An Archaeology of Capitalism

An Archaeology of Capitalism

Author: Matthew Johnson

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1996-01-23

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781557863485

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An Archaeology of Capitalism offers an account of landscape and material culture from the later Middle Ages to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. In tracing some of the roots of modernity back to the transformation of the countryside, this book seeks an innovative understanding of the transition between feudalism and capitalism, and does so through a unique synthesis of archaeology, economic, social and cultural history, historical geography and architectural history. Medieval and early modern archaeology has in the past focused on small-scale empirical contributions to the study of the period. The approach taken here is both wider-ranging and more ambitious. The author breaks down the dividing lines between archaeological and documentary evidence to provide a vivid reconstruction of pre-industrial material life and of the social and mental processes that came together in the post-medieval period in the transition towards modernity. Matthew Johnson is careful to avoid a simplifying evolutionary explanation, but rather sees the period in terms of a diversity of social and material practices evident in material traces - traces that survive and that, when reused in different contexts, came to mean different things.


Archaeology and Capitalism

Archaeology and Capitalism

Author: Yannis Hamilakis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-03

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1315434199

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The editors and contributors to this volume focus on the inherent political nature of archaeology and its impact on the practice of the discipline. Pointing to the discipline’s history of advancing imperialist, colonialist, and racist objectives, they insist that archaeology must rethink its muted professional stance and become more overtly active agents of change. The discipline is not about an abstract “archaeological record” but about living individuals and communities, whose lives and heritage suffer from the abuse of power relationships with states and their agents. Only by recognizing this power disparity, and adopting a political ethic for the discipline, can archaeology justify its activities. Chapters range from a critique of traditional ethical codes, to examinations of the capitalist motivations and structures within the discipline, to calls for an engaged, emancipatory archaeology that improves the lives of the people with whom archaeologists work. A direct challenge to the discipline, this volume will provoke discussion, disagreement, and inspiration for many in the field.


The Archaeology of American Capitalism

The Archaeology of American Capitalism

Author: Christopher N. Matthews

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780813035246

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Christopher Matthews offers a fresh look at the historic material culture and social meaning of capitalism in this wide-ranging and compelling study.


Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism

Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism

Author: Mark P. Leone

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1461547679

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American things, American material culture, and American archaeology are the themes of this book. The authors use goods used or made in America to illuminate issues such as tenancy, racism, sexism, and regional bias. Contributors utilize data about everyday objects - from tin cans and bottles to namebrand items, from fish bones to machinery - to analyze the way American capitalism works. Their cogent analyses take us literally from broken dishes to the international economy. Especially notable chapters examine how an archaeologist formulates questions about exploitation under capitalism, and how the study of artifacts reveals African-American middle class culture and its response to racism.


Revolutionary Economies

Revolutionary Economies

Author: Thomas W. Cuddy

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2008-09-11

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0759112290

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Revolutionary Economies explores the roots of American capitalism through the archaeology and history of the Chesapeake Bay region. Thomas W. Cuddy looks at the archaeological evidence concerning revolutionary-period bakeries and bakers (some of whom had been students of Adam Smith in Scotland) in Annapolis, Maryland and Alexandria, Virginia to examine the development of local production systems that characterized these important early American urban centers. Revolutionary Economies charts the stages of production from household manufacturing to larger workshops to mechanized factories and opens a window on the country's economic history. The volume's blend of archaeology, history, and economics makes it a prototypical study in historical archaeology.


Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology

Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology

Author: Heather Burke

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1461547695

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Focusing on the city of Armidale during the period 1830 to 1930, this book investigates the relationship between the development of capitalism in a particular region (New England, Australia) and the expression of ideology within architectural style. The author analyzes how style encodes meaning and how it relates to the social contexts and relationships within capitalism, which in turn are related to the construction of ideology over time.


Unmasking Ideology in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology

Unmasking Ideology in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology

Author: Bonnie Effros

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

Published: 2018-12-31

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 1938770617

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This volume addresses the entanglement between archaeology, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and war. Popular sentiment in the West has tended to embrace the adventure rather than ponder the legacy of archaeological explorers; allegations by imperial powers of "discovering" archaeological sites or "saving" world heritage from neglect or destruction have often provided the pretext for expanding political influence. Consequently, citizens have often fallen victim to the imperial war machine, seeing their lands confiscated, their artifacts looted, and the ancient remains in their midst commercialized. Spanning the globe with case studies from East Asia, Siberia, Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Africa, sixteen contributions written by archaeologists, art historians, and historians from four continents offer unusual breadth and depth in the assessment of various claims to patrimonial heritage, contextualized by the imperial and colonial ventures of the last two centuries and their postcolonial legacy.


Capitalism and Cloves

Capitalism and Cloves

Author: Sarah K. Croucher

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-10-29

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1441984712

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This study of nineteenth-century clove plantations on Zanzibar provides an important contribution to debates in global historical archaeology. Broadening plantation archaeology beyond the Atlantic World, this work addresses plantations run by Omani Arab colonial rulers of Zanzibar. Drawing on archaeological and historical data, this book argues for the need to examine non-Western contexts of colonialism and capitalism as coeval with those in the North Atlantic World. This work explores themes of capitalism, colonialism, plantation landscapes, African Diaspora communities, gender and sexuality, locally produced and imported goods in historic contexts, and Islamic historical archaeology.


An Archaeology of Temperature

An Archaeology of Temperature

Author: Scott W. Schwartz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1000504573

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This work investigates the material culture of public temperatures in New York City. Numbers like temperature, while ubiquitous and indispensable to capitalized social relations, are often hidden away within urban infrastructures evading attention. This Archaeology of Temperature brings such numbers to light, interrogating how we construct them and how they construct us. Building on discussions in contemporary archaeology this book challenges the border between material and discursive culture, advocating for a novel conception of capitalism’s artifacts. The artifacts examined within (temperatures) are instantaneous electric pulses, algorithmic outputs, and momentary fluctuations in mercury. The artifacts of the capitalized never sit still, operating at subatomic and solar scales. Temperatures, as numerical materials precariously straddling the colonially constructed nature-culture divide, exemplify the abstraction necessary to pursue the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth—a pursuit that engenders multiple environmental and economic calamities. An Archaeology of Temperature innovatively reimagines theory and method within contemporary archaeology. Equally, in plumbing the depths of temperature, this book offers indispensable contributions to science studies, urban geography, semiotics, the philosophy of materiality, the history of thermodynamics, heterodox economics, performative scholarship, and queer ecocriticism.


Bulldozer Capitalism

Bulldozer Capitalism

Author: Erdem Evren

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2022-05-13

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1800734743

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Set in the resource frontier of northeastern Turkey, Bulldozer Capitalism studies the rise and decline of an anti-dam/anti-displacement campaign and the political responses to other extractive projects that it helped to shape in its aftermath. The book shows that people can accommodate their own dispossession and displacement if they are directed to negotiate, invest in, and speculate on the destruction of their built environment and nature, and their material and immaterial bonds, wealth, and activities.