Change and Archaeology

Change and Archaeology explores how archaeologists have historically described, interpreted, and explained change, and argues that change has been under-theorised. The study of change is central to the discipline of archaeology, but change is complex, and this makes it challenging to write about in nuanced ways that effectively capture the nature of our world. Relational approaches offer archaeologists more scope to explore change in complex and subtle ways. Change and Archaeology presents a posthumanist, post-anthropocentric, new materialist approach to change. It argues that our world is constantly in the process of becoming and always on the move. By recasting change as the norm rather than the exception and distributing it between both humans and non-humans, this book offers a new theoretical framework for exploring change in the past that allows us to move beyond block-time approaches where change is located only in transitional moments and periods are characterised by blocks of stasis. Archaeologists, scholars, anthropologists and historians interested in the theoretical frameworks we use to interpret the past will find this book a fascinating new insight into the way our world changes and evolves. The approaches presented within will be of use to anyone studying and writing about the way societies and their environs move through time.

Part I – Introduction Chapter 1 - What is wrong with change? Part II – How do we study change? Chapter 2 – A changing history of archaeological thought Chapter 3 – Changing time? Chapter 4 – Scales of change Chapter 5 – Changing people and things Part III – Time for a new approach to change Chapter 6 – Relational approaches – a better way to consider change? Chapter 7 – Assembling change Chapter 8 – Becoming metallic Chapter 9 – A world in motion

Rachel J. Crellin is a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Leicester (UK). Her research interests centre on archaeological theory, especially new materialist, feminist, and posthumanist approaches to the past. She is also a specialist in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man and a metalwork wear-analyst.