Theme:
The archaeology of material culture, bodies and landscapes
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each
Title:
Current approaches to tells and tell-like sites in the prehistoric Old World
Content:
Within household archaeology two big contrasting patterns occurred at assorted times and regions, sometimes in tandem: a) the horizontal displacement of short-lived habitats leading to flat sites; and b) the vertical replacement of superimposed occupations resulting in deep (often long-lasting) biographies; i.e. highly-redundant and highly-congruent sites. However, such dynamics have been hitherto tackled from isolated local perspectives or discussed in culture-specific academic debates. This session will focus on multi-layer sites in Eurasia from the Earliest Neolithic up to the Iron Age, and from Western Europe to the Middle East, envisaged as a transversal phenomenon whose commonalities and divergences are poorly understood yet may benefit from cross-cultural comparison.
Contributors are encouraged to present synthetic overviews or cases studies in social terms from theoretically-informed and methodologically innovative perspectives on this cultural phenomenon. Papers should address key questions such as: what social practices (e.g. dwelling, gathering, maintenance or abandonment chores) contributed to their characteristic formation in contrast to those held on flat sites?; what are these deeply-stratified sites made of (e.g. everyday refuse or middens, sun-dried mud, daub or stone building debris)?; how can we measure and correlate time with sedimentation rates/accumulation trajectories using ‘micro-archaeological’ science-based methods (micromorphology, taphonomy)?; how did these sites relate to mobility/sedentarism and high/low-density aggregation dynamics?; how cutting-edge excavation and survey datasets may support sounder social interpretations?; what cultural rationales, sensory experiences or arenas for social negotiation may have fostered/afforded such archaeology (in terms of genealogies, history making and cultural memory, monumentalization, movement and perception, legitimation of ownership claims)?
Keywords:
Household, Social Theory, Materiality, Prehistory
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Main organiser:
Antonio Blanco-González (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Prof. Dr. Tobias L. Kienlin (Germany) 2
Affiliations:
1. Grupo PREHUSAL, Universidad de Salamanca
2. Institut fuer Ur- und Fruehgeschichte, Universitaet zu Koeln
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