Confronting Scale in Archaeology

Confronting Scale in Archaeology
Title Confronting Scale in Archaeology PDF eBook
Author Gary Lock
Publisher Springer Science & Business Media
Pages 298
Release 2007-11-15
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9780387757018

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Without realizing, most archaeologists shift within a scale of interpretation of material culture. Material data is interpreted from the scale of an individual in a specific place and time, then shifted to the complex dynamics of cultural groups spread over time and place. This book discusses the cultural, social and spatial aspects of scale and its impact on archaeology, and shows how an improved awareness of scale offers new and exciting interpretations.

Quantifying Archaeology

Quantifying Archaeology
Title Quantifying Archaeology PDF eBook
Author Stephen Shennan
Publisher Elsevier
Pages 374
Release 2014-05-19
Genre Social Science
ISBN 148329594X

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This book introduces archaeologists to the most important quantitative methods, from the initial description of archaeological data to techniques of multivariate analysis. These are presented in the context of familiar problems in archaeological practice, an approach designed to illustrate their relevance and to overcome the fear of mathematics from which archaeologists often suffer.

Archaeology Experiences Spirituality?

Archaeology Experiences Spirituality?
Title Archaeology Experiences Spirituality? PDF eBook
Author Dragoş Gheorghiu
Publisher Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Pages 225
Release 2011-09-22
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1443834076

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This book’s aim is to go beyond the limits of the contemporary scientific paradigm of “material culture” by presenting some of the issues confronting archaeology, as it attempts to approach the spirituality of the past. It brings together archaeologists from Western and Eastern Europe, and the USA who, more or less obviously, have used their experientiality to approach the world view and mystic experience of ancient peoples. The book intends to present several arguments in support of an archaeology of spirituality through a series of seven case studies. What method should we use to approach spirituality? Are we still dependent on quantitative methods? Is phenomenology an appropriate instrument? Can experientiality approach a spiritual experience? Is the emic approach efficient enough to approach the spiritual side of a studied phenomenon? Are the analogous ethnographic models suitable instruments for this task? How much of the spirituality of the past is still accessible today? Could we build artificial contexts that would allow the recreation of the phenomenological condition analogous to the originals? Archaeology Experiences Spirituality? goes beyond the archaeological study of material culture, offering a fascinating lecture for the reader of the twenty-first century.

Computational Approaches to Archaeological Spaces

Computational Approaches to Archaeological Spaces
Title Computational Approaches to Archaeological Spaces PDF eBook
Author Andrew Bevan
Publisher Routledge
Pages 385
Release 2016-06-16
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1315431912

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This volume of original chapters written by experts in the field offers a snapshot of how historical built spaces, past cultural landscapes, and archaeological distributions are currently being explored through computational social science. It focuses on the continuing importance of spatial and spatio-temporal pattern recognition in the archaeological record, considers more wholly model-based approaches that fix ideas and build theory, and addresses those applications where situated human experience and perception are a core interest. Reflecting the changes in computational technology over the past decade, the authors bring in examples from historic and prehistoric sites in Europe, Asia, and the Americas to demonstrate the variety of applications available to the contemporary researcher.

Modelling Human-Environment Interactions in and beyond Prehistoric Europe

Modelling Human-Environment Interactions in and beyond Prehistoric Europe
Title Modelling Human-Environment Interactions in and beyond Prehistoric Europe PDF eBook
Author Samuel Seuru
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 166
Release 2023-07-25
Genre Social Science
ISBN 3031343360

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This book offers insight into the relationship between prehistoric and protohistoric human populations and the world around them. It reconstructs key aspects of the palaeoenvironment – from large-scale drivers of environmental conditions, such as climate, to more regional variables such as vegetation cover and faunal communities. The volume underscores how computational archaeology is leading the way in the study of past human-environment interactions across spatial and chronological scales. With the increased availability of high-resolution climate models, agent-based modelling, palaeoecological proxies and the mature use of Geographic Information System in ecological modelling, archaeologists working in interdisciplinary settings are well-positioned to explore the intersection of human systems and environmental affordances and constraints. These methodological advancements provide a better understanding of the role humans played in past ecosystems – both in terms of their impact upon the environment and, in return, the impact of environmental conditions on human systems. They may also allow us to infer past ecological knowledge and land-use patterns that are historically contingent, rather than environmentally determined. This volume gathers contributions that combine reconstructions of past environments and archeological data with a view to exploring their complex interactions at different scales and invites scholars from varying disciplines and backgrounds to present and compare different modelling approaches.

Contradictions of Archaeological Theory

Contradictions of Archaeological Theory
Title Contradictions of Archaeological Theory PDF eBook
Author Sandra Wallace
Publisher Routledge
Pages 319
Release 2012-01-30
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1136913076

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Is current archaeological theory stuck at an impasse? Sandra Wallace argues that archaeological theory has become mired as a result of logical and ontological contradictions. By showing that these contradictions are a result of common underlying philosophical assumptions and fallacies this book is able to show how a fresh approach to this discipline is necessary to resolve them, even if this requires re-examining some of the tenants of orthodox archaeology. This fresh approach is achieved by using Critical Realism as an "under labourer" to philosophically evaluate archaeological theory. Starting by assessing the historical impact of philosophy on the discipline and then looking at the current relationship between archaeology and the ontology of the material this book facilitates the construction of discipline specific theory by archaeologists. The result is an approach to archaeology that allows both students and practitioners to free themselves from endemic contradictions and re-discover their approach to archaeological theory.

Envisioning Landscape

Envisioning Landscape
Title Envisioning Landscape PDF eBook
Author Dan Hicks
Publisher Routledge
Pages 301
Release 2016-06-03
Genre Nature
ISBN 1315429527

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The contributors to this volume take advantage of the diversity of landscape archaeology to examine the link to heritage, the impact on our understanding of temporality, and the situated theory that arises out of landscape studies, using examples from New York to Northern Ireland, Africa to the Argolid.