Ebook: Own and Be Owned: Archaeological Approaches to the Concept of Possession

English revision: Kristin Bornholdt Collins.

From grave-goods as "personal possessions" to debates about "who owns the past?", concepts of ownership pervade archaeology. This anthology makes the case that, although the language of owning is so widespread that it passes unquestioned, it causes us to make fundamental assumptions about what humans and objects are and how they interact. Papers explore the breadth of ownership in archaeological interpretations, from a tight sense of conferring certain rights and responsibilities, to a mechanism by which identity and values are transferred between persons and objects, to a broader sense of belonging to a group, period, or place. Topics range from Iron Age tattooing to Viking social valuables, from Roman taste to Anglo-Saxon grave robbery, and from Bronze Age rock art to modern folk rituals