Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology
Despite a growing literature on identity theory in the last two decades, much of its current use in archaeology is still driven toward locating and dating static categories such as ‘Phoenician’, ‘Christian’ or ‘native’. Previous studies have highlighted the various problems and challenges presented by identity, with the overall effect of deconstructing it to insignificance. As the humanities and social sciences turn to material culture, archaeology provides a unique perspective on the interaction between people and things over the long term. This volume argues that identity is worth studying not despite its slippery nature, but because of it. Identity can be seen as an emergent property of living in a material world, an ongoing process of becoming which archaeologists are particularly well suited to study. The geographic and temporal scale of the papers included is purposefully broad to demonstrate the variety of ways in which archaeology is redefining identity. Research areas span from the Great Lakes to the Mediterranean, with case studies from the Mesolithic to the contemporary world by emerging voices in the field. The volume contains a critical review of theories of identity by the editors, as well as a response and afterward by A. Bernard Knapp.
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Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology
Despite a growing literature on identity theory in the last two decades, much of its current use in archaeology is still driven toward locating and dating static categories such as ‘Phoenician’, ‘Christian’ or ‘native’. Previous studies have highlighted the various problems and challenges presented by identity, with the overall effect of deconstructing it to insignificance. As the humanities and social sciences turn to material culture, archaeology provides a unique perspective on the interaction between people and things over the long term. This volume argues that identity is worth studying not despite its slippery nature, but because of it. Identity can be seen as an emergent property of living in a material world, an ongoing process of becoming which archaeologists are particularly well suited to study. The geographic and temporal scale of the papers included is purposefully broad to demonstrate the variety of ways in which archaeology is redefining identity. Research areas span from the Great Lakes to the Mediterranean, with case studies from the Mesolithic to the contemporary world by emerging voices in the field. The volume contains a critical review of theories of identity by the editors, as well as a response and afterward by A. Bernard Knapp.
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Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology

Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology

Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology

Creating Material Worlds: The Uses of Identity in Archaeology

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Overview

Despite a growing literature on identity theory in the last two decades, much of its current use in archaeology is still driven toward locating and dating static categories such as ‘Phoenician’, ‘Christian’ or ‘native’. Previous studies have highlighted the various problems and challenges presented by identity, with the overall effect of deconstructing it to insignificance. As the humanities and social sciences turn to material culture, archaeology provides a unique perspective on the interaction between people and things over the long term. This volume argues that identity is worth studying not despite its slippery nature, but because of it. Identity can be seen as an emergent property of living in a material world, an ongoing process of becoming which archaeologists are particularly well suited to study. The geographic and temporal scale of the papers included is purposefully broad to demonstrate the variety of ways in which archaeology is redefining identity. Research areas span from the Great Lakes to the Mediterranean, with case studies from the Mesolithic to the contemporary world by emerging voices in the field. The volume contains a critical review of theories of identity by the editors, as well as a response and afterward by A. Bernard Knapp.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781785701818
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Publication date: 05/07/2016
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 192
File size: 12 MB
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About the Author

LOUISA CAMPBELL MA PhD FSA Scot is a graduate of the University of Glasgow. She a Roman ceramic specialist and her main research interests are threefold: material culture, the Roman and Provincial interface with a particular focus on frontier contexts and theoretical approaches to the study of culture contact. She has recently undertaken a Postdoctoral Fellowship supported by Historic Environment Scotland to develop innovative methodologies and technologies for the non-destructive in situ analysis of museum collections. This project, entitled Paints and Pigments in the Past (PPIP), resulted in the identification and reconstruction of pigments originally applied to Roman monumental sculptures from the Antonine Wall and Hadrian’s Wall.
Adrián Maldonado is lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Chester. He is most interested in the ontological transformations that came with the conversion to Christianity and the adoption of literacy beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Elizabeth Pierce has worked in commercial archaeology in Britain and the U.S., and taught courses on the archaeology of the Vikings and early medieval Scotland at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include the Middle Ages in the North Atlantic, exotic materials such as walrus ivory and jet, and recumbent monuments in medieval Scotland.

Table of Contents

Contents

Contributors
Preface
Introduction: creating material worlds, Adrián Maldonado and Anthony Russell

1. Becoming post-human: identity and the ontological turn
Oliver J.T. Harris

2. Materialising the afterlife: the long cist in early medieval Scotland
Adrián Maldonado

3. Move along: migrant identities in Scandinavian Scotland
Erin Halstad Mc Guire

4. Smoke and mirrors: conjuring the transcendental subject
John L. Creese

5. Drinking Identities and Changing Ideologies in Iron Age Sardinia
Jeremy Hayne

6. Impressions at the edge: belonging and otherness in the post-Viking North Atlantic
Elizabeth Pierce

7. We are not you: being different in Bronze Age Sicily
Anthony Russell

8. There is no identity: discerning the indiscernible
Dene Wright

9. Food, Identity and Power Entanglements in South Iberia between the 9th-6th Centuries BC
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera

10. Proportionalising practices in the past: Roman fragments beyond the frontier
Louisa Campbell

11. Afterword, by A. Bernard Knapp
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