The prehistory of the Austronesian-speaking peoples: A view from language

Prior to the European colonial expansions of the past several centuries the Austronesian (AN) language family had the greatest geographical extent of any on earth, including in its territory areas that had never previously been settled. Although predominantly distributed in a tropical or subtropical environment, AN-speaking peoples exhibit a wide range of physical types, material cultures, and types of social and political organization. This paper addresses ways in which linguistic comparison can contribute toward answering such questions as the following: Where was the AN homeland? What was the nature of early AN material culture, social and political organization? What can we infer about early AN pathology? How did early AN speakers view the spirit world? It concludes with a discussion of culture loss, many examples of which can be inferred both from the Pacific and from insular Southeast Asia.     

Household ceramic diversity in the late prehistory of the Appalachian Summit

ABSTRACT

Pottery from the Ward site village (31WT22; ca. A.D. 1100) in mountainous northwestern North Carolina exhibits remarkable synchronic diversity that evokes speculations about prehistoric social institutions. Large fragments of ceramic jars recovered from the base of a storage pit at a nearby single house site appear to represent the wares of one household dating to approximately A.D. 1350. Like the Ward site pottery, diverse tempering materials and surface treatments at this site defy existing typologies and show that individual artisans availed themselves of a palette of technological and stylistic choices, some of which were introduced through interaction with neighboring Mississippian and Woodland groups, especially those lying to the south and east.     

Language diversity,language policy and the sovereign state

An analysis of Mark Bevir's account of the role of language and tradition on the one hand, and the individual on the other in the generation of ideas, and proposal of an alternative account It endorses Bevir's project of finding a middle way between individualism and collectivism, but finds that Bevir exaggerates the role of the individual. It argues that human selves always remains dependent on language even to articulate their own intentions to themselves. Whilst they have a capacity to create new linguistic expressions, this is always limited to the exploration of possibilities already latent in the language. However, no one is a mere recipient and conduit of a given language: everyone hands it on transformed by their unique appropriation of it. The antifoundationalist analyses of Wittgenstein, Newman Collingwood, and Neurath are invoked to argue that this state of affairs also applies to the individual's relation to the beliefs and values inherited traditionally: there is no possibility of a wholesale rejection of what is received; no individual can reject all received traditions, and erect an entire belief structure from scratch, but can only modify it on a piecemeal basis, so that received tradition always remains constitutive of the individual mind. It is also argued that human self-consciousness is always socially formed, and no person ever completely integrated, and stabilized. No one is ever therefore in a state of complete self-possession. One therefore must reject Bevir's claim that the historian of ideas must initially presume that individuals are sincere, conscious and rational in their expressed beliefs: ‘sincere’ self-consciousness is an ideal never fully achieved, and beliefs as to what constitutes ‘rationality’ are so varied that specific presumptions cannot be made.     

Biblical anthropology and the idea of human prehistory in late antiquity

Late Antiquity is an important period in the history of anthropology because it marks a divide between the naturalistic and rationalistic anthropological ideas of Greco-Roman philosophers and the "biblical anthropology" that was formulated by Medieval Christian writers. The biblical anthropology that emerged in Late Antiquity addressed the question of the origin of the first humans, our relationship to the natural world, and the original state of mankind. While early Christian philosophers based much of this biblical anthropology on the Genesis account of early human history, they also utilized a great deal of Greco-Roman philosophy in order to expound a vision of human prehistory that profoundly influenced anthropological thought well into the modern era.     

Dietary change in Fijian prehistory: isotopic analyses of human and animal skeletal material

We examine evidence for prehistoric diet in the Fiji Islands through the analysis of stable isotope ratios (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) for 26 samples of human and animal bones from various archaeological sites, time periods, and local environments. The oldest individuals in this study, dating to about 2700 BP and living on the small island of Waya, consumed a predominantly marine-based diet. Subsequent populations on this island showed reduced consumption of marine resources, with greater reliance on terrestrial ones, throughout the cultural sequence. In contrast, populations of humans and pigs living inland on Viti Levu, the largest island, relied on terrestrial resources since at least 1500 BP. Thus, our results suggest that human and pig diets throughout Fijian prehistory relied variably on marine or terrestrial resources, and this distinction is largely a product of geography. This finding and our analyses provide a model for understanding ancient diets in Remote Oceania.     

