Bøger udgivet af Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Recipient of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things that compose the human material record? Taken as a whole, the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the concept of value lies at the intersection of individual and collective tastes, desires, sentiments, and attitudes that inform the ways people select, or give priority to, one thing over another.

Village Potters of the Troodos Mountains: Ceramic Production in Agios Demetrios, Cyprus 1891-2002, by Gloria London, is a study of four generations of female potters working in a remote Cypriot mountain village. Their coil-built jars, jugs, cookware, beehives, ovens, and decorative pots are the subject of the author's ethnoarchaeological research, including her quantitative data on pot sizes, production rates, firing times, and rate of loss. This data will serve archaeologists worldwide who are concerned with craft specialization and standardization, learning frameworks, markings on pots, and identifying production locations.