Resisting Traditions: Ceramics, Identity, and Consumer Choice in the Outer Hebrides from 1800 to the Present

On a number of levels, peripheral status has been imposed on the Outer Hebrides (Scotland) since the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745. Drawing on a series of interviews with Hebridean families, this paper explores the changing meanings of ceramics imported into the islands from the early nineteenth century and displayed on wooden dressers. It is argued that in renegotiating their identity in the face of a series of externally generated economic changes, rural communities in the Hebrides have acted as thoughtful consumers, appropriating mainland material culture to their own ends. Throughout this process, imports have behaved ambiguously. This ambiguity is crucial to our understanding of the relationship—here characterized not as resistance but as resistant adaptation—between the Hebrides and the mainland.     

On the Origins of Pottery

Renewed research interest in the origins of pottery has illuminated an array of possible precipitating causes and environmental contexts in which pottery began to be made and used. This article is an attempt at synthesizing some of these data in hopes of stimulating further research into this intriguing topic. Following a review of theories on the origins of pottery, discussion proceeds to a survey of geographic and cultural contexts of low-fired or unfired pottery, highlighting the role(s) of pottery among contemporary hunter-gatherers and summarizing data pertaining to varied uses of pottery containers. It is argued that objects of unfired and low-fired clay were created as part of early prestige technologies of material representations beginning in the Upper Paleolithic and are part of an early software horizon. Clay began to be more widely manipulated by nonsedentary, complex hunter-gatherers in the very Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in areas of resource abundance, especially in tropical/subtropical coastal/riverine zones, as part of more general processes of resource and social intensification (such as competitive feasting or communal ritual). Knowledge of making and using pottery containers spread widely as prestige technology and as practical technology, the kind and timing of its adoption or reinvention varying from location to location depending on specific needs and circumstances.     

Change and Inertia on the Frontier: Archaeology at the Paraje de San Diego, Camino Real, in Southern New Mexico

Archaeological testing was conducted at the Paraje de San Diego, a late sixteenth- through nineteenth-century camp site on the Camino Real 30 mi north of Las Cruces. The site is well preserved, though the site structure is complex, reflecting repeated, short-term occupation. The archaeological record (especially the many, diverse ceramics to be recovered) reflects certain changing conditions in southern New Mexico and elsewhere over time. However, the record also indicates a pervasive resistance to development. This resistance, which might be a widespread frontier phenomenon, is called structural interia.     

A History of Normative Theory in Americanist Archaeology

Efforts in the 1960s to demonstrate the value of the new archaeology involved showing that the competing culture-history paradigm was inferior. One allegedly weak plank in that paradigm had to do with how culture historians viewed culture—as a set of ideas transmitted in the form of ideal norms or mental templates. Lewis Binford referred to this view as normative theory. In archaeology that view was manifest in the equation of artifact types with prehistoric norms—an equation that, according to Binford, the culture historians had made so that they could track the flow of ideas through time and thus write culture history. Culture historians regularly subscribed to cultural transmission as the theoretical backdrop for their artifact-based chronometers such as seriation and the direct historical approach, but with few exceptions they perceived only a weak relationship between norms and artifact types. It was not until 1960, in a paper by James Gifford, that what Binford labeled as normative theory appeared in anything approaching a complete form. Ironically, the first applications of normative theory were products of the new archaeologists, not the culture historians.     

Les parties étiologiques de l'Ardvīsūr Bānūg Yašt et les noms de la grande déesse iranienne

In this paper, we show that the Yats wehave are not authentic in so far as that theyare the fruit of the arbitrary mixture of thethree kinds of the original Yats: theliturgical one, the legal one and theetiological one. In a lot of our Yats, moreweight is given to the liturgical version (withyazamaide), but, in the bnYat, the legal one (with yazaa)plays the main role. By considering alltogether the etiological fragments thebn Yat contains, it is possible toenlarge upon what we knew already of what mayhave constituted the etiological myth of thesacrifice offered to a deity.Incidentally, all the different names thegreat Iranian goddess receives, ap-, areduu-,sr- and anhit-, are explained: `water, soft,opulent, unaffected'.     

