Soils, stones and symbols: Cultural perceptions of the mineral world
✍ Scribed by George (Rip) Rapp
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 40 KB
- Volume
- 21
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0883-6353
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
According to the editors, the purpose of this book is to present the symbolic and social aspects of soil, sediment, and stone use in contrast to the usually discussed functional or utilitarian uses. In my view, the title would have been more representative if it had been "Symbols, Soils and Stones," for this is a book about folklore, mythology, magic, and belief systems, not directly about geoarchaeology. The scope of the book is based on papers presented at a conference in 2001 and augmented by other papers to enlarge the geographic and subject matter. Of the 12 authors, five are from the U.K., five from the U.S., and two from Australia. Only one author is an earth scientist. The others are from anthropology, archaeology, and philosophy/religion. The specialized subject matter will become apparent when individual chapters are discussed. Because the book is about folklore, only tangentially about geoarchaeology or earth science (my areas of expertise), I will quote liberally from most chapters to give readers of this review a flavor of the approaches used in the papers. The titles and subtitles of the chapters are fairly illustrative of their content.