Reclaiming the Land,Reclaiming the Indian: The La Salle Series of George Catlin

In 1847, American painter George Catlin completed a series of paintings depicting La Salle's travels through North America, ostensibly at the request of King Louis-Philippe. This article argues that the La Salle series is an unusually coherent statement by Catlin about the value of the American wilderness and Native American culture for white America. A close examination of the paintings and Catlin's writing exposes the La Salle series as a reclamation project in which Catlin sought to rescue an imagined “pure” past at contact and preserve it in paint in order to make it available and useful to the present.     

FOCUS: Bone Needles in Mallorcan Prehistory: a Reappraisal

A review of bone needles from the Mallorcan earliest prehistory is presented. They are not artifacts, but actually represent natural items, identified as Myotragus balearicus fibular diaphysis. The corpus fibulae ofM. balearicus is here illustrated by first time. Archaeological and paleontological implications of this diagnosis are discussed in this paper.     

满族先祖探微

作为中国古老的少数民族之一,满族的历史可上溯至远古炎黄时期,但其先祖是谁,至今仍为悬案。通过对神话传说的释读、民俗宗教的剖析,特别是对《山海经》中有关史料的发掘,为解开这一历史迷案提供了重要线索。     

Decolonizing geographies of travel: Reading James/Jan Morris

Travel writing can produce critical 'in-between' spaces, which contribute to broader cultural politics of postcolonialism, by transgressing and in a preliminary sense deconstructing imperial binaries. These imperial binaries structure subjectivities, on the one hand, and material geographies, on the other. This paper examines such a project, through a reading of travel writing by James/Jan Morris, which shows how processes of decolonizing subjectivities and material geographies may be recursively related. Morris is known for newspaper coverage of the 1953 Everest expedition, for a trilogy on the British Empire, for the autobiographical account of a sex change, and for many travel books and articles; all of which foreground themes of gender and imperialism. The paper argues that Morris's decolonizations have charted and created in-between spaces of subjectivity and material geography, ambivalent spaces with critical potential. The ambivalence of these spaces can constitute a critical limitation, but also an opportunity; in response, the conclusion redirects some critical attention away from writers and textual spaces to readers and interpretations, and thus points towards a postcolonial (and wider) politics of reading.     

Ancestors: Henry Maine and the constitution of primitive society

Maine was the most important English figure in a generation of legal theorists who founded the comparative study of “early”; social institutions. He assumed that all the Indo‐Germanic speaking peoples began their development with the same social forms. Early Roman law and contemporary Hindu custom encapsulated primitive Indo‐European institutions, notably the patriarchal family and the communal organisation of property rights. Maine's arguments were developed in part as a contribution to contemporary political debate, especially with reference to the Indian Empire. His work drew on the models of philology, German legal history, and English constitutional history.     

Remembering Ancestors: Commemorative Rituals and the Foundation of Historicity

One of the most elaborated responses to the human perception of being‐in‐time (as the essence of historicity) has been the cult of the ancestors. Consequently, the ancestor cult may be considered foundational for historicity. This is the core idea of this article. It is illustrated with Romanian ethnographic data and elaborated with cross‐cultural examples. A few objects used in commemorative rituals—coliva (a special dish), trees and pots—are interpreted according to their symbolic force of enabling people to live temporality not only fragmentarily (past?+?present?+?future), but as a transcendental unity of the temporal continuum. Finally, the functions of history are specified—namely, identity defining, the critical function, and especially (as revealed by the ancestor cult) the function of memorialization.     

Body,Vision and Movement: in the Footprints of the Ancestors

Ethnographic writings on Australian Aboriginal ontology and epistemology have overlooked the phenomenological significance of the body and notions of embodiment in the relationship between people and land. In focusing on the body as a spatio-temporal ‘hinge’ between people and place, I explore the pervasive images of bodily transformations, directional movement and traces, in the cosmogony, cosmology and life-world of the Yolngu people of Northeast Arnhem Land. The image of the footprint as a synthesis of living body, vision and movement, perception and intentionality, embodies the dynamic and creative nature pertaining to the fashioning and negotiation of group identity.     

Reclaiming Vision: Looking at landscape and the body

This paper responds to feminist critiques of the masculinity of the landscape tradition within geography. It draws upon reassessments of the gaze within film theory, art history and cultural studies as well as within representational practice. It does so in order to reclaim the concept of landscape as a theoretical tool and subject of study for a feminist cultural geography. In theorising a reclamation of looking and landscape through a critical feminist approach, issues of vision and space, gender and representation, politics and pleasure are brought forcefully together through considering images of the male body as landscape by two contemporary women artists. While recognising the politics of representation, the aim is to deconstruct ideas of an unproblematic women's vision and of a singular or essential male or female gaze. Despite the way in which the metaphor of the body/land has been employed to justify both approaches to women and the environment and to legitimate colonisation, this paper suggests that with regard to both the body and landscape we need to look again and reconsider the radical potential of visual pleasure and traditions of visual representation.     

