The consequences of Wari contact in the Nasca region during the Middle Horizon: archaeological,skeletal, and isotopic evidence

During the Middle Horizon (AD 650–1000), the Wari polity expanded its sphere of control in various regions of the Andes, including Nasca on the south coast of Peru. The nature of the interaction between Wari and local communities varied. This study explores the consequences of Wari contact in the Nasca region at the site of La Tiza, which includes individuals dated to the Early Intermediate, Middle Horizon, and Late Intermediate periods. Using evidence for burial ritual along with demographic, paleopathological and isotopic data, population composition, mobility, diet, and health are investigated. δ¹³C data indicate a relatively stable diet through time at La Tiza with evidence for continued maize consumption, and paleopathological results indicate health problems associated with this type of diet. δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr data suggest that most of the individuals buried at La Tiza were local to the area. However, two female adults from the Middle Horizon burials are characterized as nonlocal based on δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values and several individuals overlap with the ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr local range for the Wari heartland. In conjunction with the use of new tomb types during this period these results highlight the ideological and populational changes occurring with Wari contact at La Tiza.     

Regional perspectives on Wari state influence in Cusco,Peru (c. AD 600–1000)

The archaeological reconstruction of ancient states requires consistent regional measures of state-directed power and influence. This paper presents data from a series of systematic archaeological surveys in the Cusco region of highland Peru to evaluate patterns of influence by the Wari state during a period of colonization from ca. AD 600–1000. We discuss interpretive debates over the nature and intensity of Wari social power, suggesting that site-based studies can be contextualized meaningfully using our large-scale dataset, which offers settlement patterns at varying distances (0–70 km) from Pikillacta, a Wari administrative center. We discuss local settlement patterns before and during Wari colonization, as well as the distribution of Wari pottery and local Wari-influenced wares. We then use a geographic information systems analysis of travel time from key sites to evaluate the broad regional distribution patterns of local and Wari ceramic styles. Although the regional survey data do not inform us reliably about all kinds of social power, we conclude that the Wari cultural, economic, and political influence over the Cusco region was limited and discontinuous—an example of colonization that resembles the practices of other early states.     

Reconstructing Middle Horizon mobility patterns on the coast of Peru through strontium isotope analysis

The pre-Columbian coastal site of Ancón, Peru frequently has been interpreted as an important outpost of the highland Wari Empire, inhabited by individuals from the sierra and the coast. In order to test this hypothesis, bone–tooth pairs from 35 Middle Horizon (550 AD–1000 AD) Ancón skeletons were analyzed for strontium isotopes, which vary by geologic provenance. Results indicate that 34 of the 35 individuals have ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr enamel and bone values higher than Ancón's biologically available strontium isotope range. Nitrogen and carbon isotope data from a subset of the Ancón skeletons suggest that the higher than expected ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values among the Ancón sample likely reflects a diet rich in marine resources rather than migratory activity, and highlight the need to use multiple lines of evidence to track residence change at sites where individuals relied on resources other than locally grown terrestrial foods. The one remaining individual, a young female of elite status, has an enamel strontium isotope signature much lower than the available data for local fauna and soil indicating that she was not raised locally. Her enamel ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio fits well within the range of strontium isotope values established for the inland Wari site of Conchopata [Tung, T.A., Knudson, K.J. Social identities and geographical origins of Wari trophy heads from Conchopata, Peru. Current Anthropology, in press.], and suggests that highland, Wari immigrants may have been present at Ancón during the Middle Horizon.     

Changing electoral politics: The local level

This article explores contemporary notions of Italian kinship—procreation, the family, biological and social relatedness—as they are shaped by programmes of gamete donation (these are programmes that require the use of third‐party egg and semen to achieve conception). The research was carried out in Italian clinics of assisted conception and presents the views of heterosexual couples suffering from impaired infertility. The overall material reveals the power of kinship as a cultural form.     

Architecture,Local Elites,and Imperial Entanglements: The Wari Empire and the Cotahuasi Valley of Peru

Abstract

One of the enduring problems in the archaeology of ancient states and empires is the recognition of different forms of regional consolidation in the archaeological record. Among the clearer markers of direct control over an area is thought to be the construction of an administrative facility. Our recent research on the impact of the Wari Empire (A.C. 750–1000) in the Cotahuasi Valley of Peru, however, suggests that facilities built by and for local elites may emulate so many aspects of state facilities that they can be misinterpreted as intrusive sites. We demonstrate how the Cotahuasi sites diverge from the architectural canon found at Wari administrative facilities and suggest why this convergence of local and imperial architectural styles occurred.     

