The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Economics and Society

When scholars consider Spanish colonialism in the Philippines their impressions are based largely on documentary evidence of their 377-year colonial presence and on romanticized impressions of the larger Spanish empire. In the New World, wherever Europeans settled, there is a clear break in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cultural traditions. In the systemic context these changes continue to be evidenced in architectural style, city plan, and diet. Today, however, archaeologists working in Luzon, Cebu, and Mindanao are revealing vast differences between the nature of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and that seen in the Americas. There, the remoteness of the colony from Europe, combined with its geographical position on the doorstep of China, created a unique Spanish colonial adaptation that reveals the significance of Asia in the world economic order.     

The Holocene Archaeology of Southwest Ethiopia: New Insights from the Kafa Archaeological Project

Abstract  

Southwest Ethiopia’s cool, moist, and steep highlands differ from other African environments, and may have fostered distinct patterns of Holocene resource use and intensification. Prior to 2004, only a few archaeological projects probed eastern and northern margins of this region. The Kafa Archaeological Project (2004–2006) excavated ten caves and rockshelters in different environments in the heart of southwest Ethiopia to obtain a Holocene chronology and compare it with adjacent regions. At Kumali Rockshelter, middle Holocene deposits show use of a microlithic industry to obtain wild game, and excellent macrobotanical preservation promises to reveal changes in plant use from 4,700 ¹⁴C bp to the present. Ceramics and domestic animals appear at Kumali and Koka by ~2,000 ¹⁴C bp, suggesting herding and pottery making appeared late and contacts with neighboring regions were tenuous. Technologically conservative people continued microlith production and sporadic rockshelter use into the eighteenth century CE.     

The Origin of African Sheep: Archaeological and Genetic Perspectives

Indigenous African sheep genetic resources have been classified into two main groups, fat-tailed and thin-tailed sheep. The fat-tailed sheep are the most widely distributed, being found in a large part of North Africa (from Egypt to Algeria) and in Eastern and Southern Africa (from Eritrea to South Africa). The thin-tailed sheep are present mainly in Morocco, Sudan and in West Africa. African sheep were domesticated outside Africa. They share a common ancestry with European and Asian sheep. Archaeological information supports separate introductions and dispersion histories for the African thin-tailed and fat-tailed sheep. The first sheep entered Africa via the Isthmus of Suez and/or the southern Sinai Peninsula, between 7500 and 7000 BP. They were likely of the thin-tailed type. Fat-tailed sheep entered Africa through its northeastern part and the Horn of Africa. Mitochondrial DNA analysis supports a common maternal ancestral origin for all African sheep, while autosomal and Y chromosome DNA analysis indicates a distinct genetic history for African thin-tailed and sub-Saharan fat-tailed sheep. The main ancestral population of southern African fat-tailed sheep likely originated in East Africa. Further work is needed to assess the possible dispersion of sheep from western Africa to the southern African regions.     

New Perspectives on Sincu Bara, a First Millennium Site in the Senegal Valley

The 67-ha site of Sincu Bara was discovered and extensively excavated in the 1970s. Three primary aspects of its archaeological interest were its vast size, its location in the Middle Senegal Valley, where some of the earliest regional polities in West Africa arose, and the extensive and diverse assortment of copper-based metal artifacts it produced. Deposits with brass appeared to be associated with radiocarbon dates as early as the fifth century AD. It appeared that most of the deposits related to a single, long-lasting occupation by people who arrived with sophisticated copper-based metallurgy in the fifth century and remained at least until the eleventh century, without discernible modification in their material culture. Results of new excavations in 1991–1992 indicate that this interpretation must be substantially modified, since considerable change in material culture, including the introduction of copper-based metals between AD 800 and AD 900, has now been documented. This article summarizes the data from these new excavations and suggests that earlier interpretations were based largely on material from disturbed, severely mixed deposits, which gave a false picture of homogeneity through time.Les soixante sept héctares constituant le gisement du Sincu Bara étaient découverts et fouillés dans les années soixante dix. Son intérêt archéologique est lié aux trois aspects: sa grande superficie, sa location dans la vallée moyenne du Sénégal où les premières unités politiques de l'Afrique de l'Ouest existaient, et finalement, la diversité des objets métalliques en cuivre que le site a livrée. Il apparaît que la plupart des dépôts appartient à une seule occupation de longue durée par un peuple qui est arrivé pendant la cinquième siécle AD, en possession de la connaissance de métallurgie à base de cuivre et qui montrait au moins jusqu'au onzième siécle peu de modification dans leur culture materielle. Les résultats des fouilles de 1991–1992 montrent que cette interpretation doit être modifiée, car il y a eu du changement considérable dans le matèriel, comme l'introduction des métaux à base de cuivre entre AD 800–900. Dans cet article, nous avons résumé les résultats des nouvelles fouilles et nous suggérons que les anciennes interpretations ont été largement fondées sur du matériel perturbé, des dépôts mixtes qui donnaient une image fausse de l'homogenité pendant cette période.     

