Crafting in the World

​Clare T. Burke is an archaeologist specialising in the study and scientific analysis of ceramic material culture. Her PhD at the University of Sheffield focused on the chaîne opératoire and habitus as conceptual frameworks for understanding past crafting practices in relation to the production of Early Bronze Age ceramics from mainland Greece. She currently works at the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna investigating prehistoric ceramics.Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood is a Professor of Anthropology at Oakland University and an Associate of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. She organized and chaired the first two conference symposia on gender research in historical archaeology at the 1989 Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology in the First Joint Archaeological Congress in Baltimore, and at the 1989 Chacmool Conference in Calgary,Canada (proceedings published 1991). Professor Spencer-Wood’s early feminist theorizing was also published in the 1992 Southern Illinois University Conference volume. She subsequently wrote feminist articles published in Historical Archaeology and the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, as well as book chapters, including those in volumes she edited for Springer, entitled The Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes (co-edited with Sherene Baugher), and Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations: From Private to Public.

• Introduction.- Section I: Reconstructing ancient craft practice through archaeology and experiment.- Ch 1. Made to Remake the World: Bronze-Age Tools and the idea of Craft.- Ch 2. Looking over the shoulder of the Bronze Age metalsmith: Using wear analysis to understand metalsmithing practices.- Ch 3. Grasping at Threads - a Discussion on Archaeology and the Study of Craft.- Section II: Reconceptualizing Crafting.- Ch 4. Crafting History: How the World is Made. The case of Islamic archaeology.- Ch 5. Crafting a progressive nostalgia: radical embroidery as a negotiation of the past into a positive future.- Ch 6. Beauty and Grace in making Artifacts: An Anthropological Gaze upon Crafting in the World.- Section III: Teaching and Experiencing Crafts.- Ch 7. The Temporal and Spatial Diffusion of the Sloyd Educational Crafting Tradition Across the Landscape of Western Culture.- Ch 8. Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: learning the world through place-based craft.- Ch 9. Crafts and Living History: Old Sturbridge Village.- Section IV: The Meanings of Crafting in Modern Societies.- Ch 10. Hands to the Potter’s Wheel: A case of technological change in pottery production in Pomaire, Chile.- Ch 11. “El Proyecto Paraguas” (The Umbrella Project): Craft knowledge as tactical tool in marginalized communities in Argentina.- Ch 12. Etsy as a global community of practice?.- Ch 13. Commentary/conclusion.

“Crafting the world is an excellent volume that challenges the reader to reconceptualise crafting as more than a manufacturing process and to view it instead as a transformative and interactive performance.” (Antiquity, Vol. 96, 2022)