Nationalism And Archaeology
   HOME
*





Nationalism And Archaeology
Nationalism and archaeology have been closely related since at least the nineteenth century. Nationalist ideologies frequently employ results of archaeology and ancient history as propaganda, often significantly distorting them to fit their aims, cultivating national mythologies and national mysticism. Frequently this involves the uncritical identification of one's own ethnic group with some ancient or even prehistoric (known only archaeologically) group, whether mainstream scholarship accepts as plausible or rejects as pseudoarchaeology the historical derivation of the contemporary group from the ancient one. The decisive point, often assumed implicitly, that it is possible to derive nationalist or ethnic pride from a population that lived millennia ago and, being known only archaeologically or epigraphically, is not remembered in living tradition. Examples include Kurds claiming identity with the Medes, Albanians claiming as their origin the Illyrians, Iraqi propaganda invoking ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the adven ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Indus Valley Civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread. Its sites spanned an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra River, Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The term ''Harappan'' is sometimes applied to the Indus civilisation after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Nationalist Historiography
Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has been nationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy and cultural identity. Nationalism has provided a significant framework for historical writing in Europe and in those former colonies influenced by Europe since the nineteenth century. Typically official school textbooks are based on the nationalist model and focus on the emergence, trials and successes of the forces of nationalism. Origins Although the emergence of the nation into political consciousness is often placed in the nineteenth century, attempts by political leaders to craft new national identities, with their dynasty at the center, have been identified as early as the late Roman Empire. The Barbarian rulers of the successor states crafted these new identities on the basis of descent of the ruler from ancient noble families, a shared descent of a single people with common language, custom, and reli ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


National Myth
A national myth is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation's past. Such myths often serve as important national symbols and affirm a set of national values. A national myth may sometimes take the form of a national epic or be incorporated into a civil religion. A group of related myths about a nation may be referred to as the national mythos, from μῦθος, the original Greek word for "myth". A national myth is a legend or fictionalized narrative which has been elevated to a serious mythological, symbolic, and esteemed level so as to be true to the nation. It might simply over-dramatize true incidents, omit important historical details, or add details for which there is no evidence; or it might simply be a fictional story that no one takes to be true literally, but contains a symbolic meaning for the nation. The national folklore of many nations includes a founding myth, which may involve a struggle against colonialism or a war of independence or unification. In many ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Nationalisms Across The Globe
Tomasz Kamusella FRHistS (born 24 December 1967) is a Polish scholar pursuing interdisciplinary research in language politics, nationalism and ethnicity. Education Kamusella was educated at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Faculty of Philology in Sosnowiec Campus (English language), Poland; Potchefstroom University (now part of the North-West University), Potchefstroom, South Africa; and the Central European University (co-accredited then by the Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom), Prague Campus, Czech Republic. He obtained his doctor degree in political science from the Institute of Western Affairs ( Instytut Zachodni), Poznań, Poland and habilitation in Cultural Studies from the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland. Academic career From 1994 to 1995, he taught in the Language Teachers' Training College (''Nauczycielskie Kolegium Języków Obcych''), Opole, Poland, and between 1995 and 2007 at the University of Opole, Opole, Polan ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Irredentism
Irredentism is usually understood as a desire that one state annexes a territory of a neighboring state. This desire is motivated by ethnic reasons (because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to the population of the parent state) or by historical reasons (because the territory formed part of the parent state before). However, difficulties in applying the concept to concrete cases have given rise to academic disputes about its precise definition. Disagreements concern whether either or both ethnic and historical reasons have to be present, whether non-state actors can also engage in irredentism, and whether attempts to absorb a full neighboring state are also included. Various scholars discuss different types of irredentism. One categorization distinguishes between cases in which the parent state exists before the conflict and cases in which a new parent state is formed by uniting an ethnic group spread across several countries. Another distinction concerns wheth ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Historical Revisionism (negationism)
