Are legendary hominoids worth looking for? Views from ethnobiology and palaeoanthropology (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

It has been suggested that the newly discovered hominin species Homo floresiensis may have survived on the Indonesian island of Flores so recently as to inform local images of small‐bodied hominoids. Taking an ethnobiological approach, the article discusses how this matter could be resolved empirically, and concludes that this will ultimately require physical evidence chronologically overlapping substantially with modern human populations. Further discussed are recent investigations affirming the resemblance of putative hominoids and what is known of Homo floresiensis, and a new initiative to excavate a Florenese site identified ethnographically as a mass hominoid burial. Whatever the outcome of these investigations, the case presents a challenge to sociocultural anthropologists inclined to interpret images of creatures undocumented by scientific zoology as purely social or cultural constructs.     

Stone technology at the Middle Pleistocene site of Mata Menge,Flores, Indonesia

The stone technology from Mata Menge on Flores, Indonesia, is described, providing the first detailed analysis of the largest stone artefact assemblage from a stratified and securely dated Middle Pleistocene site in Southeast Asia. Technological analysis indicates a reduction sequence based on the centripetal, or “radial”, reduction of transported blanks. The implications for early hominin behaviour on Flores are considered.     

Church, Space and Conflict: Religious Co-Existence and Political Communication in Seventeenth-Century Switzerland

This article sets out to explore how a local quarrel in theGrafschaft of Baden, a bi-confessional Swiss county, occasionedby efforts to install a separate font for Protestant parishioners,activated larger constitutional and confessional tensions betweenthe Catholic and Protestant cantons of the Swiss Confederation.The article reconstructs the lengthy political negotiationscaused by the rearrangement of church space since the Landfriedenof 1531: this treaty had enshrined bi-confessionalism in theSwiss Confederation and had established the duties and rightsof both confessions, although to the disadvantage of the ReformedProtestants. It had also transformed the consecrated space ofthe church into a stage for political action by the cantons.From 1531 onwards, changes in religious belief and observancewere subject to the will of the supreme governing authority.The article shows that local conflicts over the arrangementand furnishing of certain church spaces can give us fascinatinginsights into political practice, the establishment of socialorder and the handling of denominational differences withinthe Swiss Confederation. It attempts to contribute to our understandingof early modern political history by using concepts from culturalhistory and communication theory in which politics is closelylinked to social and confessional processes generating meaningand order.     

Mormon Masculinity: Changing Gender Expectations in the Era of Transition from Polygamy to Monogamy, 1890–1920

During the period from 1890 to 1920, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (LDS) perceived a crisis in the lives of their boys. Like their Protestant contemporaries, Latter‐day Saints spent much time attempting to find a solution. At the same time, the LDS church was experiencing its own unique set of upheavals. In 1890, one of the central tenets of Mormonism – polygamy – had to be replaced with sexual practices that aligned the LDS with wider American society. It was during this transitional period that members and authorities of the LDS church sought to gain respectability in American culture by emphasising the morality and value systems they shared with their middle‐class Protestant contemporaries. As Mormons restructured marriage around the practice of monogamy, they placed the burden of the refashioned religious identity almost exclusively upon men and their bodies. The new Mormon man ushered the LDS church into the American mainstream while maintaining an acceptable difference from that mainstream culture.     

