1st Edition

The Archaeological Transformation of the Western European Rural World, 18th-21st Century Industrialization and the Process of Modernity

By Carlos Tejerizo-García Copyright 2026
212 Pages 33 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

212 Pages 33 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

How the rural world in Western Europe became modern? Who were the main agents of this change? Did these transformations have an impact on the local environment? This book explores the process of transformation of Western pre-industrial rural societies into industrialized ones through an archaeologically driven analysis based on two villages in northwestern Iberia. After a theoretical... Read more

1 – Introduction: A living memory; 2 – A material approach to the process of modernity; 3 – Before the process of modernity: A characterization of pre-industrial local economies in northwestern Iberia (16th century-Early 19th century); 4 – Demeter has died: The foundations of the process of modernity (Late 19th century-Early 20th century); 5 - A Moment of Danger: A Tale of Two Cities (1930s-1950s); 6. “For everything to remain the same…”: The impact of the slate industry in the rural territories of Casaio and Lardeira (1950s-1980s); 7 - Coping with the Age of Supermodernity (1980s-2020s); 8 - Conclusions: The Process of Modernity

Biography

Carlos Tejerizo-García is a Ramón y Cajal researcher in the Medieval, Modern and Contemporaneous History Department at the University of Salamanca (Spain). He specializes in the archaeology of rural societies in the long duration. His latest project, financed by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, focused on the archaeologicual industrialization of rural northwestern Iberia from the 18th century until today. His latest book, Arqueología y cine. La Arqueología en la gran pantalla (Almuzara, 2023) is an analysis of the social construction of archaeology in cinema.