Select proceedings of the 4th University of Chester Archaeology Student conference (Chester, 20 March 2019) investigate real-world ancient and modern frontier works, the significance of graffiti, material culture, monuments and wall-building, as well as fictional representations of borders and walls in the arts, as public archaeology.
ODJ has a concerted focus on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands alongside wider themes, debates and investigations concerning boundaries and barriers, edges and peripheries, from prehistory through to recent times. The public archaeology and heritage of frontiers and borderlands is also considered.
ODJhas a concerted focus on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands alongside wider themes, debates and investigations concerning boundaries and barriers, edges and peripheries, from prehistory through to recent times. The public archaeology and heritage of frontiers and borderlands is also considered.
Select proceedings of the 5th University of Chester Archaeology Student Conference (31 January 2020) reflect on the shifting and conflicting meanings, values and significances for treasure in archaeology’s public engagements, interactions and manifestations.
Viking Heritage and History in Europe presents new research and perspectives on the use of the Vikings in public history, especially in relation to museums, re-creation, and re-enactment in a European context. Taking a critical heritage approach, the volume provides new insights into the re-creation of history, imagining the past, interpretation, ambivalence of authenticity, authority of History, remembrance and memory, medievalism, and public history. Highlighting the complexity of the field of public history today, the fourteen chapters all engage with questions of historical authenticity and authority. The volume also critically examines the public’s reception, engagement with, and interpretation of the Viking Age and the concepts of who these individuals were. Each chapter illuminates an aspect of these themes in relation to museums, leisure activities, politics, tourism, re-enactment, and popular culture – all from the vantage point of Viking cultural heritage. Viking Heritage and History in Europe is one of the first volumes to examine the use and role of the Vikings within the field of public history, both past and present. The book will be of interest to those engaged in the study of heritage, public history, history, the Vikings, vikingism, medievalism, and media history.
This book adds to the scant academic literature investigating how comics transmit knowledge of the past and how this refraction of the past shapes our understanding of society and politics in sometimes damaging ways. The volume comes at these questions from a specifically archaeological perspective, foregrounding the representation and narrative use of material cultures. It fulfils its objectives through three reception studies in the first part of the volume and three chapters by comic creators in the second part. All six chapters aim to grapple with a set of central questions about the power inherent in drawn images of various kinds.
The objective of this volume is a theoretical debate on the archaeology at the crossroads of the Balkans, the Aegean and Anatolia and its interrelation with social and political life in this historically turbulent region. Modern political borders still divide European archaeology and intercept research. This is particularly evident in southeastern Europe, where archaeological interaction among neighbouring countries such as Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, the FYR of Macedonia and Albania is practically inactive. Reception of the past within the local perspectives of modern nation states and changing identities are some of our focal points: Can breaks or continuities in the material culture be perceived as evidence for ethnic (dis-)continuities, migrations, ethnogeneses, etc. and what is the socio-political background of such approaches? What is the potential of material culture towards the definition of modern and past identities? Interaction among different societies and cultures as well as the exchange of goods and ideas are another topic of this book. The area encompassing the north Aegean and the Balkans was, during the later prehistoric and early historic periods, the showplace of fascinating cultural entanglements. Domestic, cultic and public architecture, artefact groups and burial rites have always been employed in the archaeological process of defining identities. However, these identities were not static but rather underwent constant transformations. The question addressed is: How did people and objects interact and how did objects and ideas change their function and meaning in time and space? Colleagues representing different scholarly traditions and cultural backgrounds, working in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, FYR of Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, took part in this debate, and a total of 19 papers are now presented in this book.
Providing a dedicated venue for new research on the early medieval frontiers and borderlands of the island of Britain, the Offa's Dyke Journal (ODJ)is also the first and only open-access peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the investigation of frontiers and borderlands in deep-time perspective. The journal's remit spans detailed and original explorations into landscapes, earthworks, monuments and material culture. Exploring specific themes and issues in the archaeology, history and heritage of frontiers and borderlands in comparative and global perspective, ODJ is edited and produced under the auspices of the interdisciplinary research network, the Offa's Dyke Collaboratory, and funded by the University of Chester and the Offa's Dyke Association. The contents of this special issue comprise the proceedings of a conference held over Zoom on the weekend of 11-12 July 2020.
Why and when human societies shifted from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture engages the interest of scholars around the world. One of the most fruitful areas in which to study this issue is the North American Southwest, where Late Archaic inhabitants of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts of Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico turned to farming while their counterparts in Trans-Pecos and South Texas continued to forage. By investigating the environmental, biological, and cultural factors that led to these differing patterns of development, we can identify some of the necessary conditions for the rise of agriculture and the corresponding evolution of village life. The twelve papers in this volume synthesize previous and ongoing research and offer new theoretical models to provide the most up-to-date picture of life during the Late Archaic (from 3,000 to 1,500 years ago) across the entire North American Borderlands. Some of the papers focus on specific research topics such as stone tool technology and mobility patterns. Others study the development of agriculture across whole regions within the Borderlands. The two concluding papers trace pan-regional patterns in the adoption of farming and also link them to the growth of agriculture in other parts of the world.
