Description
Book SynopsisDespite notable explorations of past dynamics, much of the archaeological literature on mobility remains dominated by accounts of earlier prehistoric gatherer-hunters, or the long-distance exchange of materials. Refinements of scientific dating techniques, isotope, trace element and aDNA analyses, in conjunction with phenomenological investigation, computer-aided landscape modelling and GIS-style approaches to large data sets, allow us to follow the movement of people, animals and objects in the past with greater precision and conviction. One route into exploring mobility in the past may be through exploring the movements and biographies of artefacts. Challenges lie not only in tracing the origins and final destinations of objects but in the less tangible ‘in between’ journeys and the hands they passed through. Biographical approaches to artefacts include the recognition that culture contact and hybridity affect material culture in meaningful ways. Furthermore, discrete and bounded ‘sites’ still dominate archaeological inquiry, leaving the spaces and connectivities between features and settlements unmapped. These are linked to an under-explored middle-spectrum of mobility, a range nestled between everyday movements and one-off ambitious voyages. We wish to explore how these travels involved entangled meshworks of people, animals, objects, knowledge sets and identities. By crossing and re-crossing cultural, contextual and tenurial boundaries, such journeys could create diasporic and novel communities, ideas and materialities.
Trade ReviewThis volume adds an excellent contribution to renewed interest in mobility and movement, particularly in going some way to bridging the theoretical gap between ‘here’ and ‘there’ and demonstrating the importance of the journey. * Antiquity *
Table of ContentsList of Contributors 1. Making journeys, blurring boundaries and celebrating transience: a movement towards archaeologies of in-betweeness Catriona D. Gibson 2. The role of persistent places and landmarks in navigation Yolande O'Brien 3. Archaeology and movement one step at a time! Oscar Aldred 4. The Dover Bronze Age boat as a ‘Non-place’: Some reflections on maritime mobility in the Bronze Age of the Transmanche Peter Clark 5. From self-sufficiency to interdependence: Changes in the Cypriot socio-economic structure in the light of mobility during the second millennium BC Francesca Chelazzi 6. Travelling lines: Linear earthworks and movement on the prehistoric Yorkshire Wolds Emily Fioccoprile 7. Bronze Age wayfaring and the monumentalised landscape Catherine J. Frieman and James Lewis 8. Itineraries of pottery: Theorising mobility and movement of humans and things Caroline Heitz and Regine Stapfer 9. Theorising ‘Nomadic’ Betweenness: Movement, Contingency, and Materiality in the Pastoral Societies of the Bronze Age Eurasian Steppe James A. Johnson 10. Neolithic mobility in western Sweden: interpretations of strontium isotope ratios of the megalithic population in Falbygden Malou Blank and Corina Knipper 11. Choreography of existence: holloways and making of landscapes Dimitrij Mlekuž
