Middle‐east,Midwest

Barbara C. Asward, ed. Arabic‐Speaking Communities in American Cities. New York: A joint publication of the Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc., and the Association of Arab‐American University Graduates, Inc., 1974. vii + 191 pp. Appendix.     

The Middle Paleolithic from Mujina Pećina,Dalmatia, Croatia

Abstract

Mujina Pe?ina in Dalmatia, Croatia is the only systematically excavated and well-dated Middle Paleolithic cave site in the eastern Adriatic. Its stratigraphic sequence covers the period between 45 and 39 uncalibrated years ka. Results of sedimentological, lithic, faunal, and paleobotanical analyses of the upper levels (Levels B, C, D1, and D2) show that this was a hunting site only sporadically visited by humans. During these occupation episodes humans processed animal remains (mostly large bovids, cervids, and caprids) and produced tools from locally available raw material. Carnivore use of the cave is also indicated. This work contributes to our understanding of lifestyles and mobility patterns of the Middle Paleolithic inhabitants of this region.     

Beijing Tibet Middle School

~~Beijing Tibet Middle School~~     

Complex Space or Broken Middle? Milbank,Rose, and the Sharia Controversy

Abstract

Remarks by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggesting that British law recognize Islamic law in some cases provoked a public outcry. I reflect on what may have caused the strong reaction to Williams's remarks by situating them between the work of John Milbank and the work of Gillian Rose. What Williams, Milbank, and Rose are struggling to articulate is a "politics of the middle," a political theory that does not privilege the sovereignty of individual or state, and which puts intermediary associations at center stage. A politics of the middle offers the only alternative to political theology, I argue. However, attempts to articulate a politics of the middle have remained cloaked in residual political theology. Critics of secular liberalism, who often content themselves with offering genealogies instead of presenting a constructive alternative, should explore the possibilities held by a politics of the middle, possibilities (and challenges) exposed by the sharia controversy.     

Neandertal Behavior at the Middle Palaeolithic Site of Abric Romaní, Capellades,Spain

Abstract

This paper synthesizes the work carried out since 1983 at the Middle Palaeolithic site of Abric Romaní, Spain, reconstructing Neandertal behavioral and settlement patterns. The sedimentary features of this site give a high resolution of prehistoric occupational events. Large surface excavation (over 300 sq m) has been used to obtain a detailed picture of intrasite settlement patterns. The reconstruction of activities and their spatial and temporal organization is a key issue in the debate concerning the cultural capabilities of Neandertals versus anatomically modern human beings, and our interpretation integrates geoarchaeology, lithic technology, taphonomy, zooarchaeology, and anthropology. In this way, we explain the degree of diversity within a single Neandertal archaeological site, especially regarding lithic assemblage variability, faunal processing activities, and settlement patterns.     

Field survey and excavation of two linear wooden features at Hooper’s Ground,Westhay Heath,Somerset, 1992

Abstract

While much is known of prehistoric exploitation of the Somerset Levels and Moors,¹ extensive peat extraction across the Moors since the early post-medieval period has effectively removed most of the historic peats and consequently much the archaeology of the later periods. It is now believed that peat was continuing to form in the area until the end of the first millennium AD,² and though little is known, medieval and post-medieval features will invariably have cut into these and earlier peats. B. Coles and J. Coles, Sweet Track to Glastonbury (London, 1986). M. Cox, ‘Archaeology in the Somerset Levels and Moors 1992’ in M. Bell (ed.), Severn Estuary Levels Research Committee Annual Report 1992, 63-68.

In 1991, two similar linear brushwood features were noted, during routine archaeological monitoring of areas subject to peat extraction, in an area known as ‘Hooper’s Ground’ between the villages of Westhay and Burtle, some three miles west of Glastonbury. Revealed as a consequence of peat extraction, a short programme of survey and excavation undertaken in 1992 demonstrated that they were contemporary structures dating from around 1700. Their function is presently unknown, although it is considered that they may reflect land restoration for agricultural use post-dating earlier efforts at peat extraction.     

Middle Class Urbanism: The Socio-Spatial Transformation of Tehran, 1921–41

Most of the available literature on Tehran between the two world wars deals with the morphological transformation of the city and the role of the Pahlavi state in accomplishing massive urban projects. In contrast, this article focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the sociality and spatiality of the city. It demonstrates how the consolidation of the discourse of modernity resulted in the development of social and political desires for the production of new forms of social life and spaces. The article argues that the formation of the modern middle class and its alignment with the Pahlavi state’s reform projects contributed to a twofold process: first, the decline of the traditional forms of social life and spaces and, second, the production and prevalence of alternative forms. This process resulted in the establishment of social dichotomies with vast spatial manifestations and polarized the city both socially and spatially.     

Common Ground,Multiple Claims: Representing and Constructing Singapore’s “Heartland”

This article examines the various meanings of “heartland” and “heartlander” in Singapore that emerged as the city-state embarked on its transformation into a global city in the 1990s. It discusses the political and ideological nature of these terms, including the way the state has tended to deploy them and the ways they are used in public discourse. The terms’ usage serves as a measure of the state’s not unproblematic attempts to define its citizenry in order to reinscribe its legitimacy. The deployment of the terms by non-state actors and individuals, however, indicates greater civic involvement in national self-identification, which complicates the official state version. The article focuses on two significant Singapore texts that contribute to the cultural imaginary of the heartland and the heartlander – the novel Heartland by Daren Shiau and the film Eating Air by Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng. In implicit opposition to the state view, these creative works seek to convey a sense of the local and of national authenticity through their creative representation of the Singapore heartland and what it means to be a heartlander, disclosing in the process various social tensions, silences and cultural blind spots.     

