Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

Reading Dress: The Construction of Social Categories and Identities in Bronze Age Europe

AbstractThis paper proposes that social identities can be studied through the cultural construction of appearance, since this is a powerful visual mediation of identities and is a component in the learning of social roles. Three analytical principles about the construction of appearances are outlined and applied to different case studies. This illustrates how differences are created in appearance. The main characteristics and trends in appearance during the Bronze Age are then outlined. The studies show that some of the categories cross-cut other principles of identity formation. In particular it seems that while the categorical distinction between male and female affects material culture from the earliest Bronze Age, during the Middle Bronze Age different categories of women are created as well. Through the studies neglected aspects of Bronze Age social relations and ideology are brought to our attention.

Excavating women : a history of women in European archaeology

1. Excavating women: towards an engendered history of archaeology, Margarita Diaz-Andreu and Marie Louise Stig Sorensen, SECTION I. GENERAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGY, 2. Rescue and recovery: on historiographies of female archeologists, Marie Louise Stig Sorensen, 3. Archaeology of French women and French women in Archaeology, Anick Coudart, 4. Gender Politics in Polish archaeology, Liliana Janik and Hanna Zawadzka, 5. Women archaeologists in retrospect: the Norwegian case, Liv Helga Dommasnes, Else Johnsen Kleppe, Gro Mandt and Jenny-Rita Naess, 6. Spanish women in a changing world. Strategies in the search for self-fulfilment through antiquities, Margarita Diaz-Andreu, 7. When the wall came down: East German women employed in archaeology before and after 1989, Ruth Struwe, SECTION II. HISTORY THROUGH THE INDIVIDUAL, 8. Archaeology, gender and emancipation: the paradox of Hanna Rydh, Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, 9. Women in British Archaeology: visible and invisible, Sara Champion, 10. Fieldwork is not the proper preserve of a lady: the first women archaeologists in Crete, Marina Picazo, 11. The state of Denmark. Lis Jacobsen and other women in and around archaeology, Lise Bender Jorgensen, 12. Greek women in archaeology: an untold story, Marianna Nikolaidou and Dimitra Kokkinidou, 13. From pictures to stories: traces of female PhD graduates from the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Tubingen, Germany, Sibylle Kastner, Viola Maier and Almut Schulke, 14. The impact of modern invasions and migrations on archaeological explanation: a biographical sketch of Marija Gimbutas, John Chapman.

Creativity in the Bronze Age: understanding innovation in pottery, textile and metalwork production

Creativity has been an integral part of human history, yet most studies focus on the modern era, leaving unresolved questions about the formative role that creativity as played in the past. This book explores the fundamental nature of creativity in a critical period of human history, the European Bronze Age. Considering developments in crafts that we take for granted today, such as pottery, textiles, and metalwork, the volume compares and contrasts developments in various media, from the construction of the materials themselves, through the production process, to the design and effects deployed in finished objects. It explores how creativity is closely related to changes in material culture, how it directs responses to the new and unfamiliar, and how it has resulted in changes to familiar things and practices. Written by an international team of scholars, the case studies in this volume consider wider issues and provide detailed insights into creative solutions found in specific objects.

Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict: New Questions for an Old Relationship

It has become increasingly clear that cultural heritage is an important agent in the interfacing between culture generally and the specificities of politics. This has particular significant repercussions regarding the roles that heritage plays in armed conflict. Analyses of this intersection have therefore become an important field within heritage studies. Such studies have begun to reveal the multifaceted and profound ways that cultural heritage is affected by armed conflicts: it is looted, damaged and destroyed either as a result of deliberate targeting or as part of the general violence. Responding to this, the traditional focus of research and practice has been on finding ways to mitigate the destructive impact through the development of legal instruments, preventive policies and protective measures. In such approaches heritage has primarily been seen as constituted by movable objects and important historic buildings, and it has essentially been treated as a passive victim of the atrocities. The relational dynamic, however, is not just one-way: heritage can also profoundly inform and shape armed conflicts and is an important factor to take account of during post-conflict recovery activities. It is, therefore, of great importance that we analyse this dynamic and reveal some of the underlying reasons for why and how such links are formed. Prime among these are how heritage may be used to argue for and construct difference — the ‘other’. Closely linked to this is the ability of heritage to be used in rhetorical strategies to justify violence, legitimize rights claims and notions of entitlements, or call on a collective memory of past injustices to rally support and motivate action.

The ‘romanization’ of gender archaeology

Allisons paper shows how the complex world of real-life social relations, dependencies and needs may be extracted from the small finds and the mundane domestic aspects of life associated with a site – even when that site is a Roman fort. In her approach Allison does not presume that society in its totality is mirrored in these finds; rather her apparently modest, but in fact potentially significant, point is that concrete aspects of how people organised their relationships, and especially the spatial aspects of these relationships, are revealed by such finds. In this emphasis Allison makes important contributions to two core areas of concern: one is the character of domestic life within Roman forts during the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., and the other, more theoretical concern, is how we make interpretative links between objects and social roles and identities. These two areas of concern are not, however, given equal standing in her arguments. The reflection upon the interpretative project of engendering is largely nested within the discussion of how one may find evidence of women and children within the Roman fort. There appears to be little acknowledgement of how some aspects of this concern need to be discussed at a general level separate from the specific questions about gender as part of social relations within this particular type of settlement. This omission is probably due to the limited space, but it brings up important points about how we reach interpretation.

