Archaeologists Colonizing Canada: The Effects of Unquestioned Categories

The labelling and categorization of archaeological sites have consequences for the interpretation and subsequent research completed. As such, we as archaeologists must always be vigilant regarding the unintended consequences of labels we attach, or choose to omit, from official site information. These problems become compounded when governmental control codifies existing archaeological conventions and renders them rigid and difficult to change. Using the current archaeological registration database information for Brant County, Ontario, Canada, this paper demonstrates how imaginary pasts are created through archaeological convention and governmental codification and the consequences of these uncontested actions.     

Code of Practice: The British Archaeologists And Developers Liaison Group Great Britain

Abstract

The Fort Qu'Appelle reburial controversy, reported in the Journal of Field Archaeology (Spurling and Walker 1987), occasioned comment on the role that the provincial professional organization should play in such crises. The author provides an account of the conflict from the viewpoint of the Saskatchewan Association of Professional Archaeologists.     

The trial of Dominic Cummings: Rules and reason in the pandemic

The trip by Dominic Cummings, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's then right-hand man, to Durham in April 2020, in seeming violation of the rules of social distancing he had helped put in place, led to intense media scrutiny and public outrage. That there might be ‘One rule for them, and one for the rest of us’ became a stick to beat the government with and arguably contributed to Cummings’ eventual departure from Downing Street. This article focuses on the defence he put forward at the time. Rather than breaking the rules, he had followed them, he argued, providing a series of justifications, one of which led to widespread ridicule, the rest being largely dismissed. Rules of social distancing and the public's compliance with them have been of global concern during the coronavirus pandemic. I argue that the Cummings incident shows both the complexity of ordinary notions of what it means to follow a rule, and a tendency for that complexity to be left undiscussed in both scientific and public debate – to all our detriment.     

Anthropology of women: The natural history stage

Carolyn J. Matthiasson, ed. Many Sisters: Women in Cross‐Cultural Perspective. New York: The Free Press, 1974. xxi + 433 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography, and index. $15.00

Yolanda Murphy and Robert F. Murphy. Women of the Forest. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974. xii + 236 pp. Maps, bibliography, and index. $10.00 (cloth); $3.45 (paper).     

Jack Goody: The Anthropology of Unequal Society

In almost four decades Jack Goody has published a score of books seeking to explain the divergence of Africa from the Eurasian continent, and latterly to refute historical claims of western superiority to Asia. Since the millennium, he has sought to clarify his own vision of modern capitalism at a time when western hegemony is coming under pressure from globalization. Yet this achievement has not received the recognition from anthropologists that it deserves. This article, in reviewing six books published during the last decade, makes a case for reassessing Goody's project from the mid-1970s until now. It singles out two books for special attention, The Theft of History and his latest volume, Metals, Culture and Capitalism. A consistent theme of his recent work is to juxtapose his own account of the history of western capitalism with those of Marx, Weber and other writers in the classical tradition of social theory. Jack Goody remains to this day an anthropologist whose sensibility was formed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork. But he knew that, if he aspired to throw light on the human predicament as a whole, he would have to become a world historian too.