This fascinating volume integrates recent developments in anthropological and sociological theory with a series of detailed studies of prehistoric material culture. The authors explore the manner in which semiotic, hermeneutic, Marxist, and post-structuralist approaches radically alter our understanding of the past, and provide a series of innovative studies of key areas of interest to archaeologists and anthropologists.

'Handbook of Material Culture' provides a critical survey of the theories, concepts, intellectual debates, substantive domains and traditions of study characterizing the analysis of things.

This book takes a new approach to writing about the past. Instead of studying the prehistory of Britain from Mesolithic to Iron Age times in terms of periods or artifact classifications, Tilley examines it through the lens of their geology and landscapes, asserting the fundamental significance of the bones of the land in the process of human occupation over the long duree. Granite uplands, rolling chalk downlands, sandstone moorlands, and pebbled hilltops each create their own potentialities and symbolic resources for human settlement and require forms of social engagement. Taking his...