Series Editors
James Symonds (University of Amsterdam) and Gavin Lucas (University of Iceland)
The aim of this series is both to offer a venue and to promote research in the later historical archaeology of Europe. It is important we explain what we mean by this. First, by ‘later historical’, we mean research on the period after c. 1450 and up to c. 1950, known otherwise as post-medieval or modern world archaeology, terms which we find problematic for various reasons. In this way, this series will not engage with the archaeology of all periods for which written texts also exist (as implied by the term ‘historical archaeology’ in Europe), just those generally tied to the emergence of the early modern period in Europe. Although we see these chronological limits as flexible, especially depending on the nature of individual contributions, we still wish to keep a rough distinction in our series from medieval archaeology on the one hand and contemporary archaeology on the other. It is precisely the period in between these two that there is lacking any publication venue, at least for studies with a European focus.
Which leads to the second qualification. By the archaeology of Europe, we mean principally, studies conducted on and through European material, yet ones which also acknowledge the global dimension of Europe through its legacy of colonialism. In other words, Europe is as much a cultural and political as a geographical concept. Moreover, in framing Europe in these terms, we wish to stress that this ‘Europe’ is conceptualized not as the origin of the modern world, but rather, in the manner of Chakrabarty, one that is ‘provincialized’ and re-situated as a contested region within global history of the last half a millennium. The focus on Europe in this series is in large part, also an emphatic attempt to counter the contemporary balance of academic power in this field whose centre of gravity is Anglophone, primarily North American and to a lesser extent, Australian. While we fully acknowledge the importance of the deep connections with this perspective, it is equally important that the differences and diversity of a European archaeology be given a more prominent place, hence the rationale for this series.
If you have a manuscript or an idea for a book which you think could fit in this series, please contact either or both us via email. At this stage we are primarily seeking single authored manuscripts of c. 80-100,000 words rather than edited volumes.
Gavin Lucas (gavin@hi.is) & James Symonds (j.symonds2@uva.nl)
Go back to top