Politywide Analysis and Imperial Political Economy: The Relationship between Valley Political Complexity and Administrative Centers in the Wari Empire of the Central Andes

This article tests a model for the political economy of the Wari Empire (AD 600–1000) of Peru. This model divides the empire into core and periphery zones. In the core, Wari political economy was organized to extract surplus agricultural production to feed the capital. In the periphery, the Wari strove to extract prestige goods. We suggest that there is a strong relationship between where the empire chose to locate its centers in the periphery and the political complexity of the local population in which the center was placed. We argue that in areas of low political organization sites should be located near the geographic center of a population. These sites will tend to function as local administrative centers geared toward the organization and exploitation of the area's wealth potential. In areas with more complex political organization sites should be located on the margins of a population. These sites should have functioned as gateway centers controlling, or at least profiting from, interregional exchange. Our model was systematically tested through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The results suggest that much of the variability found in Wari site placement in the periphery can be explained by differences in local sociopolitical complexity.     

Wari’s imperial influence on local Nasca diet: The stable isotope evidence

The highland Wari Empire established a presence within the Nasca region of south coastal Peru during the Middle Horizon period. To clarify the nature of this interaction, we analyzed stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of human bone collagen from individuals living in the Southern Nasca Region (SNR) before (1–750 AD) and during (750–1000 AD) imperial influence. The stable isotope data do not indicate that the Wari Empire transformed maize agricultural labor in the Las Trancas Valley of the SNR. In fact, during both time periods, Nasca people had access to a wide range of food items.     

Death in Flames: Human Remains from a Domestic House Fire from Early Iron Age,Denmark

This paper presents osteoarchaeological analyses of the human skeletal material from a burnt down house in Jutland, Denmark, dated to the first century bc . We describe how the osteological analyses of this complex site were approached and illustrate how we reconstructed the death of the human victims. Besides basic osteological analyses, we also tried to reconstruct the posture of the deceased humans using 12‐in. posable wooden mannequins. Along with bones from several domestic animals, skeletal elements from six human individuals were recovered. All individuals were located in the eastern end of the house—the byre end. The demographic structure indicates a small family household. Our posture reconstruction further proposes that they did not die of asphyxiation while sleeping: At least two of the individuals were lying face down, trying to protect themselves. Two other individuals were lying on their side in crouching positions, which cannot be ruled out as examples of pugilistic attitude. However, we suggest this is rather unlikely. The humans could have died as they failed to rescue their invaluable animals from the fire. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Kidney Dagger as a Symbol of Masculine Identity – The Ballock Dagger in the Scandinavian Context

During the 13th century the dagger re‐emerged as a military weapon in Europe. A variety of distinct types evolved, soon also functioning as popular civilian weapons, all over the Continent. Contrary to other European societies, Scandinavians favoured one specific type, namely the kidney dagger. These daggers are found in different archaeological contexts in the Nordic countries, and their violent use is known from both iconographic and written sources. The Scandinavian preference is noted by several authors, one of them even proposing a Scandinavian origin. Still, they do not try to explain this preference. The article presents an interpretation based on the phallic form both of the weapon and of the way of carrying it. The phallic symbolism of the ballock dagger was obvious in contemporary medieval times, but has been obscured later on, for instance by the Victorian label ‘kidney dagger’. Using daggers from Western Norway as a starting point, kidney daggers in Scandinavia are interpreted in a medieval context derived from the Norse sagas and laws. These sources draw a picture of a violent society with rigid conceptions of honour, masculine identity and sexuality. Based on this picture, our understanding of the kidney dagger and material culture of violence in medieval Scandinavian society can be brought a step further.     

From Senegal to Augsburg: Gum Arabic and the Central European Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century

West Africa’s role in the early modern economy is usually reduced to that of a supplier of forced labour for American plantations while other types of trade — especially direct trade between Western Africa and Europe — are often marginalised in scholarship. This article argues that the West African substance gum arabic played a vital role in the large-scale production of printed cottons and linens in Europe — one of the major areas of popular consumption at the time. Its unique qualities and the fact that it was available in large quantities made gum arabic from Senegal and Mauritania indispensable in producing high-quality prints in large numbers for a reasonable price. The article advances this argument by looking at Central instead of Western Europe, in order to illustrate how pervasive this substance was in the eighteenth century. Even regions far removed from the Atlantic — such as the South German city of Augsburg, in today’s Bavaria — needed to find a way to access this Senegambian product in order to produce their popular textiles. The article thus seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Africa’s role in the development of European textile industries and its contribution to consumption patterns by following a specific material from Western Africa to Central Europe — from Senegal to Augsburg.     

