Matter,Places, and Persons in Cahokian Depositional Acts

Artifact caching, soil layering, and other intentional depositional practices—archaeologically defined “ritual deposits” of the past—are especially prevalent during the Mississippian period. Employing a perspective of relational ontology, however, we interrogate the validity of a past partitioned into religious, political, and daily spheres. Rather, this perspective emphasizes the multi-experiential and multi-dimensional aspects of social life. Meaning, intentional depositional acts can no longer be usefully described as simply “sacred” or “ritual” practices. Rather, these deposits should be explored as experiences tied to multiple layers of social life, investigating the relationships constructed through such deposits between humans, nonhuman agents, and the landscape.     

Heritage destruction and cultural rights: insights from Bagan in Myanmar

Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights has stated that the intentional destruction of cultural heritage is a violation of cultural rights. The Rapporteur examines a timely issue but bases her statement on narrow understandings ‘heritage’ as irreplaceable and ‘destruction’ as ideologically motivated and aggressive. This reinforces hegemonic ideas about heritage and what constitutes its destruction. In this article, I discuss the case of Bagan in Myanmar to illustrate the limitations of the Rapporteur’s statement. In Bagan, whether and how ‘heritage’ should be protected has been the topic of controversy. By implication what is – or is not – considered intentional destruction is contested. Ambiguity about the meaning of cultural rights, the dissonant nature of heritage, the subjectivity of destruction, and complex multi-layered motivations behind ‘destructive’ practices make overarching statement about the destruction of cultural heritage and cultural rights violations too bold and call for more nuance and contextualised research.     

TRANSGRESSING URBAN UTOPANISM: AUTONOMY AND ACTIVE DESIRE

It has been extensively argued by theorists of liberal globalization as well as by radical theorists such as situationists and anarchists that as the site of the concentration of capital, the city is the primary site for the formation of new subjectivities, new rights‐claiming practices and the intensification of resistance as the starting point for an alternative, inclusionary urban citizenship. This article contends that by dismissing or separating rural and agricultural practices, such theories express a contradiction that can best be understood not as a struggle between rural and urban utopias, but between two different approaches to utopianism – hegemonic, associated with statist practices; and critical, associated with autonomous practices. The article considers emergent free spaces within the UK, including intentional communities, autonomous social centres, radical housing co‐operatives and eco‐villages, both in urban and rural areas, as specific instances of materialized utopias that are becoming autonomous, allowing us to think beyond dominant spatial formations by offering alternative futures whilst simultaneously engaging in resistant practices in the present. Voices of interviewed practitioners and observations of practices in these spaces are brought into dialogue with theory, highlighting gaps and weaknesses and opening space for further theorizing and new imaginings. This offers possibilities for a critical‐autonomous conception of utopianism that does not take existing spatial formations for granted.     

Dental Modifications in a Skeletal Sample of Enslaved Africans Found at Lagos (Portugal)

An archaeological intervention in Valle da Gafaria (Lagos, Portugal) allowed the excavation of a deposit of waste dating from the 15^th to 17^th centuries. Among discarded objects, an important amount of human skeletal remains was exhumed (N = 158 individuals). The archaeological and historical context, as well as the morphometric analysis of the skulls, led us to attribute them an African origin. While historical sources document the trade of slaves by the Portuguese since the 15^th century, so far no slave cemetery was excavated in Portugal. The study of their lives and deaths has been accomplished by historical documents. Therefore, this sample provides a unique opportunity to learn more about captive individuals who were brought to Portugal in the modern period. The present work focuses in the intentional dental modifications presented by several of these individuals. A total of 113 subjects have teeth that can be evaluated for the presence of intentional modifications. Of these, 55.8% individuals present dental modifications on their anterior dentition, 42.9% exhibiting modifications on both upper and lower teeth. The incisors were the most frequently modified teeth, followed by the canines. Both men and women as adults and sub‐adults have dental intentional modifications. In most individuals, dental modifications involved the removal of the mesial and distal angles, which is comparable with sub‐Saharan African practices. However, we cannot infer a more specific origin for these slaves only based on dental modification's type and pattern because several ethnic groups modify teeth in the same way. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

POST-MIDDENISM: DEPOSITIONAL HISTORIES ON LATER BRONZE AGE SETTLEMENTS AT BROOM, BEDFORDSHIRE

Summary.   This paper considers recent discussions of 'deliberate', 'formal', 'placed', 'special', 'structured', or 'token' deposits on later prehistoric settlements in Britain. It argues that while these concepts have certainly been very important in raising and forefronting the interpretative possibilities that depositional practices might offer, the idea of structured deposition has, at times, been adopted and applied somewhat simplistically. In such instances, exploration of the potential complexity and interpretative scope of depositional histories on later prehistoric settlements has been substantially curtailed. Current understandings of depositional practices involving pottery and burnt human bone are examined, and alternative interpretations offered, through a case study of the evidence recovered from a series of later Bronze Age settlements at Broom Quarry, Bedfordshire.     

