Archaeologies of waste : encounters with the unwanted / edited by Daniel Sosna and Lenka Brunclíková.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction / Daniel Sosna and Lenka Brunclíková -- Part 1. Value of the Unwanted. 2. Wastes and values / Joshua Reno -- 3. Purity and holy dumps of garbage : organising rubbish disposal in the Middle and Late Bronze Age of the Carpathian Basin / Laura Dietrich -- 4. Nightman's muck, gong farmer's treasure : local differences in the clearing-out of cesspits in the Low Countries, 1600-1900 / Roos van Oosten -- Part 2. Social Practice : Consumption and Differentiation. 5. Waste, very much a social practice / Anders Högberg -- 6. One man's trash : how the excavation of Copenhagen's moat is revealing valuable information about the city's 17th century population / Ed Lyne and Camilla Haarby Hansen -- 7. Cesspits and finds : study of waste management and its social significance in medieval Tartu, Estonia / Arvi Haak -- 8. Recyclable waste as a marker of everyday life routine / Lenka Brunclíková -- Part 3. Positioning Waste : Spatial Nature of Waste. 9. Waste wanted : no space without time and place / Sabine Wolfram -- 10. Neolithic settlement space : waste, deposition and identity / Petr Kvetina and Jaroslav Rídký -- 11. The detritus of life and death : re-evaluating perceptions of rubbish on an Irish Late Bronze Age enclosure / Clíodhna Ni Lionain -- 12. Heterotopias behind the fence: landfills as relational emplacements / Daniel Sosna -- Postscript / Claudia Theune.

"Waste represents a category of 'things, ' which is familiar and ubiquitous but rarely reflected in archaeological and cultural studies. Perception of waste changes over time and practices associated with waste vary. The ambiguity of waste challenges traditional archaeological approaches that take advantage of refuse to infer past behaviour. Recent developments in research in the social sciences and humanities indicate that waste offers many more dimensions for exploration. This interdisciplinary book brings together scholars who demonstrate the potential of research into waste for understanding humans, non-humans and their inter-relations. In 12 chapters the authors cover topics ranging from the relationship between waste and identity in early agricultural settlements to the perception of contemporary nuclear waste. Although archaeological approaches dominate the contributions, there are also chapters that represent the results of anthropological and historical research. The book is structured into three main sections that explore the relationship between waste and three domains of interest: value, social differentiation, and space. Archaeologies of Waste will interest archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and other readers intrigued by the potential of things, which were left behind, to shed light on social life"--Publisher's website.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on April 07, 2017).

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