A Feminist Framework for Analyzing Powered Cultural Landscapes in Historical Archaeology

“Powered cultural landscapes” is my term for landscapes that express social power dynamics. Historical archaeologists have not adopted or developed adequate definitions or theorizations of the terms “power” or “landscape.” Since these terms are predominantly considered separately in the literature, this article first briefly defines power and develops a heterarchical theory of power. Then cultural landscapes are defined and categories of human-landscape interactions are constructed. The bulk of the article applies my heterarchical paradigm to analyze the social power dynamics in selected examples of historical archaeological research concerned with each category of human-landscape interaction.     

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

Gender-informed archaeology: The priority of definition, the use of analogy, and the multivariate approach

Despite recent efforts to construct gender theory in archaeology, I assert that no methodological or theoretical breakthroughs have occurred. This lack of progress is due to several factors. First, fundamental terms such as “theory,” “gender,” and “sex” have been used inconsistently; I suggest some working definitions for these terms. Second, researchers have resorted to the use of analogical arguments that implicitly deny the role of gender in the organization of human relations. Third, feminist political agendas have been conflated with research questions. In order to address some of these issues, I suggest that the application of a multivariate approach to the study of gender can avoid the problems inherent in any one line of evidence. Finally, I argue that a consideration of the scale of gender questions is essential to the application of existing theoretical frameworks to gender archaeologically.     

Remembering Places Never Visited: Connections and Context in Imagined and Imaginary Landscapes

Despite the vast research on landscape and landscape archaeology conducted over the past decade little attention has been given to the role of memory and imagination in people’s engagement with their ancestral homelands, “country” or other meaningful landscape. An analysis of a range of case studies, both historical and contemporary reveal that people often feel great attachment to and desire to engage with lands that they may have never visited or have little empirical evidence for attachment. Further complicating this are those examples where a “heritage” landscape based on ancient homelands is constructed on the diasporic lands of their daily lives. Understanding these imaginary landscapes offers the opportunity to take a fresh look at the relationship between identity and landscape.     

A Patina of Age: Elizabeth Macquarie (née) Campbell and the Influence of the Buildings and Landscape of Argyll,Scotland, in Colonial New South Wales

Elizabeth Macquarie, a daughter of Campbell of Airds, was the wife of Lachlan Macquarie, the fifth governor of New South Wales (1810–21). The buildings of Argyll, Scotland, strongly influenced choices made by Elizabeth in the buildings erected during her husband’s 12-year administration of the colony. By examining these Scottish influences, through theories of landscape and the transfer of traditional, even “old-fashioned,” architectural styles to this far-flung colony, new layers of meaning embedded within the landscape of Sydney Cove are disentangled to reveal a deeper understanding of how British cultural identity was recreated on the far side of the world.     

On the ‘Meishan Phenomenon’ in Song culture

The Song Dynasty enjoyed a splendid culture. Meishan, a small county in Southwest Sichuan, was one of the most developed cultural areas. This is closely related to a large-scale immigration after the collapse of the Tang Dynasty and the ‘Jingkang defeat’ in the Song Dynasty. Meishan was an area receiving more immigrants than other regions. A great number of distinguished families from North China brought with them the advanced culture of the Yellow River areas to Meishan, which combined with native culture, and produced many “cultural clans” from this “clan culture.” Some of these people became elites in various areas through education and the Civil Service Examinations. The so-called “Meishan Phenomenon” was a result of cultural melting. Translated by Li He and Zhang Hai from the Journal of Sichuan University, 2004: 3     

Some Late Ming Western Technical Terms and Their Implications for Cultural Transformation: “Brain,” “Geometry,” “Globe,” and “Cathay”

The cluster of technical terms that the Jesuit Matteo Ricci and his Chinese partners Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao cotranslated and introduced into Chinese in the late Ming dynasty was of significance for Chinas cultural transformation. For instance, “brain” replaced “heart” as a specific term referring to the organ of consciousness and memory. The classical Chinese interrogative numeral jihe was used to represent the core mathematical term “geometry”. Diqiu, meaning “the globe of the earth” in English, was minted to amend the traditional hemispherical dome cosmology. The identification of “Cathay” with China clarified the ambiguity in the Western geographical concept of the Far East, which had existed since the Middle Ages. Translated from Wuhan University Journal (Humanity Sciences), No. 6, 2003     

"中国"与"天下"的重合——古代中国疆域形成的历史轨迹

“The Central Kingdom” is pregnant of political implications as well as of geographical and cultural significance. It was believed that whoever controlled Zhongguo (the Central Kingdom or China) would be the legitimate ruler over Tianxia (the realm under heaven or all under heaven). It was the contention for “the Central Kingdom” among the varieties of dynasties, notably those established by the Han-Chinese and the various ethnic groups in the northern borderland, that lead to the alternation of disintegration and unification of the territory. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the unified “Central Kingdom” composed of a variety of ethnic groups turned into the ideal “realm under heaven” with “the Central Kingdom” at its core, which naturally put an end to the formation of territory in ancient China. Translated by Chen Dan from Zhongguo Bianjiang Shidi Yanjiu 中国边疆史地研究 (China’s Borderland History and Geography Studies), 2007, (3): 1–15     

