Search results for ""Author Ian Hodder""

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which humans became increasingly engaged in their material environment such that ‘things’ came to play an active force in their lives. A substantial and heavy involvement was with alluvial clays that surrounded the site. In the absence of large local stone, humans became increasingly involved in the extraction and manipulation of clay for a wide range of purposes – from bricks to ovens, pots and figurines. This heavy use of clays led to changes in the local environment that interacted with human activity, as indicated in the first section of the volume. In the second section, other examples of material technologies are considered all of which in various ways engage humans in specific dependencies and relationships. For example, large-scale studies of obsidian trade have drawn a complex picture of changing interactions between humans over time. The volume concludes with an integrated account of the uses of materials at Çatalhöyük based on the analysis of heavy residue samples from all contexts at the site.

Read more less

A theory of human evolution and history based on ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on “entanglement,” the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Not only do humans become dependent on things, Hodder asserts, but things become dependent on humans, requiring an endless succession of new innovations. It is this mutual dependency that creates the dominant trend in both cultural and genetic evolution. He selects a small number of cases, ranging in significance from the invention of the wheel down to Christmas tree lights, to show how entanglement has created webs of human-thing dependency that encircle the world and limit our responses to global crises.

Read more less

This provocative introduction examines the most important new school of archaeological thought and practice to have emerged over the last two decades and provides students with an assessment of the impact and importance of recent theoretical debates.

Read more less

Offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory of material entanglement and entrapment, enriched with vivid examples from everyday life Entangled explores how archaeological evidence can help provide a better understanding of the direction of human social and technological change, demonstrating how the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture. Using examples drawn from both the early farming settlements of the Middle East and daily life in the modern world, Ian Hodder highlights the complex co-dependencies of humans and things—arguing that the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds are the unseen drivers of human development. Updated and expanded, Entangled offers new perspectives on the study of the relationality between things and humans. In this edition, the author reframes relationality in terms of various forms of dependence to better explore inequality, injustice, and the ways people get entrapped in detrimental social and economic situations. An entirely new chapter focuses on human dependence on other humans, such as between colonial powers and colonized people. Increased focus is placed on object-oriented ontologies and assemblages, symmetrical archaeology, and indigenous and radical approaches in archaeology that critique relationality and posthumanism. A wide range of new examples, references, and literature are presented throughout the book. Argues that dependence on things forces humans down particular evolutionary pathways and social trends Demonstrates how long-standing entanglements can be irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates archaeology, natural and biological sciences, and the social sciences Presents a critical review of key contemporary perspectives, including material culture studies, phenomenology, evolutionary theory, cognitive archaeology, human ecology, and complexity theory Entangled: A New Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things, Second Edition is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, researchers, and scholars in the fields of archeology, anthropology, material culture studies, and related fields across the social sciences and humanities.

Read more less

This newest volume in the Çatalhöyük Research Project Series continues the interpretation of the material obtained during excavation of the site from 2009 to 2017 under the direction of Professor Ian Hodder. Çatalhöyük, a 9,000-year-old tell site in central Turkey, is of international importance due to its large size at an early date, its dense population and its long occupation. Its well-preserved buildings and rich art in the Neolithic East Mound give a unique insight into early village life, and the site allows study of many of the main questions dealing with the formation of settled villages/towns and the early intensification of agriculture. This volume, in 16 chapters by project specialists, focuses on the material artefacts recovered from the site, including a range of clay objects (ceramics, clay balls, tokens, figurines) and others made of stone, shell and textile. The analysis of these items, within a framework of intersecting and transformative “flows” of matter that are entangled with human aims and strategies, illuminates issues of procurement and exchange, house and community (including shifting cooking practices and the early management of cattle), and the organisation of production. Collectively, they reveal how change was generated across 1,100 years of occupation by the ‘productive potential’ of things.

Read more less

Drawing on the experience of the Temper project ( Training, Education, Management and Prehistory in the Mediterranean ) and wider examples from the Mediterranean, this volume explores the issues inherent in managing, interpreting and presenting prehistoric archaeological sites. The first section of the book contains thematic chapters on conservation, visitor management and interpretation, public participation, and issues of managing sites within their cultural landscape; the second section focuses on archaeology and education and the politics of national curricula, and presents detailed case studies. Written by academics and those working in the fields of archaeology, architecture, heritage management and education, this volume will be invaluable to students and practitioners alike.

