{"title":"Archaeo-Becoming, Zarankin-Centrism and Contaminated Presents","authors":"Andrés Zarankin, Iván Zigarán","doi":"10.1558/jca.36915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36915","url":null,"abstract":"Some time ago Cristobal Gnecco and Henry Tantalean had the provocative idea of encouraging a reflection about the way archaeologists and non-archeologists change their lives by working and existing together. This encounter between people is not considered important, or material for analysis for archaeology. However, they are “contaminants” (in the sense of both being affected by one another). \u0000In the specific case of Antarctica, these other “actors” are non-human (there are no native people – besides the researchers and logistic personnel). Animals, things, light/darkness, cold, snow, landscapes, etc., are the “actors” with which we interact. It is from this contact through time, that we change them and ourselves as well. This “contaminations” end affecting the histories we build and the way we do it. At the same time, I have asked myself several times: where in our academic texts are the experiences that marked us? The adventures? The sadness? The smiles and spilled tears? \u0000Another issue in my history as an archaeologist was the work at concentration camps from the last dictatorship in Argentina. The people I have met, the materiality from these places of destruction, affected and changed me. \u0000It is in this sense that this work is a personal self-reflection of my affective and transformative “relationship” with these two themes in which I have been working during the past 20 years.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41659089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“To Thee Do We Send Up Our Sighs”: Documenting Twentieth-Century Marian Shrines in the Republic of Ireland","authors":"E. Campbell","doi":"10.1558/jca.37704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.37704","url":null,"abstract":"Public Marian shrines are a ubiquitous element of rural and urban landscapes in the Republic of Ireland. Largely dating from the mid-twentieth century, the monuments formed part of a broader process of reconfiguring the Irish landscape in the post-Independence period. In this photo essay I explore the monuments, reflecting on how they served to articulate restrictive gender norms influenced by nationalist discourse and Catholic teaching. I also look at contemporary material practices associated with the shrines and their role in more vernacular forms of Marian devotion outside the tightly regulated space of the Catholic Church.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"7 1","pages":"95–111-95–111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67544699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"American Afterlives: Ghosts in the Commodity","authors":"S. Dawdy","doi":"10.1558/jca.36898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36898","url":null,"abstract":"In the United States, death practices have been undergoing a rapid transformation in the last 20 years. Moves towards creative, individualized observances are accompanied by new material practices. I deploy ethnographic examples of three entrepreneurs who make objects from cremated human remains. The entities discussed here cannot be comfortably called either human or non-human. They are both. And they are designed to facilitate on ongoing relationship with the dead. These new entities are not exactly commodities, although they may be produced through similar means. Embraced primarily by agnostics, they are not exactly religious relics, although they contain preserved parts of the human body. They come closest to being a personal fetish, or a radically material type of ghost.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"6 1","pages":"206-223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/jca.36898","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43319317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New light on an old problem: Child-related archaeological finds and the impact of the ‘Radburn’ council estate plan.","authors":"C. Lewis, Ian Waites","doi":"10.1558/JCA.39686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/JCA.39686","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses new data from archaeological excavations to explore the effectiveness of the ‘Radburn’ layout used in many post-war social housing estates. This aimed to provide healthy living environments for less-affluent families by fronting homes onto communal pedestrianised ‘greens’ enabling people to circulate and children to ‘play out’ safely near their homes. However, many Radburn estates are now socially deprived and explanations for this have included suggestions that the Radburn plan was inappropriate to the wants and needs of resident families. \u0000 \u0000Analysis of twenty small archaeological excavations carried out in 2016 by residents of a Radburn-type council estate in Lincolnshire recovered lost aspects of its heritage including a large number of child-related items from sites on the communal greens. This suggests that the greens were indeed used as intended for children’s play, undermining suggestions that inappropriate design was a significant factor in the decline of estates such as this.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"6 1","pages":"245-273"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/JCA.39686","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45042438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gamma-Ray Spectrometry as a Tool for Exploring Archaeological Nuclear Facilities: A Case Study from the Nevada Test Site Nuclear Rocket Development Station","authors":"Ben McGee","doi":"10.1558/jca.36566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36566","url":null,"abstract":"Since its first demonstration in the early 2000s, the exploration of gamma-ray spectrometry (GRS) applications as a geophysical tool in archaeology remains nascent. While intentional neutron activation, which requires a gamma-ray analysis, has seen increasing use as a geoforensics technique in archaeology, little or no research has been published concerning the possibility of GRS as an industrial archaeological tool for use in exploring nuclear sites or facilities where neutron activation and surface contamination may have already occurred. Consequently, the use of GRS as a geophysical tool for the archaeological investigation of abandoned or decommissioned nuclear facilities is proposed, demonstrated, and discussed using a case study from the Nevada Test Site Nuclear Rocket Development Station.