Contesting Ethnoarchaeologies - Traditions, Theories, Prospects

Contesting Ethnoarchaeologies provides a systematic overview of major non-American traditions of ethnoarchaeology, with a particular focus on Europe and Asia. It explores all stages of their research agenda. These ethnoarchaeologies were embedded in theoretical traditions of local archaeologies. Moreover, ethnoarchaeological studies carried out in these different settings targeted a wide range of different issues and addressed numerous questions of covering all sorts of different issues. Consequently, achieved results and data have been largely idiosyncratic and hardly compatible. Hence, this volume aims not only to conceptualize characteristics of these diverse ethnoarchaeologies but more importantly put them in a broader context of the development of archaeology in different parts of Europe and Asia. The contributors to the volume express their own diverse views on the cognitive and interpretative value of ethnoarchaeology for studying prehistoric past, based on particular cases of experience and research. As such, the volume is not only a valuable overview of numerous ethnoarchaeological practices in different parts of the region, but also a significant contribution to the history of archaeological thought. This perspective shall make the book of wider applicability and make possible to put up ethnoarchaeology as an immanent and important element of archaeological theory.

Arkadiusz Marciniak is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Poznań in Poland. His expertise is in the development of early farming communities in western Asia and central Europe and their progression to complex societies. His other interests comprise zooarchaeology of farming communities, archaeological theory and history of archaeological thought as well as archaeological heritage and political context of practicing archaeology. He is also involved in projects on distance learning solutions in archaeology and archaeological heritage. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed books and journals.
Nurcan Yalman did her PhD on ethnoarchaeology of Anatolia at the University of Istanbul, Turkey. She conducted intensive ethnoarchaeological works in Turkey as well participated in numerous archaeological excavations of the Neolithic settlements in the Near East. She is also a renewed specialist in pottery studies. Recently she is working on theoretical and methodological issues of Shared Cultural Heritage Projects, including field schools within the Centre for International Heritage Activities-Leiden.