Contemporary Archaeology and the City

Laura McAtackney is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Heritage Management in the Archaeology Department at Aarhus University, Denmark. An archaeologist by training, her current research in contemporary and historical archaeology explores areas as diverse as material segregation and walls in Northern Ireland, the dark heritage of Long Kesh/Maze prison and female experiences of political imprisonment during the Irish Civil War (and how they are remembered duringcommemorative periods). She is currently the secretary of CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory group) and is a co-assistant editor of Post Medieval Archaeology.Krysta Ryzewski is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she co-leads the Anthropology of the City initiative. Her historical and contemporary archaeological research explores the consequences of social and environmental pressures on landscapes, communities, and material culture production. She currently conducts major research projects focused on these themes in urban North America [Detroit] and in the Caribbean [Montserrat]. In 2017 she received theJohn L. Cotter Award from the Society for Historical Archaeology for her work on the Unearthing Detroit Project, which she began in 2013. The Unearthing Detroit team maintains a blog and social media accounts that chronicle her ongoing research and collaborations in thecity.

Contemporary Archaeology and the City foregrounds the archaeological study of post-industrial and other urban transformations through a diverse, international collection of case studies. Over the past decade contemporary archaeology has emerged as a dynamic force for dissecting and contextualizing the material complexities of present-day societies. Contemporary archaeology challenges conventional anthropological and archaeological conceptions of the past bypushing temporal boundaries closer to, if not into, the present.The volume is organized around three themes that highlight the multifaceted character of urban transitions in present-day cities - creativity, ruination, and political action. The case studies offer comparative perspectives on transformative global urban processes in local contexts through research conducted in the struggling, post-industrial cities of Detroit, Belfast, Indianapolis, Berlin, Liverpool, Belém, and post-Apartheid Cape Town, as well as the thriving urban centres of Melbourne,New York City, London, Chicago, and Istanbul. Together, the volume contributions demonstrate how the contemporary city is an urban palimpsest comprised by archaeological assemblages - of the built environment, the surface, and buried sub-surface - that are traces of the various pasts entangled with oneanother in the present.This volume aims to position the city as one of the most important and dynamic arenas for archaeological studies of the contemporary by presenting a range of theoretically-engaged case studies that highlight some of the major issues that the study of contemporary cities pose for archaeologists.

This book argues archaeology is uniquely placed to contribute a variety of perspectives on the current life-cycles of cities including processes of decay, revitalization, and transformation. It foregrounds the materialities of post-industrial, post-modern and other urban transformations through a diverse, international collection of case studies.