Search results for ""AltaMira Press,U.S.""

Distinguished anthropologist George Marcus and his co-author Fernando Mascarenhas engage in a new experiment in anthropological writing. Ocasião reveals the key relationship between anthropologist and subject through the letters and commentaries exchanged between Marcus and Mascarenhas, Marques of Fronteira and Alorna in Portugal. The authors discuss the persistence and survival of the contemporary Portuguese nobility, who serve as witnesses to important transitions in modern Portuguese history. The epistolary form is the medium of this innovative ethnography, and will stimulate a new critique of ethnographic genres, originating in the work of James Clifford and Marcus in Writing Culture. This new book will appeal to readers concerned with anthropological methods and fieldwork; the anthropology of elites, and a diverse European and American community of scholars interested in Portuguese culture.

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Archaeological research of the Near East lags behind other regions in its consideration of gender-related issues in its treatment of the past. Diane Bolger's present work contributes to the nascent research that aims to fill this gap. Gender in Ancient Cyprus examines some of the fundamental facets of gender as they intersect with the dynamics of social, political, and economic change in Cyprus, beginning with the earliest traces of human habitation on the island to the final phases of the Bronze Age. The book closely analyzes gender as it relates to the domestic space, technology and labor, ritual and social identity, and the roles of children, as well as the practices of modern day Near Eastern archaeology and the roles of women in it. Parallels are drawn to more developed cases elsewhere in the world. This volume is important for scholars and students interested in gender-sensitive interpretations of the archaeological record and in the ways that gender reshapes its present practices.

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Prompted by the overt omission of Muncie's black community from the famous community study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, the authors initiated this project to reveal the unrecorded historical and contemporary life of Middletown, a well-known pseudonym for the Midwestern city of Muncie, Indiana. As a collaboration of community and campus, this book recounts the early efforts of Hurley Goodall to develop a community history and archive that told the story of the African American community, and rectify the representation of small town America as exclusively white. The authors designed and implemented a collaborative ethnographic field project that involved intensive interviews, research, and writing between community organizations, local experts, ethnographers, and teams of college students. This book is a unique model for collaborative research, easily accessible to students. It will be a valuable resource for instructors in anthropology, creative writing, sociology, community research, and African American studies.

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Gaining access is a critical part of doing research, not only because one must 'get in' in order to gain information, but also because the quality of access affects what information is available to the researcher. Despite its importance, the literature on qualitative methods has not yet provided an extensive treatment of this issue. Gaining Access fills the void by offering useful, prescriptive advice on how to successfully enter different field settings for interviewing and observation. The detailed methodological guidelines presented by the authors are reinforced in a set of case studies by expert researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds on a wide variety of formal and informal settings, from working with ethnic minorities in Bosnia to studying prisons, sex workers, welfare offices, and the clergy. This book will provide useful ideas to experienced qualitative researchers as well as invaluable advice to novices conducting their first study.

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This handbook gathers original, authoritative articles from leading archaeologists to compile in a single place the latest thinking about archaeological methods. Topics range from theoretical models undergirding research to concrete strategies for field work and laboratory analysis. Public archaeology topics such as curation, collaboration, funding, and publication are also included among the 34 chapters in the book. Chapters are authored by well-known scholars on both sides of the Atlantic including Fagan, Hodder, Chippindale, Kvamme, McManamon, and many others. An extensive bibliography accompanies each chapter. As a single reference for current information on contemporary archaeological field methods, this volume is unmatched.

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Gold. Copper. Iron. Metal working in Africa has been the subject of both public lore and extensive archaeological investigation. Here, four of the leading contemporary researchers on this topic attempt to provide a complete synthesis of current debates and understandings: Where, how, and when was metal first introduced to the continent? How were iron and copper tools, implements, and objects used in everyday life, in trade, in political and cultural contexts? What role did metal objects play in the ideological systems of precolonial African peoples? Substantive chapters address the origins of metal working and the technology and the various uses and meanings of copper and iron. An ethnoarchaeological account in the words of a contemporary iron worker enriches the archaeological explanations. This book provides a comprehensive, timely summary of our current knowledge.

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