Archaeological Perspectives on the Rise of the Okinawan State

This paper presents an examination of processes of secondary state formation that occurred during the emergence of the Ryukyu Kingdom, in southwestern Japan, from the tenth to seventeenth centuries A.D. These processes include the influx of new populations, the appearance of new subsistence strategies and political groupings, shifting patterns of long-distance trade, the development of new patterns of foreign relations with China and Japan, the creation of indigenous culture and new ideology, and the transformation of gender hierarchy. I examine these processes from the perspective of political leadership and the nature of political hierarchy, concluding that the Okinawan case is distinctive in its heterarchical organization. The corporate, collective nature of Okinawan communities was overlain by a state-level network system that developed at the time of tributary linkages with China in the fourteenth century A.D.     

The Second Time as Farce: Archaeological Reflections on the New New Deal

Many connections have been made between the Great Depression and the current crisis in neoliberal capitalism, and many solutions proposed by the Left hearken to FDR’s New Deal programs. While New Deal policies had real benefits, assuming that they were uniformly beneficial to all lower class individuals is shortsighted. This is clear from the vantage point of our research in the Finger Lakes National Forest. The New Deal’s Resettlement Administration purchased these farms when implementing land-planning policies to move farmers off “sub-marginal” land to save families “stranded on sub-marginal farms.” Our research demonstrates that governmental land-use programs saved some farms by sacrificing others. This case makes it clear that solving current crises need more than nostalgic yearning for a mythic past. Solutions must come from a thorough examination of the “real concrete” past, not simply the past as imagined.     

The Batan Grande-La Leche Archaeological Project: the First Two Seasons

Abstract

Batan Grande, occupying an area of some 55 sq. km. in the small coastal valley of La Leche in North Peru, is known as a mecca of grave looting that has yielded a considerable quantity of gold funerary artifacts. These destructive clandestine operations have not only prevented serious fieldwork but also effectively obscured the complexity and significance of archaeological remains that include nearly 50 extensive cemeteries and massive adobe constructions that together span some 2,500 years since the Formative period (ca. 1300 B.C.). Since 1978, the multi-year, interdisciplinary Princeton University Batan Grande-La Leche Project has been carrying out intensive field work with principal research interests in (a) evaluating the role of organized religion in cultural development, (b) establishing a regional chronology, (c) elucidating cultural interaction during the problematical Middle Horizon Period (ca. 600–1000 A.C.), and (d) documenting systemic relationships between cultural and natural processes. This paper presents the major results and interdisciplinary research strategies of the first two seasons as well as a model of the Batan Grande burial and religious tradition.     

Archaeological Visualization: Towards an Archaeological Information Science (AISc)

This paper reviews and evaluates the potential use of modern visualization techniques in archaeology. It suggests the need to apply and develop such techniques as a central part of any modern archaeological investigation. The use of these methods is associated with wider questions about data representations, in particular, their integration with archaeological theory and their role in facilitating analysis and shaping interpretation. Concern for these questions and with the overall potential that information systems provide to capture, represent, analyze, and model archaeological information suggests the need for a new interdisciplinary focus, Archaeological Information Science. For such a focus to prosper, archaeologists need to develop additional skills that go beyond mere technical ones. They need to become more active in the design and creation of future information archaeological systems. To this end, archaeologists are urged to view this task as a way to extend archaeology in new directions and to recognize that the digital representation and treatment of archaeological information can generate new forms of doing archaeology.     

Political-Ecology Perspectives on New World Loza (Majolica)

Political ecology, with its focus on twenty-first century power relations and resource access, also provides a perspective on commodity production in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century emergent global economy. The focus here is on majolica pottery (tin-enameled ware; loza) and the spread of its technology from Spain to the Americas. Topics discussed include: the formation of business clusters and cluster regions, and their shifting patterns of decline, survival, and adaptability; access to resources used in making the vessels, the enamel, and decorative pigments (especially cobalt); the role of Muslim artisans; and the sources of innovation and entrepreneurship in loza production.     

The Distribution and Research Value of Archaeological Mussel Shell: An Overview from Mississippi

Abstract

Archaeological mussel shell rarely has been employed beyond paleodietary analysis in eastern North America, and most published work is site-specific in nature. Broad-scale syntheses of data on freshwater mussel shells are needed to realize the research potential of this common archaeological material. Such syntheses should also reveal gaps in our knowledge and perhaps illuminate reasons for why such gaps exist. In this paper, data on freshwater mussel shells from sites in Mississippi are gathered, and broad patterns in temporal and spatial distributions as well as site structure are discussed. The spatial data clearly suffer from survey, recovery, analytical and reporting biases, while data on temporal trends and site structure are lacking or are available at only gross levels. Given that shell data can be used in a number of research areas (e.g., biogeography, paleoenvironment, chemical sourcing, measurement of environmental disturbance), such unsystematic treatment of shell remains is unwarranted and should be corrected.     

