Pollock
Biographic Data
| ID | 8048 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pollock |
| FAMILY NAME | Pollock |
| SIGNATURE | POLLOCK |
| AFFILIATIONS | Freie Universität Berlin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5879-7110 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 216 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Vidas laborasi numa era de reprodutibilidade técnica
The notion of mechanical reproduction was made famous by Walter Benjamin in a 1936 essay.Benjamin was concerned with modern developments; in this paper I argue that a shift toward pervasive repetitiveness in work and thus a form of mechanical reproduction was already introduced in the Uruk period (4th millennium BCE) in southern Mesopotamia.I consider the ways in which work was conceptualized and structured in Uruk times, and by extension how inn…
Gird-I Begum – Report on the 2022 Excavations
In the summer of 2022, renewed excavations were conducted at the site of Gird-i Begum in the Shahrizor Plain, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The project aims to examine patterns of mobility, exchange, and resource acquisition practiced by the inhabitants of Gird-i Begum over time. To do so we re-examine the stratigraphic sequence, with a focus on continuities and breaks in site occupation. While the earliest occupation of the site dates to the Halaf p…
Linking archaeology and paleoenvironment
Early human habitation of the arid to semiarid Central Iranian Plateau was strongly connected to the availability of water and associated natural hazards, such as flooding and drought events. In this geoarchaeological study, we focus on the occupation at the prehistoric site of Ajor Pazi within the formerly active fluvial environment of the Varamin Plain. Through radiocarbon and luminescence‐dated sediment cross‐sections, we apply multivariate st…
Die Stadt Habuba Kabira-Süd
Lipid preservation in ceramics and bones from the Iranian Plateau
The violence of collecting
Practices of collecting have been integral to archaeology as well as to anthropology more generally since the inception of the disciplines. From the history of collecting in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is clear that although the degree of coercion varied, the practices of collecting inevitably took place in contexts of starkly unequal power relations and associated forms of violence. More than just the act of collecting, it i…
Chalcolithic Painted Pottery of the Sialk III Period
In the last two decades, the Varamin Plain to the southeast of Tehran has been the focus of intensified archaeological work, with surveys and excavations yielding new insights into the region's settlement history. New material from the dynamic network of Chalcolithic sites on the Jajrud alluvial fan now offers a more solid basis to assess the links between the Varamin Plain and the site of Tappeh Sialk in the Kashan Plain, which still remains a r…
Are All Things Created Equal? The Incidental in Archaeology
Archaeologists evince a strong tendency to impute significance to the material traces they study, a propensity that has been especially marked since the post-processual emphasis on meaning and that has taken on renewed vigour with the turn to materiality. But are there not situations in which things are rather incidental or insignificant? This set of essays emerged from a workshop held in Berlin in April 2018, in which a group of scholars was inv…
Final Thoughts on Beiläufigkeit
The essays in this theme section demonstrate clearly the diversity and complexity of a topic that seems negligible in practice but emerges as important upon further reflection—the incidentalness of things. In this brief afterword, we highlight three of the themes addressed by all or most of the contributions, which we suggest are of particular relevance when considering the place of the incidental in our archaeological engagements
The Fragile State
In his most recent book, James Scott presents us with a ‘deep history’ of the alluvial lowlands of Mesopotamia, from early domestications in the Neolithic to the emergence and consolidation of early states. Although the focus lies on Mesopotamia in these periods, Scott delves into the beginnings of the human use of fire in the Palaeolithic and draws on comparative developments in Southeast Asia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and elsewhere. He poses large q…
Archaeology's 'People
We commend González-Ruibal et al. (above) for their well-formulated challenge to a widely held view in Anglophone archaeology. Their insistence that archaeologists must rethink their position in a radically changed political context is highly apposite, although we do not agree entirely with all of their arguments. Here, we address three principal issues
Witnessing and the Right to Intransparency
Archaeology as Bearing Witness
Palestinian Looted Tombs and their Archaeological Investigation
This report describes archaeological rescue work in four looted tombs from late Roman and early Byzantine times in the surroundings of Ramallah, located in the Occupied Palestinian National Territories (OPNT). One goal of our work was to assess in detail how much of the original remains of a tomb are left behind after looting. A second aim was to explore the actual practices of looting by comparing interviews with looters with the results of an a…
Quotidian and Transgressive Practices in Nazi Forced Labor Camps
The Limits of Experience
As Adorno argued, one of the most fundamentally human experiences is suffering. However, a comparative archaeology of human experience that focuses on suffering raises troubling ethical issues. We draw on our excavations of World War II Nazi-run forced labor camps at the Tempelhof airfield in Berlin to demonstrate the need to confront suffering archaeologically and, at the same time, the ultimate impossibility of speaking for and about the suffer…
