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...

Technological Choices deals with the adoption or rejection by a society of certain technological techniques and the cultural processes which result in this selection. Lemonnier aims to demonstrate that in any society, such choices result from cultural values and social relations, rather than inherent benefits in the technology itself. This revolutionary viewpoint has crucial implications for current western societies. The book is based on case studies covering a wide chronological and geographic span - from neolithic Europe to modern industry via Papua New Guinea tribes, rural societies in...

Despite the enormous amount of material on the subject of Nazism, there has been no substantial work on its emblem, the swastika. This original and controversial contribution examines the role that the swastika played in the construction of the Aryan myth in the nineteenth century, and its use in Nazi ideology as a symbol of party, nation and race, treating it as symbolic phenomenon in a cultural context. By identifying the swastika as a boundary or liminal image, Malcolm Quinn allies visual anaysis to issues of material culture and history.

The new developments in archaeological theory and its application to archaeological data are explored in this text. The author aims to break down the separation of theory and practice and to reconcile the division between the intellectual and the dirt archaeologist. Through a series of examples - from excavation and heritage issues to site reports - the book demonstrates that an interpretive archaeology must be applied to archaeological data in order to contribute to modern social practice. Faced with a rapidly diminishing past, archaeology urgently needs a clear image of itself, able to gain...

How do we become who we are? How is it that people are so similar in the ways they differ from one another, and so different in the ways they are the same?
Christina Toren's theory of mind as not only a physical phenomenon, but an historical one, sets out to answer these questions by examining how the material world of objects and other people informs the constitution of mind in persons over time.
This theory of embodied mind as a microhistorical process is set out in the first chapter, providing a context for the nine papers that follow. Questions explored include the way...

How do we each become who we are? How is it that we are so different from one another in the ways we are the same? And so similar in the ways we are different? The answers to these puzzles lie in the manifold ways that the material world of objects and other people informs the process of our becoming ourselves. A process whereby it becomes clear that mind is THE fundamental historical phenomenon. The outcome of over a decade's work, the underlying concern of these various explorations into how Fijians live their lives and, in so doing, constitute their knowledge of the world, has been to...

This innovative volume explores the idea that while photographs are images, they are also objects, and this materiality is integral to their meaning and use. The case studies presented focus on photographs active in different institutional, political, religious and domestic spheres, where physical properties, the nature of their use and the cultural formations in which they function make their 'objectness' central to how we should understand them. The book's contributions are drawn from disciplines including the history of photography, visual anthropology and art history, with case studies...

Technological Choices deals with the adoption or rejection by a society of certain technological innovations. It demonstrates that in any society, such choices result from cultural values and social relations, rather than inherent benefits in the technology itself and highlights revolutionary viewpoint has crucial implications for current Western societies.
The book is based on case-studies covering a wide chronological and geographic span from Neolithic Europe to the modern industrial age, from the tribes of Papua New Guinea, India and North Africa to European peasant...

Murder by the Book? is a thorough - and thoroughly enjoyable - look at the blossoming genre of the feminist crime novel in Britain and the United States.
Sally Munt asks why the form has proved so attractive as a vehicle for oppositional politics; whether the pleasures of detective fiction can be truly transgressive; and when exactly it was that the dyke detective appeared as the new super-hero for today.
Along the way Munt poses some critical questions about the relations between fiction and activism, politics and representations, the writer and the reader. This will be an...