This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Poznań School of Archaeology, an original mode of archaeological thought that emerged in Poznań in the 1960s and 1970s. The book examines the significance of this original Polish archaeological thought in its broad academic context and places it in the realm of the social and intellectual framework of Europe. It is directed to the worldwide community of researchers interested in understanding the nature of the studies of the past and places this original and well-developed school of archaeological thought in its broad geographical and chronological perspective.
The Poznań School of Archaeology made explicit efforts to break off ties with the culture-history paradigm and rejected the simplified functional and rigid deductive-nomological explanations. Developed in the context of non-Marxist historical materialism, over decades it transformed itself into a distinct and multifaceted archaeological research school embedded in the tradition of cultural studies, philosophy, history, and the natural sciences. The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate programmes in archaeology and archaeological theory.
Arkadiusz Marciniak - Professor of Archaeology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In the years 2013-2019 he was Associate Professor at Flinders University. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University (twice) and at University College London. He is a scholarship holder of prestigious foundations, such as Humboldt, Fulbright, Andrew W. Mellon, Kosciuszko and Soros/Commonwealth Office. He is a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Science and a member of Academia Europaea. His expertise is in the development of early farming communities in western Asia and central Europe and their progression to complex societies. He is an initiator and advocate of social zooarchaeology, a research paradigm aimed at investigating multifaceted social relations between humans and animals. His other interests comprise heritage pedagogies and contemporary challenges of heritage policies and strategies. He directed and conducted numerous international research projects financially supported by such agencies and programs as Horizon2020, Culture 2007-2013, European Research Council, Erasmus Plus, DG Education and Culture Program, NWO HEAR JPICH or the Polish National Science Center.
Michal Pawleta holds a position of associate professor at the Faculty of Archaeology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His research interests include the social function of archaeology, uses and misuses of the past in the present, archaeological methods and theory, the protection and management of the archaeological heritage, heritage studies, heritage tourism, gender archaeology, and the archaeology of childhood. His numerous publications include a book Przeszlośc we wspólczesności. Studium metodologiczne archeologicznie kreowanej przeszlości w przestrzeni spolecznej (The Past in the Present: A Methodological Study of an Archaeologically Created Past in Social Space) published in 2016.
Wlodzimierz Rączkowski - professor, full time employment. From the beginning of his research and teaching work at Adam Mickiewicz University, he was interested in theoretical archaeology and applying theoretical concepts in settlement pattern studies. For 15 years he carried out excavations and archaeological surveys in Middle Pomerania (North Poland) managing interdisciplinary projects on changes in settlement patterns from the Bronze Age till the Middle Ages. In the late 1990s, he shifted his area of research into aerial archaeology and other remote sensing methods in archaeological research and the protection and management of archaeological heritage within theoretical contexts. He was (and is) involved in European projects, e.g. European Landscapes: past, present and future, ArchaeoLandscapes Europe, RESEARCH, TRIQUETRA. He was Chairman of Aerial Archaeology Research Group (2008-2011) and Vice-chairman (2011-2014). His current research interests comprise theoretical archaeology, remote sensing methods in archaeology, GIS as a tool in archaeology, settlement pattern studies, and past landscape studies. He has supervised 13 PhDs.