Scalar differences
Archaeology and Contemporary Warfare
In the contemporary world, archaeology has become drawn, sometimes in dramatic fashion, into the violence of war. Archaeologists have taken part in monitoring and attempting to protect sites, museums, and monuments. However, they have engaged to a lesser extent with the underlying connections between damage to and destruction of archaeological remains and the reasons why archaeology has become increasingly both a target and a weapon of war. To hi…
The Subject of Suffering
As the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno argued, suffering is one of the most fundamental of human experiences. In archaeological narratives, however, suffering seldom appears. Instead, current trends in archaeology, including the focus on the relevance of things, the dissolution of boundaries between subjects and objects, and the foregrounding of agency, shift attention away from the subject of suffering. I discuss an archaeology that takes s…
Decolonizing Archaeology
An Archaeology of Categorization and Categories in Archaeology
As archaeologists we are accustomed to classifying and categorizing the material remains of past groups. We tend, however, to devote relatively little thought to the background and implications of our practices of categorization. In this paper, we address three elements of classifi cation : the ways in which archaeologists classify objects recovered in the context of fi eldwork, the classifications used by people in the past, and the relationship…
Imperial Inspections
Rubbish, Routines, and Practice
Through the analysis of chipped stone blades from Uruk-period Sharafabad (Khuzestan), this paper examines routines and practices of villagers faced with agricultural uncertainty and state demands. Annual, seasonal and intra-seasonal patterns of tool production, use and discard, along with evidence for various domestic pursuits, show that villagers maintained elements of their daily lives in the face of poor crop yields but altered both types and …
Trypillia and Uruk
Dealing with the largest settlements of European prehistory, Trypillia mega-sites and the Late Trypillia development should be compared with population agglomerations that took place contemporarily in Southern Mesopotamia: the development of ‘agricultural towns’ and first cities during the Uruk-period. The only two phenomena of such huge population agglomerations worldwide at that time, within the Southern Buh and Dnipro interfluve and Southern M…
Towards an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces. An Introduction
Towards an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces. An IntroductionThe centrality of commensality-eating and drinking together in a common physical and social setting-in people's everyday lives makes it a particularly important location from which to explore social relations and the working of politics.The recent focus in archaeology and related disciplines on feasting and other special commensal occasions needs to be balanced by attention to daily comme…
Ayodhya, Archaeology, and Identity
The Subject of Suffering
As the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno argued, suffering is one of the most fundamental of human experiences. In archaeological narratives, however, suffering seldom appears. Instead, current trends in archaeology, including the focus on the relevance of things, the dissolution of boundaries between subjects and objects, and the foregrounding of agency, shift attention away from the subject of suffering. I discuss an archaeology that takes s…
Bureaucrats and managers, peasants and pastoralists, imperialists and traders
Archaeology Deployed for the Gulf War
A partir d'articles americains traitant de l'archeologie iraquienne entre 1990 et 1992 (avant, pendant et apres la Guerre du Golfe), les AA. montrent comment les journalistes ont utilise l'archeologie pour valoriser l'Occident et devaloriser l'Irak : references bibliques, omissions des activites des archeologues iraquiens, la relation entre le passe et le present, etc
Archaeology as Bearing Witness
Archaeology and Contemporary Warfare
In the contemporary world, archaeology has become drawn, sometimes in dramatic fashion, into the violence of war. Archaeologists have taken part in monitoring and attempting to protect sites, museums, and monuments. However, they have engaged to a lesser extent with the underlying connections between damage to and destruction of archaeological remains and the reasons why archaeology has become increasingly both a target and a weapon of war. To hi…
The Limits of Experience
As Adorno argued, one of the most fundamentally human experiences is suffering. However, a comparative archaeology of human experience that focuses on suffering raises troubling ethical issues. We draw on our excavations of World War II Nazi-run forced labor camps at the Tempelhof airfield in Berlin to demonstrate the need to confront suffering archaeologically and, at the same time, the ultimate impossibility of speaking for and about the suffer…
An Archaeology of Categorization and Categories in Archaeology
As archaeologists we are accustomed to classifying and categorizing the material remains of past groups. We tend, however, to devote relatively little thought to the background and implications of our practices of categorization. In this paper, we address three elements of classifi cation : the ways in which archaeologists classify objects recovered in the context of fi eldwork, the classifications used by people in the past, and the relationship…
Political Economy as viewed from the Garbage Dump
Cet article analyse le contenu de deux décharges en fosse datant de la période Jemdet Nasr, fouillées à Abu Salabikh, Iraq (Tell « Uruk »), et en propose une interprétation. La collecte et l'enregistrement systématiques des artefacts et des restes organiques, ainsi que la mesure du volume des dépôts fouillés ont permis de comparer la densité des divers assemblages. Ces données sont utilisées afin d'examiner certains aspects de l'économie politiqu…
