Cleaning and Value

This volume combines scholarly contributions on the relation between values and cleaning processes in different places, cultures and times. The core disciplines are archaeology and anthropology with interdisciplinary additions from sinology, classic philology, philosophy, sociology and fine arts. The individual contributions are the proceedings of a workshop organised by members of the DFG graduate school 1576 "Value and Equivalence" at Frankfurt University in June 2017. Among the contributors are researchers from Yale University, University of Cambridge, Brandeis University and Frankfurt University.

The editors do not intend to establish a theoretical concept of cleaning as a paradigm in academic discourse. Instead, our aim is to test the term's potential for moral and practice-related implications from an interdisciplinary perspective. We understand the term cleaning as referring to a conglomerate of practices. These are rooted in social norms, morals and organisational structures. Due to the inclusive multiplicity of the term it functions as a soft concept. Aspects of materiality, social organisation, creation and conservation of value, devaluation as well as destruction come into play.

Contents:

Preface

Hans Peter Hahn

Introduction

We have never been clean. Towards an interdisciplinary discourse about cleaning and value

Isabel Bredenbröker, Christina Hanzen, Felix Kotzur

Disciplinary reflections

Archaeology and Cleaning: Some reflections on the archaeological process

Ulrich Veit

How is dirt possible? On the philosophy of dirt, cleanliness and refuse

Olli Lagerspetz

Contexts and Places

The Last Bath: Cleaning Practices and the Production of 'Good Death' in an Ewe Town

Isabel Bredenbröker

The cultural aspect of cleaning in archaeology - a case study from the late Neolithic site of Fıstıklı Höyük

Georg Cyrus

CARPE Dirt, Disease, and Detritus: Roman Sanitation and its Value System

Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow

Bodies, Objects and Personal Hygiene

A matter of representation - personal hygiene in Eastern Zhou-dynasty China (771-256 BCE)

Catrin Kost

Impurity and purification: multi-layered conceptions of cleaning in Central Asian burial rituals

Jeanine Dagyeli

Your Clothes Should Be Clean! Your Head Should Be Washed!

Body Cleaning and Social Inclusion in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Ainsely Hawthorn

Social practices and politics

Shaking out the Tablecloth - Uzbek Hospitality and the Construction of Boundaries of Belonging

Sebile Yapici

The Cleansing of a Political System: Obliterations, Burials and 'Reuse' of Palaces and Seats of Power in Central Italy (Seventh-Fifth centuries BCE)

Robinson Krämer

Cleaning up the past

Mareike Späth

Artistic contributions

Chrischa Oswald - Mother Tongue

Kerstin Gottschalk - Mehl, Salz und Wasser zu einem Teig verarbeitet und auf die Spiegeloberfläche aufgetragen, Größe variabel

Andreas Koch - Duschvorhang (Shower curtain)

Robert Schittko und Nikolaus Kockel - Performance

Wagehe Raufi - In between contemporary stones

Anna Langgartner - Contemporary Art and the Gaze of an Archaeologist: A interpretative attempt of decay and lost evidence

Mia Bencun - Bruise 13