Read more less

Set in the context of this project's innovative landscape surveys, four extraordinary sites excavated at Haddenham, north of Cambridge chart the transformation of Neolithic woodland to Romano-British marshland, providing unrivalled insights into death and ritual in a changing prehistoric environment. Volume II moves on to later periods, and reveals how Iron Age and Romano-British communities adapted to the wetland environment that had now become established.

Read more less

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which the Çatalhöyük settlement and environment were dwelled in. A first section explores how houses, open areas and middens in the settlement were enmeshed in the daily lives of the inhabitants, integrating a wide range of different types of data at different scales. A second section examines subsistence practices of the site’s inhabitants and builds up a picture of how the overall landscape was exploited and lived within. A third section examines the evidence from the skeletons of those buried within the houses at Çatalhöyük in order to examine health, diet, lifestyle and activity within the settlement and across the landscape. This final section also reports on the burial practices and associations in order to build hypotheses about the social organization of those inhabiting the settlement. A complex picture emerges of a relatively decentralized society, large in size but small-scale in terms of organization, dwelling within a mosaic patchwork of environments. Through time, however, substantial changes occur in the ways in which humans and landscapes interact.

Read more less

Now in a revised and updated second edition, this volume provides an authoritative account of the current status of archaeological theory, as presented by some of its major exponents and innovators over recent decades. It summarizes the latest developments in the field and looks to its future, exploring some of the cutting-edge ideas at the forefront of the discipline.The volume captures the diversity of contemporary archaeological theory. Some authors argue for an approach close to the natural sciences, others for an engagement with cultural debate about representation of the past. Some minimize the relevance of culture to societal change, while others see it as central; some focus on the contingent and the local, others on long-term evolution. While few practitioners in theoretical archaeology would today argue for a unified disciplinary approach, the authors in this volume increasingly see links and convergences between their perspectives.The volume also reflects archaeology's new openness to external influences, as well as the desire to contribute to wider debates. The contributors examine ways in which archaeological evidence contributes to theories of evolutionary psychology, as well as to the social sciences in general, where theories of social relationships, agency, landscape and identity are informed by the long-term perspective of archaeology.The new edition of Archaeological Theory Today will continue to be essential reading for students and scholars in archaeology and in the social sciences more generally.

Read more less

This volume discusses the main excavations at Neolithic Çatalhöyük East undertaken from 2009 to 2017. The site is well known because of its large size, elaborate symbolism and wall paintings, and long history of excavation. This volume covers the last period of excavation directed by Ian Hodder in the North and South Areas of the site. It also describes the work conducted in the GDN Area on the later phases of occupation.The main aim of these excavations was to understand the layout and social geography of the settlement (both houses and open areas) and to situate the elaborate art and symbolism within a secure architectural and depositional context. Excavation and conservation methods are described and the campaign of geophysical prospection is described. Considerable focus is placed on detailed dating using Bayesian modeling that alters significantly our understanding of the organization of the settlement. New light is thrown on the degree of contemporaneity of buildings and on the continuities and breaks in house occupation and in the site as a whole. A fuller understanding has also been reached of the variability of houses and burials and of how these variations relate to social differentiation. The descriptions of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of different types of data and of different voices within the excavation team mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

Read more less

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. Çatalhöyük Excavations presents the results of the excavations that took place at the site from 2000 to 2008 when the main aim was to understand the social geography of the settlement, its layout and social organization. Excavation, recording and sampling methodologies are discussed as well as dating, ‘levels’, and the grouping of buildings into social sectors. The excavations in three areas of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük are described: the South Area, the 4040 Area in the northern part of the site, and the IST Area excavated by a team from Istanbul University. The description of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of such data within their context allows detailed accounts of the lives of the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, their relationships and activities. The integration of different types of data in the excavation account mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

Read more less

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations in 2000-2008. It synthesizes the results of research described in other volumes in the same series. The volume commences with accounts of the recent work on community collaboration at the site, and with discussions of the methods used at the site. It then synthesizes the work on landscape use and mobility, integrating the work of subsistence analysis and the analysis of human remains. The storage and sharing of food is a related topic. The ways in which houses were constructed, lived in and abandoned leads to a broad discussion of settlement and social organization at Çatalhöyük and of their change through time. For example, shifts in the themes that occur in paintings in houses change through time as part of a wider set of social, economic and ritual changes in the upper levels. The social uses of materials and technologies are explored and the roles of materials in personal adornment. Finally, the discussion of variation through place and time is recognized as dependent on scales of analysis and social process.

