Overview

Focusing on the daily concerns and routine events of people in the past, Investigating the Ordinary argues for a paradigm shift in the way southeastern archaeologists operate. Instead of dividing archaeological work by time periods or artifact types, the essays in this volume unite separate areas of research through the theme of the everyday. Ordinary activities studied here range from flint-knapping to ceremonial crafting, from subsistence to social gatherings, and from the Paleoindian period to the nineteenth century. Contributors demonstrate that attention to everyday life can help researchers avoid overemphasizing data and jargon and instead discover connections between the people of different eras. This approach will also inspire archaeologists with ways to engage the public with their work and with the deep history of the southeastern United States.

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9781683400219

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Reviews

Encourages archaeologists to consider the complexities of everyday life, and to recognize that the practices, animals, and materials that people engage with on a daily basis have important effects in the broader sociocultural context. --Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology

"""Encourages archaeologists to consider the complexities of everyday life, and to recognize that the practices, animals, and materials that people engage with on a daily basis have important effects in the broader sociocultural context.""--Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology"

"""A phenomenal collection of case studies written by prominent southeastern archaeologists which asks thought-provoking questions about the past, and more importantly, offers suggestions for the future of our field.""--North American Archaeologist  ""Offer[s] concrete, science/data-driven perspectives on the everyday. . . . The value here centers on challenging archaeologists to explore unfamiliar contexts, ideas, and methodologies from numerous perspectives, a transdisciplinary approach for a twenty-first century public-oriented archaeology.""--Southeastern Archaeology  ""Provides theoretical, empirical, and imaginative inspiration. . . . Recommend[ed] for any practitioner interested in pushing the boundaries of inquiry.""--Journal of Anthropological Research  ""Addresses critical issues, including how the everyday and the exceptional are fundamentally entangled to produce one another, contributing valuably to a substantive archaeology of everyday matters.""--Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute  ""Convincingly argues that investigating the ordinary does matter in 'real' archaeology for many reasons, including formulating research questions, integrating data, collaborative research, and even theory building.""--American Antiquity  ""Encourages archaeologists to consider the complexities of everyday life, and to recognize that the practices, animals, and materials that people engage with on a daily basis have important effects in the broader sociocultural context.""--Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology  ""Investigating the Ordinary makes a convincing case that the everyday matters in archaeological discourse, and that we, as producers of this discourse, have a responsibility to continue its relevance in today's world.""--Mississippi Archaeology"

Author Information

Sarah E. Price, senior archaeologist with Wiregrass Archaeological Consulting, is coeditor of Contemporary Lithic Analysis in the Southeast: Problems, Solutions, and Interpretations. Philip J. Carr, professor of anthropology at the University of South Alabama, is coeditor of Signs of Power: The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the Southeast.

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