“Looking at the world as an archaeologist” is the new book of the university professor Vitor Oliveira Jorge, that the Quarteto Editora is going to launch on 26th February, in Coimbra. A reflection on Archaeology as a social science, approaching the main issues of the routes, perspectives and methods that lead to the construction of knowledge in this area.
For the author, the “world” that surrounds the archaeologist is not a group of signs, of remains or vestiges, that once discovered would reveal “the past” little by little. The archaeologist does not “discover” that past (like someone unveiling something covered with a veil), but constructs a narrative that allows us to understand (make intelligible) the historicity of places and landscapes, giving a memorial sense to the materials that punctuate them.
That narrative subjects itself to the rules of verification, but is in fact, deliberately, a perspective, a construction of the present, made from a certain point of view.
Although with the ambition of finding as broad a regularity as possible, archaeology is capable of making us descend to the micro-scale, and to pose the disturbing question that each place seems to beg again: what happened here?
For the launch of the book, Professor Doutor Jorge de Alarcão, of Coimbra University and professor Doutor João Maria André, director of Colecçao “Caminhos” of Quarteto Editora, who publish this book will be speaking.
The event will take place at Teatro Académico Gil Vicente (foyer) in Coimbra, at 18.00. Entrance is free.
