Product Description

In Experiencing the Past Michael Shanks presents an animated exploration of the character of archaeology and reclaims the sentiment and feeling which is so often lost in the purely academic approach.With the use of illustrations closely associated with the text, he depicts the archaeologist as a skilled interpreter of cultural remains.

As the author moves through the debates surrounding heritage and cultural identity, archaeology becomes a cultural kaleidoscope.With perceptive clarity, Shanks considers the key concerns of archaeology in the 1990s and weighs controversial topics such as scientific objectivity and the validity of different claims to the past.The result is an exposition of archaeology as a field of human discernment and understanding, telling of a critical engagement with the material past.The aim of Experiencing the Past is not so much to instruct as to provoke thought and reflection on feelings about the past.

Product Description
Founded in 1365, not long after the Great Plague ravaged Europe, the University of Vienna was revitalized in 1384 by prominent theologians displaced from Paris--among them Henry of Langenstein. Beginning with the 1384 revival, Michael Shank explores the history of the university and its ties with European intellectual life and the city of Vienna. In so doing he links the abstract discussions of university theologians with the burning of John Hus and Jerome of Prague at the Council of Constance (1415-16) and the destruction of the Jewish community of Lower Austria (1421).

Like most other scholars of the period, Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) at one time believed that Aristotle's syllogistic was universally valid even inTrinitarian theology. In touch with the vibrant Jewish community in Vienna, Langenstein had high hopes of converting its members by logical argument. When he failed in his purpose, he lost his confidence in Aristotle's syllogistic as a universal tool of apologetics and handmaiden to Trinitarian theology. ("Unless you believe, you shall not understand," he quoted from Isaiah, in order to express his change of opinion.) During the next generation, the intellectual climate at the university changed from academic openness to increasing rigidity, and theologians turned from argument to persecution. ... Read more

Product Description
Reconstructing Archaeology challenges the disciplinary practices of both traditional and ``new'' archaeology by presenting a radical alternative--a critically self-conscious archaeology aware of its present role, and a social archaeology that appreciates artifacts not merely as objects of analysis but as keys to a social world of both past and present. The book ranges widely across social and philosophical literature, from the philosophy of science to hermeneutics, from structuralism to poststructuralism. It attempts to bridge the gap between theoretical argument and practical research, whether in excavation, artifact analysis or the relationship between professional archaeologists and the public. ... Read more

Product Description
Archaeological theory and method have recently become the subject of vigorous debate centred on the growing realization that archaeological theory is social theory and as such can be looked at by means of a wide variety of sociological frameworks, such as structuralism and post-structuralism, Marxism and critical theory. In this analysis, Shanks and Tilley argue against the functionalism and positivism which result from an inadequate assimilation of social theory into the day-to-day practice of archaeology. Aimed at an advanced undergraduate audience, the book presents a challenge to the traditional idea of the archaeologist as explorer or discoverer and the more recent emphasis on archaeology as behavioural science. The authors examine and evaluate the new possibilities for a self-reflexive, critical and political practice of archaeology, productively linking the past to the present. ... Read more

Product Description
Interpreting Archaeology argues that archaeologists must understand their own subjective approaches to the material they study as well as recognize how past researchers imposed their value systems on the evidence they presented.

This volume provides a forum for debate between the varied approaches to the past from leading archaeologists in Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia. The contributors address the philosophical issues involved in interpretation and the origins of meaning in the evolution and emergence of "mind'' in early hominids. They discuss the ways in which material culture is understood and presented in museums, and how the nature of history is itself in flux. ... Read more

Product Description
A guide to the discipline of classical archaeology, this study assesses archaeology as a means of reconstructing Greek society using the latest approaches of social archaeology. Classical Archaeology of Greece also outlines the history of the discipline and discusses why Classical Greece continues to fascinate us and why it has had such an impact on European civilization and identity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

European Economics
This book examines the causes and consequences of the unparalleled explosion in economic growth in Europe since the war. It reviews the relative performance of different countries in western and eastern Europe in light of individual governments' policies and of underlying political, social, cultural, institutional and economic factors. It goes on to examine the ways in which the structure of European society on both sides of the Iron Curtain has in turn been altered by the economic changes which have taken place since 1945. Finally, the book turns to the future, posing the question wheter this post-war growth pattern will continue, and, if so, what the consequences will be for European life. -- from book's back cover ... Read more

Product Description
This book presents a highly readable account of Lamarck's theories and the debates they generated. A child of the Enlightenment and supporter of the French Revolution, Lamarck emerges in this study as a bold and intellectually adventurous pioneer whose early work centered on meteorology and botany and who became the leading authority on invertebrates of his period. It strips away the myth of Lamarck as precursor to Darwin, making the case that the only way to see him, or any figure in the history of science, is within the scientific, religious, philosophical, and political context of his time, rather than in the light of what we know now.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was elected to the French Academy of Sciences, yet he had to contend with scientific conservatism ("Do not meddle with my Bible!" Napoleon is said to have commanded the biologists): he eventually died penniless and blind, his work condemned. Despite its shaky status Lamarckism, which holds that traits acquired during a creature's lifetime can be passed on to its offspring, is currently enjoying a resurgence of interest and has been the subject of several scientific papers and a host of experiments. "Wrong" theories tend to be avoided in discussions of the history of science and the true value of Lamarck's work is only now beginning to be appreciated. This book does not attempt to rehabilitate Lamarck but instead places him in his milieu showing that his theories are relevant to a problem still under discussion - the debate on innate versus acquired characteristics - providing a rich contribution to the history of ideas.

Madeleine Barthélemy-Madaule is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Picardie and directs the Interdisciplinary Research Center in the History of Ideas there. ... Read more

Product Description
Michael Shanks has written a challenging contribution to recent debates on the emergence of the Greek city states in the first millennium BC. He interprets the art and archaeological remains of Korinth to elicit connections among new urban environments, foreign trade, warfare, and the ideology of male sovereignty. His interdisciplinary perspective draws on an anthropologically informed archaeology, ancient history, art history, material culture studies and structural approaches to the classics, and raises large questions about the links between design and manufacture, political and social structure, and culture and ideology. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!Michael Shanks (born 1959 in Newcastle upon Tyne) is a British archaeologist who has specialised in Classical archaeology and archaeological theory. He received his BA and PhD from Cambridge University, and was a lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter before moving to the United States of America in 1999 to take up a Chair in Classics at Stanford University. He also taught classical studies at Whiltey Bay High School for a number of years during the 1980s and was well known by pupils for his hippy length hair and recitation of the odyssey in Greek without translation whilst sat cross legged on the teacher's desk. ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 896. ... Read more