Archaeology as Cultural History: Words and Things in Iron Age Greece (Social Archaeology) - Hardcover

Morris, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0631174095 ISBN 13: 9780631174097

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000

Synopsis

This book shows the reader how much archaeologists can learn from recent developments in cultural history.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This book shows the reader how much archaeologists can learn from recent developments in cultural history. Cultural historians deal with many of the same issues as postprocessual archaeologists, but have developed much more sophisticated methods for thinking about change through time and the textuality of all forms of evidence. The author uses the particular case of Iron Age Greece (c. 1100-300 BC), to argue that text-aided archaeology, far from being merely a testing ground for prehistorians' models, is in fact in the best position to develop sophisticated models of the interpretation of material culture.

The book begins by examining the history of the institutions within which archaeologists of Greece work, of the beliefs which guide them, and of their expectations about audiences. The second part of the book traces the history of equality in Iron Age Greece and its relationship to democracy, focusing on changing ideas about class, gender, ethnicity, and cosmology, as they were worked out through concerns with relationships to the past and the Near East. Ian Morris provides a new interpretation of the controversial site of Lefkandi, linking it to Greek mythology, and traces the emergence of radically new ideas of the free male citizen which made the Greek form of democracy a possibility.

About the Author:

Ian Morris is Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology, and is Associate Dean of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University. He was previously Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge and Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Chicago. His previous books include Burial and Ancient Society (1987), Death Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (1992), Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies (ed., 1994), A New Companion to Homer (ed. with Barry Powell, 1997). and Democracy 2500? Questions and Challenges (ed. with Barry Powell, 1997). He has carried out extensive excavation in Britain and Greece and is currently publishing Iron Age remains from Lerna, Greece.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0631174095
• ISBN 13: 9780631174097
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376