Details

Subject(s)

• Archaeological museums and collections [Browse]
• Antiquities—Collection and preservation [Browse]

Editor

• Stevenson, Alice [Browse]

Series

Oxford handbooks [More in this series]

Summary note

This Handbook provides a transnational reference point for critical engagements with the legacies of, and futures for, global archaeological collections. It challenges the common misconception that museum archaeology is simply a set of procedures for managing and exhibiting assemblages. Instead, this volume advances museum archaeology as an area of reflexive research and practice, addressing the critical issues of what gets prioritized by and researched in museums, by whom, how, and why. Through 28 newly commissioned chapters, authors problematize and suggest new ways of thinking about historic, contemporary, and future relationships between archaeological fieldwork and museums, as well as the array of institutional and cultural paradigms through which archaeological enquiries are mediated. Case studies embrace not just archaeological finds, but also archival field notes, photographic media, archaeological samples, and replicas. Throughout, museum activities are put into dialogue with other aspects of archaeological practice, with the aim of situating museum work within a more holistic archaeology, one that does not privilege excavation or field survey above other aspects of disciplinary engagement. These concerns are grounded in the realities of museums internationally, including those in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, North America, and Europe. In so doing, the common heritage sector refrain 'best practice' is not be assumed to solely emanate from developed countries or European philosophies, but will instead be considered as emerging from, and being accommodated within, local concerns and diverse museum cultures.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• Introduction: Museum Archaeology / Alice Stevenson
• Part A. Collecting, categorizing, and challenging histories
• Recovering the history of archaeology in museums / Géraldine Delley and Nathan Schlanger
• Emotion, affective practice, and the taking of Indigenous Ancestral Remains / Cressida Fforde, Jilda Andrews, Edward Halealoha Ayau, Madalyn Grant, Laurajane Smith, and Paul Turnbull
• Emotion and the return of ancestors: Repatriation as affective practice / Cressida Fforde, Jilda Andrews, Edward Halealoha Ayau, Madalyn Grant, Laurajane Smith, and Paul Turnbull
• Part B. Contemporary agencies of curation and communities of practice
• Museums and the market: Passive facilitation of the illicit trade in antiquities / Donna Yates and Emiline Smith
• Affective museums: The practice of collecting archaeological artefacts in the Brazilian Amazon / Marcia Bezerra and Luzia Gomes Ferreira
• De-centring museums in Indigenous community engagement: Contemporary Maya art, thought, and archaeological collections / Laura Osorio Sunnucks
• Enabled Archaeology in the field, in museums, and the visitor experience / Abigail Hunt and Thomas Kitchen
• Conservation after conflict: Rebuilding a heritage community in Iraq / Jessica S. Johnson and Brian Michael Lione
• Part C. Locating museums and collections
• Site museums and archaeology / Georgios Papaioannou
• Contested heritage and absent objects: Archaeological representation at Ghana's forts and castles / Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann
• Finding space to store archaeological collections: Challenges and progress in the United States / S. Terry Childs
• Victims or victors: Universal museums and the debate on return and restitution, Africa's perspective / George Okello Abungu
• Part D. Alternative materialities: Beyond finds
• Unlocking the potential of archaeological archives / Gail Boyle
• Museum replicas: Recovering the work of making plaster casts of pre-Columbian art / Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye
• Photographic practices in museum archaeology / Stefanie Klamm
• Listening to archaeology museums / John Kannenberg
• Part E.Fieldwork in the museum: Transformative practice
• Recreating context for museum collections using digital technologies as a form of curation / Simon J. Holdaway, Joshua Emmitt, and Rebecca Phillipps
• Ethnographic collections and archaeological research / James L. Flexner
• Scientific investigation of museum objects: Planning, analysis, and wider impact / Patrick Sean Quinn
• Conservation and the care of human remains in museums / Barbara Wills
• Part F. Exhibitionary cultures
• Museums and archaeological exhibitions: History, institution, and reality in China / Siyu Wang and Kan Hang
• Telling stories at the Ashmolean Museum: An Ancient Middle East gallery for the twenty-first century? / Paul Collins
• The Archaeology of Qatar Gallery at the National Museum of Qatar / Karen Exell
• Representing field practices in display: The Curious Case of Çatalhöyük / Duygu Tarkan and Şeyda Çetin
• Archaeology displays in universities: The role of museums and archaeology displays in Ghana / Gertrude A. M. Eyifa-Dzidzienyo
• Part G. Expanding and transcending the museum: Social issues and digital frontiers
• Engaging contemporary social issues in the museum through archaeological collections / Paolo Del Vesco
• Transcending and expanding the walls of the museum: Digital pivot, digital by default, digital transformation / Daniel Pett
• Cooperative platforms for curating and managing digitally recorded finds data: Metal-detecting and FindSampo in Finland / Ville Rohiola and Jutta Kuitunen.

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Other title(s)

• Handbook of museum archaeology
• Museum archaeology

ISBN

• 9780198847526 (hardcover)
• 0198847521 (hardcover)

OCLC

1302106460

Doi

• 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198847526.001.0001

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