‘I Saw a Nightmare . . .’: Violence and the Construction of Memory (Soweto,June 16, 1976)

The protests on June 16, 1976 of black schoolchildren in Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools precipitated one of the most pro‐found challenges to the South African apartheid state. These events were experienced in a context of violent social and political conflict. They were almost immediately drawn into a discourse that discredited and silenced them, manipulating meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence—silences—further violated those who had experienced the events. Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures—and sources—that produced them. Based on oral histories and historical documents, this article discusses the collusion of violence and silence and its consequences. It argues that—while the collusion between violence and silence might appear to disrupt or, worse, destroy the ability of individuals to think historically—the individual historical actor can and does have the will to contest and engage with collective memory and official history.     

The configuration of built space at Pataraya and Wari provincial administration in Nasca

This paper uses access analysis to describe and analyze a system of regulated and hierarchical communication within the small Wari enclosure at the site of Pataraya—located near Nasca, Peru—and interprets this system within the context of Wari imperialism and bureaucratization. The site appears to have served as a frontier way station along a key transportation route, focused on the extraction of coastal products and their transfer via interregional roads to the highlands. The analysis suggests that Pataraya’s builders manipulated spaces and the connections between them to considerable affect. In general, space syntax graphs and calculations reveal a non-distributed building where there are few choices for movement within the space and significant opportunities for control. Orientation patterns also suggest a tension in Pataraya’s architecture between access on the one hand and privacy and hierarchy on the other that may reflect a possible distinction made by Wari architects between overt expressions of political power as opposed to the more bureaucratic, day-to-day workings of political power.     

Doubts about How the Middle Horizon Collapsed (ca. A.D. 1000) and Other Insights from the Looted Cemeteries of the Lower Ica Valley,South Coast of Peru

This paper presents new information from funerary contexts in the lower Ica Valley, on the south coast of Peru, spanning two millennia from the end of the Early Horizon to the Late Intermediate Period. Although severely looted, these sites can still yield valuable information. We discuss their architecture and material culture in the context of radiocarbon dates. Among other findings, these cast new light on the poorly understood transition from the Middle Horizon to the Late Intermediate Period, for which a paucity of archaeological data from ca. a.d. 1000–1250 has long been taken as evidence of an environmentally- or socially-induced demographic collapse. Yet the data we present here suggest that the basins of the lower Ica Valley were likely occupied continuously over this period, and that the echoes of Wari influence here may have lasted longer than previously thought.     

Identifying locals, migrants, and captives in the Wari Heartland: A bioarchaeological and biogeochemical study of human remains from Conchopata, Peru

The site of Conchopata in the central Peruvian Andes was the secondary center in the heartland of the Wari Empire (AD 600–1000), and in this study we examine whether this urban locale was populated by locals, voluntary migrants from distant regions, and/or captives who were forcibly brought to Conchopata. We examine radiogenic strontium isotope ratios from 72 dental enamel and bone samples representing 31 formal burials and 18 human trophy heads to distinguish between locals and non-locals, and we examine skeletal and archaeological data to establish whether non-local persons were voluntary migrants or captives. We also describe a new, straightforward technique in the evaluation of radiogenic strontium isotope ratios to assist in detecting non-locals when large datasets are available.Results show that natal Conchopata inhabitants should exhibit radiogenic strontium isotope ratios that range from ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.70548 to ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.70610. Thus, among the 31 burials, 29 exhibit local values, suggesting that Conchopata was not a cosmopolitan center to which numerous foreigners migrated; rather, it was populated by local peoples, likely the descendants of the preceding Huarpa culture. The two individuals with non-local radiogenic strontium isotope ratios are an infant and a 17–22 years old female. The archaeological context suggests that the female may have been taken captive for subsequent sacrifice, as she was interred in front of the ritual D-shaped structure in which decapitated human heads (trophy heads) and sacrificed camelids were deposited. Among the 18 trophy heads sampled, 14 have non-local values, confirming previous studies of smaller samples that suggested that Wari warriors travelled to other locales and took captives—both adults and children—for subsequent transformation into trophy heads. Additional analyses of bone-tooth pairs from a subsample (12 burials and six trophy heads) shows that the burial group was much more sedentary (homogenous radiogenic strontium isotope ratios in bones and teeth) and the trophy head individuals were much more mobile (heterogenous radiogenic strontium isotope ratios in bones and teeth). Overall, the multiple lines of evidence support the notion that the Wari Empire occasionally used militaristic means, combined with elaborate ritualism, to subjugate other populations, a tactic that may have helped Wari establish and maintain control in particular regions in the Andes.     

Healing is as healing does: Pragmatic resolution of misfortune among the Senufo (Ivory Coast)

Using the example of the representations and practices relative to the resolution of misfortune among the Senufo Fodonon, this article aims to show the non‐autonomy and irrelevance of categories such as ‘therapeutic,’ ‘illness,’ ‘medicine,’ usually taken for granted by anthropology.