Heritage,transnational memory and the re-diasporisation of Scotland

For a long time in Scotland, diasporic – and popular – heritage with its imaginary emphasising kinship, stylised images and ritualised practices was either overlooked or discredited. The term ‘diaspora’ itself to define Scotland’s vast overseas population has been scrutinised for its usefulness. However, since devolution, it has gained currency in public discourse and policies and has led to the ‘re-diasporisation’ of Scotland. Yet, the ‘diaspora’ had long been identified as an important niche market in relation to heritage perceived as an economic resource. This article explores the changing perception and place of diasporic heritage in Scotland since the 1970s through two case studies. Focusing on processes of remembrance of nineteenth-century Highland emigration materialised through monuments and museums, it highlights the conflicting and shifting relationships that different communities – home and diasporic – have with their past, place and the meanings ascribed to them. The transnational memories increasingly promoted in Scotland act as a means of re-energising nationhood and initiating revisions and re-reading of popular and diasporic culture.     

Rhetoric and pragmatics in Ulysses: how Joyce invented Twitter

Particularly upon their first appearance, Twitter and James Joyce’s unique style had to face similarly infamous charges in that they were both accused of slowly but inexorably corrupting the English language. In fact, the linguistic practices – stylemes in the case of Ulysses – breeding such corruption are often the same: clippings, abbreviations, the dropping out of inflexional endings, omissions, ellipses, the overabundance of acronyms, creative compound words and blends, symbolisations and onomatopoeias, lexicalisations of (often) vernacular pronunciations. This paper sets out to investigate these features, their rhetorical effect and pragmatic function in order to explore the epistemological, perceptive and social context which made it possible a hundred years ago for an Irish modernist to anticipate how English was to be used on today’s social media and on Twitter in particular.     

Reform in Turkey: Liberalization as government and critique (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Turkey is in the midst of a wide‐ranging reform of historic proportions, the most profound reorganization and restructuring of institutions and practices since the foundation of the Republic in 1923. These reforms, inspired and guided by the country's EU integration, are multifaceted but can be summarized as liberalization of economy, politics and society. While capitalist penetration and privatization are obvious features of the reform, its techniques, kinds of knowledge and objects, as well as its reflexive aspects – the ways in which it studies itself unfolding – have not been sufficiently conceptualized.     

THE THERAPEUTIC STATE

State subsidy for the arts in Britain has been determined by a variety of political and social factors over the last two hundred years. This article examines the recent emergence of a therapeutic ethos that has come to shape arts policy in the United Kingdom. It begins with a survey of existing literature describing a shift in Britain’s arts policy since the 1970s. It examines the limitations of existing explanations and suggests another explanatory factor – the growing valorisation of the arts as a therapeutic tool to address social problems. This can be seen in two historically convergent trends: the challenge to cultural authority through the emergence of a therapeutic understanding of creativity, and the reorientation of political activism around issues of culture and wellbeing. Finally, the article considers how and why these ideas became institutionalised in Britain’s main arts policy body – the Arts Council.     

Generation as a social variable

ABSTRACT

In this short paper, I start with a case study – about how elementary school children in the early twentieth century in England understood their responsibilities vis-à-vis family (and school). This example provides a window into a past which deeply contrasts with present-day children’s and adults’ understandings and lives. I go on to consider (very briefly, for the field is vast) how ideas about childhood changed in the interwar years and how, since then, children have become locked into educational establishments – as well as into families. It seems to me that in these circumstances we are not used to thinking of children as thoughtful and active members of society. So it is no surprise to me that adults do not look to inter-relations with children as key variables towards understanding the social order. I note that my emphasis is on the UK, since I know most about that!     

