Ruth's Archaeology

Summary

My contribution to this session will be a personal account of a long-term professional relationship with Ruth as a student and colleague. Ruth and I began the collaboration in the Former Yugoslavia, a country that ceased to exist, and continued with projects in Israel, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Together we were learning the local archaeological practices and were developing our own. Each of us brought something to this process of learning: she - her anthropological interpretation of the material culture, and I - the experience and method of excavating it. Also, we shared many research interests, such as household archaeology, house-fire and burning, and mudbrick architecture.

Ruth's work on the archaeology of the Balkans was important for several reasons. One is that her focus on the Prehistory of this region renewed attention and deepened the interest in its archaeology. Further, her work made an impact on young archaeologists in the region, and especially on those with whom she collaborated. Ruth included all the team members in active thinking and interpretation process contrary to the local, well-established old-school archaeologists. Paradoxically she brought in more equality to the archaeological practice than existed in the nominally socialist/communist country.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Lithics Cowgirl, Household Archaeologist, Digital Doyenne: A Session Dedicated to Ruth Tringham

Keywords

Spatial Coverage