The Archaeology of the Gaucho <Emphasis Type="Italic">“Vago y Mal</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Italic">Entretenido”</Emphasis>

The purpose of this article is to explain and discuss the essential operational characteristics of the technology of power (sensu Foucault) perpetrated on the internal frontiers with the Indians in nineteenth-century Argentina. The conquest and colonization of the Pampas took shape in the establishment of military camp structures placed to create a defensive cordon, known as “the Indian frontier line.” These constructions were fortlets defended by gaucho cavalry squadrons (know as Blandengues during the Spanish period, and then Guardias Nacionales after Argentinean Independence). This process is known in Argentinean historiography as “the conquest of the desert.” This particular technology of power existed in this historical context and operated at every social level, impacting strongly on the lower classes that inhabited the incorrectly named “desert.” Its implementation in the military field enabled the existence of an array of micro-powers that surrounded the gaucho, called vago y malentretenido—“a vagrant and lingerer”—and their women's lives. The army as institution was the locus of various forms of coercion and old forms of punishment (such as the stakes, whipping, and public executions) most of which affected peasants, nonresidents, itinerant workers, and the rural youth. This schema was adopted in different areas: in the enrolment and discipline of the gaucho soldiers, in life in the fortlet-prisons, and in the ritualism of power. The alternative chosen by soldiers to evade this technology of power and the fortlet-panopticons was escape through desertion. The utility of those observations is demonstrated, because an important part of the area of research of historical archaeology that has developed with the greatest impetus in Argentina has taken fortlets as its subject of study.     

近代中国城市大众文化史研究笔谈

The studies of urban popular culture in modern China in recent years have attracted wide attention from scholars in China and abroad. The symposium, which is composed by Ma Min’s “Injecting vitality into the studies of urban cultural history,” Jiang Jin’s “Issues in the studies of urban popular culture in modern China,” Wang Di’s “The microcosm of Chinese cities: The perspective and methodology of studying urban popular culture from the case of teahouses in Chengdu,” Joseph W. Esherick’s “Remaking the Chinese city: Urban space and urban culture” and Lu Hanchao’s “From elites to common people: The downward trend in the studies of Chinese urban history in the United States,” provide valuable insights on the perspective, trend, and methodology of the studies. Four articles of the symposium are translated by Yang Kai-chien and Jin Xueqin from Shixue Yuekan 史学月刊 (Journal of Historical Science), 2008, (5): 5–19; Joseph W. Esherick provides the English version of his article.     

Women Appear in the Plains

Androcentrism marked archaeology on the American Plains, women excluded from major projects and archaeology focused on lithics supposedly made by men, with sherds used to establish chronologies and regions. In the 1970s, women scholars initiated feminist studies and became more numerous in the profession. On the Canadian Plains, two 1980 books shifted attention to the formation of Métis, which can be seen as contributing to feminist diversity theory. Postcolonialism, incorporating collaboration with First Nations, became important after 2000 and adds to diversity theory as well as pointing the real-world political-economic consequences of traditional archaeological pictures of Plains “prehistory.”     

Re-emerging Frontiers: Postcolonial Theory and Historical Archaeology of the Borderlands

The article considers the importance of frontier studies in historical archaeology and discusses applicability of some of the concepts deriving from postcolonial theories for a better understanding of human relationships in the frontier zones. The conditions of frontiers and borderlands are compared with the characteristics of the “Third Space” described by Homi Bhabha as a realm of negotiation, translation and remaking. It is argued that concepts developed in postcolonial theories, such as “Third Space,” “in-betweeness” or hybridity, are useful not only to address cultural and social processes in borderlands that were created by colonial empires. They are also an apt way to conceptualize relationships in frontiers that lacked colonial stigma. To illustrate this point, two different historical examples of borderlands are scrutinized in this paper: the medieval frontier region that emerged between Denmark and the Northwestern Slavic area and the creation of the colonial frontier in Northeastern America through the establishment of the Praying Indian Towns.     

Hatching seeds before they’re counted

Like other analytic aspects of archaeology, archaeobotany has been growing progressively more quantitative in the past few decades. This may be a sign of the proliferation of increasingly mature and sophisticated methodologies for analyzing botanical data, but associated with the sophistication of quantitative methods is their inherent opacity: the value and applicability of anthropological conclusions drawn from quantitative archaeobotanical data are not only limited by the amount of information that can be extracted from data by sophisticated statistical tools, but also by our ability to draw reasonable anthropological—as opposed to merely statistical—conclusions. Even the words “classification” and “significance” have different meanings in statistics and in anthropology. In this paper, I propose the use of graphical analysis for archaeobotanical data in addition to, or instead of, typical statistical tools like significance tests, variable reduction, and clustering. Applied to data from charred seed assemblages from the ancient Near East, the visual representation of quantitative data has the advantage of handling semiquantitative data better and being interpretable without reliance on the paradigm of a formal statistical test.     

