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WiSe 19/20: Storage: Planning for the Future

Susan Pollock und Sabine Reinhold

Information for students

Assmann, Jan. 2013. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen Taschenbuch. München: Beck. - Ingold, Tim. 1987. The Significance of Storage in Hunting Societies. In The Appropriation of Nature: Essays on Human Ecology and Social Relations, pp. 198-221. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. - Morehart, Christopher T. & Kristin De Lucia, eds. 2015. Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. - Nissen, Hans, Peter Damerow, and Robert Englund. 1990. Frühe Schrift und Techniken der Wirtschaftsverwaltung im alten Vorderen Orient. Informationsspeicherung und –verarbeitung vor 5000 Jahren. Franzbecker. [translated and published 1993 as Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago] - Paulette, Tate. 2015. Grain Storage and the Moral Economy in Mesopotamia (3000-2000 BC). PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago. - Renfrew, Colin, ed. 1998. Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Vansina, Jan. 1988. Oral Tradition as History [reprint]. London : Currey. - Wengrow, David. 2011. Archival and Sacrificial Economies in Bronze Age Eurasia: An Interactionist Approach to the Hoarding of Metals. In Interweaving Worlds: Systematic Interactions in Eurasia, 7th to 1st Millennia BC, pp. 135-144. Oxford: Oxbow. - Environmental Archaeology. The Journal of Human Palaeoecology. (2015) Special Issue on Storage. - World Archaeology 49(1) (2017) The Archaeology of Food Surplus. close

Comments

The storage of goods and information is a concern of contemporary societies, but it is also one with a long history. The storage of food can be traced back to the beginning of the Neolithic, if not before, and technologies and tools for information storage may be just as old. Storage involves not just the physical keeping of material things – food, valuables, etc. – and immaterial ones – information, knowledge, etc. – but also planning and expectations for the future. Storage has a marked influence on spatial practices, for example in terms of sedentism, the need for storage facilities, etc. It is connected to surplus available for display or distribution, and it may also nurture abstract thinking in the form of counting, numerical notations, and writing. In this course, we will examine archaeological approaches to questions of storage, from the physical activity and technologies of storing to the underlying social, economic and ideological implications of these practices. Case studies will be drawn from the ancient Near East, Eurasia, and Europe. close