‘Running Away with Itself’: Missionaries,Islanders and the Reimagining of Cricket in Samoa, 1830–1939

Missionaries were among the first and most influential bearers of European social practices in Oceania. While they sought to reshape the lives of Indigenous peoples, missionaries frequently found that Islanders reconfigured introduced practices in distinctive and sometimes disruptive ways. This essay explores this process using the example of sport and games, and particularly cricket, in Samoa. Despite initial reservations, by the late-19th century most missionaries considered European sports to be inoffensive and even useful in furthering their objectives. Samoan pastimes, however, were irremediably bound to ‘un-Christian’ practices such as lewd dancing, revelry and excess. This neat dichotomy was disrupted by the manner in which Samoans adapted papalagi (foreign) sports – principally cricket – in ways that obliterated their European character and instead catered to Samoan expectations of what recreation should be. After initial efforts to control and proscribe cricket, missionaries grew resigned to its place within increasingly ‘Samoanised’ churches.     

Clothing as communication? Vestments and views of the papacy c.1300

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303) used clothing in a highly intentional and performative manner to communicate his status and authority. His audience, however, was quite limited – essentially, the small community of those who aspired to hold or influence the power of the Holy See – and the messages conveyed were not particularly complex. Attempting a reception history of papal attire c.1300, the essay surveys remarks regarding clothing in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century chronicles and analyses in depth the evidence of two sources: ambassadorial reports to King James II of Aragon (1291–1327) and the De electione et coronatione sanctissimi patris domini Bonifatii pape octavi of Cardinal Jacopo Caetani Stefaneschi (c.1270–1343). A suggestive finding is that performativity, or the highly theatrical use of garments, appears to have been used by Boniface VIII to foster dissemination of simple communications across great distances.     

Archaeological geology of two flow-banded spherulitic rhyolites in New England,USA: their history,exploitation and criteria for recognition

Artifacts of spherulitic rhyolite derived from two locations in northern New Hampshire are significant to minor components of numerous Paleoindian, Archaic and Woodland archaeological sites in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont and easternmost Quebec. The two known sources of are a dike near the city of Berlin, New Hampshire, and blocks-in-till near the village of Jefferson, New Hampshire. The source near Berlin has been a known source for “Indian relics” since the middle of the nineteenth century. The second source near Jefferson New Hampshire was first recognized in 1997. Both sources are situated along prominent east–west routes between the east flowing Androscoggin River on the east and the south flowing Connecticut River on the west. Mount Jasper is located above the Dead River. The Dead River flows east and enters the Androscoggin River approximately 3 km from Mount Jasper. Passage between the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers would have taken the travelers directly beneath Mount Jasper. To the west, from the upper reaches of the Dead River, the portage to Head Pond is approximately 0.9 to 1.5 km. From Head Pond access to the Connecticut is by way of the North Branch Upper Ammonoosuc River. The Jefferson source is located on terraces on the northwest side of the modern Israel River. The Israel River flows west and north for approximately 25 km into the Connecticut River. To the east the Israel River rises to a divide which separates it from the east flowing Moose River, which empties into the Androscoggin. Attribution to source is based upon comparison with known outcrops which include the combined characteristics of gross lithology, weathering characteristics, and bulk mineralogy. Comparison of dike samples with artifacts also indicate that the thickness and continuity of the flow bands together with spherule characteristics, which include, size, shape, volume, microscopic structures and weathering character, further suggest a limited source.     

Infrastructural territorialisations: Mega-infrastructures and the (re)making of Kenya

This paper, based on historical and contemporary dynamics of railway infrastructures in Kenya, analyses how mega-infrastructures are central in state practices of infrastructural territorialisation – an infrastructure-based production of territoriality as a historically and geographically specific form of spatio-political order and organisation, imbued with social tensions, stemming from the state-led imposition of a techno-politics onto its territory. Focusing on territorial and political objectives of the state advanced through the Uganda Railway and the Standard Gauge Railway, the paper demonstrates how both of these projects have been central in colonial and contemporary practices of infrastructural territorialisation, albeit in mercurial ways that do not fully represent original techno-political intensions of the state. This discussion, first, highlights how megaprojects – although primarily analysed by recent geographical scholarship as advancing contemporary geographies of global capitalism – also contingently coalesce with state (re)territorialisation practices. Second, undertaking these analyses in the Kenyan context, the paper shows how, despite shared historical dynamics of contingent state territorialisation – and the reconstitution of racial and socio-economic inequalities, advanced through megaprojects that in Kenya are socially interpreted through historical experiences of colonialism – current infrastructural territorialisations are also different; whilst the colonial territorialisation of Kenya emerged as relatively unchallenged, its present state territory-making is undermined by both the global character of megaprojects and the external actors that the state relies on for its practices of infrastructural territorialisation.     

