ARCH 2410 Archaeologies of Place
Course Description:
Can we write a place-oriented history of our past? Our lives, the way we define ourselves, our memories and experiences are tightly intertwoven with the nature of places we live in, the history of towns and countrysides that we belong to, and the landscapes in which we grow up. The concept of place, as a site of human practice in and with the material world, has recently become a prevailing concept in the humanities and social sciences, a hot topic. In this course we will explore how archaeology and ethnographic research addresses material complexities and cultural meanings of places in the broader context of landscapes. We will investigate critical theories of place, space and landscape, while working with case studies from the ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean as well as the contemporary world. We will seek the question, how through particular fieldwork practices of archaeologists, anthropologists, contemporary artists, geographers and mapmakers, one can access and document the rich meanings, stories, and memories of places, their layered material corpus. Read the long version...
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Class meetings:
Mondays 3:00-5:20 PM at Joukowsky Institute Seminar Room (70 Waterman Street, Room 203)
Instructor:
Ömür Harmanşah
Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies
Office Hours: Tuesdays 1-3 pm at the Institute and Wednesdays 11-12 am at Blue State Café
Books ordered for the Bookstore:
You are not required to buy any of these books. We will read portions of most of them, and all are recommended readings. A copy of each of these books is placed on Reserve at the Rock.
- Auge, Marc; 1995. Non-places : introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London, New York: Verso.
- Tuan, Yi-Fu, 1977. Space and place : the perspective of experience. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
- Bradley, Richard; 2000. An archaeology of natural places. London, New York: Routledge.
- Massey, Doreen; 2005. For space. London: Sage.
- Forbes, Hamish Alexander ; 2007. Meaning and Identity in a Greek Landscape: An Archaeological Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Casey, Edward S.; 1993. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Assignments
Assignment 1. Place: Where you belong
Assignment 2. Place: photograph- an exercise in archaeography
