New Book Chronicle

Abstract

Questions of identity have been a focus for many areas of archaeology in the last 20 years, with an emphasis on recognising its fluid and continually changing nature. Despite challenges to approaches to identity in some areas of archaeology (Meskell 2002) and its appropriation in debates around indigeneity and nationalism (Frieman & Hoffman 2019), identity continues to be a fruitful lens through which to study past societies, with concepts of intersectionality allowing for more complex approaches to the topic (Meskell 2002; Voss & Casella 2012). This NBC spotlights a range of volumes that investigate the articulation of social identity through both lived environments and material culture. The themes that emerge centre around the creation, negotiation or maintenance of identity in contested or discordant places and the ways in which identity is projected or ascribed often in response to conflict, oppression or significant social change. Our first three volumes focus on how individuals and groups express their identity in alien and dissonant environments, with case studies from the Americas, Europe, North Africa and the Caribbean.