Diaphyseal aclasis in citizens of ancient Jericho

Three cases of multiple osteochondromatosis are reported among 843 skeletons excavated from the site of the ancient city of Jericho. Radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence both suggest that two of the skeletons date from about 1700 BC . These skeletons represent the earliest known cases of diaphyseal aclasis.     

The Age of Clay: The Social Dynamics of House Destruction

This study provides some fresh insight into Neolithic domestic architecture through the analysis of architectural technology and the control over the practice of house construction and destruction. Examined on a regional or local level, architecture of the Neolithic is often presented as a fairly homogenous social practice over the large area of Southeast Europe. In viewing the Neolithic houses as homogenous and uncontroversial material culture, archaeologists have overlooked not only the possible variation and multimeaning of the Neolithic houses but also their striking and extensive means of destruction. The role of house conflagration, a practice that lasted during the entire Neolithic of Southeast Europe, has not been addressed in archaeological investigations. Indeed the phenomenon of burned houses has been treated as a series of lucky accidents during the Neolithic, which are primarily responsible for the preservation of Neolithic sites. Contrary this view, I argue that it is unlikely that the houses were burned as a result of a series of accidents or for any structural and technological reasons but rather that they were destroyed by deliberate burning and most likely for reasons of a symbolic nature. The causes for the practice of house firing and house abandonment as observed through the architectural evidence at the site of Opovo are believed to have been related to the need for house replacement and securing its postutilitarian visibility in order to show social and material continuity of the Neolithic society. In my view, a struggle for social and material continuity might have been a leading mobilizing force in creating and maintaining social practices and beliefs in the Neolithic society.     

Correction to: Elena A. A. Garcea: The Prehistory of the Sudan

African Archaeological Review -     

The Army and Chemical Weapons Destruction: Implementation in a Changing Context

In 1985, Congress directed the Army to destroy the nation's stockpile of chemical weapons. The estimate was that this task could be accomplished by 1994 at a cost of $1.7 billion. By 1998, only a portion of the stockpile has been destroyed, the deadline extended to 2007 and the estimated cost had risen to approximately $16 billion. This paper discusses the factors underlying cost escalation and missed deadlines. It examines the diffusion of control over the implementation process surrounding the chemical weapons demilitarization (Chem Demil) program in the United States. Focusing on the role of the Army and its difficulties in adjusting strategies in the face of political change from the Cold War to the post-Cold War setting, it analyzes the course of implementation through three converging "streams of political activity." What differentiates the federal, intergovernmental, and international stream are the nature an number of actors, and the type of pressures with which the Army must deal.     

Waging War on the Dead: The Necropolitics of Sufi Shrine Destruction in Mali

The destruction of Sufi heritage in Timbuktu used and abused heritage to assert sovereignty, terrorize the living, and repudiate materiality. Archeologists have not analyzed how necropolitics relates to the desecration of the dead and the torture of the living in Mali, where “bodies” are becoming prime stages for radical performances of sovereignty, ideology, and materiality. To understand how Sufi shrines are becoming prime ideological battlegrounds, we must consider the affective presence and emotive materiality of the dead “bodies” and “spirits” of the saints being “slayed,” and acknowledge the relationship between the disturbance of the dead and postcolonial violence on the living.     

Beyond the Anthropocene: Defining the Age of Destruction

The question of the Anthropocene has gained increased notoriety among archaeologists recently. Precisely because of that, it is in need of thorough critique. The aim of this article is not to rule out the concept of Anthropocene, but to point out some of its problems: the relationship of Anthropocenic discourses with the emergence of an all-embracing biopolitical science; the inadequacies of the term, which blames all humans equally for a specific effect of modernity and capitalism; its failure to accept a diversity of origins (but also the problem of accepting overly deep origins), and the shortcomings of adopting a geological framework for archaeology. I thus suggest that the discipline has to define its own eras – also for the contemporary period – and that the Age of Destruction could be an apt archaeological counterpart for the Anthropocene. One of the benefits of outlining an archaeological era is that it brings modernity and capitalism back to the fore, and with them issues of power and conflict that have been largely lost in recent post-anthropocentric debates.     

Tackett,Nicolas, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy

It is generally held that a small number of great or aristocratic clans, flourishing from the third to the ninth century, disappeared from the received historical record around the tenth century. Despite meticulous studies by several generations of scholars, the transformation of social order remains one of the most contested areas of Chinese history. This book revisits the fall of such clans. Based on extensive historical data, including an exhaustive survey of epitaphs from the ninth century, it proposes a series of interpretative frameworks that provide a fresh take on various social and political changes.