Overview

In 2014, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World organized an international writing competition calling for accessible and engaging essays about any aspect of archaeology. Nearly 150 submissions from over two dozen countries were received. Archaeology for the People gathers the best of those entries. Their diverse topics-from the destruction of historic, urban gardens in contemporary Istanbul to the fall of the ancient Maya city- offer a taste of the global reach and relevance of archaeology. Their main common trait, however, is that they prove that archaeology can offer much more to a general audience than Indiana Jones or aliens building pyramids. All of the articles collected in this book combine sophisticated analysis of an exciting archeological problem with prose geared at a non-specialized audience. This book also offers a series of reflections on how and why to engage in dialogues about archaeology with people who are not specialists. These include a stunning photo-essay that captures the challenges of life at an archaeological site in northern Sudan, interviews with a number of leading archaeologists who have successfully written about archaeology for a broad public or who are actively engaged in practicing archaeology beyond academia, and a discussion of the experience of teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about archaeology to over 40,000 students. This book should be of interest to anyone who has wondered how and why to write about archaeology for people other than archaeologists.

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9781785701078

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Archaeology for the People is a useful and important volume that contains thought-provoking stories about a controversial past that is often deliberately ignored, including by many archaeologists secluded in the ivory tower of academia. Books like this one prevent the past from becoming an Ignoreland, to cite the title of a critical and mordant track included in REM's album Automatic for the People. * European Journal of Archaeology *

Archaeology for the People is a useful and important volume that contains thought-provoking stories about a controversial past that is often deliberately ignored, including by many archaeologists secluded in the ivory tower of academia. Books like this one prevent the past from becoming an Ignoreland, to cite the title of a critical and mordant track included in REM's album Automatic for the People. -- XURXO M. AYAN VILA * European Journal of Archaeology *

Author Information

John Cherry looked after medieval metalwork at the British Museum from 1964 to 2002. In 2016 he published Richard Rawlinson and his Seal Matrices: Collecting in the Early Eighteenth Century, and 'Patronage and purpose: goldsmiths and the engraving of silver seal matrices in late Medieval England' in Orfeverie gothique en Europe: production et reception, ed. E.A. Koenig and M. Tomasi. Felipe Rojas (Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Brown University) has conducted archaeological fieldwork in the Eastern Mediterranean at various sites including Aphrodisias, Sardis, and Petra. He is currently finishing a monograph about Greek, Roman and Byzantine interaction with the Bronze and Iron Age material culture of Anatolia.

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