Working Without a Net: Recent Trends in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology

This paper reviews ceramic ethnoarchaeological research conducted subsequent to Kramer's (1985) seminal stock-taking. Among current trends are a continued interest in the relationship between ceramics and economic specialization, the degree to which manufacture constitutes a technological style, and the link between pots and formation processes as represented in assemblage sizes, use-lives, and recycling. At the same time, some pesky theoretical issues continue to be sidestepped in the current literature. Despite its reputation as a pleasant break from the real business of archaeology, this paper argues that ceramic ethnoarchaeology can and should play a more substantial role in archaeological investigations.     

Low-Fired Earthenwares in the African Diaspora: Problems and Prospects

Local earthenware associated with enslaved African populations in the Americas, variously called Colono-Ware, Afro-Caribbean Ware. Yabbas, and Criollo ware, has received considerable attention from researchers. What unifies this disparate group of ceramics is not method of manufacture, design and decoration, or even form and function but the association or potential association with African diaspora populations. The ceramics incorporate some skills and techniques possibly brought by African potters to the Americas, as well as skills reflecting European and Native American traditions, and local adaptations in form, function, and manufacture. Analogies linking African ceramic traditions to American industries have at times been employed uncritically and have relied on generalized characteristics to infer overly specific meanings. With particular reference to low-fired earthenwares from Jamaica, this paper examines the historical and cultural context of these ceramics and the methodological and theoretical problems faced in their interpretation.     

Recent ceramic analysis: 1. Function,style, and origins

The recent literature on ceramic analysis, which has grown dramatically over the last 8 years, is reviewed in two articles. In this first article attention focuses on studies of function and use, stylistic analyses, and pottery origins. Functional analysis has been the most rapidly expanding segment of the field, particularly experimental, ethnoarchaeological, and residue analysis approaches. Stylistic analyses seem to be in a lull, following increasing dissatisfaction with information theory approaches. Questions of pottery origins are enjoying renewed interest and are briefly surveyed here. The second of the two articles will survey compositional investigations, pottery production, and approaches to ceramic theory. Both reviews close with observations on current directions in ceramic studies.     

The Archaeology of the Disenfranchised

The question of multivocality has been much explored and debated in recent archaeological publications. Clearly, the objective of such work is to assure the inclusion of the views of disadvantaged minorities and disenfranchised peoples in the presentation of their own pasts. This objective has not been achieved with much success, however, partly because mainstream archaeologists have had some difficulties in grappling with what appear to be a proliferation of alternative archaeological theories. Few discussions have approached alternative archaeologies as constituting a definable archaeological paradigm that might be termed The Archaeology of the Disenfranchised. Four different models within this paradigm are discussed and a strategy for a more widespread inclusion of alternative archaeological discussions and projects is suggested.     

Domesticated Landscapes: The Subsistence Ecology of Plant and Animal Domestication

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances of the species they are taking. Under other circumstances and for other species, the skills and tactics used may call for greater environmental preparation or manipulation. Therefore, instead of trying to distinguish people today and in the past as either foragers or farmers, it makes sense to define human subsistence behavior as an interactive matrix of species and harvesting tactics, that is, as a provisions spreadsheet.     

On the Origins of Pottery

Renewed research interest in the origins of pottery has illuminated an array of possible precipitating causes and environmental contexts in which pottery began to be made and used. This article is an attempt at synthesizing some of these data in hopes of stimulating further research into this intriguing topic. Following a review of theories on the origins of pottery, discussion proceeds to a survey of geographic and cultural contexts of low-fired or unfired pottery, highlighting the role(s) of pottery among contemporary hunter-gatherers and summarizing data pertaining to varied uses of pottery containers. It is argued that objects of unfired and low-fired clay were created as part of early prestige technologies of material representations beginning in the Upper Paleolithic and are part of an early software horizon. Clay began to be more widely manipulated by nonsedentary, complex hunter-gatherers in the very Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in areas of resource abundance, especially in tropical/subtropical coastal/riverine zones, as part of more general processes of resource and social intensification (such as competitive feasting or communal ritual). Knowledge of making and using pottery containers spread widely as prestige technology and as practical technology, the kind and timing of its adoption or reinvention varying from location to location depending on specific needs and circumstances.     

