Petrification is a process, but it also can be understood as a concept. This volume takes the first steps to manifest, materialize or “petrify” the concept of “petrification” and turn it into a tool for analyzing material and social processes. The wide array of approaches to petrification as a process assembled here is more of a collection of possibilities than an attempt to establish a firm, law-generating theory. Divided into three parts, this volume’s twenty-plus authors explore petrification both as a theoretical concept and as a contextualized material and social process across geological, prehistoric and historic periods.
Topics connecting the various papers are properties of materials, preferences and choices of actors, the temporality of matter, being and becoming, the relationality between actors, matter, things and space (landscape, urban space, built space), and perceptions of the following generations dealing with the petrified matter, practices, and socialrelations. Contributors to this volume study specifically whether particular processes of petrification are confined to the material world or can be seen as mirroring, following, triggering, or contradicting changes in social life and general world views. Each of the authors explores – for a period or a specific feature – practices and changes that led to increased conformity and regularity. Some authors additionally focus on the methods and scrutinize them and their applications for their potential to create objects of investigation: things, people, periods, in order to raise awareness for these or to shape or “invent” categories. This volume is of interest to archaeologists, geologists, architectural historians, conservationists, and historians.
Sophie Hueglin graduated from the University of Freiburg, Germany, and for many years has led excavations in the city of Basel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on medieval and early modern material culture and the European Iron Age. During her Marie-Curie fellowship at Newcastle University, UK, she has developed petrification as a transdisciplinary diachronic concept. From 2016-2020, she served as Vice-President of the European Association of Archaeologists. Currently, she is involved in academic research and teaching in Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Austria, and India.
Alexander Gramsch received degrees from Cambridge University, UK, and Leipzig University, Germany. His research interests include the archaeology of practices, the human body, and cultural change, working on topics such as Bronze Age cremation rituals and the itinerary of the human body. He has worked for private archaeological companies and the State Archaeological Service in Rhineland-Palatinate.Currently, he is head of the editorial department of the Römisch-Germanische Kommission (RGK).
Liisa Seppänen has degrees in archaeology and cultural history from Turku University. She has worked on large urban excavations and is presently a docent of urban archaeology at Turku University and of archaeology at Helsinki University. Her research focus lies on building materials, town planning and urban development in connection with social complexity and heritage values. Since 2014, she has been part of the international expert network “Archaeology, Architecture and Contemporary City Planning”.
