"Archaeologists are synonymous with artifacts. With artifacts we construct stories concerning past lives and livelihoods, yet we rarely write of deeply personal encounters or of the way the lives of objects and our lives become enmeshed. In this volume, 23 archaeologists each tell an intimate story of their experience and entanglement with an evocative artifact. Artifacts range from a New Britain obsidian tool to an abandoned Viking toy boat, the marble finger of a classical Greek statue and ordinary pottery fragments from Roman England and Polynesia. Other tales cover contemporary objects, including a toothpick, bell, door, and the blueprint for a 1970s motorcar. These creative stories are self-consciously personal; they derive from real world encounter viewed through the peculiarities and material intimacy of archaeological practice. This text can be used in undergraduate and graduate courses focused on archaeological interpretation and theory, as well as on material culture and story-telling"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
1. Enounter, engagement, and object stories / Steve Brown, Ursula Frederick and Anne Clarke
2. What this awl means / Janet Spector
3. On toothpicks and elephants / Alexandra Kelly
4. Walking straight through places and times : finding an Acheulian hand ax / Allison Mickel
5. Marooned! The old people, a dolphin and a model canoe / Anne Clarke
6. Shalimar / Denis Byrne
7. TBC / Emma Waterton
8. Tradition and inventiveness : decolonising an "Indian" bell / Giovanna Vitelli
9. A voyage of discovery : biography and identity in early Medieval Dublin and today / Harold Mytum
10. A steely gaze : my captivation with the American tintype / Heather Law Pezzarossi
11. A cake of spinifex resin / Heidi T. Pitman
2. Can, door, heritage : a conflict to post-conflict object narrative / John Giblin
13. Pointing to the past / Lesley A. Beaumont
14. The reality of whales : reflections from a follower of whales / Lynette Russell
15. The Salt Pan Creek boondi / Paul Irish
16. Transformative material, transformative object : the impact of a bronze axe / Rachel Crellin
17. The prosaic platter / Ralph Mills
18. The claw : a song of electrons / Robert Maxwell
19. Reflections and connections / Robin Torrence
20. Dido and the basket : fragments towards a non-linear history / Ruth Tringham
21. A Neolithic house with two hearths at Osanni, South Korea / Sarah Milledge Nelson
22. Naughtiness on the mission / Steve Brown
23. The materiality of Polynesian plainware pottery / Tom Sapienza
24. Man with hat and pipe : inscribing convict identities in time and place / Tracy Ireland
25. Sandman / Ursula Frederick
26. Afterword: The resonance of a trowel / Jane Lydon.
ISBN
9781611323832 (hardback : alkaline paper)
1611323835 (hardback : alkaline paper)
9781611323849 (paperback : alkaline paper)
1611323843 (paperback : alkaline paper)
LCCN
2014036904
OCLC
898334284
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