Shadow Archaeologies explores the modes of knowledge production which operate where the light of mainstream, historically oriented archaeology does not reach. It exposes the field’s underbelly and dwells on issues that standard practice ignores or glosses over, questioning what archaeology and the archaeological are or could be.
The volume brings together scholars working at the discipline’s theoretical cutting edge to challenge mainstream archaeology in various ways. They engage with the political dimensions of the discipline’s mode of production, develop alternate practices, and conceive of other manifestations of the archaeological object, thus illuminating various ways in which the concept of shadow archaeology can be articulated. After an introduction by the editors, the volume is organised into three parts, which address from different angles the politics, practices, and objects of an archaeology that resides in the shadow of antiquity.
While the book will appeal to any archaeologist with an interest in theory, it is also a challenge to all archaeologists to reflect on their discipline and their own working practices and an invitation to join in the discussion about what archaeology might become.
Lists of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Chapter 1. Introduction; Section 1: Politics – Chapter 2. The Form of a Shadow: Decolonial Practice, Refusal, and Feminist Killjoys; Chapter 3. Colonial Shadows, Multitemporality, and Continuous Change around the Great Lakes; Chapter 4. Archaeology and Technology: Living in the Shadow of the Machine-Gods; Chapter 5. Tacit Archaeology: Legacy Colonialism, Implicit Knowing, Cultural Techniques, and Slow Inheritance; Chapter 6. Contemporary Archaeology as Shadow Archaeology in (the North of) Ireland; Chapter 7. Staying on the Surface of Qadas; Section 2: Practices – Chapter 8. Wonder, Intuition, and Compulsive Creativity as Archaeological Method; Chapter 9. Hauntography and Other Dark Arts; Chapter 10. Shadow Metal Detecting: Archaeological Worldmaking in Another Context; Chapter 11. Performance in Archaeology and the Archaeology of Performance: An Experimentation at the Neolithic Site of Toumba Serron in Northern Greece; Chapter 12. Yellowcake: A Performative (An)Archaeology of Uranium; Chapter 13. The Limeburners; Chapter 14. ‘Shadowplay’: A Conversation about Archaeology and Music; Section 3: Objects – Chapter 15. Shadows from Below: On an Increasingly Permeable Object of Permian Proportions; Chapter 16. The Archaeosphere: Emerging from the Shadows, Receding from the Light; Chapter 17. In the Shadow of Ruins: Rubble of the Post-War Warsaw; Chapter 18. Archaeology as a Hauntology of Remains; Chapter 19. In the Dark Abyss of Time: Where Stands Archaeology?; Chapter 20. Buried Culture and the Dark Side of the (Excavated) Archaeological Object; Chapter 21. On ‘Incompossible’ Pasts and the Powers of the False: Exploring the Shadow Worlds Archaeology Encounters and Forgets; Index.
Assaf Nativ is an independent scholar. His primary interests pertain to how archaeologists construct their professional knowledge, especially pertaining to the value systems that underlie their choices and judgements. His practical experience was primarily acquired in the southern Levant, where he excavated sites spanning the Pottery Neolithic period and the twentieth century. Gavin Lucas is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Iceland. He has an enduring interest in the way archaeologists think and work, with a special interest in the concept of time. His main focus of fieldwork and empirical research has been on the archaeology of the last 500 years.
