1st Edition

An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era

By Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal Copyright 2019
    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era approaches the contemporary age, between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, as an archaeological period defined by specific material processes. It reflects on the theory and practice of the archaeology of the contemporary past from epistemological, political, ethical and aesthetic viewpoints, and characterises the present based on archaeological traces from the spatial, temporal and material excesses that define it. The materiality of our era, the book argues, and particularly its ruins and rubbish, reveals something profound, original and disturbing about humanity.

    This is the first attempt at describing the contemporary era from an archaeological point of view. Global in scope, the book brings together case studies from every continent and considers sources from peripheral and rarely considered traditions, meanwhile engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophy, anthropology, history and geography.

    An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era will be essential reading for students and practitioners of the archaeology of the contemporary past, historical archaeology and archaeological theory. It will also be of interest to anybody concerned with globalisation, modernity and the Anthropocene.

    Table of contents

    Acknowledgements

    Introduction

    Outline of the book

    1. An archaeology of the contemporary era

    Archaeologies of the contemporary past

    What is "contemporary"?

    Supermodernity, Postmodernity, the Anthropocene

    Reasserting the modern divide

    Defining an archaeological era

    Archaeological knowledge and the contemporary past

    Summary

    2. Ruins

    Systemic collapse

    Systemic operation

    Autophagy

    Failure

    Catastrophe

    Annihilation

    Summary

    3. Politics

    The soft politics of contemporary archaeology

    A radical politics for contemporary archaeology

    Summary

    4. Ethics

    The hegemony of ethics

    The ethics of witnessing

    The temporality of ethics

    Ethics and affect

    Summary

    5. Aesthetics

    The aesthetic regimes of art and archaeology

    The politics of the sensible

    A poetics of things

    Making the mud and crops speak: an archaeological rhetoric

    Summary

    6. Time

    Presentism

    Annihilation

    Acceleration

    Heterochrony

    The time of tragedy and hope

    Summary

    7. Space

    Expansion

    Impoverishment

    Ephemerality

    Division and confinement

    Waste

    Deep mapping

    Summary

    8. Materiality

    Proliferation and deprivation

    Monsters

    Waste

    Atmospheres

    Summary

    9. Concluding remarks: beyond the Anthropocene

    References

    Index

    Biography

    Alfredo González-Ruibal is a researcher with the Institute of Heritage Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council. His research focuses on the archaeology of the contemporary past, and particularly on the dark side of modernity: war, dictatorship, predatory capitalism and colonialism. He has conducted fieldwork in Spain, Brazil, Equatorial Guinea and the Horn of Africa.

    This text will likely be indispensable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students entering the field, as well as thought provoking for professionals engaged in the development and interpretation of new projects. The thematic organization of chapters allows for accessible piecemeal reading, but at the same time, each section builds to contribute to González-Ruibal’s political intervention into and rehabilitation of archaeology as the discipline primed to enhance our understanding of (super)modernity. African Archaeological Review, Johanna A. Pacyga

    This book is the most formidable, encompassing, agenda-setting instalment in the growing archaeology of the contemporary era. It will shape and sharpen the conversation for years to come. Norwegian Archaeological ReviewLori Khatchadourian