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Joanna R. Sofaer - The Body as Material Culture, Häftad

Häftad, Engelska, 2006

The Body as Material Culture

A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology

Av Joanna R. Sofaer

Del 4 i serien Topics in Contemporary Archaeology

502 kr

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Beskrivning
Bodies intrigue us. They promise windows into the past that other archaeological finds cannot by bringing us literally face to face with history. Yet 'the body' is also highly contested. Archaeological bodies are studied through two contrasting perspectives that sit on different sides of a disciplinary divide. On one hand lie science-based osteoarchaeological approaches. On the other lie understandings derived from recent developments in social theory that increasingly view the body as a social construction. Through a close examination of disciplinary practice, Joanna Sofaer highlights the tensions and possibilities offered by one particular kind of archaeological body, the human skeleton, with particular regard to the study of gender and age. Using a range of examples, she argues for reassessment of the role of the skeletal body in archaeological practice, and develops a theoretical framework for bioarchaeology based on the materiality and historicity of human remains.
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Joanna R. Sofaer is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. As an osteoarchaeologist and prehistorian, she has published widely on human bioarchaeology and European prehistory. Her previous publications include Children and Material Culture (editor) (2000).

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'… [Sofaer] thoughtfully appraises the theory of the body. She has tried to do something quite different from other texts on either osteoarchaeology or the theory of dead bodies, and she has succeeded. What is presented is a way of bridging the methodological divide by viewing the skeleton as both a material and a cultural object. … By shifting 'the body' into the realm of material culture, Sofaer proposes to combine the study of the diversity and biological fluidity of human skeletons with that of their intersubjectivity and materiality. … For those archaeologists who 'switch off' at the thought of theories of the body, sex, gender and age, this book is an essential read. It is a valuable excursion into how archaeology has conceived and is conceptualising the body as both a biological and a cultural resource. … manages to convey the theoretical association between bodies and objects in a direct, engaging and thought-provoking way.' Antiquity

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