Archaeologies-Journal of the World Archaeological Congress最新文献

Tourism in heritage sites pushes back on the criticism of whether or not globalization should be understood as a conflict between creation, civil rights, and the ecosystem, normative ideas often characteristic of specific grounded communities. Tourism in ancient heritage sites has been a popular form for decades and remains so. Therefore, many studies address sustainability issues in these locations by focusing on their economic and environmental aspects. By comparison, fewer studies address social sustainability in historical sites, particularly in the context of developing economies. Given the scarcity of such research, this study explores social-sustainability concerns in Hampi, India. The application of a qualitative methodology with triangulation techniques identified the objective of this study. Reflective thematic analysis identified three main themes: power, politics, and the ongoing tug of war between local people and authorities; heritage tourism development challenges in Hampi; and “what is real,” ie., the concerns of authenticity.

A growing literature in archaeological theory has embraced the “material turn,” especially what is branded as “Object-Oriented Ontology” (OOO). Some archaeologists view this as an opportunity for the discipline which is, by definition, a practice of knowing objects. Others argue that the material turn may open up hitherto-unexplored ways of looking at historical processes. While this all sounds very exciting for a new generation of archaeologists, we see a genuine need to be cautious about the implications of subscribing to OOO-inspired archaeologies. These new theoretical developments have a direct impact on how archaeologists narrate, conceptualize, and interpret the past, present and future. In this article, we scrutinize the philosophical pathway behind this perspective and discuss its relation to archaeological theory. We advocate a modest, responsive version of new materialist archaeologies that can engage more thoughtfully with the past and Anthropocene social crises of systemic injustice and inequality.

One of the main goals of public archaeology is to facilitate the public access to the past. This paper constitutes an attempt to address this challenge and tackle one of the most significant, and burgeoning, problems for museums (the saturation of deposit spaces). We conducted a pedagogical experience that, seeking to entice young audiences, resulted in a successful interaction between school students and archaeological materials. Our methods are informed by the guidelines of Participatory Action Research and highlight the importance of stimulating an active engagement, through sensorial and practical approaches to orphan archaeological objects. The meaningful engagement that results from interactions, we argue, opens room not only to provide a closer appreciation of the materiality of these objects but primarily a reflection of a ‘distant past’ as something not so distant. This is particularly relevant in the context where we unfold our work because of its deep archaeological past and culturally diverse and indigenous background, which, nonetheless, are commonly thought as disassociated from the current population. We conclude that these interactive engagements foster the emergence of new spaces of debate in which the past is not closed and becomes a field of reflection and public action.

China’s Song Dynasty (960–1279 ad) was a prosperous period of economic development and cultural exchange. The economic and cultural prosperity also promoted the development of the brewing industry, and alcohol consumption became a fad. Based on the archeological materials related to the alcohol culture of the Song Dynasty (including image materials, such as tomb murals, temple murals, grotto statues and surviving paintings, and excavated drinking vessels), the type, texture, and decorative pattern of drinking vessels have characteristics that are unique for the time, and the purpose and methods of alcohol consumption and brewing in the Song Dynasty are unprecedentedly diverse. Alcohol trade, drinking customs, and the banquet culture at that time reflect the influence of the alcohol culture and its penetration into every household, further manifesting as cultural integration with other ethnic groups (the Khitan and Jurchen). By exploring a distant ancient society through alcohol from an archeological perspective, this paper focuses on the utensils, patterns, functions, customs, and accompanying cultural exchange phenomena associated with alcoholic beverages in the Song Dynasty in China.

In archaeology, the methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation, at least in the most traditional and hegemonic currents, are marked by the idea that the world is composed of individual entities, each one with specific and separated properties. In order to question this model, I will use the concept of Diffraction proposed by Haraway and Barad, to understand how different encounters over time actualized Theban Tomb 123, located in the plain of Sheikh Abdel Qurna, in Luxor, Egypt. The first encounter to be analysed is the encounter between Amenemhet with TT123 in the Pharaonic period (1479–1425 BC). The second involves encounters between TT123 with Qurnawis, a community that between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries used the pharaonic tombs on the West Bank of Luxor as housing. Finally, I will analyse the encounters between archaeologists with TT123. Thinking about these different encounters shows us that this space that archaeologists call TT 123, rather than being a fixed materiality, is a transitory materiality and meeting point of different ontologies.

After development over two millennia of Neolithic monumental architecture (enclosures & long barrows) in Central Europe, the 3rd Millennium BC seems to bring a hiatus in the creation of such monuments. The cult and worship moved to natural shrines (Corded Ware) and became invisible in the archaeological record. However, in the last decade, some new forms of Bell Beaker ritual constructions were discovered in Bohemia and Moravia. Two such features were discovered during large scale excavations at Hostivice, west of Prague in 2011 and 2013. The first consisted of a rectangular setting of large postholes with a large internal pit containing scatters of cremated (animal?) bones and fragments of decorated beakers. The second structure consisted of large circular postholes surrounding a pit which contained a votive offering of four stone wristguards carefully set in a square arrangement. In 2015, unprecedented evidence of a Bell Beaker ritual site was discovered at Brodek in Central Moravia. An unusual long rectangular passage structure defined by alignments of postholes and a ‘shrine’ consisting of four grave-like pits containing a variety of votive offerings, but no visible indications of human burial, were discovered. The sacrificial deposits were probably inserted into the features during a series of successive offering events. These previously unknown types of monument suggest a greater complexity of funerary and ritual construction in the region of non-megalithic territory.