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3 books match the query 'Archaeology at'

cover of 100 Years of Archaeology at the University of Michigan: Essays on the Past, Present, and Future of the Discipline

100 Years of Archaeology at the University of Michigan

Essays on the Past, Present, and Future of the Discipline

Edited by Brian A. Stewart, Robin A. Beck, Tiffany C. Fryer, Michael L. Galaty, Raven Garvey, Hannah Hoover, John O’Shea, and Alicia Ventresca-Miller

University of Michigan Press, 2025

The University of Michigan has been at the forefront of archaeological research for more than 100 years, since 1922, when the Museum of Anthropology (now the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology) was established on the Ann Arbor campus. The goal of its curators for many decades was to create a research and teaching program that emphasized methodological rigor in the analysis of archaeological materials, attempting to solve grand questions about human behavior through fieldwork, collections, and laboratory work. About fifty years ago, the Museum's emphasis shifted to developing archaeological theory when a new generation of curators with processualist leanings made Ann Arbor a testing ground for the so-called New Archaeology.
 
Now, archaeology stands at a crossroads. Some archaeologists refer to the death of archaeological theory. Others stake out opposed camps of generalists and particularists. At U-M, as at many other universities, the past decade has seen a new commitment to collaborative archaeology, working with descendant communities and acknowledging the discipline's roots in colonialism and extraction. 
 
In 2022, to celebrate a century of existence, the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA) hosted an international conference to explore possibilities for a middle way: an archaeology for the next 100 years, combining humanistic and scientific approaches, which allows for both agents and systems, description and explanation, science and heritage. This volume is meant to be a snapshot of that conference and this moment in the development of the discipline. Included are most of the papers and posters presented, as well as photographs of the panels and the proceedings. 
 

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cover of Archaeology at the Site of the Museum of the American Revolution: A Tale of Two Taverns and the Growth of Philadelphia

Archaeology at the Site of the Museum of the American Revolution

A Tale of Two Taverns and the Growth of Philadelphia

Rebecca Yamin

Temple University Press, 2019

When the Museum of the American Revolution acquired the land at Third and Chestnut streets in Olde City, Philadelphia, it came with the condition that an archaeological investigation be conducted. The excavation that began in the summer of 2014 yielded treasures in the trash: unearthed privy pits provided remarkable finds from a mid-eighteenth-century tavern to relics from a button factory dating to the early twentieth century. These artifacts are described and analyzed by urban archaeologist Rebecca Yamin in Archaeology at the Site of the Museum of the American Revolution.

Yamin, lead archaeologist on the dig, catalogues items—including earthenware plates and jugs, wig curlers, clay pipes, and liquor bottles—to tell the stories of their owners and their roles in Philadelphia history. As she uncovers the history of the people as well as their houses, taverns, and buildings that were once on the site, she explains  that by looking at these remains, we see the story of the growth of Philadelphia from its colonial beginnings to the Second World War.

Archaeology at the Site of the Museum of the American Revolution is a perfect keepsake for armchair archaeologists, introductory students, and history buffs.

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cover of Cobble Circles and Standing Stones: Archaeology at the Rivas Site, Costa Rica

Cobble Circles and Standing Stones

Archaeology at the Rivas Site, Costa Rica

Jeffrey Quilter

University of Iowa Press, 2004

In this first-person tale of archaeological adventure in the tropical forest, Jeffrey Quilter tells the story of his excavation of Rivas, a great ceremonial center at the foot of the Talamanca Mountain range, which flourished between A.D. 900 and 1300, and its fabled gold-filled cemetery, the Panteón de La Reina. Beginning with the 1992 field season and ending with the last excavations in 1998, Quilter discusses Rivas’ builders and users, theories on chiefdom societies, and the daily interactions and surprises of modern archaeological fieldwork.

Writing in the first person with a balance between informal language and academic theory, Quilter concludes that Rivas was a ceremonial center for mortuary rituals to bury chiefly elite on the Panteón. Through use of his narrative technique, he provides the reader with accounts of discoveries as they occurred in fieldwork and the development of interpretations to explain the ancient refuse and cobble architecture his team uncovered. As his story progresses amid the enchantment of the Costa Rican landscape, research plans are adjusted and sometimes completely overturned as new discoveries, often serendipitous ones, are made. Such changing circumstances lead to new insights into the rise and fall of the people who built the cobble circles and raised the standing stones at Rivas, a thousand years ago.

The only book in English that focuses on a single archaeological site in Costa Rica, which continues to develop as a destination for archaeological tourism, Cobble Stones and Standing Circles will appeal to laypeople and professionals alike.
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