Defining the Fringe of Contemporary Australian Archaeology
Title | Defining the Fringe of Contemporary Australian Archaeology PDF eBook |
Author | Rocco Bosco |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Pages | 185 |
Release | 2018-04-18 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1527510735 |
Popular culture has often presented a mythologised version of archaeology that at times misinforms the general public about broader academic intentions. The fantastic and bizarre continue to capture the public imagination, so that while archaeological teams excavate, survey and record, they occupy the same geographic locations as ghost tour operators and seekers of the supernatural. Not only does archaeology operate within the same geography as modern mythology, but widespread access to technology, from satellite imagery to GPS data, means that enthusiastic amateurs can partake in their own investigations. With limited landscape identification training, an enthusiasm for discovery and strange cultural biases, fringe operators have utilised new technologies to justify old fallacies through variant forms of amateur archaeology. This collection draws on the wealth of work currently being undertaken by contemporary archaeologists in Australia, from rock art observations to art/archaeology experiments and even space archaeology. It explores archaeology on the edge, contextualising the fringe dwellers that operate on the periphery of accepted academia. It also looks at contemporary archaeological theory and practice in relation to these fringe operators, developing approaches toward interaction, in contrast to the more common reaction of repudiation. The relationship between the accepted centre and the outer edge in contemporary archaeological practice and theory unveils much about popular misconceptions and how archaeological spaces can be overlaid with variant mythological and cultural interpretations.
The Business of Heritage
Title | The Business of Heritage PDF eBook |
Author | Darran Jordan |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Pages | 231 |
Release | 2020-06-04 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1527554163 |
Throughout the world, consultant archaeologists are at work on heritage assessments covering a broad range of fields, subjects, techniques, locations and connections. Due to government legislations to protect heritage, an industry has developed where archaeology is inextricably linked to business. The result is the production of a vast amount of material not widely seen, with the result of the heritage work often remaining unpublished. This collection of papers examines how heritage is undertaken as a business, and what this means for the ongoing protection of the past and development of archaeological knowledge. The international connections of a global business structure present an opportunity to approach heritage and archaeological studies with a global ‘one world’ view, parallel with the corporate approach practiced by an international company. This volume collects papers by archaeologists and heritage specialists from around the globe, providing insights into the intentions, processes and outcomes of an international heritage consultancy in operation. From managing heritage structures associated with space exploration at the NASA Ames Research Center, to protecting Roman archaeology in North Yorkshire, and from an industrial landscape in Cornwall to a palimpsest of Aboriginal artefacts in Australia, this book contextualises international consultancy within a broader milieu of archaeological study and documents the way in which an international business contributes to the development of academic knowledge on a world scale.
Digging It Up Down Under
Title | Digging It Up Down Under PDF eBook |
Author | Claire Smith |
Publisher | Springer Science & Business Media |
Pages | 352 |
Release | 2007-03-14 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0387352635 |
This field manual provides essential background information for those interested in undertaking archaeology in Australia. Professional archaeologists provide their personal tips for working in each state and territory, dealing with a living heritage, working with Aboriginal peoples, and coping with Australian conditions. Grounded in the social, political and ethical issues that inform Australian archaeology today, this book is also packed with practical advice.
Dr Space Junk vs The Universe
Title | Dr Space Junk vs The Universe PDF eBook |
Author | Alice Gorman |
Publisher | MIT Press |
Pages | 306 |
Release | 2019-10-22 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 0262043432 |
A pioneering space archaeologist explores artifacts left behind in space and on Earth, from moon dust to Elon Musk's red sports car. Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist: she examines the artifacts of human encounters with space. These objects, left behind on Earth and in space, can be massive (dead satellites in eternal orbit) or tiny (discarded zip ties around a defunct space antenna). They can be bold (an American flag on the moon) or hopeful (messages from Earth sent into deep space). They raise interesting questions: Why did Elon Musk feel compelled to send a red Tesla into space? What accounts for the multiple rocket-themed playgrounds constructed after the Russians launched Sputnik? Gorman—affectionately known as “Dr Space Junk” —takes readers on a journey through the solar system and beyond, deploying space artifacts, historical explorations, and even the occasional cocktail recipe in search of the ways that we make space meaningful. Engaging and erudite, Gorman recounts her background as a (nonspace) archaeologist and how she became interested in space artifacts. She shows us her own piece of space junk: a fragment of the fuel tank insulation from Skylab, the NASA spacecraft that crash-landed in Western Australia in 1979. She explains that the conventional view of the space race as “the triumph of the white, male American astronaut” seems inadequate; what really interests her, she says, is how everyday people engage with space. To an archaeologist, objects from the past are significant because they remind us of what we might want to hold on to in the future.
The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space
Title | The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space PDF eBook |
Author | Juan Francisco Salazar |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Pages | 778 |
Release | 2023-07-10 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1000890643 |
The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space offers state-of-the-art overview of contemporary social and cultural research on outer space. International in scope, the thirty-eight contributions by over fifty leading researchers and artists across a variety of disciplines and fields of knowledge, present a range of debates and pose key questions about the crafting of futures in relation to outer space. The Handbook is a call to attend more carefully to engagements with outer space, empirically, affectively, and theoretically, while characterizing current research practices and outlining future research agendas. This recalibration opens profound questions of intersectional politics, race, equity, and environmental justice around the contested topics of space exploration and life off-Earth. Among the many themes included in the volume are the various infrastructures, networks and systems that enable and sustain space exploration; space heritage; the ethics of outer space; social and environmental justice; fundamental debates about life in outer space as it pertains to both astrobiology and SETI; the study of scientific communities; the human body and consciousness; Indigenous astronomical systems of Knowledge; contemporary space art; and ongoing critical interventions to overcome the legacies of colonialism and dismantle hegemonic narratives of outer space.
Histories of Australian Rock Art Research
Title | Histories of Australian Rock Art Research PDF eBook |
Author | Jo McDonald |
Publisher | ANU Press |
Pages | 306 |
Release | 2022-09-06 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1760465364 |
Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often engaging with earlier rock markings. The art reflects and expresses changing experiences within landscapes over time, spirituality, history, law and lore, as well as relationships between individuals and groups of people, plants, animals, land and Ancestral Beings that are said to have created the world, including some rock art. Since the late 1700s, people arriving in Australia have been fascinated with the rock art they encountered, with detailed studies commencing in the late 1800s. Through the 1900s an impressive body of research on Australian rock art was undertaken, with dedicated academic study using archaeological methods employed since the late 1940s. Since then, Australian rock art has been researched from various perspectives, including that of Traditional Owners, custodians and other community members. Through the 1900s, there was also growing interest in Australian rock art from researchers across the globe, leading many to visit or migrate to Australia to undertake rock art research. In this volume, the varied histories of Australian rock art research from different parts of the country are explored not only in terms of key researchers, developments and changes over time, but also the crucial role of First Nations people themselves in investigations of this key component of their living heritage.
What Katie Did
Title | What Katie Did PDF eBook |
Author | Jane Singleton |
Publisher | Jane Singleton |
Pages | 140 |
Release | 2020-05-04 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0648656314 |
Katie Langloh Parker was a white woman who notated the Aboriginal language Euahlayi and collected the legends from the Noongahburrahs in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. But her publication of the legends is controversial. There have been both critical and supportive critiques of her work, but little on the woman herself who accomplished something extraordinary as a nineteenth century squatter's wife in the outback.