Philosophy of archaeology: Current issues

Recent literature reflects continuing concern with problems such as explanation, skepticism, and objective knowledge. Some authors urge archaeologists to abandon positivism in favor of new philosophical approaches, such as feminism, Marxism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Ethical issues have received increased attention as archaeologists have become involved in determining public policy with regard to disposition of artifacts and uncovering of human burials.     

Ford revisited: A critical review of the chronology and relationships of the earliest ceramic complexes in the New World, 6000-1500 B.C.

In 1969, Ford offered a comprehensive model for the diffusion of ceramic production and Formative lifeways in the New World. Although criticized as simplistic, it was echoed by other unitary models, such as Lathrap's spread of Tropical Forest culture outward from a lowland South American hearth. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the earliest American pottery appears in the Amazon basin as early as 6000 B.C. However, there is little support for an ex Amazonas lux spread of pottery technology. Diffusionary models predict early complexes will resemble one another at first and then diverge over time, but comparative analysis reveals substantial variability even at the earliest time level. Heterogeneity among the earliest complexes indicates several likely hearths for the independent evolution of ceramic production, including (1) lowland Brazil, (2) northern Colombia, (3) coastal Ecuador, (4) coastal Peru, (5) central Panama, (6) southern Mesoamerica, (7) the southeastern United States, and (8) the central United States.     

Common Recollections: Resisting Enclosure “by Agreement” in Seventeenth-Century England

Through the enclosure of upland common wastes, an upwardly mobile yeomanry and lesser gentry sought to shift the emphases of local economies toward agrarian capitalism and strove to establish tighter control over burgeoning rural industries. An examination of the township of Castleton in the Pennine uplands of Derbyshire, where the 1691 enclosure proceedings and survey still survive, demonstrates that the typical historical view of such (non-Parliamentary) enclosure agreements is highly problematic. Confronted with the loss of customary common rights, poorer Castleton tenants were compelled to enclose strips within the open arable fields in order to husband animals. By attempting to preserve routines of daily life, however, they also resisted enclosure—through the conservation of common rights and customary practices and through efforts to maintain continuity in agricultural and lead-extraction activities.     

Recent ceramic analysis: 2. Composition,production, and theory

This is the second of two articles reviewing the burgeoning literature on recent ceramic analysis. The first (Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1996) (pp. 133–163) surveyed functional and stylistic analyses and pottery origins. This article reviews compositional investigations and studies of pottery production, both of which have flourished in a period of heightened examination of specific techniques, assumptions, and concepts, such as standardization. In addition, researchers are exploring new analytical methods as well as approaches to ceramic theory. The review closes with a series of observations and critiques of current directions.     

Traitana und Θraēta(o)na

An attempt is made to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-Iranian legend, mainly on the basis of a passage in the Avestan Ardvsr-Yast (Yt. 5,61 f.) and a so far misinterpreted RVedic verse (1,115,5). The legend seems to involve a hero named *Traitana/*Tritana who rescues a devout mortal from water by killing a hostile creature (*dsa-). By comparing this legend with a set of closely related RVedic legends, in which mortals are rescued at sea or from imprisonment by Indra or the Avin, it is assumed that the story of *Traitana/*Tritana belonged to a genre once forming a part of an otherwise lost heroic poetry of Indo-Iranian age.     

Ethnoarchaeology of Domestic Space and Spatial Behaviour Among the Tiv and Ungwai of Central Nigeria

