TY - BOOK ID - 3095208 TI - The archaeology of Islands AU - Rainbird, Paul AU - Cambridge University Press PY - 2007 VL - *3 SN - 9780521853743 0521853745 0521619610 9780521619615 9780511619007 9780511290572 0511290578 0511287380 9780511287381 0511289979 9780511289972 9780511289385 0511289383 0511619006 1107176530 9781107176539 1280917385 9781280917387 9786610917389 6610917388 0511288700 9780511288708 0511301898 9780511301896 PB - Cambridge [etc.] Cambridge University Press DB - UniCat KW - Island archaeology. KW - Islands. KW - Maritime anthropology. KW - Island archaeology KW - Islands KW - Maritime anthropology KW - Marine anthropology KW - Marine ethnology KW - Maritime ethnology KW - Isles KW - Islets KW - Anthropology KW - Ethnology KW - Landforms KW - Archaeology KW - Social Sciences KW - Archeology UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:3095208 AB - Archaeologists have traditionally considered islands as distinct physical and social entities. In this book, Paul Rainbird discusses the historical construction of this characterization and questions the basis for such an understanding of island archaeology. Through a series of case studies of prehistoric archaeology in the Mediterranean, Pacific, Baltic, and Atlantic seas and oceans, he argues for a decentering of the land in favor of an emphasis on the archaeology of the sea and, ultimately, a new perspective on the making of maritime communities. The archaeology of islands is thus unshackled from approaches that highlight boundedness and isolation, and replaced with a new set of principles - that boundaries are fuzzy, islanders are distinctive in their expectation of contacts with people from over the seas, and that island life can tell us much about maritime communities. Debating islands, thus, brings to the fore issues of identity and community and a concern with Western construction of other peoples. ER -