How did past communities and individuals remember through social and ritual practices? How important were mortuary practices in processes of remembering and forgetting the past? This innovative new research work focuses upon identifying strategies of remembrance. Evidence can be found in a range of archaeological remains including the adornment and alteration of the body in life and death, the production, exchange, consumption and destruction of material culture, the construction, use and reuse of monuments, and the social ordering of architectural space and the landscape. This book shows how in the past, as today, shared memories are important and defining aspects of social and ritual traditions, and the practical actions of dealing with and disposing of the dead can form a central focus for the definition of social memory.

A unique collection of newly written essays by archaeologistsworking in a variety of contexts and geographical areas,Archaeologies of Memory is a groundbreaking text thatpresents a coherent framework for the study of memory in pastsocieties. Serves as an accessible introduction to central issues in thestudy of memory, including authority and identity, and the rolememory plays in their creation and transformation. Presents a collection of newly commissioned essays that providea coherent framework for the study of memory in pastsocieties. Brings together essays from both anthropological and classicalarchaeologists. Includes contributions drawn from a variety of cultures andtime periods, including New Kingdom Egypt and the prehistoricAmerican Southwest.

Volume 14 of the Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History series is dedicated to the archaeology of early medieval death, burial and commemoration. Incorporating studies focusing upon Anglo-Saxon England as well as research encompassing western Britain, Continental Europe and Scandinavia, this volume originated as the proceedings of a two-day conference held at the University of Exeter in February 2004. It comprises of an Introduction that outlines the key debates and new approaches in early medieval mortuary archaeology followed by eighteen innovative research papers offering new interpretations of the material culture, monuments and landscape context of early medieval mortuary practices. Papers contribute to a variety of ongoing debates including the study of ethnicity, religion, ideology and social memory from burial evidence. The volume also contains two cemetery reports of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries from Cambridgeshire.

This study draws on the theory and practice of archaeology to develop a new perspective on the literature of the Renaissance. Philip Schwyzer explores the fascination with images of excavation, exhumation, and ruin that runs through literary texts including Spenser's Faerie Queene, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, Donne's sermons and lyrics, and Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall. Miraculously preserved corpses, ruined monasteries, Egyptian mummies, and Yorick's skull all figure in this study of the early modern archaeological imagination. The pessimism of the period is summed up in the haunting motif of the beautiful corpse that, once touched, crumbles to dust. Archaeology and literary studies are themselves products of the Renaissance. Although the two disciplines have sometimes viewed one another as rivals, they share a unique and unsettling intimacy with the traces of past life - with the words the dead wrote, sang, or heard, with the objects they made, held, or lived within. Schwyzer argues that at the root of both forms of scholarship lies the forbidden desire to awaken (and speak with) the dead. However impossible or absurd this desire may be, it remains a fundamental source of both ethical responsibility and aesthetic pleasure.

Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions aims to move archaeological research concerning the Holocaust forward through a discussion of the variety of the political, social, ethical and religious issues that surround investigations of this period and by considering how to address them. It considers the various reasons why archaeological investigations may take place and what issues will be brought to bear when fieldwork is suggested. It presents an interdisciplinary methodology in order to demonstrate how archaeology can (uniquely) contribute to the history of this period. Case examples are used throughout the book in order to contextualise prevalent themes and a variety of geographically and typologically diverse sites throughout Europe are discussed. This book challenges many of the widely held perceptions concerning the Holocaust, including the idea that it was solely an Eastern European phenomena centred on Auschwitz and the belief that other sites connected to it were largely destroyed or are well-known. The typologically , temporally and spatial diverse body of physical evidence pertaining to this period is presented and future possibilities for investigation of it are discussed. Finally, the volume concludes by discussing issues relating to the “re-presentation” of the Holocaust and the impact of this on commemoration, heritage management and education. This discussion is a timely one as we enter an age without survivors and questions are raised about how to educate future generations about these events in their absence.

Over 80 archaeologists from four continents create a benchmark volume of the ideas and practices of landscape archaeology, covering the theoretical and the practical, the research and conservation, and encasing the term in a global framework.

This 2002 book explores social memory in the ancient Greek world using the evidence of landscapes and monuments.

How did past communities and individuals remember through social and ritual practices? How important were mortuary practices in processes of remembering and forgetting the past? This innovative new research work focuses upon identifying strategies of remembrance. Evidence can be found in a range of archaeological remains including the adornment and alteration of the body in life and death, the production, exchange, consumption and destruction of material culture, the construction, use and reuse of monuments, and the social ordering of architectural space and the landscape. This book shows how in the past, as today, shared memories are important and defining aspects of social and ritual traditions, and the practical actions of dealing with and disposing of the dead can form a central focus for the definition of social memory.

The Archaeology of Personhood discusses what it means to be human and, by drawing on examples from European prehistory, discusses the implications that contemporary understandings of personhood have on archaeological interpretation.

Outside of scientific journals, archaeologists are depicted as searching for lost cities and mystical artifacts in news reports, television, video games, and movies like Indiana Jones or The Mummy. This fantastical image has little to do with day-to-day science, yet it is deeply connected to why people are fascinated by the ancient past. By exploring the development of archaeology, this book helps us understand what archaeology is and why it matters. In Spooky Archaeology author Jeb J. Card follows a trail of clues left by adventurers and professional archaeologists that guides the reader through haunted museums, mysterious hieroglyphic inscriptions, fragments of a lost continent that never existed, and deep into an investigation of magic and murder. Card unveils how and why archaeology continues to mystify and why there is an ongoing fascination with exotic artifacts and eerie practices.