Towards an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces. An Introduction
Towards an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces. An IntroductionThe centrality of commensality-eating and drinking together in a common physical and social setting-in people's everyday lives makes it a particularly important location from which to explore social relations and the working of politics.The recent focus in archaeology and related disciplines on feasting and other special commensal occasions needs to be balanced by attention to daily comme…
Witnessing and the Right to Intransparency
Archaeology as a Means for Peace or a Source of Violence? An Introduction
Uruk Colonies and Anatolian Communities
The first Mesopotamian city-states in the Uruk period (ca. 3800-3100 B. C.) pursued a strategy of commercial expansion into neighboring areas of the Zagros Mountains, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia. Recent research in these areas has located several Uruk outposts, in what is apparently the world's earliest-known colonial system. Although some Uruk "colonies" have been excavated, virtually nothing is known about either the operation of this syst…
Fars Archaeology Project 2003
Of Priestesses, Princes and Poor Relations
Archaeological discoveries of dead individuals, usually in the form of burials, have frequently captured the imaginations of public and professional audiences alike. In addition to the allure of exotic artefacts and seemingly bizarre funeral rites, burials offer rich possibilities for investigating myriad aspects of past social, cultural and even individual life. This discussion focuses on one of the more renowned archaeological excavations of an…
The violence of collecting
Practices of collecting have been integral to archaeology as well as to anthropology more generally since the inception of the disciplines. From the history of collecting in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is clear that although the degree of coercion varied, the practices of collecting inevitably took place in contexts of starkly unequal power relations and associated forms of violence. More than just the act of collecting, it i…
Quotidian and Transgressive Practices in Nazi Forced Labor Camps
Imperial Inspections
The looting of the Iraq Museum
The looting of the Iraq Museum has been widely proclaimed to be the worst cultural destruction since World War II; some have compared it to the decimation wrought by the Mongol invasion of Baghdad. Others have contended that the damage was wildly exaggerated. Any attempt at understanding the events surrounding the looting and destruction of the museum's collections must examine both what happened and how it was represented to a worldwide audience…
Household Production at the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh, Iraq
Restructuring of the economy is thought to have accompanied the emergence of ancient states and urban societies in the Near East, beginning in the Uruk period (fourth millennium B. C.), but scholars disagree on the precise nature of economic change. Through investigations at the Uruk Mound of Abu Salabikh, an Uruk-period town in southern Mesopotamia, we examine the contexts of production within one community. Our analyses rely primarily on data c…
The Fragile State
In his most recent book, James Scott presents us with a ‘deep history’ of the alluvial lowlands of Mesopotamia, from early domestications in the Neolithic to the emergence and consolidation of early states. Although the focus lies on Mesopotamia in these periods, Scott delves into the beginnings of the human use of fire in the Palaeolithic and draws on comparative developments in Southeast Asia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and elsewhere. He poses large q…
Palestinian Looted Tombs and their Archaeological Investigation
This report describes archaeological rescue work in four looted tombs from late Roman and early Byzantine times in the surroundings of Ramallah, located in the Occupied Palestinian National Territories (OPNT). One goal of our work was to assess in detail how much of the original remains of a tomb are left behind after looting. A second aim was to explore the actual practices of looting by comparing interviews with looters with the results of an a…
Scalar differences
Rubbish, Routines, and Practice
Through the analysis of chipped stone blades from Uruk-period Sharafabad (Khuzestan), this paper examines routines and practices of villagers faced with agricultural uncertainty and state demands. Annual, seasonal and intra-seasonal patterns of tool production, use and discard, along with evidence for various domestic pursuits, show that villagers maintained elements of their daily lives in the face of poor crop yields but altered both types and …
Reconsidering the Neolithic at Toll-e Bashi (Iran)
Religion in South Asia
Style and information
Chronology of the Royal Cemetery of Ur
The study of chronology is little but a dry exercise when undertaken for its own sake alone. Yet, there can be little doubt that it remains a necessary prelude to virtually all of the more interesting analyses of social, political, economic, and other issues which archaeologists may seek to address. It is in this spirit that I would like to present a reevaluation of the internal chronology of the Royal Cemetery of Ur which has formed the basis of…
Abu Salabikh, the Uruk Mound 1985-86
The Uruk Mound at Abu Salabikh is a low-lying mound of approximately 10 hectares, located to the south and west of the main Early Dynastic mound and almost directly south of the West Mound (Fig. 1). Nowhere does the mound rise more than three meters above the surrounding land, and it is disconcertingly easy to overlook amidst the canal banks.Prior to 1985, investigations of the Uruk Mound had been limited to a few soundings and small-scale scrapi…