Reset redux: possible evolutionary pathways towards the transformation of tourism in a COVID-19 world

Abstract

With international arrivals surpassing 1.5 billion for the first time in 2019 the long-term evolution of tourism demonstrates prolific path dependence with a decade of growth since the global financial crisis. This latest period of unfettered international tourism development has come to an abrupt end as the impact of COVID-19 has brought the sector to a near standstill. As the world grapples with the realities of the global pandemic there is an opportunity to rethink exactly what tourism will look like for the decades ahead. Key concepts in evolutionary economic geography, especially path dependence/creation and institutional inertia/innovation, show variations in pathways for travel and tourism in a COVID-19 world. A path that leads to transformation in tourism can be realized if sufficient institutional innovation occurs on both the demand and supply side of tourism that can foster the emergence of new paths. COVID-19 presents a once in a generation opportunity where the institutional pump is primed for transformation. Whether that leads to a radical transformation of the tourism sector remains to be seen, but the imprint it will leave on both the demand and supply of tourism will have long-term, incremental impacts for years to come and ultimately move us closer towards the transformation of tourism.     

Bridging prehistory and history in the archaeology of cities

Abstract

Archaeology is ideally suited for examining the deep roots of urbanism, its materialization and physicality, and the commonalities and variability in urban experiences cross-culturally and temporally. We propose that the significant advances archaeologists have made in situating the discipline within broader urban studies could be furthered through increased dialog between scholars working on urbanism during prehistoric and historical periods, as a means of bridging concerns in the study of the past and present. We review some major themes in urban studies by presenting archaeological cases from two areas of the Americas: central Mexico and Atlantic North America. Our cases span premodern and early modern periods, and three of the four covered in greatest depth live on as cities of today. Comparison of the cases highlights the complementarity of their primary datasets: the long developmental trajectories and relatively intact urban plans offered by many prehistoric cities, and the rich documentary sources offered by historic cities.     

Nomads of the Desert West: A shifting continuum in prehistory

The Desert West, a term first employed by Jesse D. Jennings to describe the geographic region where Desert culture evolved, is used to frame a discussion of adaptive diversity that focuses on the time period 1250 to 750 B.P. Variable pathways into and out of sedentism are explored and subsistence intensification, exchange, ideology, and warfare are discussed in relation to an adaptive mosaic of nomads and agriculturalists. I argue that a conjoint prehistory of the Great Basin and the Southwest is both possible and desirable and is needed to illuminate general social processes and major episodes of culture change affecting groups in the Desert West.     

Beware of false prophets: biology, human nature and the future of International Relations theory

The disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) has been marked by confrontation between those who believe that the study of politics can and should be modelled on the natural sciences, a position defended most forcibly in the United States, and those who have dissented, viewing this ambition as methodologically unjustified and ethically undesirable. But the scientific template against which to judge such claims is constantly shifting. In this article it is suggested that mainstream IR theorists are likely to turn increasingly to the biological sciences for inspiration and intellectual legitimacy. Some of the possibilities and problems involved in this move are explored, focusing in particular on the prominent role played by evolutionary psychology in the social sciences. A variety of reasons are offered, political and theoretical, as to why IR scholars should be extremely wary of looking to the biological sciences to provide universalistic accounts of human behavioural patterns.     

Training,education, management and prehistory in the Mediterranean: Work in progress on a European Union research project

Abstract

This paper presents the work in progress of TEMPER (Training, Education, Management and Prehistory in the Mediterranean), a research project conducted by a consortium of seven partner institutions in the UK, Greece, Malta, Israel, and Turkey. TEMPER is funded by the European Union, as part of their Euromed Heritage II programme [1] and is the only project funded by the programme focusing on our prehistoric cultural heritage. The aim of TEMPER is to make the prehistory of the Mediterranean more accessible. This will be achieved through the development of educational programmes at pilot sites around the Mediterranean, the development of management plans for pilot sites, the delivery of a related training programme and dissemination of the project results. The project runs from January 2002 to June 2004.     

Revolutionary and evolutionary change in human geography: a personal assessment

Many perspectives new to Anglo-Saxon human geography have been introduced into the discipline over the last twenty years. These are reviewed in terms of the impacts upon mainstream human geography of the quantitative/spatial organisation /theoretical revolutions, and the reactions against these in turn by advocates of the behavioural, liberal/relevance, Marxist and post-positivist perspectives. The review ends with a brief consideration of some contemporary approaches within human geography, particularly those seeking an understanding of the processes underpinning the relationships between agency and structure. By way of conclusion a personal assessment is given of the current standing of the discipline and the nature of the changes required of it in the 1980s.     

