Despite the fundamental importance of the senses in human experience, archaeologists have, until recently, tended to neglect the abundant sensory dimensions of the material world they investigate, with the exception of the sense of sight, which has dominated archaeological theory and practice. In this book Robin Skeates establishes a well-defined methodology for an archaeology of the senses, produces a challenging new interpretative synthesis of Maltese prehistoric archaeology, and provides a rich archaeological case-study for the emergent interdisciplinary field of sensual culture studies. Using the combined methods of reflexivity, inventory, experimentation, thick description, and creative writing, Skeates explores the senses of sight, sound, smell and taste, touch, spatiality, the emotions, and their synaesthesthic interplay. Over space, three particular types of sensory domain are considered in detail within the wider context of the Maltese islandscape: dwelling places, monumental buildings, and the underworld. And over time the character, dynamism, and diversity of the successive sensual cultures of prehistoric Malta are defined.

An Archaeology of the Senses: Prehistoric Malta

History

Skeates, Robin

Ancient Civilizations

Oxford University Press

Throughout the world, competing interest groups lay claim to the material remains of the past. Archaeologists, developers, indigenous 'first peoples', looters, museum curators, national government officals, New Age worshippers, private collectors, tourists - all want their share. This introduction to contemporary debates surrounding their rival claims deals with defining, owning, protecting, managing, interpreting, and experiencing the archaeological heritage. 
Fundamental questions are considered: What is 'archaeological heritage'? Who should own and control the material culture of the past? How should these remains be protected? How should the archaeological heritage be presented to the public? 
Robin Skeates calls for greater communication and co-operation between archaeologists and other interest groups, urging archaeologists to increase the involvement of local people in the culturally valuable and vulnerable material remains of their past, and in archaeological research that attempts to be objective.

Debating the Archaeological Heritage (Debates in Archaeology)

World

Bristol Classical Press

This book draws on the complementary fields of visual cultural studies and interpretative archaeology to examine how successive generations transformed their visual culture to construct themselves. It explores this process through an extended case-study of art and social life in prehistoric south-east Italy, between the Upper Palaeolithic and the Bronze Age. A central argument of the book is that a wide range of visually communicative artworks were consumed and produced in the cultural process. Such objects range from portable artefacts, to installations within sites, to monumental structures in the landscape - all of which were interwoven with people's bodies in the experiences of daily life and special performances. More specifically, it is argued that these powerful aesthetic objects were actively used by people across space and time to perceive the world around them and to reproduce their social lives. They helped people to establish personal and collective boundaries, identities and relationships, to acquire and exercise power, to promote ideologies, and to contest them, especially at time of social tension.

Visual Culture & Archaeology: Art and Social Life in Prehistoric South-East Italy

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Bristol Classical Pr

Fifteen papers from a weekend conference on archaeology, ritual and religion at Oxford in 1989. Contributions are: Archaeology of ritual (J. C. Barrett), Ritual tradition and the reconstitution of society (P. Garwood), Beaker funerary practice (J. Thomas), Social transformation in the Danish Neolithic (C. B. Damm), Ritual use of narcotics in later Neolithic Europe (A. Sherratt), Symbolic dimensions of Neolithic exchange in Armorica (M. A. Patton), From ritual action to symbolic communication (I. D. Mortensen), Booty sacrifices in southern Scandinavia (C. Fabech), Intensity and symbolism in Celtic religious expression (M. Green), Animals and ritual behaviour (A. Grant), Animal and infant burials in Romano-British villas (E. Scott), Caves, cults and children in Neolithic Abruzzo (R. Skeates), Monuments and places (R. Bradley), Monuments and the ritual landscape (J. Harding), Social arenas in the Neolithic and Copper Age of SE Europe (J. Chapman). 192p with illus. (Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Monograph 32, 1991) Pb

Sacred and Profane

Politics & Social Sciences

Garwood, Paul

Toms, J.

Jennings, D.

Archaeology

Oxford University School of Archaeology

Prehistoric Italy (Routledge World Archaeology)

Routledge

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