Archaeological Investigations on the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh, Iraq
The 1987 field season was the first full season of work on the Uruk Mound at Abu Salabikh (see Postgate & Moon 1984 and Pollock 1987 for discussions of previous work). The interests and questions guiding this work center on the political economy of the Uruk period—the ways in which decisions of a political nature structure, and are structured by, economic activities. Our work thus far has provided preliminary insights into patterns of production,…
Jane Moon. Catalogue of Early Dynastic Pottery
Political Economy as viewed from the Garbage Dump
Cet article analyse le contenu de deux décharges en fosse datant de la période Jemdet Nasr, fouillées à Abu Salabikh, Iraq (Tell « Uruk »), et en propose une interprétation. La collecte et l'enregistrement systématiques des artefacts et des restes organiques, ainsi que la mesure du volume des dépôts fouillés ont permis de comparer la densité des divers assemblages. Ces données sont utilisées afin d'examiner certains aspects de l'économie politiqu…
Investigations on the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh, 1990
A second full season of archaeological investigations was undertaken at the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh in the spring of 1990. The aims of this season's work were to begin to explore in some detail variations in production, exchange, and consumption of subsistence and craft goods within the Uruk community. Both the aims and the strategies employed were outgrowths of our previous work at the site which had sought a broad understanding of the kinds of…
Of Priestesses, Princes and Poor Relations
Archaeological discoveries of dead individuals, usually in the form of burials, have frequently captured the imaginations of public and professional audiences alike. In addition to the allure of exotic artefacts and seemingly bizarre funeral rites, burials offer rich possibilities for investigating myriad aspects of past social, cultural and even individual life. This discussion focuses on one of the more renowned archaeological excavations of an…
Bureaucrats and managers, peasants and pastoralists, imperialists and traders
Archaeology Deployed for the Gulf War
A partir d'articles americains traitant de l'archeologie iraquienne entre 1990 et 1992 (avant, pendant et apres la Guerre du Golfe), les AA. montrent comment les journalistes ont utilise l'archeologie pour valoriser l'Occident et devaloriser l'Irak : references bibliques, omissions des activites des archeologues iraquiens, la relation entre le passe et le present, etc
Uruk Colonies and Anatolian Communities
The first Mesopotamian city-states in the Uruk period (ca. 3800-3100 B. C.) pursued a strategy of commercial expansion into neighboring areas of the Zagros Mountains, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia. Recent research in these areas has located several Uruk outposts, in what is apparently the world's earliest-known colonial system. Although some Uruk "colonies" have been excavated, virtually nothing is known about either the operation of this syst…
Household Production at the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh, Iraq
Restructuring of the economy is thought to have accompanied the emergence of ancient states and urban societies in the Near East, beginning in the Uruk period (fourth millennium B. C.), but scholars disagree on the precise nature of economic change. Through investigations at the Uruk Mound of Abu Salabikh, an Uruk-period town in southern Mesopotamia, we examine the contexts of production within one community. Our analyses rely primarily on data c…
Ayodhya, Archaeology, and Identity
Presentism and the LAW
We welcome the Lampeter Archaeology Workshop's (LAW) attempt to clarify the ways in which they understand relativism in post-processual archaeology and especially their distinctions among several kinds of relativism. We would like to comment on links between epistemological relativism and a particular view of history (or, more generally, the past) that the LAW's discussion raises. In particular, we draw attention to several implications of their …
The Halaf Settlement at Kazane Höyük
Sexual Revolutions
The looting of the Iraq Museum
The looting of the Iraq Museum has been widely proclaimed to be the worst cultural destruction since World War II; some have compared it to the decimation wrought by the Mongol invasion of Baghdad. Others have contended that the damage was wildly exaggerated. Any attempt at understanding the events surrounding the looting and destruction of the museum's collections must examine both what happened and how it was represented to a worldwide audience…
Fars Archaeology Project 2003
Reconsidering the Neolithic at Toll-e Bashi (Iran)
Two Lyres from Ur
Life in a Fifth-Millennium BCE Village
War, politics and archaeology
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Imperial Inspections
Rubbish, Routines, and Practice
Through the analysis of chipped stone blades from Uruk-period Sharafabad (Khuzestan), this paper examines routines and practices of villagers faced with agricultural uncertainty and state demands. Annual, seasonal and intra-seasonal patterns of tool production, use and discard, along with evidence for various domestic pursuits, show that villagers maintained elements of their daily lives in the face of poor crop yields but altered both types and …
Archaeology (41 works) · History (40 works) · History (24 works) · Geography (21 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (19 works) · Ancient Near East History (17 works) · Art (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Ancient history (16 works)