Geography and prehistory,a survey of the literature with a select bibliography

This brief review explores the relationship between geography and prehistory. Various major themes have characterized this relationship: the study of distributions and locations; the exploration of environmental influences and ecosystems; the reconstruction of past environments; the establishment of the rôle of man as an agent of ecological change; and the discernment of the development of the landscape. The links between these two disciplines, which have been provided by these common research themes, have recently been strengthened by the adoption of a new methodology.     

Crossing the border: contrasting styles of rock art in the prehistory of north-west Iberia

Rock art can be regarded as a specialised form of material culture, and at the regional scale it may have exhibited as much diversity as monuments and portable artefacts. Its character might also have changed in relation to different practices and different ways of perceiving and using the landscape. Such contrasts can be identified in the prehistoric rock art found on either side of the modern border between Portugal and Spain and may be related to much broader currents in Iberian archaeology, extending from the Atlantic to the West Mediterranean.     

Putting the border in place: customs regulation in the making of the Irish border, 1921–1945

This paper explores the historical geography of the making of the Irish border through a focus on the practices of customs regulation through which it was constituted and on the impeded, permitted and concealed mobilities of people and objects across the customs boundary after 1923. It traces how legislative change at the level of the state – in this case the governments of the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom – was translated into the routine practices of those trying to regulate the movement of people and objects across the customs boundary, and considers the responses of those subject to, and regularly subverting, these efforts. Drawing on recent interests in the prosaic practices of the state, and in materiality and mobility more widely, our focus is both on the work of political power at the border through the practices, texts, tools and techniques of customs regulation, and on the experience and effects of customs control for those living near the newly defined line between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State.     

The geochemical evolution of very dilute CO2‐rich water in Chungcheong Province,Korea: processes and pathways

A geochemical study was carried out on the CO₂‐rich water occurring in granite areas of Chungcheong Province, Korea. In this area, very dilute and acidic CO₂‐rich waters [62–242 mg l^?1 in total dissolved solid (TDS), 4.0–5.3 in pH; group I) occur together with normal CO₂‐rich waters (317–988 mg l^?1 in TDS, 5.5–6.0 in pH; group II). The concentration levels and ages of group I water are similar to those of recently recharged and low‐mineralized groundwater (group III). Calculation of reaction pathways suggests that group I waters are produced by direct influx of CO₂ gas into group III type waters. When the groundwater is injected with CO₂, it develops the capacity to accept dissolved solids and it can evolve into water with very high solute concentrations. Whether the water is open or closed to the CO₂ gases becomes less important in controlling the reaction pathway of the CO₂‐rich groundwater when the initial pco ₂ is high. Our data show that most of the solutes are dissolved in the CO₂‐rich groundwater at pH > 5 where the weathering rates of silicates are very slow or independent of pH. Thus, groundwater age is likely more important in developing high solute concentrations in the CO₂‐rich groundwaters than accelerated weathering kinetics because of acidic pH caused by high pco ₂.     

The Woodland and Mississippian traditions in the prehistory of Midwestern North America

Cultural developments in Midwestern North America between 5000 and 400 B.P. are reviewed and related to two overlapping, but contrasting, cultural traditions: Woodland and Mississippian. Significant changes in prehistoric subsistence systems, settlement patterns, and sociopolitical organization are reviewed within a three-division framework, beginning with a Transitional period (5000–2000 B.P.) when Late Archaic and Early Woodland societies settled into different regions, constructed regional markers (cemeteries, mounds, earthworks), and established economic and social relations with both neighboring and more distant groups. This was followed by the Middle Woodland period (2000–1500 B.P.) that is associated with the Hopewell climax of long-distance exchange of exotic materials, mound building, and ceremonial activities, although all Middle Woodland groups did not participate in this Hopewell interaction sphere. In the Late Prehistoric period (1500–400 B.P.), the Woodland tradition persisted in some areas, while the Mississippian tradition developed from local Late Woodland societies elsewhere. Finally, the patterns of interaction between the two traditions are discussed.