An attempt has been made in this paper to use ethnoarchaeology to clarify our understanding of aspects of domestic space and spatial behaviour among the Tiv and Ungwai peoples of Central Nigeria. Indeed, the work is in several senses, a comparative study of two ethnolinguistic groups who occupy a similar ecological niche with broadly similar sociopolitical organisation. This mode of organisation is non-centralized in character. In addition, the two peoples had a tradition of hilltop occupation in ancient times. Differences in topography (hilltops for the ancient settlers and lowlands for the present-day peoples) have affected not only the compound layout of each of these ethnic groups but also among other features, the architecture of their houses. Given the limited available archaeological data including charcoal samples for dating, one is not yet able to ascribe specific functions to some of the structures identified on the archaeological sites (hilltops). This will be better addressed as research progresses.Quelques tentatives ont ete faits dans cet article pour se servir de Iethnoarchaeologie pour expliquer les divers aspects de lespace domestique et des caracteres de loccupation lespace parmi les Tiv et les Ungwai de la region centrale du Nigeria. En fait, ce travail est en grandes measures une etude comparative des deux groupes ethnolinguistiques occupant le meme crenau ecologique ayant largement la meme organization socio-politique. Le mode dorganisation est du type non centralize. De plus les deux groupes ethniques ont une tradition de locucpation des peuples anciens centres sur le haut de la colline. Des differences en topographie (le haut des collines pour le anciens occupants et la plaine pour les habitants actuels) n ont pas seulement eu effets sur la generalite de la maniere dont les concessions des ces groupes ethniques se presentent mais aussi larchitecture de leurs maisons sont parmi les traits particuliers importants. A cause du numbrer restreint de donnees disponibles en ce moment, nous ne sommes pas encore en mesure dattribuer certaines functions aux structures identifiees aux chantiers archaeologigues (au sommet des collines). Ces functions seront mieux traitees au fur et a mesure que lon avance dans nos recherches.     

GrenzWerte—55. Deutscher Geographentag in Trier

Unter dem Motto GrenzWerte wird der 55. Deutsche Geographentag vom 1. bis 8. Oktober 2005 in Trier stattfinden. Inmitten der Großregion SaarLorLux/Rheinland-Pfalz/Wallonien, die selbst von Grenzen unterschiedlichster Art durchzogen und umgeben ist, werden die Öffnung Europas nach Osten und weitere interessante Grenzaspekte Deutschlands thematisiert. Vielerorts wird diskutiert über Grenzen, die erreicht sind, beispielsweise im Verkehrswesen, beim Umweltschutz oder in Nachhaltigkeitsfragen. Das Motto GrenzWerte hat diesen Trend aufgegriffen und ließ neben der räumlichen auch eine inhaltliche Grenzdimension entstehen. Darüber, welche Anknüpfungspunkte sich daraus für die Angewandte Geographie ergeben, sprach der stellvertretende Vorsitzende des DVAG, DIPL.-GEOGR. KAI PARTALE , mit dem Vorsitzenden des Ortsausschusses für den Geographentag in Trier und Professor für Angewandte Geographie und Raumentwicklung an der Universität Trier, PROF. DR. HEINER MONHEIM.     

Über den ursprung der voneinander abweichenden Strukturen der Munda- und Khmer-Nikobar-Sprachen

Vorbemerkung Da die Bezeichnung Mon-Khmer zweideutig ist - sie umfasst nämlich einmal nur die Mon-Khmer-Sprachen im engeren Sinne, also Mon, Khmer, Bahnar, Mnong usw., zum anderen aber diese Sprachen und die verwandten Gruppen Khasi, Nikobar, Palaung-Wa, Semang, Sakai und Jakud - sei hier vorgeschlagen, den Terminus Mon-Khmer nur noch im engeren Sinne zu verwenden und ihn im weiteren Sinne gegen die Bezeichnung Khmer-Nikobar einzutauschen, da dadurch Irrtümer vermieden und ausserdem die zu bezeichnenden Sprachgruppen besser charakterisiert werden als durch die zu einer Gruppe gehörenden Sprachen Mon und Khmer. Die gesamte Ostobergruppe der austroasiatischen Sprachen wird durch die beiden charakteristischen und wichtigen Sprachen, die alte Literatursprache Khmer und die besonders altertümliche Nikobar-Gruppe, wohl am besten repräsentiert. Die Bezeichnung Mon-Annam-Sprachen ist wegen des Übergangscharakters des Vietnamesischen abzulehnen. Die Khmer-Nikobar-Sprachen stehen also den Mundasprachen in Vorderindien gegenüber.     

The archaeology of the Spanish contact period in the Caribbean

The arrival of Spanish conquistadors and colonists to the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century set in motion the processes that produced the post-1500 New World. The sixteenth-century cultural and ecological exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas that took place during the early contact period greatly affected the social and economic patterns of life in both the Old and the New Worlds. Nowhere was this change manifest as profoundly and dramatically as in the sixteenth-century Caribbean. This essay explores the archaeological insights into the processes of encounter between the Amerindian peoples of the Caribbean region and the first permanent Europeans in the Americas and the responses of each to contact with the other. Archaeological research has informed our understanding of this seminal era in New World cultural development in important ways. It had also allowed the documentation of both the cultural and demographic disintegration of the Caribbean Indians and the formation of Euro-American culture.     

