Archaeology Cultural History P

ISBN-13: 9780631196020 / Angielski / Miękka / 1991 / 376 str.

Ian Morris; Howard Morris

Opis

This book shows the reader how much archaeologists can learn from recent developments in cultural history.

Recenzje

"... [a] new and appealing addition to the debates about ′what is archaeology′... Morris comes to interesting conclusions about how the Greeks, defining their relationship to a ′better′ past and an alien but enticing ′East,′ controlled their environment and constructed a domestic and political space requiring slavery and sharp gender distinctions." CHOICE <!––end––>

"Ian Morris′ new book is a blast of fresh air ..." Journal of Hellenic Studies

"The way in which he ha sintegrated the archaeology is masterful ..." Antiquity

Spis treści

List of Illustrations.

Preface and Acknowledgements.

Journal Abbreviations.

Part I:.

1. Archaeology as Cultural History.

Part II:.

2. Archaeologies of Greece.

3. Inventing a Dark Age.

Part III:.

4. Equality for Men.

5. Antithetical Cultures.

Part IV:.

6. The Past, the East, and the Hero of Lefkandi.

7. Rethinking Time and Space.

Part V:.

8. Conclusions.

Notes.

References.

Index.

O autorze

Ian Morris is Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology, and is Associate Dean of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University. He was previously Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Chicago. His previous books include Burial and Ancient Society (1987), Death Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (1992), Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies (ed., 1994), A New Companion to Homer (ed. with Barry Powell, 1997). and Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges (ed. with Barry Powell, 1997). He has carried out extensive excavation in Britain and Greece and is currently publishing Iron Age remains from Lerna, Greece.

Blurb

This book shows the reader how much archaeologists can learn from recent developments in cultural history. Cultural historians deal with many of the same issues as postprocessual archaeologists, but have developed much more sophisticated methods for thinking about change through time and the textuality of all forms of evidence. The author uses the particular case of Iron Age Greece (c. 1100–300 BC), to argue that text–aided archaeology, far from being merely a testing ground for prehistorians′ models, is in fact in the best position to develop sophisticated models of the interpretation of material culture.

The book begins by examining the history of the institutions within which archaeologists of Greece work, of the beliefs which guide them, and of their expectations about audiences. The second part of the book traces the history of equality in Iron Age Greece and its relationship to democracy, focusing on changing ideas about class, gender, ethnicity, and cosmology, as they were worked out through concerns with relationships to the past and the Near East. Ian Morris provides a new interpretation of the controversial site of Lefkandi, linking it to Greek mythology, and traces the emergence of radically new ideas of the free male citizen which made the Greek form of democracy a possibility.