Overview
Incomplete Archaeologies takes a familiar archaeological concept – assemblages – and reconsiders such groupings, collections and sets of things from the perspective of the work required to assemble them. The discussions presented here engage with the practices of collection, construction, performance and creation in the past (and present) which constitute the things and groups of things studied by archaeologists – and examine as well how these things and thing-groups are dismantled, rearranged, and even destroyed, only to be rebuilt and recreated. The ultimate aim is to reassert an awareness of the incompleteness of assemblage, and thus the importance of practices of assembling (whether they seem at first creative or destructive) for understanding social life in the past as well as the present. The individual chapters represent critical engagements with this aim by archaeologists presenting a broad scope of case studies from Eurasia and the Mediterranean. Case studies include discussions of mortuary practice from numerous angles, the sociopolitics of metallurgy, human-animal relationships, landscape and memory, the assembly of political subjectivity and the curation of sovereignty. These studies emphasise the incomplete and ongoing nature of social action in the past, and stress the critical significance of a deeper understanding of formation processes as well as contextual archaeologies to practices of archaeology, museology, art history, and other related disciplines. Contributors challenge archaeologists and others to think past the objects in the assemblage to the practices of assembling, enabling us to consider not only plural modes of interacting with and perceiving things, spaces, human bodies and temporalities in the past, but also to perhaps discover alternate modes of framing these interactions and relationships in our analyses. Ultimately then, Incomplete Archaeologies takes aim at the perceived totality not only of assemblages of artefacts on shelves and desks, but also that of some of archaeology’s seeming-seamless epistemological objects.
Full Product Details
Author: Emily Miller Bonney ,
Kathryn J. Franklin ,
James A. Johnson
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Imprint: Oxbow Books
Dimensions:
Width: 17.00cm
, Height: 1.00cm
, Length: 24.20cm
Weight: 0.422kg
ISBN: 9781785701153
ISBN 10: 1785701150
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 31 December 2015
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Author Information
Emily Miller Bonney is Associate Professor in the Department of Liberal Studies at the University of California, Fullerton. Her principal research interests are in Bronze Age Crete; landscape archaeology; the archaeology of memory and material studies Kathryn J. Franklin is a lecturer in the department of Near Eastern Languages and civilizations at the Univeristy of Chicago. Her wide ranging research interests include materiality, landscape archaeology, the archaeology of Armenia, ancient trade and commerce and migration studies. James A. Johnson recently completed his PhD in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh investigating social complexity and differentiation in Bronze Age societies in the southern Ural mountains
