Personifying Prehistory

Relational Ontologies in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

AvJoanna Brück

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The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2019-02-12
Mått148 x 224 x 22 mm
Vikt572 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor322
FörlagOUP OXFORD
ISBN9780198768012

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Joanna Brück is Professor of Archaeology at University of Bristol and was previously Senior Lecturer at University College Dublin. Her primary area of research is the archaeology of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She is particularly interested in the treatment of the human body and concepts of the self; depositional practices and what these reveal about the meanings and values ascribed to objects; and the relationship between space and society including domestic architecture and the changing organisation of landscape. She co-organises the Bronze Age Forum and is an editor of Archaeological Dialogues. She has also recently published an edited volume on the material and visual culture of the 1916 Rising in Ireland.

Personifying Prehistory is a tour de force that encapsulates the theoretical work that Joanna Brück has developed over the last two decades and combines it with in-depth and detailed case studies from the most important aspects of making persons in the British and Irish Bronze Age... Brück weaves a captivating spell, she invites the reader to cast an enquiring eye at the British and Irish Bronze Age, an Age that in her retelling is rich with interwoven meaning, where breaking and forging things, materials, bodies, landscapes, becomes different tunes making up one mighty song.