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Archaeology : the conceptural challenge / Timothy Insoll.

By: Insoll, TimothyMaterial type: TextTextSeries: Duckworth debates in archaeologyPublication details: London : Duckworth, 2007. Description: 144 p. : ill. ; 22 cmISBN: 0715634577; 9780715634578Subject(s): Archaeology -- Philosophy | Interpretation (Philosophy)LOC classification: CC72 | .I557 2007
Contents:
1. Introduction -- 2. Global and local -- 3. Time, age, and experience -- 4. Textual, oral, visual, and digital culture -- 5. Nature, animals, and the wild -- 6. Conclusions.
Review: "The central question which this book seeks to explore is - are we trying to reconstruct a past in our own image, chained solely to our own unacknowledged emotional, intellectual, and philosophical traditions? Should we in fact attempt to look anew at the fundamental concepts we often take for granted and, seeing them as constructs of the relatively recent past, begin to acknowledge our limitations and perhaps engage more profitably with archaeological evidence in various ways? Concepts considered include time, age and experience, literacy, text and the oral/aural, colour, emotion and the senses, the wild and nature, and the global and local. Wittgenstein's thought on the notion of family resemblance is taken as a starting point, yet the end result is not another nihilist offering based upon a post-modernist collapsed perspective, but rather a considered approach, which is ultimately positive in tone, owing a debt, if anything, to the philosophical outlooks of critical realism."--book jacket.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books The BIAA David H. French Library
Shelf 25 - Main Room 		A7 INSOL 27150 Not for loan BOOKS-000000025619

Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-139) and index.

1. Introduction -- 2. Global and local -- 3. Time, age, and experience -- 4. Textual, oral, visual, and digital culture -- 5. Nature, animals, and the wild -- 6. Conclusions.

"The central question which this book seeks to explore is - are we trying to reconstruct a past in our own image, chained solely to our own unacknowledged emotional, intellectual, and philosophical traditions? Should we in fact attempt to look anew at the fundamental concepts we often take for granted and, seeing them as constructs of the relatively recent past, begin to acknowledge our limitations and perhaps engage more profitably with archaeological evidence in various ways? Concepts considered include time, age and experience, literacy, text and the oral/aural, colour, emotion and the senses, the wild and nature, and the global and local. Wittgenstein's thought on the notion of family resemblance is taken as a starting point, yet the end result is not another nihilist offering based upon a post-modernist collapsed perspective, but rather a considered approach, which is ultimately positive in tone, owing a debt, if anything, to the philosophical outlooks of critical realism."--book jacket.