Ruth Tringham

University of California, Berkeley | UCB · Department of Anthropology

I excavate layers of dead people’s residential debris; my trowel gradually reveals the thousands of events that have created the layers and material fragments of past lives. At the same time, my mind buzzes with all the small stories that rise up out of the debris of the dead residents. This chapter, inspired by the writing of George Saunders, by S...

Review of the book

In this paper I explore the reason why fire might be chosen as a means of destruction of places, be they urban or rural, public monuments or intimate domestic places. And how can and do archaeologists and historians act as arson investigators many centuries (and millennia) after the event to determine whether the destruction is an act of domicide o...

This article describes a path to addressing the discomfort that I and many of my braver colleagues have had, when putting words into the mouths and heads of prehistoric actors, knowing that these words say more about us than they do about prehistory. Yet without such speech, how are we archaeologists and the broader public to imagine the intangible...

In this paper there are some thoughts addressing issues of the future of archaeology that are especially dear to my heart, including questions of who sets research agendas, dissemination of archaeological knowledge, multiscalar interpretation of archaeological data, celebrating the ambiguity of the archaeological record, and putting the dialogic na...

Tringham, Ruth 2015 Review of Yannis Hamilakis. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xiii + 255pp., 26 b/w figs., hbk, ISBN 978-0-521-83728-6). European Journal of Archaeology 18(4):705-708.

This contribution to the forum on the relationship of "media archaeology" to the practice of "archaeology" reiterates the idea that an uncritical acceptance by "media archaeologists" of what archaeologists actually do has led to unnecessary limitations on the potential value of 'media archaeology'. The authors suggest that the concept of use lives...

Household archaeology developed in the 1980s as a reaction to the dominant regional scale of traditional ecological-evolutionary models in archaeology by focusing on the study of intrasettlement relations. The first household archaeology studies were designed to provide detailed microscale analysis of demographic, social and economic processes of e...

In this paper I bring together the ideas of Steve Anderson (Recombinant History), Lev Manovich (Database Narratives) and Kathleen Stewart (Ordinary Affects) with my own experience in creating experimental narratives for archaeology using multiple media formats. It explores the fragmentary and non-linear nature of narratives about the past as a legi...

Yannis Hamilakis. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, xiii + 255pp., 26 b/w figs., hbk, ISBN 978-0-521-83728-6) Yannis Hamilakis provides a very different framework for incorporating the senses into the construction of the past using archaeological research—a framework that...

This presentation discusses the broader implications of digital documentation, presentation and publication for long-term sustainable preservation of humanities research, using the example of our archaeological project from Çatalhöyük, Turkey.

In this paper I come to the more general issues of a sensuous archaeology through the sense of touch - the haptic sense. Using data from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey, I stress that the sense of touch involves far more than just fingers and skin, far more than the obvious haptic sensations, such as surface, form, pressure, pain, temperat...

This paper grew out of a conversation about memories; about remembering my first Mac; what a sharp memory and a powerful event it was; and how all the memories of using computers and their peripherals in the field since then explode in its wake with ever increasing complexity and speed until the digital media engulf and revolutionize our field expe...

The aim of our project, Last House on the Hill (LHotH), is to holistically reconstitute the rich multimedia and primary research data with the impressive texts of the monograph, the printed final report of the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH) project, in which a team from UC Berkeley excavated a group of Neolithic 9000-year old building...

Ruth Tringham is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. She is one of the founders and a director of the UC Berkeley Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching in Anthropology (MACTiA). Her research has focused on the transformation of early agricultural (Neolithic) societies. Tringham has directed and published arch...

Through a discussion of the intentions behind two hypertext works, Ruth Tringham’s Chimera Web and Rosemary Joyce’s Sister Stories, we present an argument that the new digital media offer unique opportunities for feminist archaeology to realize some of its deepest values. Through the medium of hypermedia and hypertext (multilinear) narratives the c...

Tringham, Ruth 2005 Weaving house life and death into places: a blueprint for a hypermedia narrative. In (un)settling the Neolithic, edited by D. Bailey, A. Whittle and V. Cummings, pp. 98-111. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK.

In: Prehistoric Sitagroi, excavations in Northeast Greece 1968-1970. Volume 2: the Final Report, edited by E. Elster and A. C. Renfrew Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, UCLA 2003 Vol. 2 The Flaked Stone assemblage This is the long version of the report on the flaked stone assemblage from Sitagroi. It reports the analysis of raw materials and...

Household archaeology developed in the 1980s as a reaction to the dominant regional scale of traditional ecological–evolutionary models in archaeology by focusing on the study of intrasettlement relations. The first household archaeology studies were designed to provide detailed microscale analysis of demographic, social and economic processes of e...

Since the explicit collaboration of biological and physical scientists with archaeologists started in the late 1930s, the discourse on the nature of this collaboration has been intense. The question of the relative roles of the specialist scientist and the archaeologist in the collaboration, and the training and experience of both in the use of sci...

A single season of field work was carried out in 1995 at the Podgoritsa Tell, an Eneolithic (5th millennium B.C.) settlement mound located between the villages of Dralfa and Podgoritsa in the Turgovishte region of NE Bulgaria. Results provide significant new data about the physical and social dimensions of early agricultural settlement tells in SE...

