Research Catalog

Digging through darkness : chronicles of an archaeologist

Title
Digging through darkness : chronicles of an archaeologist / Carmel Schrire.
Author
Schrire, Carmel
Publication
Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 1995.

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Details

Description
x, 276 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm
Summary
In Digging through Darkness, Carmel Schrire interweaves art and fact to recreate a distant world. She combines autobiography, historical archaeology, and fictional reconstructions to explore the roots and consequences of colonial conquest in Africa, Australia, and the Pacific. The book takes its unique shape from Schrire's intimate connection with her subject - she is a native white South African, the Jewish descendant of a colonist who arrived at the Cape of Good Hope over a hundred years ago. Tracking the broad sweep of European expansion into Africa, Australia, and the Pacific, Schrire focuses on the evidence unearthed in archaeological sites, leading the reader through a wealth of strata and artifacts, to see how inferences may be drawn from heaps of broken bones and stones. These findings are then interwoven with historical sources to present an integrated picture of the past. When evidence is insufficient to propel the inference, the author constructs a fictional account, inventing scenes that relate archaeological sites to historical documents. This interweaving gives voice not only to the literate colonists but also to illiterate native people who endured dispossession in silence.
Subject
  • Schrire, Carmel
  • Schrire, Carmel, 1941-
  • Archaeology > Fieldwork
  • Archaeology and history
  • historical archaeology
  • 15.31 methods and techniques of archaeology
  • Archäologie
  • Kolonialismus
  • Rassismus
  • Archeologen
  • Colonies > Afrique
  • Colonies > Australie
  • Archéologie > Récits personnels
  • Histoire > Sources
Genre/Form
  • Chronicles (form)
  • Memoirs (form)
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-262) and index.
ISBN
  • 0813915589
  • 9780813915586
  • 9780813916927
  • 0813916925
LCCN
94030778
OCLC
  • ocm30894778
  • 30894778
  • SCSB-2057284
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library