1st Edition

Sites, Traces, and Materiality An Alchemy of Medieval Honduras

By Rosemary A. Joyce Copyright 2025
166 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

166 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

166 Pages 11 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Sites, Traces, and Materiality proposes a new materialist model for archaeology that brings together the concept of site ontology from geography, a novel analysis of archaeological materiality as traces, and engagement with the concept of animacy hierarchy, in order to explore how geological materials can be reconceived as active. Using a sustained analysis of ancient Honduras, the book... Read more

List of figures; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1. Materiality, Archaeology, and Medieval Honduras; Chapter 2. Flows of Clay; Chapter 3. The Animacy of Obsidian; Chapter 4. Becoming Marble; Chapter 5. Mercurial Copper; Chapter 6. Alchemy Revisited; References; Index.

Biography

Rosemary A. Joyce is Distinguished Professor Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. An archaeologist who has conducted excavations in Honduras for more than thirty years, and a museum anthropologist who has studies collections in museums throughout Europe, North America, and Central America, Joyce is a specialist in the study of ceramics, including vessels and figural sculpture. She has published pathbreaking work on archaeology of sex and gender, and contributions to understanding heritage thinking in both the contemporary world and the past.