current book projects
The following is a list of book projects that are currently in process simultaneously. It is difficult to predict the eventual order of appearance in print for all of them, although the Celtic book is certain to be the first. Check back for further developments.
Celticism, Celtitude, and Celticity: Contemporary Ways of Being and Becoming Celtic
This book, which is nearing completion, explores the multiple forms that Celtic identities and imaginaries have taken since the Romantic era, from ethnic nationalism to diasporic heritage nostalgia and postmodern forms of spirituality and the ways in which the ancient past has been mobilized in these projects. Based upon historical and ethnographic research, it examines the spaces and media where these imaginaries are constructed and performed, from Celtic festivals to Celtic cyberspace, music, theme parks, reenactment groups, heritage societies, commodity vendors, sports teams, etc. It illuminates the different ways that common symbols are mobilized and the tensions and contradictions that arise in the practice of Celticness.
"Potting is Our Second Garden": Ethnoarchaeology among the Luo of Kenya
(with Ingrid Herbich)
This book, being written in collaboration with Ingrid Herbich, is based upon three years of ethnographic fieldwork we conducted among the Luo people of western Kenya. It focuses on a regional study of ceramic production, distribution, and consumption, providing a detailed documentation of procees of learning, networks of distribution, patterns of use and the economic situation and social context of potters. The study uses these data to address issues of material culture theory and should be of particular interest to archaeologists.
Les maisons à cour de Lattes et de la Méditerranée occidentale: Transformations du paysage urbain, espace domestique et vie socio-politique (edited volume)
This book is an edited volume in the Lattara series that will be published in French and English. It presents the data from over a decade of excavation by several teams of a series of houses constructed around central courtyards at Lattes (ancient Lattara) in southern France. These houses represent an intriguing departure from the traditional spatial configuration of domestic units at Lattes and throughout the region, and the book also seeks to situate these houses within a larger regional context and to explore theeir significance in terms of social process resulting from the colonial encounter that began at the end of the seventh century BC.
Biography and the Luo Material World: Relating Lives, Objects, Landscape and Memory in Rural Africa (with Ingrid Herbich)
This book, being written in collaboration with Ingrid Herbich, is based upon three years of ethnographic fieldwork we conducted among the Luo people of western Kenya.The book uses the concept of biography as an analytical technique for examining the dynamic relationship between people’s lived experience, the material world they create and inhabit, and the production and operation of social memory and identity. It builds upon several anthropological approaches to biography to focus upon three domains that structure the book: (1) biographies of Luo potters (time, history, memory, and life narratives), (2) the cultural biography of objects, and (3) settlement biography and the materialization of social life. The goal of this approach is to shift emphasis away from material culture as static things-in-themselves to the processes and practices that give objects form and meaning – to situate them within a recursive relational history of human/ object interactions.
Alcohol: Integrating Biological and Social Science Perspectives (with William Green)
This book presents a confrontation between perspectives on alcohol and drinking from the social and biological sciences. It examines views of drinking as an individual pathology and social problem against those that see it as a normal cultural practice with a widespread distribution and a deep history. The book also presents information on the history and prehistory of alcohol.
Mobility, Memory, and Material Worlds: Crossroads and Convergences (edited volume)
This edited volume presents the results of a conference that was the culmination of a three year project of collaborative graduate training and research between the University of Chicago and the Maison René Ginouvès of the University of Paris X. The project was funded by the Partner University Fund (PUF) and focused on the theme of "Memory, Material Culture, and Migration."