The Novel-ty of Responsible Archaeological Site Reporting: How Writing Fictive Narrative Contributes to Ethical Archaeological Practice

Abstract

The writing conventions governing most contemporary archaeological site reports encourage depersonalized, scientistic narratives that fundamentally misrepresent the context and complexity of most excavations. This means that any invested stakeholder in the archaeological record — whether specialist or layperson — has no means of understanding the full and nuanced nature of the archaeological epistemological process that generates the data and interpretations described in these reports. I argue that fictive narrative has the potential to transcend many of these prevailing problems through its temporal flexibility, inherently pluralistic nature, dynamic contextualization, and essential reliance on creativity — all of which are tropes that also characterize the hermeneutic process of archaeological research.     

Occupying the Past: Colonial Rule and Archaeological Practice in Israel/Palestine

Scholars working on issues of cultural heritage politics have repeatedly argued that archaeological sites in Israel/Palestine serve as grounds for the creation of a nation-state narrative that erases other histories. Expanding on this view, my paper first explores a set of spatio-political strategies that Israeli settlers use to carve out a national space within a larger colonial landscape. Second, as I trace those strategies into the realm of archaeological work, it is my goal to highlight how practices of heritage management and colonial rule in Israel/Palestine are co-constitutive. In this context, I also consider how the occupation, confiscation, and demolition of archaeological sites take place before the background of a modernist discourse that references a universal or global heritage.     

Status and Role of Formation Theory in Contemporary Archaeological Practice

Since Binford appropriated the term “middle-range theory,” it has signified the process of reasoning from the extant material record to the cultural past. Merton's sociological concept of middle-range theory is relevant to archaeology, but does not mean what Binford denoted by it. More accurately, Binford's domain should be called “formation theory.” By whatever name used, archaeologists differ greatly in our views of its role and status. Somehow, formation theory has come to be viewed as method but not theory, and as intrinsic to materialism, but irrelevant if not antithetical to other ontologies. Yet it is as critical to the contextual understanding of the past sought by many archaeologists today—a role that, among others, belies formation theory's marginal status in academic practice.     

鲁北地区考古发现与春秋时期齐国灭纪

进入春秋时期,西周形成的传统政治格局开始发生改变,社会开始出现一种比较宽松的发展局面.各诸侯国凭借当时宽松的政治环境竞相发展自己的实力.齐国成为首先发展起来的国家,在其发展过程中,它不断吞并周围的小国,其中纪国是第一个被吞并的国家,主要原因是齐国为了占有纪国丰富的海盐资源.     

Public Significance and Imagined Archaeologists: Authoring Pasts in Context

This paper explores how archaeological authorship is an articulation of the imagined social roles archaeologists play with the actual contexts of our practice. The discovery of popular public discourses on archaeology should not be seen as impediments to pure archaeologies, but as routes to the significance archaeology seeks to attain. A parallel concern with the determining influence of public concerns in ethnography is reviewed to develop a method for an archaeology that is truly publicly formed. An example of a public archaeology program developed in dialogue with existing historical debates in Annapolis, Maryland illustrates.     

Computational Reproducibility in Archaeological Research: Basic Principles and a Case Study of Their Implementation

The use of computers and complex software is pervasive in archaeology, yet their role in the analytical pipeline is rarely exposed for other researchers to inspect or reuse. This limits the progress of archaeology because researchers cannot easily reproduce each other’s work to verify or extend it. Four general principles of reproducible research that have emerged in other fields are presented. An archaeological case study is described that shows how each principle can be implemented using freely available software. The costs and benefits of implementing reproducible research are assessed. The primary benefit, of sharing data in particular, is increased impact via an increased number of citations. The primary cost is the additional time required to enhance reproducibility, although the exact amount is difficult to quantify.     

Research on Conservation State and Preservation Conditions in Unsaturated Archaeological Deposits in Oslo

Abstract

Archaeological, biological, and geochemical investigations of soil sample series from a section and five boreholes have been studied to evaluate the state of preservation at the time of investigation and the preservation conditions of urban archaeological deposits from medieval Oslo, Norway. Focus has been put on the most fragile deposits in the unsaturated and fluctuation zones. Even with limited investigations, it is possible to assess the archaeological conservation state and the preservation conditions. Further work should focus on interpreting measured results and on mitigation strategies.     

The Ethics Minefield: Issues of responsibility in learning and research

Google Glass was deployed in an Urban Studies field course to gather videographic data for team-based student research projects. We evaluate the potential for wearable computing technology such as Glass, in combination with other mobile computing devices, to enhance reflexive research skills, and videography in particular, during field research. The utility as well as the limitations of Google Glass are discussed, including its actual and potential application for teaching and data gathering purposes in the field. As such, this article constitutes one of the first instances of evaluating Google Glass as a social science research tool.     