I,Claudius. Self‐styling in early medieval debate

Historians often have difficulties understanding contrary figures who deviated from mainstream practices and beliefs. In the case of Claudius of Turin, who because of his iconoclasm has been pictured as a proto‐Protestant, this image of a solitary was partly his own creation. Claudius liked to present himself as a truth‐teller, defending God's honour and the unity of the church against all kinds of evils. This article uses the case of Claudius and the response of Dungal, one of his learned opponents, like him connected to the royal court, to reflect on the role of self‐styling in early medieval debate.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 5. October 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 5 Front cover THE CRISIS IN MALI. Malian refugees are seen at the Mbera refugee camp in eastern Mauritanian, Mbera, Mauritania, 17 July 2012. At that point, roughly 92,000 refugees had arrived in the camp. Estimates are that nearly half a million Malians have been displaced from their homes this year with many refugees having also fled to Burkina Faso and Niger. Photo taken by award‐winning photographer, Lynsey Addario ( http://www.lynseyaddario.com ). Back cover TOURISM: WORK VS LEISURE A tourist from Hong Kong photographs a young Mursi woman with lip‐plate in her lower lip. Tourists queue up orderly for each to take their turn photographing the wonders of Mursi culture. The image demonstrates the complexity of tourist encounters, and the multifaceted aspects of leisure and work. The Mursi prepare for their visitors well ahead of touring cars arriving at their settlements. They make themselves up and imitate the kinds of working activities (e.g. grinding) they know from experience will fascinate and elicit a response from tourists. Tourists typically ask the Mursi for permission to photograph the process and, occasionally, join in themselves with the Mursi in their ‘work’. In this sense, the Mursi imitate ‘traditional’ sociality as they simulate their own working activities for tourists who supposedly spend their leisure time in Mursiland. As Tamàs Règi argues in this issue, instead of seeing leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, anthropologists might approach it, rather, as a process that evolves at the interface between different societies that meet. In this way, leisure is a constantly developing practice in cross‐cultural encounters.     

The Two Kingdoms: The Norwegian Seamen's Church in London 1865–1905

The Norwegian church in London began its life as a mission to Scandinavian seamen in 1868, after an evangelical society for this group had been founded in Bergen in 1864. Throughout the period covered, the former was involved in extensive cooperation with the other Nordic missions in the British capital. Yet it was always a congregation rather than just a mission and, as time went by, it became more self‐consciously Norwegian too. Evidence presented here suggests the mission was a place of worship for its domiciled compatriots before 1872, when the church building was completed. In common with many foreign Protestant churches in London, the Norwegian congregation experienced some conflict. There were restrictions on it owing to Norway having entered a forced union with Sweden in 1814. The Swedish church saw itself as catering for both nationalities and would not brook competition from what was officially a service for Scandinavian seamen. The clergy were not natural supporters of Norwegian nationalism. But as their country became more self‐assertive within the union from 1880, they began demanding enhanced rights for their church. It was only when Norway had unilaterally declared its independence in 1905 that the clergy became full‐blown adherents of this.     

"It Was Never Good World Sence Minister Must Have Wyves": clerical celibacy, clerical marriage, and anticlericalism in Reformation England

The impact of the Reformation was felt strongly in the nature and character of the priesthood, and in the function and reputation of the priest. A shift in the understanding of the priesthood was one of the most tangible manifestations of doctrinal change, evident in the physical arrangement of the church, in the language of the liturgy, and in the relaxation of the discipline of celibacy, which had for centuries bound priests in the Latin tradition to a life of perpetual continence. Clerical celibacy, and accusations of clerical incontinence, featured prominently in evangelical criticisms of the Catholic church and priesthood, which made a good deal of polemical capital out of the perceived relationship of the priest and the efficacy of his sacred function. Citing St Paul, Protestant polemicists presented clerical marriage as the only, and appropriate remedy, for priestly immorality. But did the advent of a married priesthood create more problems than it solved? The polemical certainties that informed evangelical writing on sacerdotal celibacy did not guarantee the immediate acceptance of a married priesthood, and the vocabulary that had been used to denounce clergy who failed in their obligation to celibacy was all too readily turned against the married clergy. The anti‐clerical lexicon, and its usage, remained remarkably static despite the substantial doctrinal and practical challenges posed to the traditional model of priesthood by the Protestant Reformation.     

