“It is rare to read an archaeological book that has the capacity to inspire, as this one has.”—Mark P. Leone, author of The Archaeology of Liberty in an American Capital “Archaeology as Political Action is a highly original work that will be important for archaeologists and others concerned with processes of social change in the world today and, more importantly, with making a difference.”—Thomas C. Patterson, coeditor of Foundations of Social Archaeology “This powerful statement by a leading archaeological thinker has profound implications for rigorous archaeological interpretation, community collaboration, and political intervention.”—Stephen W. Silliman, coeditor of Historical Archaeology
The Archaeology of Politics is a collection of essays that examines political action and practice in the past through studies and analyses of material culture from the perspective of anthropological archaeology. Contributors to this volume explore a variety of multi-scalar relationships between past peoples, places, objects and environments. At stake in this volume is what it is that constitutes politics, its social and cultural location, fields of analysis, its materiality and sociology and especially its position and possibilities as a conceptual and analytical category in archaeological investigations of past socio-cultural worlds. Our primary goals are twofold: the problematization and re-conceptualization of politics from its understanding as a reified essence or structure of political forms (e.g., a State) to a fluid, dynamic and culturally inflected set of practices; and, second, to consider politics’ entanglement with the materiality of socio-cultural worlds at multiple-scales through the demonstration of innovative analytical approaches to the material record. The volume is a tightly integrated group of essays exploring an assortment of case studies that offer new theoretical insight to archaeological and historical analyses of politics.
Archaeology is perceived to study the people of long ago and far away. How could archaeology matter in the modern world? Well-known archaeologist Jeremy Sabloff points to ways in which archaeology might be important to the understanding and amelioration of contemporary problems. Though archaeologists have commonly been associated with efforts to uncover cultural identity, to restore the past of underrepresented peoples, and to preserve historical sites, their knowledge and skills can be used in many other ways. Archaeologists help Peruvian farmers increase crop yields, aid city planners in reducing landfills, and guide local communities in tourism development and water management. This brief volume, aimed at students and other prospective archaeologists, challenges the field to go beyond merely understanding the past and actively engage in making a difference in the today’s world.
For thousands of years, the geography of Eurasia has facilitated travel, conquest and colonization by various groups, from the Huns in ancient times to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the past century. This book brings together archaeological investigations of Eurasian regimes and revolutions ranging from the Bronze Age to the modern day, from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in the west to the Mongolian steppe and the Korean Peninsula in the east. The authors examine a wide-ranging series of archaeological studies in order to better understand the role of politics in the history and prehistory of the region. This book re-evaluates the significance of power, authority and ideology in the emergence and transformation of ancient and modern societies in this vast continent.
This book argues archaeology is uniquely placed to contribute a variety of perspectives on the current life-cycles of cities including processes of decay, revitalization, and transformation. It foregrounds the materialities of post-industrial, post-modern and other urban transformations through a diverse, international collection of case studies.
Dean Saitta examines archaeology's success in reconstructing collective social actions of the past - mass protests, labor strikes, slave uprisings on plantations - and considers the implications of such reconstructions for society today. Framing key issues and definitions in a clear and accessible style, Saitta reviews some of the progress archaeologists have made in illuminating race-, gender-, and class-based forms of collective action and how those actions have shaped the American experience. Saitta argues that archaeology is not only a source of historical truth but also a comment on the contemporary human condition.
"For more than a century, scholars have critiqued, misinterpreted, and bickered about Marx's concept of mode of production. Modes of Production and Archaeology cuts through the dense and thorny intellectual thicket that grew up from these debates. The book presents an easily understood discussion of Marx's concepts and demonstrates how archaeologists can analyze modes of production to explain long term patterns in cultural change."-Randall McGuire, author of Archaeology as Political Action "Shows clearly how historical materialist ideas and concepts are productive in developing the theory and practice of archaeology."-Robert Chapman, author of Archaeologies of Complexity "Covers a huge range of ground and brings together ideas and analyses in a way that has not really been done yet in archaeology."-Colin Grier, Washington State University This volume explains how archaeologists can use Karl Marx and Frederick Engels' mode of production concept to study long-term patterns in human society. Modes of production describes how labor is organized to create surplus which is then used for political purposes. This type of analysis allows archaeologists to compare and contrast peoples across distant continents and eras, from hunter-gatherer groups to early agriculturalists to nation-states. Presenting a range of different perspectives from researchers working in a wide variety of societies and time periods, this volume clearly demonstrates why historical materialism matters to the field of archaeology.
Anthropological archaeology and other disciplines concerned with the formation of early complex societies are undergoing a theoretical shift. Given the need for new directions in theory, the book proposes that anthropologists look to political science, especially the rational choice theory of collective action. The authors subject collective action theory to a methodologically rigorous evaluation using systematic cross-cultural analysis based on a world-wide sample of societies.
Archaeology has often been put to political use, particularly by nationalists. The case studies in this timely collection range from the propaganda purposes served by archaeology in the Nazi state, through the complex interplay of official dogma and academic prehistory in the former Soviet Union, to lesser-known instances of ideological archaeology in other European countries, in China, Japan, Korea and the Near East. The introductory and concluding chapters draw out some of the common threads in these experiences, and argue that archaeologists need to be more sophisticated about the use and abuse of their studies. The editors have brought together a distinguished international group of scholars. Whilst archaeologists will find that this book raises cogent questions about their own work, these problems also go beyond archaeology to implicate history and anthropology more generally.
"[Cooperation research] is one of the busiest and most exciting areas of transdisciplinary science right now, linking evolution, ecology and social science. . . this is the first major work or collection to address linkages between archaeology and cooperation research."—Michael E. Smith, Arizona State University Past archaeological literature on cooperation theory has emphasized competition's role in cultural evolution. As a result, bottom-up possibilities for group cooperation have been under theorized in favor of models stressing top-down leadership, while evidence from a range of disciplines has demonstrated humans to effectively sustain cooperative undertakings through a number of social norms and institutions. Cooperation and Collective Action is the first volume to focus on the use of archaeological evidence to understand cooperation and collective action. Disentangling the motivations and institutions that foster group cooperation among competitive individuals remains one of the few great conundrums within evolutionary theory. The breadth and material focus of archaeology provide a much needed complement to existing research on cooperation and collective action, which thus far has relied largely on game-theoretic modeling, surveys of college students from affluent countries, brief ethnographic experiments, and limited historic cases. In Cooperation and Collective Action, diverse case studies address the evolution of the emergence of norms, institutions, and symbols of complex societies through the last 10,000 years. This book is an important contribution to the literature on cooperation in human societies that will appeal to archaeologists and other scholars interested in cooperation research.
