2008. 320 pp., 45 illustrations, 21 tables, notes, references, index, 6 x 92008. 320 pp., 45 illustrations, 21 tables, notes, references, index, 6 x 9
Memory making is a social practice that links people and things together across time and space and ultimately has material consequences. The intersection of matter and social practice becomes archaeologically visible through the deposits created during social activities. Memories are made, not just experienced, and their material traces allow us to understand the materiality of these practices. Indeed, materiality is not just material culture repackaged. Instead, it is about the interaction of humans and materials within a set of cultural relationships. In this book the authors focus on a set of case studies that illustrate how social memories were made through repeated, patterned, and engaged social practices. “Memory work” also refers to the interpretive activities scholars perform when studying social memory. The contributors to this volume share a common goal to map out the different ways in which to study social memories in past societies programmatically and tangibly.
Contributors: Susan D. Gillespie, Rosemary A. Joyce, Lisa J. Lucero, Lynn M. Meskell, Barbara J. Mills, Axel E. Nielsen, Timothy R. Pauketat, Joshua Pollard, Ann B. Stahl, William H. Walker
View the Table of Contents
- Introduction: Memory, Materiality, and Depositional Practice
Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker
- Practice in and as Deposition
Rosemary A. Joyce
- Deposition and Material Agency in the Early Neolithic of Southern Britain
Joshua Pollard
- Founders’ Cults and the Archaeology of Wa-kan-da
Timothy R. Pauketat
- Remembering while Forgetting: Depositional Practices and Social Memory at Chaco
Barbara J. Mills
- History in Practice: Ritual Deposition at La Venta Complex A
Susan D. Gillespie
- Practice and Nonhuman Social Actors: The Afterlife Histories of Witches and Dogs in the American Southwest
William H. Walker
- Dogs, Pythons, Pots, and Beads: The Dynamics of Shrines and Sacrificial Practices in Banda, Ghana, 1400–1900 CE
Ann B. Stahl
- Memorializing Place among Classic Maya Commoners
Lisa J. Lucero
- The Materiality of Ancestors: Chullpas and Social Memory in the Late Prehispanic History of the South Andes
Axel E. Nielsen
- Memory Work and Material Practices
Lynn Meskell
Read Reviews
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“this excellent collection...is...a fascinating application of the latest archaeological thought to a wide-range of case studies.
this collection of essays represents archaelogogy at close to its best, combining detailed knowledge of fascinating case studies with up-to-date theoretical influences.
By examining particular historical instantiations of different networks of people, places, animals and things, this volume ensures the manner in which materiality and deposition play a crucial role in remembering and forgetting has never been clearer.”
—Oliver Harris, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2
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“Mills, Walker, and company innovatively turn memory on its head, focusing not on memory as a tool, but rather on the ways memory is constitutive of social life as revealed through depositional practices. More than just a new twist on memory, the concepts deployed in this book have the potential to be transformative for the discipline. Anthropological readers grappling with issues of practice, continuity, and materiality will be engaged, inspired, and perhaps unsettled by some of the ideas presented here. All those with a stake in the future directions taken by archaeological theory should read this book.”
—Ruth M. Van Dyke, American Antiquity
2008. 320 pp., 45 illustrations, 21 tables, notes, references, index, 6 x 9