The Forgotten History of the Protestant Crusade: Religious Liberalism in Ireland1

Irish historians do not generally identify religious liberalism as a feature of the 1820s. Instead, they have mapped religious conflict onto increasingly binary conflicts in the socio‐economic, cultural, and political spheres. The “Second Reformation” missionary movement put evangelicals and Catholics on a direct collision course and, consequently, historians have argued that it was a key factor in the emergence both of Irish Catholic nationalism and Protestant defensive co‐operation. However, the Crusade also produced a strong Protestant backlash alongside the growing sectarian conflict. In County Limerick, for example, two versions of Church of Ireland opposition emerged during 1820, among high church clergy including Bishop Jebb and among liberal Protestant gentlemen. Instead of closing down debate into rigid binary opposition along sectarian lines, the Limerick evidence shows that the Crusade produced a much more complex religious, social, and political debate than historians have recognised which, in turn, made possible a wider range of responses to key Irish problems.     

Looking for problems: A systems approach to hominin palaeocommunities from Plio‐Pleistocene Africa

This paper evaluates the potential contribution(s) of faunal analysis to hominin palaeoecology at regional and continental scales, through an explicit investigation of the values, methods and conceptual frameworks of palaeoanthropology and their compatibility with real data structures. It employs a problem‐framing method developed in policy‐relevant science to establish a suitable research design for ‘large scale’ faunal analysis, before testing the method in a pilot study of 48 faunal assemblages from the African Plio‐Pleistocene. Hitherto, taphonomic bias has discouraged attempts to study faunal assemblages on large spatiotemporal scales, and most scientists have restricted their work to the smaller (site or local) scale and/or a subset of the total fauna. Furthermore, palaeoanthropological studies of fauna tend to address pre‐determined questions through analysis of statistical outputs (patterns), rather than investigating the limitations and potential of the data through exploratory work. This paper, despite identifying a number of inherent constraints on palaeocommunity analysis at the large scale—including a clear tendency towards the segregation of faunal assemblages along taphonomic and geographic lines—successfully defines palaeocommunities and identifies systematic variation in their distribution in several regional datasets and at the continental scale. It suggests that the potential viability of faunal analyses for a given project could be made empirically testable, and further work on the lines defined here might provide insight into the impacts of taphonomy and ecology at the large scale. Although there are conceptual and methodological problems associated with large‐scale faunal analyses, this paper suggests that they could provide some insight into hominin environments, evolutionary ecology and biogeography as part of a holistic, multi‐scale approach to our lineages' history. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“The Cockroaches of Canada”: French‐Canada,Immigration and Nationalism,Anti‐Catholicism in English‐Canada, 1905–1929

This article examines the central influence of anti‐Catholicism upon English‐Canadian nationalism in the first third of the twentieth century. Anti‐Catholicism provided an existing rhetorical and ideological tradition and framework within which public figures, intellectuals, Protestant church leaders and other Canadians communicated their diverse visions of an ideal Canada. The study of anti‐Catholicism problematises the rigid separation that many scholars have posited between a conservative ethnic nationalism and a progressive civic nationalism. Often times these very civic values were inextricable from a context of Britishness. In addition, anti‐Catholicism was not simply about theological differences between Protestants and Catholics. Instead this theological thread often intersected with the perceived socio‐political problems that Catholics and Catholicism posed. Hostility to Catholicism was not limited only to fraternal organisations such as the Orange Order; indeed the importance of anti‐Catholicism as a component of Canadian nationalism lies in its presence across the political and intellectual spectrum. Catholicism was perceived to inculcate values antithetical to British traditions of freedom and democracy.     

The Protestant working class in Belfast: education and civic erosion – an alternative analysis

This paper explores and reassesses the issues of social decline, educational underachievement and civic erosion in relation to the Protestant working class in Belfast. Prior to the ‘Troubles’ the Protestant working class in Belfast had at its heart a civic-mindedness which was in tune with working-class communities across the UK at the time. This civic-mindedness encouraged the growth of extended communities and placed an importance on church attendance and educational achievement; something which has been conveniently ignored in most analyses. Owing to population movements in Greater Belfast which followed the violence that followed the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971 Protestant church congregations dwindled and school attendances dropped significantly. The paper ultimately seeks to provide a ‘long view’ of the Protestant working-class experience in order to assist those who are concerned with the problems facing it in the current era.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.     

