Michael Shanks' new book from Left Coast Press, The Archaeological Imagination, is a thought experiment on steroids.
The Archaeological Imagination cover art. Left Coast Press, Inc. 2012.
The book is difficult to categorize--is it theory? philosophy?--but Shanks argues that everyone, to some extent, is an archaeologist, in that all of us humans work on the past. Work on it, by absorbing it, refleshing it, remembering it, detailing and changing its meaning and recombining its DNA to provide a new structure on which to both sustain the present and build onto the future.
I'd be lying if I said I totally understood it: but the chapter that was hardest for me to grasp is the one that I keep going back to. A stimulating, provoking book, The Archaeological Imagination is for any kind of archaeologist who wants/needs their foundations rocked.
- The Archaeological Imagination, a book review
Shanks M. 2012. The Archaeological Imagination. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press. 166 p., 4 chapters, an introduction, references and an index. Acid-free paper. ISBN 978-1-59874-362-3.
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