Change and continuity in the recent 30 years of research on modern Chinese history: Some unsystematic reflective thoughts

Research on modern Chinese history in the past 30 years can be equally divided into two parts, which are different in terms of attended issues, observed objects, and investigated topics, and also employ different perspectives to explore “problems,” utilize different materials, and resort to different formats for narration. To understand this “thirty-year” (post-1978) historiography, it is necessary to go back to the “seventeen-year” (1949–1966) research before the Cultural Revolution and examine and analyze these studies for trends of continuity and fracture in the accumulation of scholarship. On the other hand, future research should be cautious about even an unconscious tendency of self-isolation, keep an open mind, and fully consider the numerous foreign elements “present in China” in the modern period, their consequences, and impact.     

“Thrown Like Chaff in the Wind”: Excavation, Memory and the Negotiation of Loss in the Scottish Highlands

Memory has become an important area of research in historical archaeology over the last decade with an increasing focus on retrieving the narratives of subaltern groups and painful memories of conflict, displacement and loss. Drawing on ethnographic research, I explore how archaeological excavation provides an arena for sharing, negotiating and contesting difficult forms of memory associated with the Highland Clearances. I argue that the Clearances involve a kind of “postmemory” revolving around a series of iconic motifs and that this provides a framework for interpretation and action in the present. Coherence is produced not through the “excavation” of silenced narratives, but through social processes of performance, negotiation and “composure,” as people engage in a dialogue with past, present and future.     

Landscapes of Belief: Non-Conformist Mission in the North Pennines

In addition to the well-known foreign missionary activities of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century churchmen, this same period saw campaigns of active proselytization within Britain. Whether couched in terms referring to “religious revival” or “home mission” it had the same aim as foreign mission activity, namely to effect religious change. This paper explores the way in which the religious changes associated with these campaigns affected the landscape of the lead-mining districts of the North Pennines in northern England. A repeating cycle of preaching first outdoors, then indoors and then in purpose-built structures can be recognized.     

Play Things: Children’s Racialized Mechanical Banks and Toys, 1880–1930

The reproduction of racism and class-based oppression are taught to children through various cultural media, including toys and games. Between 1880 and 1930, the popularity of racialized toys and banks were fear-based responses to the perceived encroachment by “foreign and exotic” migrations of African American, Chinese, Irish and Native Americans into the cultural landscape of white middle-class America. This article analyzes how artifacts associated with children, such as mechanical banks, clockwork figures, and other toys are part of a larger cultural structure that viewed race and class as inseparable, and that these objects were essential in the development of a learned habitus that exposed white middle class children in the Victorian era to a racially and class oriented world. We argue that these objects reflect both the times in which they were made, and illuminate the relationship between adults and a newfound emphasis on children and childhood, in which toys serves as symbolic mediators of culture.     

唐宋时期寡妇的家产权益与生存处境

By investigating the Tang-Song examples of widows remaining chastity or inviting a jiejiaofu (second husband) into the deceased husbands’ families, this article analyzes widows’ lives and their right to inherit their deceased husbands’ family properties. The conclusion is that widows had only “rights of management,” but not the “possessive right,” over their deceased husbands’ properties. Moreover, the qualities of widows’ lives in their in-law’s families depended on their relationships with the deceased husbands’ brothers. When being treated unfairly, widows often resorted to “the power of the maternal uncle” in order to defend their benefits. Translated into English by Yang Kai-chien     

女国民的兴起:近代中国女性主体身份与文学实践

The construction of “citizen-state” relations in the intellectual world of modern China and the establishment of individual citizenship in political discourse have opened up a political and discourse sphere for modern women to strive for new identities, wherein some intellectually advanced women have managed to establish their individual identity as “female citizen” by carrying the debate on the relationship between women and the state with regard to their rights and responsibilities, and on the relationship between gender role and citizenship. Though the idea of “female citizen” was not provided with a political theory of practical significance, the subject identity of women, however, was repeatedly spoken about and strengthened in brand-new literary practices, resulting in a dynamic discourse of “female citizen”; in the meantime, disagreements concerning the concepts of “female rights,” “civil rights,” and “natural rights” have all helped create significant tension inside the related discourse sphere. Translated by Feng Mei from Nankai Xuebao 南开学报 (Journal of Nankai University), 2008, (4): 40–47     

An Archaeology of Landscapes: Perspectives and Directions

This review calls for the definition of a landscape approach in archaeology. After tracing the development of the landscape idea over its history in the social sciences and examining the compatibility between this concept and traditional archaeological practice, we suggest that archaeology is particularly well suited among the social sciences for defining and applying a landscape approach. If archaeologists are to use the landscape paradigm as a pattern which connects human behavior with particular places and times, however, we need a common terminology and methodology to build a construct paradigm. We suggest that settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes will contribute toward the definition of such a broadly encompassing paradigm that also will facilitate dialogue between archaeologists and traditional communities.