Redefining Archaeology

This volume demonstrates how humans adapt to new and challenging environments by building and adjusting their identities. By gathering a diverse set of case studies that draw on popular themes in contemporary historical archaeology and current trends in archaeological method and theory, it shows the many ways identity formation can be seen in the material world that humans create. The essays focus on situations across the globe where humans have experienced dissonance in the form of colonization, migration, conflict, marginalization, and other cultural encounters. Featuring a wide time span that reaches to the ancient past, examples include Roman soldiers in Britain, Vikings in Iceland and the Orkney Islands, sex workers in French colonial Algeria, Irish immigrants to the United States, an African American community in nineteenth-century New York City, and the Taino people of contemporary Puerto Rico. These studies draw on a variety of data, from excavated artifacts to landscape and architecture to archival materials. In their analyses, contributors explore multiple aspects of identity such as class, gender, race, and ethnicity, showing how these factors intersect for many of the individuals and groups studied. The questions of identity formation explored in this volume are critical to understanding the world today as humans continue to grapple with the legacies of colonialism and the realities of globalized and divided societies.

This work explores the archaeologies of daily living left by the indigenous and other displaced peoples impacted by European colonial expansion over the last 600 years. Case studies from North America, Australia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Ireland significantly revise conventional historical narratives of those interactions, their presumed impacts, and their ongoing relevance for the material, social, economic, and political lives and identities of contemporary indigenous and other peoples.

First reference work to explore the research on gender in archaeology.

Part IV of Nelson's 'Handbook of Gender in Archaeology' (2006). Examines the archaeology of women's lives and activities around the globe.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of Mediterranean prehistory and an essential reference to the most recent research and fieldwork. Only book available to offer general coverage of Mediterranean prehistory Written by 14 of the leading archaeologists in the field Spans the Neolithic through the Iron Age, and draws from all the major regions of the Mediterranean's coast and islands Presents the central debates in Mediterranean prehistory---trade and interaction, rural economies, ritual, social structure, gender, monumentality, insularity, archaeometallurgy and the metals trade, stone technologies, settlement, and maritime traffic---as well as contemporary legacies of the region's prehistoric past Structure of text is pedagogically driven Engages diverse theoretical approaches so students will see the benefits of multivocality

A substantially revised and expanded edition of one of the most widely-used and respected general introductions to the field of archaeology.

"Prison: Cultural Memory and Dark Tourism discusses decommissioned Australian prisons currently or potentially functioning as tourist attractions. In particular, it addresses a fundamental question: Do the interpretations and presentations of the sites include and fairly represent the personal stories and experiences associated with those prisons? The author argues that the conventional understanding of most of Australia's historical prisons fosters a radical "othering" of inmates, and with it the exclusion, distortion and historical neglect of their narratives." "This book examines avenues via which neglected narratives may be glimpsed or inferred, presenting a number of examples. This remedies the imbalance in some degree - and tests such avenues' potential as resources for inclusive interpretations by public historians and curators. The book also focuses on the influence of "celebrity prisoners", whose links to the penal system are exploited as promotional features by the sites and in some cases by the individuals themselves. Their narratives provide broad, if unwitting, support for the system and for the othering of the more general inmate population." "The ramifications of the above with regard to aspects of Australian identity mean that certain facets of the "Australian character" traditionally held to be emblematic are affected. These effects have subtle but tangible consequences for modern Australians' collective memory and deleterious consequences for current popular attitudes to penal practice."--BOOK JACKET.