Introducing Urbanism, Technology, and Identity: Celebrating the Comparative Archaeology of Rita P. Wright

Summary

In this talk, we introduce the papers of the session, which reflect the many threads of Rita P. Wright’s contributions to archaeology. Prof. Wright has established a suite of concepts and critiques that generate a comparative framework that is not restricted to a single geographical area. In her early work on ceramic production and craft, Wright synthesized the anthropology of technology with the archaeology of the Indo-Iranian borderlands, laying the foundation for a technological approach that transformed the archaeology of South Asia. Her critical re-evaluation of early cities, states, and complex societies incorporated past people and groups previously omitted from investigation, bringing to the forefront the political and economic dimensions of households and other social entities. Her work also drove the archaeology of identity and gender, correcting traditional approaches that too often left humanity out of explanations of the past. She has also established a landscape approach that examines the social relations that connected the city of Harappa to its many surrounding settlements, she has revealed rural/urban interactions that drove the emergence and transformation of urbanism. The impact of these contributions is ongoing, and has set the agenda for a new generation of comparative archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20755