Historicising Agency

Why has ‘agency’ been such a tenacious concept in historical scholarship on women and gender, and what have been the consequences on this tenacity? This essay tackles these questions and proposes, through a brief examination of the history of skin lighteners in South Africa and beyond, how agency might be pushed in more surprising, more analytically productive directions. Too often agency slips from being a conceptual tool or starting point to a concluding argument. For example, in my subfield of African women's and gender history, statements like ‘African women had agency’ can stand as the impoverished punch lines of empirically rich studies. Consideration of Walter Johnson's 2003 essay ‘On Agency’ highlights the intellectual and political imperatives of 1970s Marxist and feminist social history that placed agency at centre stage. This essay examines why, more than a decade after Johnson's critique, agency endures as a ‘safety’ argument for reasons related to representational politics, research methodologies and the circumscribed imagination of intellectual gatekeepers. It argues that we should move beyond agency as argument by attending to the multiple concerns and desires – some intentional, others not – that animate human actions, including contentious gendered practices, and by examining how different historical actors have themselves understood agency. Agency has a history. By acknowledging and tracing that history, we will be better able to discern the usefulness and limits of agency for our own analyses.     

Sound maps matter: expanding cartophony

In this article I investigate online sound mapping practices, taking cartophony – the coming together of cartographic and sonic activities – as an important contribution to emerging ways of thinking and practicing mapping. I first develop a typology of approaches to cartophony, before moving on to reveal the normative tendencies of online combinations of sound and mapping through an analysis of three platforms: Freesound; audioBoom; and Radio Aporee. Showing how in different ways each of these platforms supports an approach to sound mapping that favours pinning high fidelity, indexical audio-recordings to a seemingly neutral base layer, I question what is glossed over through this approach, while also considering how visual and sound-based strategies for communicating about places illuminate and resonate with one another. Discussing some more experimental online sound maps, I highlight the value of such projects in their current form, and argue for the continued expansion of cartophonic practice.     

I Will Follow You into the Dark: Death and Emotion in a Mycenaean Royal Funeral

Despite many years of intensive research into burial and funeral practices in Late Bronze Age (LBA) Greece, emotion remains largely absent from the discussion. Yet death and the emotions it provoked would have been familiar aspects of daily life in Mycenaean Greece. The dead had to be dealt with and moved on through various rites until they became a safe part of the landscape and memory of individuals and communities. In addition to anthropological and psychological research on death and grieving, we have several categories of evidence that can allow us a glimpse of the emotional world of death in LBA Greece: the Homeric poems the Iliad and Odyssey, iconographical representations of death, funeral practices and mourning, and the archaeological material itself – the tombs and offerings. In this paper, I introduce the various categories of evidence and draw on them to support an imaginative reconstruction of an event that happened, but which is not recorded in any historical sources – the death and burial of a great king of Mycenae. I argue that using emotion as a lens through which to view the evidence can sometimes allow deeper interpretation and enable fuller historical reconstructions of lived lives and experiences.     

Points in Time: The Mesolithic–Neolithic Transition and the Chronology of Late Rod Microliths in Britain

This paper presents the results of the Bayesian statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates associated with diagnostic late Mesolithic rod microliths from England and Wales. These date estimates are compared with results for the earliest evidence for Neolithic material culture and practices in Britain (Whittle et al. 2011; Griffiths 2011; 2014; forthcoming). The chronology of some rod microlith sites indicates a potential overlap between the earliest Neolithic and latest Mesolithic material culture and practices, in the first three centuries of the fourth millennium cal BC across England and Wales. The locations of late Mesolithic sites suggest regional processes of ‘neolithization’ may have occurred. In the region where we have the best chronological evidence for late Mesolithic sites – in Yorkshire – the location of the very latest Mesolithic sites suggests these lifeways may have persisted in landscapes which had been foci of hunter‐gatherer activity for hundreds of years, and which might have been understood as ‘ancestral’ or ‘persistent’ places.