Protrusion, Bioturbation, and Settlement Detection during Surface Survey: The Lowland Maya Case

In upland settings in humid and semihumid temperate and tropical environments, bioturbation is a major factor in the burial of modest architectural remains, which are abundant components of the settlement systems of complex societies. Surface survey, favored by archaeologists of complex societies as a settlement detection method, seldom is appropriate for discovering architectural remains buried through bioturbation. Where the focus of analysis includes settlement represented by architectural remains, surface survey is appropriate only where all or a representative sample of all types of architectural remains are protrusive. Protrusion describes a relationship (affected by climate, environment, topography, and cultural variables) between the height of a ruined building and the depth of the biomantle, which is the zone of bioturbation. To enable archaeologists to assess the appropriateness of settlement detection procedures, including surface survey, I propose a scheme that classifies architectural remains in terms of their protrusion, building height, and visibility characteristics. The scheme can be employed to determine if and why architectural remains are protrusive in particular study areas. To demonstrate its analytical utility, I apply the scheme and the model of building burial through bioturbation that underlies it to the problem of Maya invisible settlement. I conclude that in the Maya lowlands of Mesoamerica, building remains buried through bioturbation are a more abundant settlement category than many archaeologists have supposed.     

Low-Fired Earthenwares in the African Diaspora: Problems and Prospects

Local earthenware associated with enslaved African populations in the Americas, variously called Colono-Ware, Afro-Caribbean Ware. Yabbas, and Criollo ware, has received considerable attention from researchers. What unifies this disparate group of ceramics is not method of manufacture, design and decoration, or even form and function but the association or potential association with African diaspora populations. The ceramics incorporate some skills and techniques possibly brought by African potters to the Americas, as well as skills reflecting European and Native American traditions, and local adaptations in form, function, and manufacture. Analogies linking African ceramic traditions to American industries have at times been employed uncritically and have relied on generalized characteristics to infer overly specific meanings. With particular reference to low-fired earthenwares from Jamaica, this paper examines the historical and cultural context of these ceramics and the methodological and theoretical problems faced in their interpretation.     

The prehistory of Cyprus: Problems and prospects

The archaeological record of prehistoric Cyprus is rich, diverse, well-published, and frequently enigmatic. Regarded by many as a bridge between western Asia and the Aegean, Cyprus and its past are frequently seen from scholarly perspectives prevalent in one of those two cultural areas. Its material culture, however, differs radically from that of either area. Apart from the early colonization episodes on the island (perhaps three during the pre-Neolithic and Neolithic), evidence of foreign contact remains limited until the Bronze Age (post-2500 B. C.). This study seeks to present the prehistory of Cyprus from an indigenous perspective, and to examine a series of archaeological problems that foreground Cyprus within its eastern Mediterranean context. The study begins with an overview of time, place, and the nature of fieldwork on the island, continues with a presentation and discussion of several significant issues in Cypriot prehistory (e.g., insularity, colonization, subsistence, regionalism, interaction, social complexity, economic diversity), and concludes with a brief discussion of prospects for the archaeology of Cyprus up to and beyond 2000.     

Stirrings at the Periphery: History, Archaeology, and the Study of Dian

Early Chinese texts speak of the Han state conquering the kingdom of Dian in southwest China in 109 B.C. The limited historical record is complemented by archaeolgical discoveries pointing to the presence in Yunnan province of a complex Bronze Age society whose association with the historical Dian has been generally accepted. Historiographic and nonprocessual in nature, archaeology in Yunnan has yet to generate the data needed for a deeper understanding of Dian social structure and change. Whatever its shortcomings, however, Dian archaeology plays a consistent and important role within a system of thought which gives preeminence to the historical record.     

Keeping Up Appearances: Dress, Architecture, Furniture, and Status at French Azilum

Situated in northern Pennsylvania, French Azilum was a late eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century community of elite French refugees escaping the French Revolution. Inhabitants of the isolated community expressed the need to reconstitute themselves as the privileged class of the ancien régime by attempting to dress, build their homes, and furnish them in a certain fashion to distinguish themselves as elites and to reestablish the social hierarchy of the ancien régime in a frontier outpost. In this paper, we explore how the settlers at French Azilum used architecture, furnishings, and dress in an attempt to keep up appearances.     

