Archaeology between Nature and Culture

Pre-requisites: Intended for third and fourth year students. “Introduction to Archaeology” is a prerequisite course. A working knowledge of English is essential for the assigned literature.

Course objectives: The course aims to build bridges between the epistemology of natural and social sciences in archaeology. The course also seeks to develop critical thinking skills through examining different scientific approaches to similar evidence.

Course description: The course has been designed to help students attain critical thinking skills on archeological themes in which studies of nature and culture intersect. Beginning first with distinguishing between what is human and non-human, then moving onto the debate of nature and nurture, the course focuses on the history of ideas about race and other relevant topics. In addition, the course covers important topics in archeology from new theoretical perspectives, such as human-animal relations, nutrition and cooking, the human body and gender, cannibalism and violence, kinship and identity construction. The course examines the technical procedures of collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting artifacts and ecofacts. The course is to promote ideas that supersede binary opposition between nature and culture, as well as the movement of archeology away from anthropocentrism.

Learning Outcomes:

Literature/Reading:

• Monaghan, John & Peter Just. 2003. Pčelinje larve i supa od luka (poglavlje 2). U: Socijalna i kulturna antropologija, 34-52. Šahinpašić: Sarajevo.
• Palavestra Aleksandar. 2011. Kultura i priroda. U: Kulturni konteksti arheologije, 37-49. Filozofski fakultet: Beograd.
• Salins, Maršal. 2014. Zapadnjačka iluzija o ljudskoj prirodi. Beograd: Anarhija/Blok 45 (98-121).
• Palavestra, Aleksandar i Marko Porčić. 2008. Archaeology, Evolution and Darwinism. Etnoantropološki problemi 3 (3), 81-100.
• Džonson, Metju. 2008. Evolucija, Arheološka teorija. Klio: Beograd (161-178).
• Žakula, Sonja. 2013. „(Ne) razumeti Darvina: evolucija i konstrukcija granice između ljudi i životinja“, u: Kulturna prožimanja: antropološke perspektive, ur. Srđan Radović, 31-50. Beograd.
• Mos, Džordž. 2005. Nauka o rasi. Istorija rasizma u Evropi. Beograd: Službeni glasnik (93-106).
• Diamond, Jared. 1992. ’’Living Through the Donner Party’’, Discover, March 1992, 100-107.
• Živaljević, Ivana. 2013. Životinje između Prirode i Kulture: priča o arheozoologiji. Etnoantropološki problemi 8(4), 1137-1163.
• Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. 2005. So You Think You’re Human? Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Harris, Oliver and Craig Cipolla. 2017. Finding Symmetry: Actor-Network-Theory and New Materialism. In: Archaeological Theory in the new millennium, 129-151.
• Kristiansen, Kristian. 2014. Towards a new paradigm? The Third Science Revolution and its Possible Consequences in Archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology 22, 1-34.
• Babić, Staša. 2019. Arheološka stratigrafija, ravna ontologija i tanka deskripcija. Beleška o (interdisciplinarnom) dijalogu. Etnoarheološki problemi 14 (3): 811-831.
• Harris, Oliver and Craig Cipolla. 2017. Multi-species archaeology: people, plants, and animals. In: Archaeological Theory in the new millennium, 152-170.
• Vilson, Edvard. 2007. Altruizam. U: O ljudskoj prirodi, 143-158. Zagreb: Naklada Jesenski i Turk.
• Novaković, Predrag. 2008. Arheologija prostora i arheologija krajolika. U: Povijest u kršu, 15-54. Zagreb: FF press.
• Živaljević, Ivana. 2021. Multispecies pasts and the Possibilities of Multispecies Futures in the Age of the Anthropocene. Etnoantropološki problemi 16 (3): 659-676.
• Ingold, Tim. 2000. Od poverenja ka dominaciji. Alternativna istorija odnosa između ljudi i životinja. Anarhija: Blok 45.
• Žakula, Sonja & Ivana Živaljević. 2018/2019. Izučavanje ljudsko-životinjskih odnosa u antropologiji i arheologiji I/ II. Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU.
• Gilchrist, Roberta. 2009. The Archaeology of sex and gender, In: The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology, eds. B. Cunliffe, C. Gosden and R. Joyce, 1029-47.
• Zaharijević, Adriana. 2020. Performativnost. U: Život tela, politička filozofija Džudit Batler, 134-178. Novi Sad: Akademska knjiga.
• Milosavljević, Monika. 2019. Evidencija o životinjama u srednjem veku unutar kulturno-istorijske paradigme. Etnoantropološki problemi 14 (3), 833-859.
• Matić, Uroš. 2021. Introduction. In: Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt, 4-15.
• Nystrom, Kenneth. 2014. The Bioarchaeology of Structural Violence and Dissection in the 19th-Century United States. American Anthropologist 116 (4), 1-15.
• Hakenbeck, Susanne. 2019. Genetics, archaeology and the far right: an unholy Trinity. World Archaeology 51 (4), 517-527.
• Palavestra Aleksandar. 2011. Evolucija na delu. U: Kulturni konteksti arheologije, 69-85. Filozofski fakultet: Beograd.