In almost all of its variants, the Goddess movement has appealed to and uses archaeological materials, especially those that it claims to be images of females: female figurines or statuettes and female motifs on ceramics or other media.l Above all, images from the European Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods (c. 40,000 to 5,000 years ago) are...

(Monographs in World Archaeology 22.) xi+353 pages, 127 figures, 28 tables. 1995. Madison (WI); Prehistory Press; 1-881094-11-1 paperback $45

This chapter discusses how the underlying assumptions that archaeologists hold about "the home" and "place" affect the way in which they interpret the archaeological remains of architecture, and the way in which that architecture is excavated. It discusses the fact that archaeology is not a discipline with a unified viewpoint about the "home" or th...

This paper is concerned with the importance of archaeological records in prehistorical times for the built environment. It is suggested that previous writings on this period have been dehumanising, uncreative and arid. The author argues that a focus on space, place and gender can illustrate many of the complexities and issues facing not only that p...

This article develops the theme of the feminist and post-processual critique of the processualist and traditional study of archaeological architecture. The article discusses the avenues through which a feminist exploration of archaeological architecture may proceed in practice, using data from Opovo and other sites in Southeast Europe.

The period of the 4th to mid-3rd mill.B.C. is a period during which urban centers and early states were established in Mesopotamia. Six thousand years ago, the Near East and Europe were demographically, technologically and economically at not such very different levels, but no cities or states developed in Europe until 3000 years after the earliest...

This is the second preliminary report of excavations and analyses of Opovo-Ugar Bajbuk, a Neolithic settlement of the Vinca-Plocnik culture located in the lower Tamil river valleyNE Yugoslavia. The Opovo Archaeological Project began in the summer of 1983; this report coversthe 1985–1987 field seasons. Work at Opovo has continued to reveal more abou...

Books reviewed by Ruth Tringham in this article:Foragers and Farmers: Population Interaction and Agricultural Expansion in Prehistoric Europe by Susan Alling Gregg.Forest and Farmers and Stockherders: Early Agriculture and Its Consequences in North-Central Europe by Peter Bogucki.

Many aspects of the use and significance of space that are considered vital to the study of traditional architecture, such as gender relations in domestic space, have been minimized in the treatments of architectural remains in archaeology. This paper examines the rationale for restricting the facts of prehistoric architecture to building technique...

Tringham, Ruth and Dusan Krstic (1990) Conclusion: Selevac in the wider context of European prehistory. In Selevac: a Neolithic village in Yugoslavia, edited by R. Tringham and D. Krstic, pp. 567-616. Monumenta Archaeologica #15. UCLA Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.

This report provides the preliminary results of an archaeological project currently underway in the Vojvodina, Yugoslavia. The project focuses on the site of Opovo-Ugar Bajbuk, which lies in the lower valley of the Tamiš River, north of the Danube. Excavation of the site began in the summer of 1983. Materials so far uncovered indicate that the site...

This is a review article of three monographs published recently about V. Gordon Childe, who was Europe's most eminent prehistorian from 1925-1957. The article draws attention to the fact that there seems, especially in Great Britain, to be a re-emergence of Childe's popularity after a relative inattention in the last 20 years. There is a possible e...

Nature is the international weekly journal of science: a magazine style journal that publishes full-length research papers in all disciplines of science, as well as News and Views, reviews, news, features, commentaries, web focuses and more, covering all branches of science and how science impacts upon all aspects of society and life.

The main agenda of this essay is that observation of and experimentation with archaeological materials cannot be separated from hypothesis building and testing, and, as a corollary, that basic research in archaeological materials is as much an integral part of archaeological question answering as the philosophical model building of Binford, Plog, a...

Review by Ruth Tringham of movie by Paul Johnstone

Review by Ruth Tringham of movie by Gene Feldman

Review by Louis Levine of book by V.M. Masson and V.I. Sarianidi, translated by Ruth TRringham

The paper describes a series of experiments recently carried out to test the formation of edge-damage on flaked stone tools which results from their being used in various tasks. Variables that were systematically tested include action, worked material, angle of the edge, and grip. The main criterion in distinguishing different patterns of damage wa...

This is a review of the film by Jim Halvorson

Review by John Nandris of book by Ruth Tringham

Preface to the 1971 edition In this book I have chosen to discuss a series of subjects and problems which most interest me, rather than write a systematic description of prehistoric cultural development of east-central Europe and the Danube basin from c. 6000-3000 B.C. A prehistory of this part of Europe is badly needed both for students and resear...

This paper describes a project that is currently being carried out in collaboration with the Interactive University of UC Berkeley in which a relational database comprising the contexts, materials, observations, and interpretations in visual, numerical and textual format from Neolithic excavations in Turkey (Çatalhöyük) and Yugoslavia (Opovo) provi...

Published in 2000 in I. Hodder (ed.) Towards Reflexive Methodology in Archaeology Cambridge: McDonal Institute for Archaeology The aim of this paper is to point out that important contextual variables occur in the process of retrieval of the archaeological materials through excavation. The excavation methodology at Çatalhöyük has tended to be treat...

In this paper, we present: • The nature of the Remediated Places Project itself • The context of the content that is used in this performance of the Remediated Places Project • The theoretical context of the Remediated Places Project and the performance in terms of digital technologies, hypermedia and New Media creativity, the process of historical...

Proceedings of a meeting of the Research Seminar in Archaeology and Related Subjects held at the Institute of Archaeology, London University