Historical negationism, also called denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with ''historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history."The two leading critical exposés of Holocaust denial in the United States were written by historians Deborah Lipstadt (1993) and Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman (2000). These scholars make a distinction between historical revisionism and denial. Revisionism, in their view, entails a refinement of existing knowledge about an historical event, not a denial of the event itself, that comes through the examination of new empirical evidence or a re-examination or reinterpretation of existing evidence. Legitimate historical revisionism acknowledges a 'certain body of irrefutable evidence' or a 'convergence of evidence' that suggest that an event – like the black plague, American slavery, or the Holocaust – did in fact o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Historical Revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or timespan or phenomenon, introducing contrary evidence, or reinterpreting the motivations and decisions of the people involved. The revision of the historical record can reflect new discoveries of fact, evidence, and interpretation, which then results in revised history. In dramatic cases, revisionism involves a reversal of older moral judgments. At a basic level, legitimate historical revisionism is a common and not especially controversial process of developing and refining the writing of histories. Much more controversial is the reversal of moral findings, whereby what mainstream historians had considered (for example) positive forces are depicted as negative. Such revisionism, if challenged (especially in heated terms) by the supporters of t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Giant Human Skeletons
Giant skeletons reported in the United States until the early twentieth century were a combination of hoaxes, scams, fabrications, and the misidentifications of extinct megafauna. Many were reported to have been found in Native American burial mounds. Examples from to tall were reported in many parts of the United States. The claims of "giant skeletons" were debunked in 1934 by Aleš Hrdlička, curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Institution opposed the popular myth that an "ancient white race" were the Mound Builders. The role of the Smithsonian Institution in debunking such claims led to a conspiracy theory that Smithsonian archeologists were destroying giant's bones in order to cover up the existence of giants. Hrdlička blamed the reports of giant skeletons on the "will to believe" coupled with "amateur anthropologists" who were unfamiliar with human anatomy. In 2014 an internet story began circulating which claimed that the Smithsonian In ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Facts On The Ground
Facts on the ground is a diplomatic and geopolitical term that means the situation in reality as opposed to in the abstract. The term was popularised in the 1970s in discussions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to refer to Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank, which were intended to establish permanent Israeli footholds in Palestinian territory. Rashid Khalidi wrote in 2010: See also * ''Fait accompli'' * ''De facto'' * ''Status quo ante bellum'' * '' Ex factis jus oritur'' * Realpolitik * Revanchism * Operation Uvda * Ground truth Ground truth is information that is known to be real or true, provided by direct observation and measurement (i.e. empirical evidence) as opposed to information provided by inference. Etymology The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (s.v. "ground t ... References * * * * * Further reading Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977', Macmillan, 2006 Political terminology Po ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Culture-historical Archaeology
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture. It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural evolutionism began to fall out of favor with many antiquarians and archaeologists. It was gradually superseded in the mid-twentieth century by processual archaeology. Cultural-historical archaeology had in many cases been influenced by a nationalist political agenda, being utilised to prove a direct cultural and/or ethnic link from prehistoric and ancient peoples to modern nation-states, something that has in many respects been disproved by later research and archaeological evidence. First developing in Germany among those archaeologists surrounding Rudolf Virchow, culture-historical ideas would later be popularised by Gustaf Kossinna. Culture-historical thought would be introduced to British archaeology by the Australian archaeologist V. G ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Albanian Nationalism
Albanian nationalism is a general grouping of nationalist ideas and concepts generated by ethnic Albanians that were first formed in the 19th century during the Albanian National Awakening ( sq, Rilindja). Albanian nationalism is also associated with similar concepts, such as Albanianism. "Henceforth, Hoxha announced, the only religion would be "Albanianism." Hoxha was using nationalism as a weapon in his struggle to break out of the Soviet bloc." (''Shqiptaria'' or ''Shqiptarizmi'') and Pan-Albanianism, that includes ideas on the creation of a geographically expanded Albanian state or a ''Greater Albania'' encompassing adjacent Balkan lands with substantial Albanian populations. During the late Ottoman period Albanians were mainly Muslims with religious ties to the ruling Turks in the Ottoman Empire.. "Due to religious ties of the Albanian majority population with the ruling Ottoman Turks and the virtual lack of an Albanian state in history, nationalism was less developed among Al ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]