Views and Commentaries: Composed Versus Simple Pasts: About Archaeologists and Their Partners

Partnership is an equitable exchange of knowledge. In fact, the very nature and indisputability of imported and taught knowledge—the scientific one and here archaeological—question the nature of the traditional and ordinary knowledge of peoples concerned. These two kinds of knowledge differ in the nature of the facts recognized by each of them: scientific facts or tacit common knowledge facts built differently, and in the number and strength of the external allies they succeed in mobilizing. Even if they remain translatable one into the other at a certain cost, they are engaged in a race. The result seems lethal for traditional knowledge unless powerful nonscientific allies, opposed to this leveling standardization, get involved with researchers aware of the stake for the South but also for the North, committed for some centuries to a rationalization supported by science, its technics, and the socioeconomic powers able to fund them.Le partenariat est un échange équitable de savoirs. En réalité, la nature et l'indiscutabilité du savoir importé et inculqué—le savoir scientifique et ici archéologique—met en cause la nature du savoir ordinaire et traditionnel des peuples concernés. Ces deux formes de savoirs diffèrent par la nature des faits reconnus par chacun d'eux: faits scientifiques ou faits du savoir observationnel ordinaire, construits différemment, et par le nombre et la force des alliés extérieurs qu'ils réussissent à se donner. S'ils sont traduisibles l'un dans l'autre à un certaincoût, une course est néanmoins engagée entre eux. L'issue en semble fatale aux savoirs traditionnels à moins que des alliés puissants non-scientifiques, opposés à ce nivellement uniformisateur, s'engagent à leurs côtés avec l'appui des chercheurs conscients d'un enjeu qui concerne certes le Sud, mais aussi le Nord engagé depuis quelques siècles dans une rationalisation appuyée sur la science, ses techniques et les puissances socio-économiques capables de les financer.     

The Woodland and Mississippian traditions in the prehistory of Midwestern North America

Cultural developments in Midwestern North America between 5000 and 400 B.P. are reviewed and related to two overlapping, but contrasting, cultural traditions: Woodland and Mississippian. Significant changes in prehistoric subsistence systems, settlement patterns, and sociopolitical organization are reviewed within a three-division framework, beginning with a Transitional period (5000–2000 B.P.) when Late Archaic and Early Woodland societies settled into different regions, constructed regional markers (cemeteries, mounds, earthworks), and established economic and social relations with both neighboring and more distant groups. This was followed by the Middle Woodland period (2000–1500 B.P.) that is associated with the Hopewell climax of long-distance exchange of exotic materials, mound building, and ceremonial activities, although all Middle Woodland groups did not participate in this Hopewell interaction sphere. In the Late Prehistoric period (1500–400 B.P.), the Woodland tradition persisted in some areas, while the Mississippian tradition developed from local Late Woodland societies elsewhere. Finally, the patterns of interaction between the two traditions are discussed.     

Resisting Traditions: Ceramics, Identity, and Consumer Choice in the Outer Hebrides from 1800 to the Present

On a number of levels, peripheral status has been imposed on the Outer Hebrides (Scotland) since the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745. Drawing on a series of interviews with Hebridean families, this paper explores the changing meanings of ceramics imported into the islands from the early nineteenth century and displayed on wooden dressers. It is argued that in renegotiating their identity in the face of a series of externally generated economic changes, rural communities in the Hebrides have acted as thoughtful consumers, appropriating mainland material culture to their own ends. Throughout this process, imports have behaved ambiguously. This ambiguity is crucial to our understanding of the relationship—here characterized not as resistance but as resistant adaptation—between the Hebrides and the mainland.     

Le droit a l'adhyayana selon la Mīmāmsā

Summary This paper is a short survey of five Mmms authors - in chronological order, abara, Kumrila, Prabhkara, likantha, Prthsrathi Mira - in reference to the right (adhikra) of learning by heart the Veda (adhyayana). More or less explicitly, they dismiss it for the social class of the dra, and their gloss on the first stra of the dra is highlighted with the help of this view. The paper summarizes also a number of points raised by this complicated stra.