Unit information: Materialities in 2010/11

Unit name	Materialities
Unit code	ARCHM0049
Credit points	40
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Emeritus Professor. Saunders
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None.
Co-requisites	None.
School/department	Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This multidisciplinary course aims to give students a broad understanding of some of the most important issues in the development, practice, and theoretical underpinnings of a modern anthropological archaeology of all periods. The Unit also introduces key elements and concepts of Historical and Contemporary archaeology, Landscape and Garden archaeology, Maritime and Conflict Archaeology. It provides insights into the construction and nature of archaeological knowledge, demonstrates how artefacts become heritage, how this heritage is presented to the public, and how all archaeologies seek to illuminate past human behaviours. From prehistory to the present, the unit shows how these behaviours shape the materialities of the archaeological record, and how archaeologists employ a diversity of approaches to analyse this.

Aims:

The unit will provide the student with a broad understanding of the range of archaeological knowledge and related anthropological theory for investigating the periods from prehistory to the present. International case studies will be used to explore diversity in archaeological evidence, significance, and value, and address the specific problems of interpretation raised by this variety. Students will be introduced to key anthropological theories about material culture that can be applied to all archaeological periods. Specific unit aims include:

• Provide students with an overview of different kinds of archaeology, their contexts and development

• Enable students to understand the complex interpretive relationships between archaeology and material culture anthropology

• Equip students with an understanding of archaeological theory, and thus enable them to interpret a range of artefacts of different ages and purposes.

• To enable students to identify an object's multiple contextual meanings, including its representation to a range of audiences in the modern world

• To provide students with a sound understanding of the broader and multidisciplinary approaches to the past, and to identify and analyse these pasts from a variety of perspectives, including social anthropology, history, and cultural geography.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate a familiarity with diverse range of modern kinds of archaeology and their distinctive traces around the world

• demonstrate an appreciation of the complexities of, and opportunities for, analysing artefacts within an anthropological context

• demonstrate sound understanding of alternative interpretive approaches to material culture in the social sciences

Teaching Information

20 two hour sessions of lectures/fieldtrips plus fortnightly reading groups.

Assessment Information

Presentation (10 mins with student-led discussion 5-10 mins) 25% 4000 word essay 75%.

Reading and References

• Appadurai, A. (ed). The Social Life of Things. 1986. Cambridge University Press.

• Babits, L. and H. Van Tilburg (eds). Maritime Archaeology: A Reader. 1998. Kluwer/Plenum.

• Buchli, V and G. Lucas (eds). Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past. 2001. Routledge.

• Deetz, J. In Small Things Forgotten. 1977. Anchor Books.

• Lowenthal, D. The Past is a Foreign Country. 1985. Cambridge University Press.

• Pollard, J. and A. Reynolds. Avebury: the biography of a landscape. 2002. Tempus.