Now, these books will be required reading by those studying the late prehistoric archaeology of Britain and Europe at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate level, and by those in North America studying complex societies, monumentality and ways of writing archaeology.

Assembling Archaeology provides a radical rethinking of the relationships between teaching, researching, digging, and practicing as an archaeologist in the 21st century. The issues addressed here are global and applicable wherever archaeology is taught, practiced, and researched. At its heart this book addresses the undervaluation of teaching, demonstrating that this affects the fundamentals of contemporary archaeological practice and is particularly connected to the lack of diversity in disciplinary demographics. It proposes a solution which is grounded in a theoretical rethinking of archaeological teaching, training, and practice by advocating a holistic 'assemblage' approach which challenges traditional power structures and the global marketization of the higher education system. Drawing on insights from archaeology's current material turn, this book approaches the discipline as a subject of investigation and offers a new perspective founded upon the notion of the learning assemblage, which resituates teaching and learning as a central focus and contributes to broader discourses on critical pedagogy and rhizomatic learning. It ultimately argues for a robust archaeological pedagogy that is rooted in and emergent from the material realities of the profession, and will be valuable to everyone from academia to Cultural Resource Management (CRM), heritage professional to undergraduate student.

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.

In Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective, contributors illustrate the virtues of various ecological, experimental, statistical, typological, technological, and cognitive/social approaches for understanding the origins, formation histories, and inferential potential of a wide range of archaeological phenomena. As archaeologists worldwide create theoretically inspired and methodologically robust narratives of the cultural past, their research pivots on the principle that determining the origins and histories of archaeological phenomena is essential in understanding their relevance for a variety of anthropological problems. The chapters explore how the analysis of artifact, assemblage, and site distributions at different spatial and temporal scales provides new insights into how mobility strategies affect lithic assemblage composition, what causes unstable interaction patterns in complex societies, and which factors promote a sense of “place” in landscapes of abandoned structures. In addition, several chapters illustrate how new theoretical approaches and innovative methods promote reinterpretations of the regional significance of historically important archaeological sites such as Myrtos-Pyrgos (Crete, Greece), Aztalan (Wisconsin, USA), Tabun Cave (Israel), and Casas Grandes (Chihuahua, Mexico). The studies presented in Archaeological Variability and Interpretation in Global Perspective challenge orthodoxy, raise research-worthy controversies, and develop strong inferences about the diverse evolutionary pathways of humankind using theoretical perspectives that consider both new information and preexisting archaeological data. Contributors: C. Michael Barton, Brian F. Byrd, Gerald Cadogan, Philip G. Chase, Harold L. Dibble, Matthew J. Douglass, Patricia C. Fanning, Lynne Goldstein, Simon J. Holdaway, Kathryn A. Kamp, Sam Lin, Emilia Oddo, Zeljko Rezek, Julien Riel-Salvatore, Gary O. Rollefson, Jeffrey Rosenthal, Barbara J. Roth, Sissel Schroeder, Justin I. Shiner, John C. Whittaker, David R. Wilcox

The field school is often described as a “rite of passage” among archaeologists. They are considered essential for the appropriate training of students for academic or professional archaeological careers, and are perhaps the only universal experience in an increasingly diverse array of archaeological career paths. Jane Baxter’s practical guide about how to run a successful field school offers archaeologists ways to maximize the educational and training benefits of these experiences. She presents a wide range of pedagogical theories and techniques that can be used to place field schools in an educational, as well as an archaeological, context. Baxter then offers a “how to” guide for the design of field schools, including logistical, legal, and personnel issues as well as strategies for integrating research and teaching in the field. Replete with checklists, forms, and cogent examples, the author gives directors and staff a set of “best practices” for designing and implementing a school.