The Concepts of imitatio and translatio: Perceptions of a Viking‐Age Past

The author presents the results of excavations at Mare Church, North Tr?ndelag. Medieval sources indicate that Mære was the religious centre for Inner Tr?ndelag in pre‐Christian times. It was also the place where the first church (shire church) in Sparbyggjafylke was erected. At Mære if anywhere, therefore, it should be possible to test archaeologically the theory about cult continuity from pagan to Christian times.

Under the present church, which dates from the end of the twelfth century, the remains of an early wooden church surrounded by a churchyard were found, together with vestiges of at least two buildings from pre‐Christian times. On the evidence of loose finds, the oldest of these can be dated to the Migration Period (c. A.D. 500). A series of gold plaquettes were found associated with the later of the two buildings. This find is interpreted by the author as indicating that the building may have been a pagan cult building.     

Comments on Jörn Staecker: The Concepts of imitatio and translatio: Perceptions of a Viking‐Age Past.

Three groups of motifs – cervids, boats and human figures – dominate North European hunter‐gatherer rock art. The scarcity of explicit narrative scenes makes the interpretation of this art a very difficult task, but important clues can be found in a group of ‘ambiguous’ images, where the said three categories are combined in ‘unrealistic’ ways. In this paper, the prospect of an ethnographically informed approach to their interpretation is explored, using as a case study the rock painting of Pyhänpää (Central Finland) and ethnographic material drawn chiefly from Saami religion and traditional Finnish epic poetry. It is argued that the ambiguous imagery of rock art has a clear counterpart in the pre‐Christian religious tradition, where cervids and boats have a similarly ambiguous nature. The painting, which shows an elk, a boat and a human figure merged together, is interpreted as representing the shamanic flight and the sense of co‐essence between the shaman and his spirit helper beings. The making of the painting is associated with the belief that such beings lived inside specific rock cliffs and that their power could be obtained through visits to rock art sites.     

‘Two‐party preferred’: The analysis of voting figures under preferential voting

Since the Commonwealth Electoral Commission is issuing full distribution of the preferences of votes for minor candidates at elections for the House of Representatives, it is now possible to assess the use of these and compare them with previous estimates. This paper therefore looks at the concept of the ‘two‐party preferred vote’ in the light of such publication and the introduction of optional preferential voting in New South Wales.     

Knowledge and professional identity in engineering: code‐switching and the metrics of progress

When nations redefine their priorities and re‐plot their directions of travel, engineers get worried about the contents of their knowledge. The cultural and historical specificity of their responses illustrates the extent to which the questions of what counts as engineering knowledge and what counts as an engineer are linked tightly together, and also suggests that both may be tied to local images of the nation. After summarizing recent historical work comparing national patterns in engineering knowledge and engineers' work, this essay outlines how a focus on professional identity may provide a way of accounting for national and transnational influences on engineers while avoiding the specter of determinism. Offering brief case studies drawn from France, the UK, Germany and the USA, the authors describe engineers as ‘responding’ to codes of meaning that live at different scales, including contrasting metrics of progress and images of private industry. The paper is concluded with a brief assessment of some further implications of the analysis of professional identity for work in engineering studies.