These activities and representations refer to — and depend on for their coherence — heterogeneous domains of social organization extrinsic to ‘illness,’ in biomedicine's isolation of this concept. These domains consist of the matrilineage structure, the form of initiation institutions, the logic of secrecy, and the unobservable ‘religious’ entities which are fluctuating and transformable (ancestors, spirits, twins, etc.) amongst which the possible causalities of the misfortune are selected.

Following the stages of the “therapeutic processes,”; the first part describes one of two aspects — the procedures and institutions concerning the resolution of illness — and shows that they form a sub‐set of the local ways of treating the ‘event’ in general.

The second part describes the other aspect: the logic of possible causalities and the modalities of connection with the “therapeutic”; register. Far from being homogeneous, totalizable, mutually informative, these two domains, composite and paradoxical, are actualized and unified in concrete therapeutic procedures whose particular form and content are determined by constraints which are primarily pragmatic, issuing from historical situations peculiar to these individuals and groups.     

Representative Ideas of the Deathwish in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

The extensiveness of Alfonso X’s Libro del saber de astrología created such a challenge that only one of the nine subsequent, variant copies attempted to copy it in its entirety: Vatican Library, Ms. Vat. lat. 8174. None of them, including this one, however, contains all of the original text. It is the intricacy of design of the first treatise, the Libro de las figuras de las estrellas fijas que son en el ochavo cielo, however, that posed the greatest challenge for copyists. The Vatican copy and Ms. 1197 of the Biblioteca Nacional de España approximated the design of text of the constellation to the left with a wheel diagram of the various stars to the right as found in the original. The way that Ms. 9-28-8 5707 of the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia negotiated this arrangement by using two conjugate folios, placing the star wheel diagram across the interior two pages and the text on the first and fourth page, which left a considerable amount of blank space that invited over the years several kinds of writings—tallies, signatures, memorias (a record of transactions), and billet doux (essentially, love messages sent via a go-between). The billet doux form the greatest literary interest given their date, their content, and the name of the male protagonist—Felisardo, which aligns them with Lope de Vega’s work called Novelas a Marcia Leonarda, and in particular the one titled La desdicha por la honra—published in 1624.     

Francis Slade on Political Forms and Their Formation

The task of the article is to introduce the reader to one of the essential teachings of Francis Slade's understanding of political philosophy. After a brief presentation of why Slade examines political philosophy through the lens of form and what the principal political forms are, this article presents the form of premodern political philosophy by explicating what of its fundamental teachings modern political philosophy rejects and denies. The remainder of the work presents the modern form of the political by means of tracing the essential moments of the genesis of this form in Machiavelli's Prince and in Hobbes’ Leviathan. The argument focuses primarily on their revolutionary understanding of the human condition and its need to be transformed, or how man is no longer understood as a political animal and has necessarily become the subject of the state.     

“Special Forces”: A Stereotype of Benjaminite Soldiers in the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles

This article explores one point of contrast between the characterizations of Benjamin-Judah relations in the DtrH and Chronicles. The argument is that the Deuteronomist offers a stereotype of Benjaminite “special forces,” which the Chronicler then co-opts in service of his own agenda. The remarkable aspect of this cooption is that the Chronicler does not retain or adapt any of the Deuteronomistic material that contributes to this Benjaminite stereotype, only the stereotype itself—i.e., the stereotype only manifests itself in the Sondergut material. The article suggests that the Chronicler repurposes the stereotype in service of a conciliatory agenda: the reincorporation of wealthy Benjaminites into the Jerusalem temple’s sphere of influence.

The irony of “Benjaminite” left-handedness is not a new observation; this essay suggests that they should be linked to the motif of “skill with long-distance weapons.” The two motifs are linked in three ways: 1) in practice, they represent a deviation from “regular” hand-to-hand warfare; 2) they overlap within the narratives; and 3) both are specifically linked to Benjaminites—left-handedness by the irony of the name, and long-distance weaponry by the fact that Benjaminites are characterized uniquely among the tribes by that skill (i.e., whenever Benjaminites are noted in a tribal list as having skill with the sling or bow, they are the only tribe that possesses that skill).     

‘The vandals at home’: Antonio Cederna’s denunciation of the devastation of Italian cities in the postwar period

Writing for the influential magazine Il Mondo, Antonio Cederna relentlessly denounced the projects and works that endangered Italy’s historical and landscape heritage in a period – the 1950s and 1960s – characterized by processes of change that were as intense as they were disordered and contradictory. The battles he waged against the danger of Italian cities being tampered with by those whom he called ‘the vandals at home’ had a significant impact on urban development. In addition, his discourse left a deep and enduring trace in Italian journalism, urban planning and historiography. This article focuses on the early period of Cederna’s journalistic activity: it delineates the core features of his denunciation, paying as much attention to its contents as to the form and manner in which it was expressed, and it assesses the outcome and legacy of his press campaigns both on a material and a political-cultural level.     

The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.