Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies

The study of the collapse of past societies raises many questions for the theory and practice of archaeology. Interest in collapse extends as well into the natural sciences and environmental and sustainability policy. Despite a range of approaches to collapse, the predominant paradigm is environmental collapse, which I argue obscures recognition of the dynamic role of social processes that lie at the heart of human communities. These environmental discourses, together with confusion over terminology and the concepts of collapse, have created widespread aporia about collapse and resulted in the creation of mixed messages about complex historical and social processes

Detribalizing the later prehistoric past: concepts of tribes in Iron Age and Roman studies

In studies of the Iron Age and Early Roman periods the concept of the ‘tribe’ has long been a social framework upon which to hang the archaeological record. Yet, despite widespread recognition of the complex social processes and shifting identities during Rome’s expansion, the nature of ‘tribes’ in Late Iron Age Britain and the suitability of this term for describing societies at this time has been largely ignored. This article examines why the term ‘tribe’ has retained its prominence in archaeological studies despite being widely critiqued by anthropologists. Through an examination of the historiography of the term I argue that the traditional tribal model was born of nineteenth-century perceptions of social systems and that neither archaeological evidence nor classical sources support many of its current connotations. The names in classical sources should instead be regarded as reflecting the emergence of new social and political entities in the later Iron Age

Ritualized Coping During War: Conflict, Congregation, and Emotions at the Late Pre-Hispanic Fortress of Acaray

Recent efforts to engage more explicitly with the interpretation of emotions in archaeology have sought new approaches and terminology to encourage archaeologists to take emotions seriously. This is part of a growing awareness of the importance of senses—what we see, smell, hear, and feel—in the constitution and reconstitution of past social and cultural lives. Yet research on emotion in archaeology remains limited, despite the fact that such states underpin many studies of socio-cultural transformation. The Archaeology of Anxiety draws together papers that examine the local complexities of anxiety as well as the variable stimuli—class or factional struggle, warfare, community construction and maintenance, personal turmoil, and responsibilities to (and relationships with) the dead—that may generate emotional responses of fear, anxiousness, worry, and concern. The goal of this timely volume is to present fresh research that addresses the material dimension of rites and performances related to the mitigation and negotiation of anxiety as well as the role of material culture and landscapes in constituting and even creating periods or episodes of anxiety