A Life in Balkan Archaeology

A Life in Balkan Archaeology PDF

Author: John Chapman

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2021-12-31

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1789257328

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This lively memoir tells the story of a boy growing up in Plymouth, Devon, getting excited about archaeology after visits to mainland Greece and Crete, trying to get into Greek archaeology and relocating northwards into the Balkans, where he spent a career in prehistoric research. The chapters alternate between museum/university experiences and the author's major research projects. The experiences of working in that part of the world as the Third Balkan War was starting were dramatic. The memoir presents stories with implications for East–West relationships which will soon disappear from living memory. The ways that research projects originated and developed are also strongly featured. There is also a fund of anecdotes about prehistorians living and dead. The publication of this memoir records those fragments of the discipline’s history which are in danger of being lost forever. But Chapman's life story is not erased from this account, which is not an anthropological work but, rather, a participant account with a modicum of relevant personal details. This memoir provides the insider story to the research results.

Balkan Prehistory

Balkan Prehistory PDF

Author: Douglass W. Bailey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1134607083

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Bailey's volume fills the gap that existed for an archaeology of the Balkans and will be required reading for anyone studying the Neolithic, Copper and early Bronze Ages of Eastern Europe.

Balkan Dialogues

Balkan Dialogues PDF

Author: Maja Gori

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1317377478

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Spatial variation and patterning in the distribution of artefacts are topics of fundamental significance in Balkan archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have classified spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete “cultures”, which have been conventionally treated as bound entities and equated with past social or ethnic groups. This timely volume fulfils the need for an up-to-date and theoretically informed dialogue on group identity in Balkan prehistory. Thirteen case studies covering the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age and written by archaeologists conducting fieldwork in the region, as well as by ethnologists with a research focus on material culture and identity, provide a robust foundation for exploring these issues. Bringing together the latest research, with a particular intentional focus on the central and western Balkans, this collection offers original perspectives on Balkan prehistory with relevance to the neighbouring regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Anatolia. Balkan Dialogues challenges long-established interpretations in the field and provides a new, contextualised reading of the archaeological record of this region.

Bridging Science and Heritage in the Balkans: Studies in Archaeometry and Cultural Heritage Restoration and Conservation

Bridging Science and Heritage in the Balkans: Studies in Archaeometry and Cultural Heritage Restoration and Conservation PDF

Author: Nona Palincas

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2019-03-31

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1789691974

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In a period when the study of archaeological remains is enriched through new methods derived from the natural sciences and when there is general agreement on the need for more investment in the study, restoration and conservation of the tangible cultural heritage, this book presents contributions to these fields from South-Eastern Europe.

Social Dimensions of Food in the Prehistoric Balkans

Social Dimensions of Food in the Prehistoric Balkans PDF

Author: Mariya Ivanova

Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781789250800

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Ever since the definition of the Neolithic Revolution by Vere Gordon Childe, archaeologists have been aware of the crucial importance of food for the understanding of prehistoric developments. Numerous studies have classified and described cooking ware, hearths and ovens, have studied food residues and more recently also stable isotopes in skeletal material. However, we have not yet succeeded in integrating traditional, functional perspectives on nutrition and semiotic approaches (e.g. dietary practices as an identity marker) with current research in the fields of Food Studies and Material Culture Studies. This volume brings together leading specialists in archaeobotany, economic zooarchaeology, and palaeoanthropology to discuss practices of food production and consumption in their social dimensions from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age in the Balkans, a region with intermediary position between and the Aegean Sea on one side and Central Europe and the Eurasian steppe regions on the other. The prehistoric inhabitants of the Balkans were repeatedly confronted with foreign knowledge and practices of food production and consumption which they integrated and thereby transformed into their life. In a series of transdisciplinary studies, the contributors shed new light on the various social dimensions of food in a synchronous as well as diachronic perspective. Contributors present a series of case studies focused on themes of social interaction, communal food preparation and consumption, the role of feasting, and the importance and management of salt production.

Balkan Dialogues

Balkan Dialogues PDF

Author: Maja Gori

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 131737746X

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Spatial variation and patterning in the distribution of artefacts are topics of fundamental significance in Balkan archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have classified spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete “cultures”, which have been conventionally treated as bound entities and equated with past social or ethnic groups. This timely volume fulfils the need for an up-to-date and theoretically informed dialogue on group identity in Balkan prehistory. Thirteen case studies covering the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age and written by archaeologists conducting fieldwork in the region, as well as by ethnologists with a research focus on material culture and identity, provide a robust foundation for exploring these issues. Bringing together the latest research, with a particular intentional focus on the central and western Balkans, this collection offers original perspectives on Balkan prehistory with relevance to the neighbouring regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Anatolia. Balkan Dialogues challenges long-established interpretations in the field and provides a new, contextualised reading of the archaeological record of this region.

Archaeology Across Frontiers and Borderlands

Archaeology Across Frontiers and Borderlands PDF

Author: Stefanos Gimatzidis

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 9783700180296

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The objective of this volume is a theoretical debate on the archaeology at the crossroads of the Balkans, the Aegean and Anatolia and its interrelation with social and political life in this historically turbulent region. Modern political borders still divide European archaeology and intercept research. This is particularly evident in southeastern Europe, where archaeological interaction among neighbouring countries such as Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, the FYR of Macedonia and Albania is practically inactive. Reception of the past within the local perspectives of modern nation states and changing identities are some of our focal points: Can breaks or continuities in the material culture be perceived as evidence for ethnic (dis-)continuities, migrations, ethnogeneses, etc. and what is the socio-political background of such approaches? What is the potential of material culture towards the definition of modern and past identities? Interaction among different societies and cultures as well as the exchange of goods and ideas are another topic of this book. The area encompassing the north Aegean and the Balkans was, during the later prehistoric and early historic periods, the showplace of fascinating cultural entanglements. Domestic, cultic and public architecture, artefact groups and burial rites have always been employed in the archaeological process of defining identities. However, these identities were not static but rather underwent constant transformations. The question addressed is: How did people and objects interact and how did objects and ideas change their function and meaning in time and space? Colleagues representing different scholarly traditions and cultural backgrounds, working in Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, FYR of Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, took part in this debate, and a total of 19 papers are now presented in this book.