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:PrefaceHans Peter HahnIntroductionWe have never been clean. Towards an interdisciplinary discourse about cleaning and valueIsabel Bredenbröker, Christina Hanzen, Felix KotzurDisciplinary reflectionsArchaeology and Cleaning: Some reflections on the archaeological processUlrich VeitHow is dirt possible? On the philosophy of dirt, cleanliness and refuseOlli LagerspetzContexts and PlacesThe Last Bath: Cleaning Practices and the Production of 'Good Death' in an Ewe TownIsabel BredenbrökerThe cultural aspect of cleaning in archaeology - a case study from the late Neolithic site of F?st?kl? HöyükGeorg CyrusCARPE Dirt, Disease, and Detritus: Roman Sanitation and its Value SystemAnn Olga Koloski-OstrowBodies, Objects and Personal HygieneA matter of representation - personal hygiene in Eastern Zhou-dynasty China (771-256 BCE)Catrin KostImpurity and purification: multi-layered conceptions of cleaning in Central Asian burial ritualsJeanine DagyeliYour Clothes Should Be Clean! Your Head Should Be Washed!Body Cleaning and Social Inclusion in the Epic of GilgameshAinsely HawthornSocial practices and politicsShaking out the Tablecloth - Uzbek Hospitality and the Construction of Boundaries of BelongingSebile YapiciThe Cleansing of a Political System: Obliterations, Burials and 'Reuse' of Palaces and Seats of Power in Central Italy (Seventh-Fifth centuries BCE)Robinson KrämerCleaning up the pastMareike SpäthArtistic contributionsChrischa Oswald - Mother TongueKerstin Gottschalk - Mehl, Salz und Wasser zu einem Teig verarbeitet und auf die Spiegeloberfläche aufgetragen, Größe variabelAndreas Koch - Duschvorhang (Shower curtain)Robert Schittko und Nikolaus Kockel - PerformanceWagehe Raufi - In between contemporary stonesAnna Langgartner - Contemporary Art and the Gaze of an Archaeologist: A interpretative attempt of decay and lost evidenceMia Bencun - Bruise 13