Making Places in the Prehistoric World draws together innovative research from around the world to explore settlement as culturally constructed place, process and practice. The contributors to this volume draw on current theoretical debates to challenge ways in which modern Western norms have been imposed the past. Using the latest research on a diverse range of prehistoric context - North America, Britain, Bulgaria and Sardinia - and on comtemporary societies in the Andes and Southern Africa, they demonstrate how terms such as 'household', 'domestic practice' and 'marginality' fail to take account of social perception or cultural diversity. This groundbreaking volume addresses issues central to the study of prehistoric settlement including group memory, the transmission of ideology and the impact of mobility and seasonality on the construction of social identity. Building on these themes, the contributors point to new ways of understanding the relationship between settlement and landscape by replacing Capitalist models of spatial relations with more intimate histories of place.
This volume will be essential reading for students and scholars in archaeology, and will also be of interest to researchers in cultural anthropology and geography.