Anglican High Churchmen and the Expansion of Empire*

Postcolonial history has taken a great deal of interest in the missionary endeavours of the church throughout the Empire, especially the work of Protestant/evangelical mission societies. Apart from attention to organisations like the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) and to some extent the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the work of Anglican High Churchmen has sometimes been overlooked. 1 In fact, High Churchmen were very concerned about the role of the Church of England in the expanding empire during the mid‐nineteenth century. They were keen to bring the extension of the church under institutional control and to co‐operate with the imperial parliament as closely as possible. The activity of the SPG and the foundation of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund (CBF), which provided clergy, schoolmasters, catechists, and bishops as agents of Anglicanism and Englishness, can be seen as part of this strategy.     

IDENTITIES AND URBAN SOCIAL SPACES IN LITTLE TOKYO,LOS ANGELES: JAPANESE AMERICANS IN TWO ETHNO‐SPIRITUAL COMMUNITIES

Ethnic identities are expressed and articulated in particular places. These mutable identities are crucial sources of meaning in the lives of social actors. This article seeks to elucidate just how the contexts of specific institutions in an urban enclave will impact upon patterns of conflict and cooperation among different subgroups practising two religious traditions. Historical discourses of ethnic community and ‘race’, shifts in migration patterns and the changing nature of the Little Tokyo enclave provide the formative patterns of social spaces, in which ethnic actors seek to create lives of spiritual and material meaning and security. Barth's concept of the social organization of cultural difference encourages analysis of ethnic identities as a dynamic and mutable enterprise. Because the maintenance of boundaries is crucial to identities, the manner in which a group seeks to maintain difference is intermeshed with the social terrain of particular places. Through qualitative methods of semi‐structured and informal interviews and participant observations, this project engages Japanese American identities within the context of two religious communities in an urban enclave. Fieldwork was conducted in two institutions, a Protestant church and a Buddhist temple, with the aim of exploring how Japanese American identities are expressed and (re)negotiated within different ethno‐spiritual communities. Such communities are fundamental to the expression of ethnic identities, and to the emotional lives of worshippers, particularly seniors and new immigrants.     

Defending the Faith: Orangeism and Ulster Protestant Identities in Colonial New South Wales

