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Archaeology is a way of acting and thinking about what is left
of the past, about the temporality of what remains, about material
and temporal processes to which people and their goods are
subject, about the processes of order and entropy, of making,
consuming and discarding at the heart of human experience.
These elements, and the practices that archaeologists follow to
uncover them, is the essence of the archaeological imagination.
In this extended essay, renowned archaeological theorist
Michael Shanks offers his colleagues and students a window
on this imaginative world of past and present and the creative
role archaeology can play in uncovering it, analyzing it, and
interpreting it.
of the past, about the temporality of what remains, about material
and temporal processes to which people and their goods are
subject, about the processes of order and entropy, of making,
consuming and discarding at the heart of human experience.
These elements, and the practices that archaeologists follow to
uncover them, is the essence of the archaeological imagination.
In this extended essay, renowned archaeological theorist
Michael Shanks offers his colleagues and students a window
on this imaginative world of past and present and the creative
role archaeology can play in uncovering it, analyzing it, and
interpreting it.