Content:
The aim of this session is to explore how social archaeology can tackle some major societal topics and changes in postclassical times in the light of the microhistory experience. Developed, through different trajectories, by Italian social historians (Ginzburg, Levi, Grendi, Moreno, Poni, etc.), the Annales French School (Le Roy Laduire), and other scholars (Davies, West, etc), this approach has been able to balance the tension between very detailed analysis and the discussion of relevant scientific issues (state formation, social identities, territorialities, social memories, landscape and agrarian system transformation, relational agencies, social mobility, etc.) considering a long-term and a multiscale approach.
Not only is it a methodological question about representativeness, but also a theoretical and conceptual one. This “historical microanalysis” is grounded on the context of practices, social relationships, and the cultural production of evidence and material culture. As a result, new avenues to explore the deep meanings of places and temporalities have been opened. Besides this, an explicit microhistorical approach empowers archaeology to overcome the classic contraposition between top-down and bottom-up perspectives, évènementiel and longue durée processes, and textual and material sources.
There is an interest in papers centered on topics such as social inequality, local societies, collective action, ownerships and commons, possession and jurisdiction, social mobility, environmental resources management and environmental issues, subaltern studies, and other social issues. Although the interest is placed in long-term approaches, a microhistorical approach is very useful for the analysis of postclassical societies (5th-21st centuries).
The final aim is to promote a discussion about the potentiality of historical micro-history within the archaeological research opening new possibilities for dialogues between different disciplines: archaeology, history, social anthropology, geography, historical ecology, and landscape studies.
Keywords:
social archaeology, multi-temporalities, micro-analysis, landscapes, local societies, Big questions