南方潮湿地区考古遗址迁移保护初探——以长沙国际金融中心建设工地考古遗址迁移保护工程为例

长沙国际金融中心建设工地考古遗址迁移保护工程是大遗址保护实践的有益探索,也是目前遗址保护与区域经济建设协同发展模式下较具现实意义和操作性的一种大型遗址保护途径。本次迁移保护工程是湖南地区首次遗址类不可移动文物大规模迁移保护,采用"表面加固"、"分段整体切割"、"探铲打孔底板嵌套插入隔断"、"聚氨酯发泡固型"四个步骤,对各类型遗存进行科学、完整的迁移保护,该技术在长沙首次成功运用,解决了潮湿土遗址迁移保护的饱水环境、遗址基层不稳定、安全施工等技术难题。希望为南方潮湿地区遗址、墓葬的整体迁移保护提供有益的借鉴。     

Introduction: Gender Interventions in Research,Teaching and Practice

This study investigates the counter-intuitive observation that older students tend to thrive better than younger students in online classes. We use a variety of measures to compare performance and attitudes of undergraduates and continuing adult professionals in separate but nearly identical class sections led by the same instructor at a US university during the same nine-month study period. Findings are consistent with theoretical predictions about differences in readiness of younger and older adults for self-directed learning experiences. Results also suggest that online educators should be proactive in stimulating younger students' participation in class discussions, and should find ways to evaluate explicitly the tacit learning that online discussion can foster.     

阴阳五行与秦汉政治史观

阴阳五行对秦汉政治史观产生了深刻影响。秦汉时期共有四种主要的政治史观 :以五行相胜原则运转的五德终始说 ;以五行相生原则运转的汉家尧后说 ;董仲舒所创三统说以及质文说。这四种政治史观都与阴阳五行有密切关联 ,并对秦汉乃至以后两千余年封建社会产生了深远影响     

Collecting Artifacts on Holocaust Sites: A Critical review of Archaeological Research in Ybenheer,Westerbork, and Sobibor

Following the author’s involvement in archaeological research projects at different Nazi camps, this article provides a critical analysis of the collection, selection, and analyses of artifacts. Firstly, this paper argues that the effect of national heritage management strategies is decisive and asks for evaluation and co-operation with historians. Secondly, this research was carried out on behalf of a memorial center. It is argued that due to the different perspectives of memorial centers and archaeologists this relationship should be reconsidered. The client-contractor relationship should be avoided and replaced by a different relationship, namely that of partners in a joint undertaking.     

Developing Complex Societies in Southeast Asia: Using Archaeological and Historical Evidence

A number of archaeologists are making significant advances in the historical archaeology of Southeast Asia. The papers presented in this issue, and the one that preceded it, provide new insights and exciting directions for future research.     

The Research and Production Plant,Parkgate, Dublin: Archaeological Investigations of a World War II Munitions Facility

Abstract

This paper describes the structures, operations, and history of the Research and Production Plant, Parkgate, a munitions facility developed by the Irish State in the early years of World War II (referred to in Ireland as 'the Emergency'). Located on the edge of the city of Dublin and within the historic curtilage of Phoenix Park, its emissions were the cause of some controversy and resulted in a local health scare, suppressed and censored by the Fianna Fáil government of the day. The Plant's eventual closure was brought about by complaints from the Office of Public Works regarding severe chemical damage in the adjacent Peoples' Garden and to trees and other vegetation further away in the Park proper. In the meantime, production had switched to service a private concern, which was to benefit further from the arrangement before restrictions on the importation of phosphorus and other chemicals were lifted in 1946. The structures were identified and recorded over the summer of 2007 and the research conducted the following winter, based on files held in the Military Archives and contemporary parliamentary reports.     

Public Authority and Conservation in Areas of Armed Conflict: Virunga National Park as a ‘State within a State’ in Eastern Congo

Much research on nature conservation in war‐torn regions focuses on the destructive impact of violent conflict on protected areas, and argues that transnational actors should step up their support for those areas to mitigate the risks that conflict poses to conservation efforts there. Overlooked are the effects transnational efforts have on wider conflict dynamics and structures of public authority in these regions. This article describes how transnational actors increasingly gained influence over the management of Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and how these actors contributed to the militarization of conservation in Virunga. Most scholarly literature suggests that ‘green militarization’ contributes to the extension of state authority over territory and population, yet this is not the case in Virunga. Instead, the militarization of Virunga translates into practices of extra‐state territorialization, with the result that many in the local population perceive the park's management as a project of personalized governance and/or a ‘state within a state’. This article thus argues that it is important to depart from an a priori notion of the ‘state’ when considering the nexus of conservation practices and territorialization, and to analyse this intersection through the lens of public authority instead.     

Rock Art and Ritual: An Archaeological Analysis of Rock Art in Arid Central Australia

Rock art researchers throughout the world have explicitly or implicitly invoked ritual as an activity associated with the production of rock art but the articulation between the structure and composition of rock art assemblages and ritual behaviour remains poorly understood. Anthropologist, Roy Rappaport (1999) argued that all ritual, whatever the content or focus, has a universal structure. We review this proposition in the context of ritual studies and propose a method aimed at assessing the potential for identifying ritual structure in rock art assemblages. We discuss an archaeological analysis undertaken on the rock art assemblages in arid Central Australia, which aimed at distinguishing such a ritual structure among engraved assemblages, likely to have a Pleistocene origin, as well as more recent painted, stencilled and drawn assemblages. This analysis, despite its limitations, provides the foundation for developing a model, which will enhance the understanding of the relationship between the production of rock art and ritual.     

考古学研究玉器起源的一部力作——评《玉器起源探索——兴隆洼文化玉器研究及图录》

The book Research on the Origin of Jades:A Study and Album of XinglongwaCulture Jades jointly compiled and published by the Institute of Archaeology,CASS,and the Center forChinese Archaeology and Art,the Chinese University of Hong Kong,describes all the jades round 8000BP unearthed from the Xinglongwa site and expounds comprehensively the results of their studies.Itmakes a multi-angle discussion on related problems,such as the origin and diffusion,the use and usingmanner and the making technology of jad...