Social theory in archaeology and ancient history : the present and future of counternarratives / edited by Geoff Emberling.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Emberling, Geoff, editor, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social archaeology.

Civilization, Ancient.

Social systems--History.

Social systems.

Excavations (Archaeology).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 366 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Social Theory in Archaeology & Ancient History

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Recently a new generation of archaeologists has recognized that large questions of development in societies are fundamentally important, thereby re-validating studying the rise of states, the origin of cities, and the collapse of civilizations. These essays demonstrate the importance of large historical questions in case studies of key civilizations.

Contents:

Part I. Introduction

Counternarratives: the archaeology of the long term and the large scale / Geoff Emberling

Part II. Cultural trajectories

Social evolutionary theory and the fifth continent: history without transformation? / Tim Murray

Structures of authority: feasting and political practice in the earliest Mesopotamian states / Geoff Emberling

Counternarratives and counterintuition: accommodating the unpredicted in the archaeology of complexity / Steven E. Falconer

Inscribing legitimacy and building power in the Mekong Delta / Miriam T. Stark

Part III. Cities, states, and empires

The city in the state / Carla M. Sinopoli and Uthara Suvrathan

Cities and ideology: the case of Assur in the Neo-Assyrian period / Peter Machinist

City and countryside

image and text: balancing rural and urban values in third-millennium Egypt / John Baines

Local courts in centralizing states: the case of Ur III Mesopotamia / Laura Culbertson

Part IV. Collapse and resilience

Writing collapse / Severin Fowles

Objects in crisis: curation, repair, and the historicity of things in the South Caucasus

1500-300 BCE / Adam T. Smith and Lori Khatchadourian

Leaving classic Maya cities: agent-based modeling and the dynamics of diaspora / Patricia A. McAnany, Jeremy A. Sabloff, Maxime Lamoureux St-Hilaire, and Gyles Iannone

Part V. Archaeology and history

Settling on the ruins of Xia: archaeology of social memory in early China / Li Min

Anti-history / Shannon Lee Dawdy

Part VI. Commentary

The present and future of counternarratives / Norman Yoffee.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Nov 2015).

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

ISBN:

1-316-45123-2

1-316-45499-1

1-316-45547-5

1-316-45835-0

1-316-45595-5

1-107-28205-5

1-316-45643-9