Ebook: Contemporary archaeology and the city: creativity, ruination, and political action

Introduction: Contemporary archaeology and the city : creativity, ruination, and political action / Laura McAtackney and Krysta Ryzewski -- Section I: Creativity. Artist spaces in Berlin : Defining and redefining a city through contemporary archaeology / Carolyn L. White and Steven Seidenberg ; Cultural heritage and political ecology: a modest proposal from Istanbul via Detroit / Ian Alden Russell ; Making music in Detroit : archaeology, popular music, and post-industrial heritage / Krysta Ryzewski -- Section II: Ruination. Embers from the house of blazes : fragments, relics, ruins of Chicago / Rebecca S. Graff ; Commemorating Melbourne's past : constructing and contesting space, time, and public memory in contemporary parkscapes / Madeline Shanahan and Brian Shanahan ; Ruined by the thirst for urban prosperity : contemporary archaeology of city water systems / April M. Beisaw ; Ruins of the south / Alfredo González-Ruibal -- Section III: Political action. Creative destruction and neoliberal landscapes : post-industrial archaeologies beyond ruins / Sefryn Penrose ; Repercussions of differential deindustrialization in the city: memory and identity in contemporary East Belfast / Laura McAtackney ; A renaissance with revenants : images gathered from the ruins of Cape Town's Districts One and Six / Christian Ernsten ; Encountering home : a contemporary archaeology of homelessness / Courtney Singleton ; The optimism of absence: an archaeology of displacement, effacement, and modernity / Paul R. Mullins -- Conclusion: A future for urban contemporary archaeology / Krysta Ryzewski and Laura McAtackney.;"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 by pushing 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, Belem, 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 one another in the present."--Jaquette.