The Aterian from the Jebel Gharbi (Libya): New Technological Perspectives from North Africa

The purpose of this work is to examine the Aterian complex in the context of modern human origins through the analysis of the lithic industries from a geographically strategic area, the Jebel Gharbi (Libya). From a chronological point of view, the Aterian fits the time period of the Out of Africa 2 dispersal. During geoarchaeological surveys of the Jebel Gharbi carried out by the Italian–Libyan Archaeological Mission, 25 Aterian sites were found. The technology of the Aterian lithic industries from the Jebel Gharbi shows affinities both with the Aterian industries from Morocco and coeval industries from Egypt such as Taramsa. The affinities between contemporary Libyan Aterian industries, Egyptian industries, and some series from the Levant open new perspectives on the possible models of contact and displacement of human groups in a key period for the history of humankind.     

Detecting Apprentices and Innovators in the Archaeological Record: The Shell Bead-Making Industry of the Channel Islands

Archaeologists have demonstrated that it is challenging but feasible to identify the material remains of apprenticing activities associated with stone tool and ceramic assemblages. Building on this work, I explore apprenticing behavior in North America??s most intensive ancient shellworking context, using the large bead-making assemblages from California's Channel Islands. I examine a spectrum of production errors associated with a newly identified variant of Olivella shell bead and offer generalizations about what we should find in the material record of apprentices engaged in manufacturing ornamental goods. I also explore how we may distinguish novices?? errors from the mistakes of skilled experts experimenting with new bead forms. Existing ethnoarchaeological studies of children??s roles and contemporary craft practitioners specializing in ceramics, bead making, stone work, and other materials are foundational sources of data for this project, providing insights into the transmission of technical information from experts to novices in communities of practice. Such work directly informs archaeological research and facilitates our understanding of apprenticing from periods and regions where ethnographic information is insufficient or inapplicable.     

Expanding the Dimensions of Early Agricultural Tells: The Podgoritsa Archaeological Project,Bulgaria

Abstract

A single season of field work was carried out in 1995 at the Podgoritsa Tell, an Eneolithic (5th millennium B.C.) settlement mound located between the villages of Dralfa and Podgoritsa in the Turgovishte region of NE Bulgaria. Results provide significant new data about the physical and social dimensions of early agricultural settlement tells in SE Europe. Most important is the first discovery of architectural structures and activity areas located outside of the topographic circumference of an Eneolithic tell. Additional, and equally unprecedented, information from geophysical and soil coring investigations proves that the land around the Podgoritsa site went through cycles of use and disuse. These cycles were determined by variations in the level of the local water table. Evidence of a bank and ditch structure on the western edge of the tell raises the possibility that the site's inhabitants may have been actively managing local water supplies. The firm evidence for off-tell activity (which explodes the myth that the modern visible topographic limits of a tell represent the limits of activity) and the possibility of 5th millennium hydrological engineering have important consequences not only for our understanding of the SE European Copper Age but also or future strategies of tell excavation across SE Europe and western Asia.     

早商时期经营四土之考古学新证

早商时期,商族在推翻夏朝统治的同时,迅速据有夏的故土并极力向外开拓,夏、商两大族群及其周边各族之间的迅速渗透、融合,初步奠定了商代早期四土政治地理与民族格局的基础。     

Managing the Archaeological Heritage: The Case of Akrotiri,Thera (Santorini)

Abstract

This article deals with the archaeological site of Akrotiri on the Cycladic island of Thera (Santorini), Greece, and demonstrates, in particular, how the construction of a new protective shelter has provided an opportunity for enhancing the present and future conservation and management of the site in accordance with, among other values, the aspirations of the local community. Drawing on the experience of the author as Director of the excavation, special emphasis will be placed on the features of the new bioclimatic shelter that can accommodate the continuous use of the site as both a scientific workshop and a tourist attraction.     

The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project

This article analyses French assimilation policy towards the four communes of the colony of Senegal, placing it in a new conceptual framework of ‘globalization’ and ‘post-colonial studies’. Between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, the four cities of Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque and Dakar were granted municipal status, while their inhabitants acquired French citizenship. However, the acquisition of these political privileges went together with a refusal on the part of these ‘citizens’ to submit themselves to the French code civil. Their resistance manifested itself in particular in the forging of an urban culture that differed from both the metropolitan model and the Senegambian models of the independent kingdoms on the colony's fringes or the societies integrated as protectorates. This article argues that, at the very heart of this colonial project and despite its marked assimilationist and jacobin overtones, a strong project of cultural and political hybridization developed. The inhabitants of the quatre communes forged their own civilité which enabled them to participate in a global colonial culture on the basis of local idioms.     

“中国社会科学院考古学论坛·2010年中国考古新发现”纪要

2011年1月11日,由中国社会科学院主办,中国社会科学院考古研究所、考古杂志社承办的第十届中国社会科学院考古学论坛.2010年中国考古新发现在中国社会科学院学术报告厅举行。会上,浙江省文物考古研究所、山西省考古研究所、湖南省