Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about an archaeological imagination, along the lines of the sociological and geographical, as creative work on the remains of the past rooted in a faculty or sensibility dispersed through the cultural reception of the past. Archaeology has frequently accompanied high cultural conservatism. The connoisseur may celebrate ancient fine arts, the achievements of artisans patronized by the civilized wealthy and elite of the early imperial states, as great human achievements, quite separable from their social milieu. The conservationist may campaign to prevent the loss of cultural goods and the destruction of ancient sites in the face of a future-oriented contemporary can to economic growth and development. Notions of the archaeological, sociological, and geographical imagination all imply creative understanding of life today, of possibilities of change, innovation, of the roles of individual perception, practice and agency.