Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives

ISBN-13: 9780415067898 / Angielski / Twarda / 1998 / 448 str.

Kristian Kristiansen; Michael Rowlands

Opis

This volume brings together a series of papers which define the relevance of archaeology to the study of long term change and to the understanding of our contemporary world. It re-evaluates the premises and epistemologies which underlie the study of archaeology and looks at the ways discoveries about the past have a direct bearing oncontemporary beliefs and actions. The major theoretical ideologies which have influenced archaeology since the mid-1970s are considered: functionalism, determinism, structural Marxism, world systems theory, postmodernism and postprocessual archaeology. The papers in this volume, however, concentrate on the study of structures as far as the archaeological record brings new or different insight to their functioning in the long term. The volume also remains committed to the possibility of an historical reconstruction of social realities. The text is a compilation of papers in theoretical archaeology and should appeal to academics and postgraduates in archaeology, anthropology and history.

Spis treści

Introduction PART I Conceptualising social transformation 1 Objectivity and subjectivity in archaeology 2 Materialism and multilinear evolution 3 Conceptualising the European Bronze and Early Iron Ages 4 The formation of tribal systems in northern Europe, 4000–500 BC 5 From stone to bronze: the evolution of social complexity in northern Europe, 2300–1200 BC 6 Kinship, alliance and exchange in the European Bronze Age 7 The consumption of wealth in Bronze Age Denmark: a study in the dynamic of economic processes in tribal societies PART II Centre periphery relations 8 Centre and periphery: a review of a concept 9 Chiefdoms, states and systems of social evolution 10 Centre and periphery in Bronze Age Scandinavia 11 The emergence of the European world system in the Bronze Age: divergence, convergence and social evolution during the first and second millennia BC in Europe PART III Contact and colonialism The archaeology of colonialism 13 The internal structure and regional context of Early Iron Age society in south-western Germany 14 The archaeology of colonialism and constituting the African peasantry 15 Ritual killing and historical transformation in a West African kingdom 16 The embodiment of sacred power in the Cameroon Grassfields

O autorze

Kristian Kristiansen is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, Denmark and was previously Director of the Danish Archaeological Heritage Administration in the Ministry of the Environment. He has written widely on theoretical archaeology and the archaeology of Northern Europe. Michael Rowlands is professor of Anthropology at University College London, UK. He is a leading figure in the development of theoretical archaeology.