‘The Bashful and the Boastful’

The creation and maintenance of influential leaders and authorities is one of the key themes of archaeological and historical enquiry. However, the social dynamics of authorities and leaders in the Mesolithic remains a largely unexplored area of study. The role and influence of authorities can vary remarkably in different situations, yet they exist in all societies and in almost all social contexts from playgrounds to parliaments. Here we explore the literature on the dynamics of authority creation, maintenance and contestation in egalitarian societies, and discuss the implications for our interpretation and understanding of the formation of authorities and leaders and changing social relationships in the Mesolithic.     

The Lhalu Clan and the Lhalu Wooded park

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Whose world and whose archaeology? The colonial present and the return of the political

El autor identifica un proyecto colonial crecientemente agresivo funcionando en Irak y Afganistán y considera que el fallo catastrófico de la comunidad arqueológica occidental de responder apropiadamente a las condiciones en ambas naciones. La manera de énfasis sobre arqueología está contribuyendo activamente no solamente a la legitimidad de una guerra ilegal y sin ética, sino también a la reproducción del régimen de poder y verdad que la guerra busca establecer. Se llama al WAC a “descentralizar” al mundo como es visto por los centros metropolitanos Occidentales, dejando a la “periferia” tomar la iniciativa, poner la agenda, y promover las medidas arqueológicas alternativas.

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Résumé L'auteur identifie un projet colonialiste de plus en plus agressif en Irak et en Afghanistan, et considère léchec catastrophique de la communauté des archéologues occidentaux à répondre de fa?on approprée aux conditions dans chacune de ces deux nations. Insister sur l'archéologie contribue activement, non seulement à légitimer une guerre illégale et immorale, mais aussi à reproduire le régime de force et de vérité que la guerre cherche à établir. Il en appelle au WAC pour'dé-centrer'la vision du monde des centres métropolitains occidentaux, afin de permettre à la ‘périphérie’ de prendre l'initiative, de mettre en place un agenda, et de préconiser des épistémologies archéologiques alternatives.

     

The “Philosophical Bible” and the Secular State

Almost all scholars of the Enlightenment consider Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke as the founding theorists of the “secular modern state.” In contrast to the widely held view of the modern state, I argue that far from being “secular” it was the product of the sacralization of politics, which resulted from the way these philosophers interpreted the Scriptures as part of their philosophical inquiries. The analysis of the “linguistic turn” in their biblical interpretations reveals how they tried to undermine the power of the Church to claim greater freedoms for the state. Their philosophical inquiries initiated the secularization of the Christian religion and the sacralization of politics as two correlative developments, rather than the secularization of the state per se, as is usually supposed. The philosophical arguments proposed by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke helped to resolve the religious battles of Europe’s many confessions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but are still pertinent to our current very different historical context.     

The First ‘Urnfields’ in the Plains of the Danube and the Po

Journal of World Prehistory - Archaeological research is currently redefining how large-scale changes occurred in prehistoric times. In addition to the long-standing theoretical dichotomy between...     

The new refugees and the “old ethnicity”

Haines, David W., ed. Refugees in the United States: A Reference Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Westport Press, 1985. viii + 243 pp. including chapter references, annotated literature guide, and index. $39.95 cloth.     

The Nor’-Wester and the Saskatchewan Gold Rush

ABSTRACT

This article explores the phenomenon of how news about the discovery of gold on the North Saskatchewan River in British administrated Rupert's Land was propagated by the press in the early 1860s. It tracks the resonance of gold rush news first in the Nor’-Wester, a newspaper published in the Red River Settlement, and then reveals how this paper's coverage was re-published and transmitted across the Anglophone world. The article shows how news about the Saskatchewan gold rush was highly politicised. In the Red River Settlement, editors of the Nor’-Wester sought to spur on the British parliament to implement responsible government in the colony, issuing dire warnings about the potential repercussions of a mass migration to the region and the need to act precipitously. Likewise, in newspapers across North America, editors republished and endorsed news from the Nor’-Wester about the Saskatchewan gold fields to benefit their own communities. But while editors championed the Saskatchewan gold fields to lure potential gold rushers to the region, no large-scale migration to the Northwest occurred. While news about the Saskatchewan gold fields may have been popular across the Anglophone world, it was not actionable. While news reports conveyed the impression that a gold rush was ongoing on the North Saskatchewan River, the reality on the ground did not match the press coverage.     

The Sartre–Camus Quarrel and the Fall of the French Intellectual

Over the past thirty years, the disappearance, if not the death, of the intellectual in France has been the focus of significant conversation and debate. Yet a good bit earlier, two writers who epitomized that very figure of the intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, in works written after their bitter break, seemed to have already sensed this decline. The present essay explores what Camus's novel La Chute [The fall] and Sartre's autobiography Les Mots [The words] share thematically and, in particular, how both works anticipate the fall of the French intellectual.     

Defence,the Family and the Battler: The Democratic Labor Party and its Legacy∗

The split in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of the mid-1950s had a lasting impact on both the political and industrial wings of the labour movement. In electoral terms the creation of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), and the DLP's second-preference strategy, in particular, had adverse consequences for the ALP. This article re-examines the DLP in terms as a political party, a promotional pressure group and as part of a social movement. The article argues that as a party, the DLP was a failure largely due to its narrow focus on anti-communist defence and foreign policies. But as part of a social movement, it was far more successful and its legacy was still evident in 2007, and was found in the non-labourist social conservatism of the Howard government.     

Abolish the army? The ideal of democracy and the transformation of the Czechoslovak military after 1918 and 1989

This article deals with the relationship between the democratic transformations in Czechoslovakia after 1918 and 1989 and the armed forces. The democratic ideal of transformation seemed to be alien to the military institution, which upheld the old regime and paradigmatically represented undemocratic patterns of governance. In order to accommodate the popular demand to ‘abolish’ the army, the new political elite strived to initiate an institutional transformation that would re-legitimize the armed forces. Whereas after 1918 the military improved its reputation by changing into a ‘school of nation’, after 1989 the military, expected to become fully professional, went through a period in which its inner organisational culture was liberalized and personal freedoms of the soldiers were strengthened. The decline of previous authorities and the rise of civic self-confidence connected to the process of democratisation also led to the demoralisation of the soldiers. The liminal phase of military transformation was marked by the experience of the first ‘post-war war’, the Czechoslovak-Hungarian War in 1919 and the Gulf War in 1991, which indicated the needs of the new security environment and gave the idealistic thinking about the democratic military a touch of reality.