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"6 1","pages":"297-321"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/jca.36566","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47608824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the Ruins of Embobut: Transforming Landscapes and Livelihoods in the Cherangani Hills, Kenya","authors":"Samuel Lunn-rockliffe","doi":"10.1558/jca.38591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.38591","url":null,"abstract":"The Embobut Forest, western Kenya, can be described as an entanglement of ruins. These ruins are the materialisation of a series of contested ecological debates and political decisions pivoting on the questions of conservation and community rights to land that have resulted in the violent dislocation of local Sengwer and Marakwet communities. In the first instance, this paper aims to contextualise these debates by offering an analytic focus on the process of ruination in order to offer a more nuanced narrative of landscape modification and changing human lives over the past century. Subsequently, I look beyond processes of ruination and towards notions of transformation, in an attempt expound how Embobut has not become a static world of passive ruins but rather is constantly changing as novel forms of dwelling and new ecological relationships continue to unfold in a manner not envisaged by conservation policy.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/jca.38591","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47210120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Archaeology, Heritage and Performance in the Perth Popular Music Scene","authors":"S. Winter, B'geella Romano","doi":"10.1558/jca.36005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36005","url":null,"abstract":"The city of Perth, Western Australia, has a long-running local popular music scene. Music is performed live in pubs and clubs, but it is often only a secondary reason for the running of these venues – consequently, the physical heritage of this music scene is often forgotten, with little memorialisation of the places and people involved in it. Archaeological investigation of one of these longer-running venues – the Fly By Night Club, a music venue from 1986 to 2015 – recovered a range of material culture that largely provides evidence of social encounters within the audience rather than of the many performers who have played at the Fly. The material evidence challenges the notion of modern music as capitalist commodity, including the idea of audiences as passive entities that exist in a subordinate position to performers, who occupy a privileged position within the paradigm of live music. Instead, the audience is shown to have considerable agency in the way it enhances its own enjoyment of live music, and to be an active participant in the social process of live musical performance.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/jca.36005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49659875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Phantom Brickworks: Antimetaphors of the Property Crisis in Spain","authors":"Pablo Arboleda","doi":"10.1558/jca.36289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.36289","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/jca.36289","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44913469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Archaeologies of the Present and Sedimented Futures: Reflections from Lake Titicaca, Bolivia","authors":"Andrew P. Roddick","doi":"10.1558/JCA.33817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/JCA.33817","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I argue for the merits of a future-oriented ethnoarchaeology that engages recent critiques of ethnoarchaeology and underscores the material traces of our own practices. I develop such an approach by discussing the recent work of the Proyecto Ollero Titicaca Sur, an archaeological, ethnographic, and historic project that explores ceramic craft production in the Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia. This research was originally framed as an analogy-driven ethnoarchaeological project, connecting dynamics of pottery production with research into crafting communities in the deeper past. However, ongoing work has revealed a community defined not just by the material traces of a historical tradition but also by differential and “arrested” futures. This plurality of futures includes the often-unacknowledged relationship of the ethnoarchaeologist to a larger landscape of development.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/JCA.33817","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45390720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should Archaeology Have a Future?","authors":"LouAnn Wurst","doi":"10.1558/JCA.33840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/JCA.33840","url":null,"abstract":"Archaeologists have recently been discussing what the future may hold for archaeology, a focus firmly situated within the context that the discipline of archaeology is authentic and legitimate and deserves to have a future. In this paper, I want to challenge these ideas and think instead about whether archaeology should even have a future. This line of reasoning is developed by examining the relationship between capitalism and the academy, neoliberal transformations to higher education, and some of the ways that archaeologists have responded. I conclude with some suggestions for alternatives, both for those working within the dominant capitalist academic structures themselves and those that eschew capitalism itself.","PeriodicalId":54020,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Archaeology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1558/JCA.33840","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41527426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}