The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World

Abstract

This book surveys an archaeology “in and of the present.” It investigates the challenges and pitfalls of an archaeology of the contemporary world as well as the methodologies for doing it. It consists of a collection of chapters in which authors from within and outside of archaeology reflect on cross-disciplinary concerns. Contributors discuss topics ranging from scale and time to ruins, memory, authenticity, sectarianism, heritage, modernism, and disaster. To extend and complicate the interdisciplinary overviews and archaeological thematics, the book presents in-depth case studies on mobilities, space and place; media and mutabilities; and things and connectivities. Three contributors?representing disciplinary interests in archaeology, geography and photography?produce photo essays in which they reflect on some of the central themes in an archaeology of the contemporary world. The book pursues questions of materiality that appear to owe much to Walter Benjamin's unfinished Arcades Project (2002), a distinctively spatial exploration of the ruins and debris of the arcades of Paris. It also looks at spectacular events as sites of material intensity, including protests and riots, sporting mega-events, and festivals.