History to Prehistory: an Archaeology of Being Indian

This paper explores a conception of being Indian in New Orleans that complicates and localizes Indian histories and identities. It poses that the notion of “being Indian” may be approached not only through the history and archaeology of persons but also as an identity such that being Indian itself is an artifact produced by a wide range of people in the development of New Orleans in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Employing a critical reading of intercultural relations, I explore archaeological evidence that suggests colonial New Orleans was created in both Indian and non-Indian terms through exchange. In this process archaeology shows that being Indian was part of a widely-shared colonial strategy that places a fluid Indian identity at the center of local history. The paper also considers how the marginalization of Indian people in the early nineteenth century was one way New Orleans and the greater southeast connected with dominant American sensibilities. Developing with the idea of “prehistory,” nineteenth-century Native Americans were distanced as a cultural other and pushed to margins of New Orleans society. The subsequent internal tensions of assimilation and removal derailed Indian challenges to White domination they had employed over the previous 100 years. As this action coincides with the invention of American archaeology as the science of prehistory, the paper concludes with a critical reflection on archaeological terminology.

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Re′sume′ Cet article explore l’idée d’être Amérindien à la Nouvelle-Orléans qui rend plus complexes et plus spécifiquement locales les histoires et caractères identitaires amérindiens. Il suggère que la notion d’ ? être amérindien ? peut être appréhendée non seulement à travers l'histoire et l'archéologie des personnes, mais également par le biais d’une identité à proprement parler, procédant de l’acceptation qu’être Amérindien est en lui-même une construction empruntant à un large éventail de personnes de la région de la Nouvelle-Orléans durant la période coloniale et post-coloniale. Utilisant une lecture critique des relations interculturelles, j'explore les faits archéologiques qui suggèrent que la Nouvelle-Orléans coloniale fut créée selon des principes à la foi amérindiens et non amérindiens par l’entremise d’échanges. Dans ce processus, l'archéologie démontre qu' ? être amérindien ? faisait partie d'une stratégie coloniale largement utilisée et qui se servait d’une identité amérindienne polyvalente comme point central de l'histoire locale. Cet article traite également de la fa?on dont la marginalisation du peuple amérindien au début du 19ème siècle fut un moyen par lequel la Nouvelle-Orléans et plus largement le sud-est sont entrés en adéquation avec la sensibilité américaine dominante. En même temps que se développait l’idée de ? préhistoire ?, les amérindiens du 19ième siècle furent écartés en temps qu’? autre culture ? et repoussés aux marges de la société de la Nouvelle-Orléans. Les tensions internes qui ont suivi, liées à leur assimilation et déplacement, ont entravées les efforts des Amérindiens contre la domination des Blancs, efforts déployés au cours des 100 années précédentes. Ceci co?ncidant avec l’invention de l’archéologie américaine comme la science de la préhistoire, cet article termine avec une discussion critique de la terminologie archéologique.

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Resumen Esta ponencia explora una concepción de ser Indio/a en New Orleans que complica y localiza historias e identidades Indias. Propone que se puede abordar la noción de “ser Indio/a” no sólo a través de la historia y la arqueología de las personas, sino también como una identidad que hace que ser Indio/a sea en si mismo un artefacto producido por una amplia porción de gente en el desarrollo de New Orleans en los períodos coloniales y post-coloniales. Usando una lectura crítica de relaciones interculturales, exploro la evidencia arqueológica que sugiere que el New Orleans colonial fue creado en términos Indios y no-Indios por el intercambio. En este proceso la arqueología demuestra que ser Indio/a era parte de una estrategia colonial extensamente compartida que ubica una identidad India fluida en el centro de la historia local. La ponencia también considera la manera como la marginalización del pueblo Indio al comienzo del siglo XIX fue una forma a través de la cual New Orleans y el gran sudeste se conectaban con las sensibilidades norteamericanas dominantes. Al desarrollarse con la idea de “prehistoria”, los Nativos norteamericanos del siglo XIX fueron distanciados como un otro cultural y desplazados a los márgenes de la sociedad de New Orleans. Las tensiones internas subsiguientes de asimilación y extirpación torcieron el curso de los desafíos Indios al dominio blanco que habían estado usando en los últimos cien a?os. Como esta acción coincide con la invención de la arqueología norteamericana como la ciencia de la prehistoria, la ponencia concluye con una reflexión crítica de la terminología arqueológica.

     

史前墓地研究述评

墓葬资料对于研究没有字记载的史前社会,具有特殊的价值和意义,其研究的主要内容包括编年、墓地形成过程、人口数量与结构、社会组织和结构、葬俗和葬制、体质特征和人种、习俗和病理、随葬品等。中国史前墓葬和墓地的研究,经历了四个阶段,即资料积累阶段、社会性质讨论阶段、发展阶段和扩展阶段。