Philosophy of archaeology: Current issues

Recent literature reflects continuing concern with problems such as explanation, skepticism, and objective knowledge. Some authors urge archaeologists to abandon positivism in favor of new philosophical approaches, such as feminism, Marxism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Ethical issues have received increased attention as archaeologists have become involved in determining public policy with regard to disposition of artifacts and uncovering of human burials.     

Emulation and Empowerment: Material, Social, and Economic Dynamics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Virginia

The influence of emulative behavior on the material and socioeconomic transformations of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglo-American world is widely debated. A study of historical archaeological sites and probate inventories in Virginia implicates emulation as one ethic operative in rural communities but also identifies a second dynamic: a tendency for many planters of divergent means to act in step with one another, responding in similar ways to new circumstances. Here termed a cultural accord, this affinity enabled some individuals who occupied middling social positions to use emulation advantageously in ways that less privileged members of the population could not.     

Low-Level Food Production

Societies with low-level food production economies occupy the vast and diverse middle ground between hunting–fishing–foraging and agriculture. Efforts by Ford, Harris, Rindos, Zvelebil, and others to characterize this in-between territory are discussed, and a new conceptual framework is proposed. Domestication, the central landmark of this middle ground, is situated well away from the boundaries with hunting–gathering and agriculture, and separates low-level food production economies into two broad categories. Key issues and questions concerning societies with low-level food production, both with and without domesticates, are discussed. Hunter–gatherer and agriculture boundary zones on either side of the middle ground are considered, as are the developmental pathways that traverse them.     

Considérations sur une technique du Rasāyana āyurvédique

Summary Rejuvenation techniques, inspired by a common classical tradition, are described in Caraka (Cikits I, 1–4) and in Suruta (Cikits XXVII–XXX), followed up by the Nvantaka (Bower Ms., sl.188–200) and by the Astngahrdayasamhit (Uttara XXXIX). Valuable mediaeval tk comment on the details of these techniques and indeed interesting modern examples of a treatment closely following the ancient medical texts are known.[Contrary to the cure taking place in the open air and in the sun (vttapika), the practice of rejuvenation characterized by the ku is applied indoors in premises called kut or gra, built according to definite rules (site, architecture, etc.). The patient enters at a time astrologically auspicious, after performing certain rites and preparing his mind for a treatment which is as perilous as it is laborious.The rites of the operation and the unusual type of abode, difficult to interpret, permit, however, an examination of the textual data in a different light from that of the scholiasts themselves, who remain very guarded, and even obscure, on important points of detail. Here one must presume an initiation ceremony whose method was used for the legendary sages as well as patients of today. The technique which is called retreat in a hut implies the idea of regressus ad uterum. Rejuvenation which constitutes, from the biological point of view, a regeneration of the body (kyakalpa) must be considered on the symbolical plane as a new birth: the patient is assimilated to the embryo, and to the uterus correspond both the hut described in the classical yurvedic treatises and the dark enclosed premises recommended by the modern kavirj.

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Texte intégral dont fut tirée la communication présentée au séminaire Médecine et pharmacopée en Asie, organisé dans le cadre du XXIX^e Congrès international des orientalistes, qui a eu lieu à Paris, du 16 au 22 juillet 1973. Voir le texte abrégé dans XXIX ^e Congrès international des orientalistes. Résumés des communications [IV]: Section 11, Colloques, Séminaires, [Nogent s/Marne 1973 ], pp. 46–47.     