Read more less

The Neolithic saw the spread of the first farmers, and the formation of settled villages throughout Europe. Traditional archaeology has interpreted these changes in terms of population growth, economic pressures and social competition, but in "The Domestication of Europe" Ian Hodder works from a new, controversial theory focusing instead on the enormous expansion of symbolic evidence from the homes, settlements and burials of the period. Why do the figurines, decorated pottery, elaborate houses and burial rituals appear and what is their significance? The author argues that the symbolism of the Neolithic must be interpreted if we are to understand adequately the associated social and economic changes. He suggests that both in Europe and the Near East a particular set of concepts was central to the origins of farming and a settled mode of life. These concepts relate to the house and home - termed "domus" - and they provided a metaphor and a mechanism for social and economic transformation. As the wild was brought in and domesticated through ideas and practices surrounding the domus, people were brought in and settled into the social and economic group of the village. Over the following millennia cultural practices relating to the domus continued to change and develop, until finally overtaken by a new set of concepts which became socially central, based on the warrior, the hunter and the wild.

Read more less

"Assembling Çatalhöyük, like archaeological remains, can be read in a number of ways. At one level the volume reports on the exciting new discoveries and advances that are being made in the understanding of the 9000 year-old Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük. The site has long been central to debates about early village societies and the formation of mega-sites in the Middle East. The current long-term project has made many advances in our understanding of the site that impact our wider understanding of the Neolithic and its spread into Europe from the Middle East. These advances concern use of the environment, climate change, subsistence practices, social and economic organization, the role of religion, ritual and symbolism. At another level, the volume reports on methodological advances that have been made by team members, including the development of reflexive methods, paperless recording on site, the integrated use of 3D visualization, and interactive archives. The long-term nature of the project allows these various innovations to be evaluated and critiqued. In particular, the volume includes analyses of the social networks that underpin the assembling of data, and documents the complex ways in which arguments are built within quickly transforming alliances and allegiances within the team. In particular, the volume explores how close inter-disciplinarity, and the assembling of different forms of data from different sub-disciplines, allow the weaving together of information into robust, distributed arguments."

Read more less

Set in the context of this project's innovative landscape surveys, four extraordinary sites excavated at Haddenham, north of Cambridge chart the transformation of Neolithic woodland to Romano-British marshland, providing unrivalled insights into death and ritual in a changing prehistoric environment. The highlight of Volume I is the internationally renowned Foulmire Fen long barrow, with its preserved timber burial chamber and façade. The massive individual timbers allow detailed study of Neolithic wood technology and the direct examination of a structure that usually survives only as a pattern of post holes.

Read more less

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations conducted by Mellaart revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as spectacular wall paintings and reliefs in the houses. This volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations undertaken at Çatalhöyük between 2009 and 2017, although many authors also discuss data generated through the whole 25-year period of excavation by the Çatalhöyük Research Project since 1993.This volume scrutinizes Çatalhöyük as the by-product of the activities of a community residing in central Turkey 9,000 years ago, but also as the outcome of the interactions of a community of researchers with wide-ranging theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. The volume commences with an overview of community engagement practices and of the ways different audiences have interacted with the site through the life of the project. It then considers the differences in approach of the Mellaart and recent excavations and reflects on different methodological perspectives that have been used at the site. It synthesizes the diverse array of environmental resources that would have been used in different times of the year. The ways in which the community at Çatalhöyük was held together, but also how community dynamics may have changed over time, are considered through the analysis of open areas, house architecture and contents, and the sequence of activities in houses. Modeling changes in practices over time shows that the effects of new introductions such as cooking pottery played out over many phases of occupation. The evidence for violence at the site is re-evaluated integrating the analysis of human remains and different forms of artifacts such as projectile points, clay balls and maceheads. The use of pigments on house surfaces, objects and human bodies and the social practices surrounding these practices are considered.The diversity of themes discussed in this volume captures the multifaceted nature of Çatalhöyük.

Read more less