The Muddle in the Middle Pleistocene: The Lower–Middle Paleolithic Transition from the Levantine Perspective

The terms Lower Palaeolithic and Middle Palaeolithic represent research constructs within which cultural evolution and prehistoric hominin behaviours can be studied, with the transition usually understood as marking a watershed in our evolution: an adaptation with a million-year record of success that gives way to something new. The interpretation of the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian technocomplex is usually understood as a period of cultural stasis that extends over much of Africa and Eurasia, principally associated with Homo erectus. Those innovations that can be observed occur widely separated from one another in space and time. Yet a closer and more detailed examination of the Middle Pleistocene records from East Africa, southern Africa, Europe and the Levant reveals significant variation in cultural repertoires. A kind of paradox emerges, in which an Old World Lower Palaeolithic, apparently lacking an overall dynamic of distinctive and directed change in terms of cumulative variation over time, nevertheless culminates in a transition which sees the universal appearance of the Middle Palaeolithic. The two main hypotheses that have been advanced to explain the global transition, which happens essentially synchronously, appear mutually exclusive and contradictory. One view is that altered climatic-environmental constraints enabled and encouraged an ‘Out-of-Africa’ dispersal (or dispersals) of a new type of genus Homo. This cultural replacement model has been challenged more recently by the alternative hypothesis of accumulating but unrelated and temporally non-linked regional, and in fact potentially autochthonous, processes. The Levant, by virtue of its position bridging Africa and Eurasia (thus being the region into which any out-of-Africa groups would have had first to disperse into), must be seen as a critical region for assessing the relative merits of these competing hypotheses. This paper deals with the Lower–Middle Paleolithic boundary in the Levant within a long temporal perspective. The Middle Pleistocene record in the Levant enables us to examine the amplitude of variation within each techno-complex, as well as to question whether there are diachronic changes in the amplitude of techno-typological variations as well as changes in the manner by which they appear in the record. The results carry significant implications for understandings of demographic and societal processes during the Lower–Middle Paleolithic transition in the Levant.     

Breaking Ground: Hoes in Precolonial South Africa—Typology,Medium of Exchange and Symbolic Value

In sub-Saharan Africa, every cultivator of the soil in a precolonial, agriculturist society needed a digging implement, and this normally took the form of a hoe with an iron blade hafted on a wooden handle. This paper marks the first attempt to document the surprising variety of hoe blade styles and map their regional distributions within South Africa. While the primary function of the hoe—this key item of material culture in African farming communities—was to cultivate the soil, the large quantity of metal and therefore labour required to make a hoe blade accorded it great value in the years before European industrial copies flooded the market. The hoe was an important item in trade networks, in marriage transactions and in a number of symbolic contexts associated with individual and collective ancestry. This biographical approach to hoe exchange, use and recycling reveals the complex significance of this tool in the lives of precolonial farmers. In particular, we are able to show that hoes could in some circumstances be accorded the same values as cattle in marriage exchange.     

A new species of Kalligramma Walther, 1904 (Insecta,Neuroptera, Kalligrammatidae) from the Middle–Upper Jurassic of Daohugou,Inner Mongolia,China

Liu, Q., Khramov, A.V. & Zhang, H.C., 21.4.2015. A new species of Kalligramma Walther, 1904 Walther, J., 1904. Die Fauna der Solnhofener Plattenkalke bionomisch betrachtet. Denkschriften der Medizinisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft zu Jena 11, 133–214. [Google Scholar] (Insecta, Neuroptera, Kalligrammatidae) from the Middle–Upper Jurassic of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, China. Alcheringa 39, XXX–XXX. ISSN 0311-5518.

A new species of Kalligramma Walther, 1904 Walther, J., 1904. Die Fauna der Solnhofener Plattenkalke bionomisch betrachtet. Denkschriften der Medizinisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft zu Jena 11, 133–214. [Google Scholar] (Insecta, Neuroptera, Kalligrammatidae) is described as Kalligramma delicatum based on a nearly complete forewing from the Middle–Upper Jurassic of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, China. The new species is characterized by the narrow costal space with sinuous costal veinlets, Rs with eight primary branches, MP with five pectinate branches and 1A forked beyond its mid-length. The forewing of Kalligramma can be distinguished from the hind wing by its ovate rather than subtriangular shape, significantly wider costal space and more numerous crossveins between costal veinlets. The new species is interpreted to represent a forewing based mainly on its shape.

Qing Liu [qingliu1029@yeah.net] and Haichun Zhang [hczhang@nigpas.ac.cn], State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, PR China; Aleksandr V. Khramov [a-hramov@yandex.ru], Borissiak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 117997, Russia. Received 10.12.2014; revised 11.2.2015; accepted 17.2.2015.     

Variability in the Middle Stone Age Lithic Sequence, 115,000–60,000 Years Ago at Klasies River,South Africa

Stratified samples of artefacts from the Late Pleistocene deposit at the Klasies River main site, covering some 60,000 years, have been studied. Variability in the artefact sequence has been documented in the technologies of artefact production in addition to conventional typological analysis. Particular emphasis has been given to the recognition of the reduction sequences used in producing the pre-formed blanks that are a feature of the Middle Stone Age. The results show that the variability is due to changes between the dominant blade and or point technological conventions (traditions) through time. Technological study supports and gives meaning to the recognition of distinct sub-stages, MSA I (Klasies River), MSA II (Mossel Bay), Howiesons Poort and a post-Howiesons Poort at main site. These sub-stages are more than convenient, site-specific, organizational entities—they delineate separate technological conventions that may have relevance on a sub-continental scale.