Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact

Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact PDF Author: Warren R. Perry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781475772494
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description

Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact

Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact PDF Author: Warren R. Perry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781475772494
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description


Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact

Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact PDF Author: Warren R. Perry
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0306471566
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
An attempt to use archaeological materials to investigate the colonization of southeastern Africa during the period 1500 to 1900. Perry demonstrates the usefulness of archaeology in bypassing the biases of the ethnohistorical and documentary record and generating a more comprehensive understanding of history. Special attention is paid to the period of state formation in Swaziland and a critique of the `Settler Model', which the author finds to be invalid.

Imperfect Balance

Imperfect Balance PDF Author: David Lewis Lentz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231111577
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Together with experts in a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences--including botany, geology, ecology, geography and archaeology--Lentz investigates the history and effects of human impact on the environment in the New World before the arrival of the Europeans in the late 15th century. An Imperfect Balance offers an objective evaluation of "precontact era" land usage, demonstrating that native populations engaged in land management practices not entirely dissimilar to their European counterparts.

Archaeology in Environment and Technology

Archaeology in Environment and Technology PDF Author: David Frankel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134626088
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Environments, landscapes, and ecological systems are often seen as fundamental by archaeologists, but how they relate to society is understood in very different ways. The chapters in this book take environment, culture, and technology together. All have been the focus of much attention; often one or other has been seen as the starting point for analysis, but this volume argues that it is the study of the inter-relationships between these three factors that offers a way forward. The contributions to this book pick up different strands within the tangled web of intersections between environment, technology, and society, providing a series of case studies which explore facets of this common theme in different settings and circumstances and from different perspectives. As well as addressing themes of theoretical and methodological interest, these case studies draw on primary research dealing with time periods from the late Pleistocene glacial maximum to the very recent past, and involve societies of very different types. Running through all the contributions, however, is a concern with the archaeological record and the ways in which scales of observation and availability of evidence affect the development of questions and explanations. The diversity of the chapters in this volume demonstrates the inherent weakness in any attempt to prioritise environment, technology, or society. These three factors are all embedded in any human activity, as change in one will result in change in the others: social and technical changes alter relations with the environment–and indeed the environment itself—and as environmental change drives changes in society and technology. As this book shows, it is possible to consider the relationship between the three factors from different perspectives, but any attempt to consider one or even two in isolation will mean that valuable insights will be missed.

African Landscapes

African Landscapes PDF Author: Michael Bollig
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387786821
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Landscape studies provide a crucial perspective into the interaction between humans and their environment, shedding insight on social, cultural, and economic topics. The research explores both the way that natural processes have affected the development of culture and society, as well as the ways that natural landscapes themselves are the product of historical and cultural processes. Most previous studies of the landscape selectively focused on either the natural sciences or the social sciences, but the research presented in African Landscapes bridges that gap. This work is unique in its interdisciplinary scope. Over the past twelve years, the contributors to this volume have participated in the collaborative research center ACACIA (Arid Climate Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa), which deals with the relationship between cultural processes and ecological dynamics in Africa’s arid areas. The case studies presented here come from mainly Sahara/Sahel and southwestern Africa, and are all linked to broader discussions on the concept of landscape, and themes of cultural, anthropological, geographical, botanical, sociological, and archaeological interest. The contributions in this work are enhanced by full color photographs that put the discussion in context visually.

Economies and the Transformation of Landscape

Economies and the Transformation of Landscape PDF Author: Lisa Cliggett
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759111172
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Economies and the Transformation of Landscape explores both the general and specific ways in which local economic ventures around the world, such as mining, ranching, and farming, affect the environment.

Archives, Objects, Places and Landscapes

Archives, Objects, Places and Landscapes PDF Author: Manyanga, Munyaradzi
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
ISBN: 9956764191
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Dissatisfaction has matured in Africa and elsewhere around the fact that often, the dominant frameworks for interpreting the continent's past are not rooted on the continent's value system and philosophy. This creates knowledge that does not make sense especially to local communities. The big question therefore is can Africans develop theories that can contribute towards the interpretation of the African past, using their own experiences? Framed within a concept revision substrate, the collection of papers in this thought provoking volume argues for concept revision as a step towards decolonizing knowledge in the post-colony. The various papers powerfully expose that 'cleansed' knowledge is not only locally relevant: it is also locally accessible and globally understandable.

Envisioning Landscape

Envisioning Landscape PDF Author: Dan Hicks
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315429519
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The common feature of landscape archaeology is its diversity – of method, field location, disciplinary influences and contemporary voices. The contributors to this volume take advantage of these many strands to investigate landscape archaeology in its multiple forms, focusing primarily on the link to heritage, the impact on our understanding of temporality, and the situated theory that arises out of landscape studies. Using examples from New York to Northern Ireland, Africa to the Argolid, these pieces capture the human significance of material objects in support of a more comprehensive, nuanced archaeology.

Reclaiming Archaeology

Reclaiming Archaeology PDF Author: Alfredo González-Ruibal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135083533
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Archaeology has been an important source of metaphors for some of the key intellectuals of the 20th century: Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Alois Riegl and Michel Foucault, amongst many others. However, this power has also turned against archaeology, because the discipline has been dealt with perfunctorily as a mere provider of metaphors that other intellectuals have exploited. Scholars from different fields continue to explore areas in which archaeologists have been working for over two centuries, with little or no reference to the discipline. It seems that excavation, stratigraphy or ruins only become important at a trans-disciplinary level when people from outside archaeology pay attention to them and somehow dematerialize them. Meanwhile, archaeologists have been usually more interested in borrowing theories from other fields, rather than in developing the theoretical potential of the same concepts that other thinkers find so useful. The time is ripe for archaeologists to address a wider audience and engage in theoretical debates from a position of equality, not of subalternity. Reclaiming Archaeology explores how archaeology can be useful to rethink modernity’s big issues, and more specifically late modernity (broadly understood as the 20th and 21st centuries). The book contains a series of original essays, not necessarily following the conventional academic rules of archaeological writing or thinking, allowing rhetoric to have its place in disclosing the archaeological. In each of the four sections that constitute this book (method, time, heritage and materiality), the contributors deal with different archaeological tropes, such as excavation, surface/depth, genealogy, ruins, fragments, repressed memories and traces. They criticize their modernist implications and rework them in creative ways, in order to show the power of archaeology not just to understand the past, but also the present. Reclaiming Archaeology includes essays from a diverse array of archaeologists who have dealt in one way or another with modernity, including scholars from non-Anglophone countries who have approached the issue in original ways during recent years, as well as contributors from other fields who engage in a creative dialogue with archaeology and the work of archaeologists.

Computational Approaches to the Study of Movement in Archaeology

Computational Approaches to the Study of Movement in Archaeology PDF Author: Silvia Polla
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110288389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
This book contains a collection of papers discussing questions related to space and movement in the framework of computational archaeology, landscape archaeology, historical geography and archaeological theory. The contributions, written by recognized experts in the field, show how the study of settlements pattern and movement has been dramatically transformed by the use of technology like Geographic Information System (GIS). The papers focus on the ways to approach past movement using GIS in archaeological landscape studies: theoretical, technical and interpretative issues are addressed and explored. They provide the state of the art in theory and methodology and show, by using case studies, the potential of the developed approaches for the understanding of factors and effects of landscape formation and transformation in the long term.