Breathing Life into the Archives: Reflections Upon Decontextualization and the Curatorial History of V.G. Childe And the Material from Tószeg

AbstractWhat is the fate of the material from old excavations? This article aims to generate attention towards this question by discussing the fragmentation of assemblages due to long and disjointed excavation campaigns as well as the eagerness of museums to have representative objects from famous sites. The challenge emerging is the need to explore ways of reinstating objects that may be widely dispersed and entirely decontextualized into our database. The tell at Toszeg-Laposhalom, Hungary, is used as a case study with particular attention to the campaign of 1927. This case is important for several reasons. Toszeg is a key European Bronze Age site. It is also a good example of a site with numerous excavation campaigns and many different teams being involved. Moreover, the 1927 campaign, which is documented through the correspondence between the partners, was V.G. Childes first excavation, and the data recovered played a key role in his Central European Bronze Age chronology.

Thoughts on death and gender

Lohofs paper provides a good opportunity for reflecting upon current theoretical approaches to burial rituals and death in the archaeological past. The paper contains many constructive ideas, and its general social perspective means that the interpretations are of relevance for many regions of north-western Europe. It is particularly noteworthy how this kind of approach can bring out details rather than merging them into general trends. Through such attention the mortuary practices of the period appear as far more fluctuating and varied than usually appreciated; a characteristic that lends support to the idea of mortuary contexts constituting a discursive practice rather than a simple reflection of society. It makes one wonder about the potential variability behind the uniform ‘stories’ created for so many areas for this period. As an example, the ‘coming and going’ of cremation during this time is an important observation, that should be emphasised and more fully integrated in our explanations of the use of cremation in the Late Bronze Age.

Finding Alcatrazes and early Luso-African settlement on Santiago Island, Cape Verde

After the Portuguese discovered the Cape Verde Islands in AD 1456 they divided its main island, Santiago, into two governing captaincies. The founding settlement in the south-west, Cidade Velha, soon became the Islands’ capital and a thriving trade centre; in contrast, that in the east, Alcatrazes, only lasted as an official seat from 1484–1516 and is held to have ‘failed’ (see Richter 2015).

War and Cultural Heritage: The Impact of Conflict on Cultural Heritage: A Biographical Lens

The concern of this volume is the web of meanings and connotations associated with particular places as a result of wars, conflicts, and their aftermaths. It is about how cultural heritage is both affected and generated by conflict, and how such heritage is subsequently interpreted, responded to, and used. The chapters brought together here arose from a large collaborative research project, funded by the EuropeanUnion, that explored the uses of cultural heritage in post-conflict reconstruction processes in five countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, France, Germany, and Spain, with case studies added from Denmark and Serbia. The authors who together explored the varied facets of these processes brought with them a wide range of academic backgrounds, including archaeology, environmental psychology, geography, history, international relations, politics, and social anthropology; and all perspectives were needed as these are complex and intractable processes which affect individuals, generations, and policies. Together we explored different aspects of the historical processes and sought suitable methods for investigating dramatic and often still traumatic parts of the European cultural space. One major outcome is the detailed account of a number of specific places as presented in this volume and in the YouTube videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/CRICResearchProject) that accompany it. Through these two sources the means by which places are rethought and remade during post-conflict phases, including reconstruction, are considered and analysed. In particular, the volume demonstrates that places are not just ‘the heritage of war’ but actively participate in the recovery and remaking of communities.

Parallel Lives – An Interview with Ruth Tringham

Ruth Tringham is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. She is one of the founders and a director of the UC Berkeley Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching in Anthropology (MACTiA). Her research has focused on the transformation of early agricultural (Neolithic) societies. Tringham has directed and published archaeological excavations in South‐east Europe and Turkey, at the site of Çatalhöyük. Current research focuses on the life‐histories of buildings and the construction of place. Much of her recent practice of archaeology incorporates digital, especially multimedia, technology in the presentation of the process of archaeological interpretation, Since 1998 Tringham has incorporated multimedia authoring and digital technology into teaching inquiry‐based hybrid courses. From 1998 to 2001 she held the UCB Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education. Tringham is now recognized internationally as one of the leaders of digital education, media literacy, and digital publishing in archaeology. This interest in multimedia grows out of a lifelong passion for music, puppets and cultivating illusions of reality. The interview was conducted in Cambridge on 23 October 2007, the day after Ruth Tringhams participation in a personal history retrospective at the Department of Archaeology together with Meg Conkey, Henrietta Moore and Alison Wylie, and organized by Pamela Smith. The retrospective aimed to reflect on the transformation of archaeological theory and method during the 1970s and early 1980s (an audio recording is at http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/podcast/rss.xml). The interview was transcribed by the interviewees together with Dr Katharina Rebay, University of Cambridge.