GrenzWerte—55. Deutscher Geographentag in Trier

Unter dem Motto GrenzWerte wird der 55. Deutsche Geographentag vom 1. bis 8. Oktober 2005 in Trier stattfinden. Inmitten der Großregion SaarLorLux/Rheinland-Pfalz/Wallonien, die selbst von Grenzen unterschiedlichster Art durchzogen und umgeben ist, werden die Öffnung Europas nach Osten und weitere interessante Grenzaspekte Deutschlands thematisiert. Vielerorts wird diskutiert über Grenzen, die erreicht sind, beispielsweise im Verkehrswesen, beim Umweltschutz oder in Nachhaltigkeitsfragen. Das Motto GrenzWerte hat diesen Trend aufgegriffen und ließ neben der räumlichen auch eine inhaltliche Grenzdimension entstehen. Darüber, welche Anknüpfungspunkte sich daraus für die Angewandte Geographie ergeben, sprach der stellvertretende Vorsitzende des DVAG, DIPL.-GEOGR. KAI PARTALE , mit dem Vorsitzenden des Ortsausschusses für den Geographentag in Trier und Professor für Angewandte Geographie und Raumentwicklung an der Universität Trier, PROF. DR. HEINER MONHEIM.     

Über den ursprung der voneinander abweichenden Strukturen der Munda- und Khmer-Nikobar-Sprachen

Vorbemerkung Da die Bezeichnung Mon-Khmer zweideutig ist - sie umfasst nämlich einmal nur die Mon-Khmer-Sprachen im engeren Sinne, also Mon, Khmer, Bahnar, Mnong usw., zum anderen aber diese Sprachen und die verwandten Gruppen Khasi, Nikobar, Palaung-Wa, Semang, Sakai und Jakud - sei hier vorgeschlagen, den Terminus Mon-Khmer nur noch im engeren Sinne zu verwenden und ihn im weiteren Sinne gegen die Bezeichnung Khmer-Nikobar einzutauschen, da dadurch Irrtümer vermieden und ausserdem die zu bezeichnenden Sprachgruppen besser charakterisiert werden als durch die zu einer Gruppe gehörenden Sprachen Mon und Khmer. Die gesamte Ostobergruppe der austroasiatischen Sprachen wird durch die beiden charakteristischen und wichtigen Sprachen, die alte Literatursprache Khmer und die besonders altertümliche Nikobar-Gruppe, wohl am besten repräsentiert. Die Bezeichnung Mon-Annam-Sprachen ist wegen des Übergangscharakters des Vietnamesischen abzulehnen. Die Khmer-Nikobar-Sprachen stehen also den Mundasprachen in Vorderindien gegenüber.     

Gardens, Legitimation, and Resistance

Eighteenth-century garden design has been interpreted in terms of legitimation, a tool with which elites attempted to maintain power and authority over marginalized groups. But most acts of aesthetic landscaping, it can be argued, were primarily directed not towards the poor but to rival groups within the propertied. Similarly, any opposition to the dominant ideology expressed in the design of landscape was mainly mounted by disaffected groups within the ranks of the franchised. In so far as the poor in this period inscribed their mark upon the land, it was in acts of vandalism or reappropriation which have left little direct trace in the archaeological record.     

The Middle Paleolithic of the East Mediterranean Levant

This paper reviews recent developments in geochronology, archaeology, and behavioral interpretations of the Middle Paleolithic Period (ca. 47–250 Kyr) in the East Mediterranean Levant. Neandertals and early modern humans both occupied the Levant during this period. Both these hominids are associated with the Levantine Mousterian stone tool industry and similar sets of faunal remains. The Levant has long been seen as preserving evidence for the origin of modern humans out of Neandertal ancestors. Recent radiometric dates for Levantine Middle Paleolithic contexts challenge this hypothesis. Instead, they suggest the evolutionary relationships between these hominids were far more complicated. Proposed models for Neandertal and early modern human coevolutionary relationships are examined. Intense competition between Neandertals and early modern humans for a narrow human niche may be the context out of which the Upper Paleolithic behavioral revolution arose.     

Archaeology, History, and Material Culture: Grounding Abstractions and Other Imponderables

United States national programs for historic preservation have a great influence on public memory and commemoration. Decisions about what may be listed in the National Register of Historic Places or designated a National Historic Landmark may commemorate or silence parts of the past. Historians invoke the concept of integrity as a gatekeeper to control access to these lists. Archaeologists have the opportunity to contest some of the imposed silences and make these lists more inclusive of underrepresented groups.