The Orange Order was never as prominent in the Australian colonies as its own publicity asserted and its arguments against the power of Rome in Australian politics and society were more shrill than accurate. However, it held a clearly defined position as a vector of anti‐Catholicism and ultra‐Protestantism in many parts of colonial Australia, and its parades and social gatherings were important spaces for the formation of Australian Protestant identities imbued with varying levels of Irishness. The use of public space meant that the Loyal Orange Institution had a wider impact than their often small numbers might otherwise suggest. With their parades, sermons, public meetings, and demonstrations many Orangemen and women attempted to claim colonial public space not only as Protestant, but as a particularly Irish inflected anti‐Catholicism.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 1. February 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 1 Front cover FASCISM ON THE RISE? This picture features activists of the Polish National Radical Camp (ONR) who are about to start a celebratory march commemorating the anniversary of the movement's establishment back in 1934. The march's point of departure was the premises of the Gdansk shipyard – a place that became well known in 1980s due to a series of anti-regime protests by ‘Solidarity’ movement activists. The slogan above the gate reads: ‘Thank you for good work!’ (employees would see this slogan when leaving the premises, after their shift). The choice of place was far from coincidental. Polish mass media were quick to describe the anniversary as an attack on the memory of the Solidarity movement which, they emphasized, was the antithesis of fascism and which fought for liberalism. They also claimed that the march was a ‘reminiscence’ of September 1939 when Nazi Germany took over the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk). It is clear that the event was meant as a provocation and the organizers did not shy away from admitting it. Yet in his commemorative speech, the ONR leader referred explicitly to the events of 1980, reminding the gathered crowd that Solidarity fought for better work conditions, dignity and basic rights, and linked those arguments to a depiction of work conditions in the (present-day) neo-liberal system. He also emphasized that Solidarity brought about a revolution and that such a revolution is needed again today. His speech exemplifies well, a growing tendency for far-right movements to draw explicitly on socialist ideas and return to the idea of ‘the third way’, observable in Poland and beyond. The event was attended by activists from abroad, among them Forza Nuova activists and Polish economic migrants living in the UK and Ireland. In this issue, Agnieszka Pasieka considers what it is like to study the ‘unlikeable’ other. Several other contributions also discuss how anthropology might position itself in relation to the trend towards extreme right-wing politics worldwide. Back cover FIRE AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, BRAZIL Oil painting, undated and without the artist's signature, which used to belong to the National Museum, Brazil, until the recent fire destroyed it. Depicted is a Bororo boy, baptized as Guido, who was adopted at approximately seven years of age by D. Maria do Carmo de Mello Rego, a lady of fine education, wife of the governor of Mato Grosso. Without children and of relatively advanced age, the couple treated Guido as if he were their own son. D. Maria do Carmo made great efforts to win his affection, teaching him to read and introducing him to the arts. For four years, from 1888 to 1892, Guido lived with her and her husband, first in Mato Grosso, then in the city of Rio de Janeiro until he died on a nearby farm due to natural causes, possibly pneumonia. Donated by D. Maria do Carmo before his death, this painting became part of one of the oldest National Museum collections composed of about 400 Indian artefacts she had gathered from Mato Grosso (the majority of these of Bororo origin), including an album with drawings and watercolours made by Guido and carefully arranged by her. Not only this painting, but the entire collection of ethnographic pieces and the album of drawings and watercolours were unfortunately destroyed by the fire. In this issue, Gemma Aellah and Jessica Turner interview João Pacheco de Oliveira, professor of anthropology and curator of ethnographic collections at the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.     

The Palaeolithic of the Middle Son valley, north-central India: Changes in hominin lithic technology and behaviour during the Upper Pleistocene

The Middle Son valley in north-central India preserves extensive Quaternary alluvial deposits. A long history of archaeological and geological research in the valley has resulted in the discovery of lithic assemblages ranging from Lower Palaeolithic to microlithic, a rich corpus of fossilised faunal remains, and ash deposits from the 74,000 year-old Toba supereruption. This paper reviews the chronology and stratigraphy of the valley’s Quaternary sediments, and presents a model that hypothesizes the temporal sequence of important lithic assemblages from excavated and surface contexts. Artefacts in these assemblages are analysed and changes in lithic technology through time are described; this evidence is used to propose shifts in hominin behaviour and demographic structure in this region during the Upper Pleistocene. Recognising gaps in our understanding of the Middle Son record, future avenues of research are recommended that will build upon previous research and address questions of palaeoanthropological significance. The Middle Son valley preserves a long and rich record of hominin occupation from all periods of the Palaeolithic that is rarely paralleled by other sites in India.     

Medieval memories and the reformation of religious identity: Catholic and Anglican interactions with parish church sites in County Limerick,Ireland

SUMMARY: This paper examines parish church sites in County Limerick and their evolving meanings as a result of Ireland’s unsuccessful Protestant Reformation. Unusually for Europe, most Irish parish churches fell into ruin from 1550 to 1700. Conquest, loss of patronage and the Anglican Church of Ireland’s failure to convert most native Catholics ensured this eventuality. Nevertheless, local memories continued to draw people to these sites. There is evidence for Catholic burial in the 18th and 19th centuries, conversion of chancels into burial plots and, sometimes, church maintenance or construction by Anglicans. These activities all reveal contemporary concerns with history, identity and legitimacy.