Unquiet Pasts

This important book addresses critical themes in the development of archaeology as a reflexive, self-critical discipline in the modern world. It explores the ethical, political and cultural tensions and responsibilities which need to be addressed by archaeologists when working within networks of global ecologies and communities, examining how authoritarian traditions can exacerbate the divide between expert and public knowledge. Moreover, it analyses how localized acts of archaeology relate to changing conceptions of risk, heritage, culture, identity, and conflict. Bringing insights from Alain Schnapp, Michael Shanks, Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, John Urry and others to cross-disciplinary discussions of these themes, Unquiet Pasts shows how archaeological discourse can contribute towards engaging and understanding current dilemmas. It also shows how archaeology, as a localized and responsibly exercised practice, can play a part in building our commonly shared and experienced world.

'This fascinating and important collection demonstrates the creative possibilities of a reflexive, self-aware analysis of a learned practice. The dialectics of past and present, object and culture, and discoverer, audience and analyst, are all explored to great effect. If only the natural sciences could learn the lesson - how much better and safer the world would be!' Jerome Ravetz, Oxford University, UK

Dr Stephanie Koerner, Art History and Archaeology, University of Manchester, UK and Ian Russell, Brown University, USA Stephanie Koerner. Andrew Cochrane. Roberta Robin Dods. Sergio Gomes. Ulf Ickerodt. Tom Lane. Geoff Carver. Koji Mizoguchi. John Urry, John Carman. Nathan Schlanger. Bo Jensen. Ana Vale. Steven Vella, Marlene Borg. Marta De Magalhaes. Alain Schnapp, Michael Shanks, Christopher Witmore. Gail Higginbottom, Philip Tonner. Angela Piccini. Thomas Kador, Jane Ruffino. Caroline Gatt. Monica Popa. Alia Ullah. Timothy Darvill. Ian Russell.

Over the past decade, Stephanie Koerner organised a major series of sessions in collaboration with a number of prominent international archaeological scholars at the European Archaeological Association annual meetings. These brought together international practitioners and theorists to discuss critical themes in the development of archaeology as a reflexive, self-critical discipline in the modern world. Based on these important sessions, bringing together such thinkers as Ulrich Beck, Bruno Latour, Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, it provokes an active engagement with current sociological and philosophical studies and in doing so, bring archaeological discourse 'up-to-date' with other disciplines' studies. It also explores ethical, political and cultural tensions and responsibilities which need to be addressed by archaeologists when working within networks of global ecologies, global communities and global ontologies, and how authoritarian traditions can exacerbate the divide between expert and public knowledge. Moreover, it analyses how localised acts of archaeology relate to globalised conceptions of heritage, culture, identity, and conflict. These issues are evidence of the contribution that archaeological discourse can make towards engaging and understanding current dilemmas facing the study of the sciences in our common world and how archaeology as a responsibly exercised, reflexive and localised practice can play a part in building 'with tooth and nail' our commonly shared and experienced world. The volume has an innovative structure in that there are four main sections with post-script responses from contributors included in each section. This structure reflects the dynamism of the debates which have characterised the conference sessions on which the book was based. Each contributor in each thematic section has read the other contributions and has then written a response to the more general issues raised. This documents an open discourse which invites readers to continue lines of inquiry in their own work and study.

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