Negotiations with the Animate Forest: Hunting Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

Ethnoarchaeological research at highland Maya hunting shrines documents the material remains of interactions between two types of animate beings: humans and the forest. When either active agent enters the others’ domain there are accompanying ceremonial activities to assuage the inherent danger, often leaving physical traces in the material record. These traces, if found in the archaeological record, might reveal similar ancient interactions. Using the material correlates of modern hunting rituals, we explore the utility of ethnoarchaeological research in identifying negotiations with non-human agents associated with the animate forest – an active agent in many societies.     

Dealing with Soviet Power and Influence:Eisenhower's Management of U.S. National Security

Book reviewed in this article:
Robert Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy     

全面抗战前中日国交调整的力度与限度——以成都事件为视点的考察

1936年下半年发生在中日国交调整期间的成都事件,虽然在一定程度上影响了中日关系,但也为重启交涉创造了契机。交涉过程中,日本企图借成都事件一揽子解决以往的各项悬案,从而导致外交谈判的重点出现偏移,谈判的目标由解决具体事件转为全面调整国交。由于双方分歧过大,交涉难以进行,最终谈判被迫退回到“就事论事”的层面,有限度地解决了成都事件。“蓉案”引发的中日交涉,表明了全面抗战爆发前中日两国调整关系的意愿,但由于双方存在明显分歧,国交调整所取得的成果有限。     

Form and deformity: the trouble with Victorian pockets

This essay explores the Victorian debate about the place of pockets in men's and women's clothing. By studying the representation of men as naturally pocketed creatures and the general denial of useful pockets to middle-class women, the essay demonstrates the tenacious cultural logic by which men's and women's pockets were imagined to correspond to sexual differences and to index access, or lack thereof, to public mobility and financial agency. Interconnected readings of visual art, essays, and novels show how the common sense about gendered pockets was utilized and promulgated in Victorian narratives. The question of who gets pockets is thus positioned as part of the history of gendered bodies in public space.     

论1937至1941年国民政府对日和谈与对外求援

抗日战争爆发后到太平洋战争爆发前,国民政府一直没有放弃争取和平解决的努力。在与日本政府通过各种途径直接进行谈判的同时,并请其它国家出面调停,极力呼吁国际社会采取行动,其目的是争取以和平途径制止日本的侵略。与此同时,国民政府还设法争取各国对中国抗战的支援。除了争取与美国建立政治、军事和经济合作及获得美国的财政和军事援助外,还向英国和法国求援。在此期间,苏联结予中国以很多援助,包括提供大量的借款,派遣大批军事顾问和技术人员,派遣空军帮助中国作战等。国民政府的对日和谈和对外求援都是其抗战战略的一部分。国民政府以和平途径制止日本侵略的目的未能实现,但其对外求援对抗战起到了有利作用。     

Empire is the Enemy of Love: Edith Noor's Progress and Other Stories

Cases discovered in the British Colonial Office archives of the 1920s and 1930s show how different branches of the imperial state struggled with interracial couples and families to define their rightful place in the empire. As discursive analysis historically contextualised shows, state servants striving to maintain colonial power relations held assumptions about racial and cultural differences that reacted in unpredictable ways with their deeply gendered and classed judgements about interracial marriages and the women in them. This evidence reveals that racial distinction or ‘whiteness’ was neither the sole nor even the primary variable driving these decisions. Discourses of gender, class, culture, sexual danger and spatial location were equally powerful.     

They Fear Us,yet Cling to Us: Russian Negotiations with Tsushima Domain Officials during the 1861 Tsushima Incident

Over six months in 1861, Commander Birilëv of the Russian Navy constructed a base on the island of Tsushima and attempted to negotiate with local domain officials to turn the island into a Russian protectorate. While official Japanese documents, including Tsushima reports to the Tokugawa government in Edo, claim they vigorously resisted these most unwelcome Russian efforts, Birilëv records the Tsushima officials themselves as the ones who first requested Russian patronage. How can we reconcile these two dramatically different versions of the same event? Due to the relatively isolated position of Tsushima, separated from mainland Japan by the sea, the Russians incorrectly believed they were dealing with a borderland that could be detached from the Tokugawa polity, or even with an independent state, tied to Japan merely by flimsy ‘feudal’ bonds. At the same time, Tsushima officials, afraid of antagonizing the volatile Birilëv, resorted to various stratagems that were misinterpreted by him as signals of desire to switch feudal overlords. The resultant negotiations reveal much about international diplomacy across different political cultures in mid-19^th century Asia, the influence of Russia on the development of the Japanese polity, and the conduct of gunboat diplomacy at the apogee of European imperialism.     

Commitment,Objectivity and Accountability to Communities: Priorities for 21st-Century Archaeology

Abstract

It is no longer possible to ignore the unprecedented levels of destruction resulting from development projects imposed by multinational corporations and governments. In this context, it is important to address the role archaeology and related professions, such as heritage management, play from the perspective both of the threat to physical heritage and our relationship with affected communities. This paper explores ways in which professionals can learn to work in a mutually accountable way with communities opposing destructive development, and together seek alternatives to development which threatens lives, livelihoods, culture, and environment. Case studies from the Boyne Valley and Tara in Ireland, Il?su dam in Turkey and the Oaxaca valley in Mexico, illustrate some of the issues. The implications of the growing privatization of professions, particularly for communities in the Third World whose poverty undermines their power to refuse even the most globally devastating developments, making it imperative that professionals look again at what we aim to accomplish and how much we are actually accomplishing it. As professionals we cannot afford to be ignorant of what communities want, need and are entitled to in order to develop and flourish. Archaeology and people's cultural roots are not separable from these questions.     

Drug Bodies: Relations with Substance in the Wau Bulolo Valley

Over the past decade, marijuana has become a significant element in the lives of Papua New Guinean youth. While placing them in conflict with community leaders, young men find meaning in marijuana. Used to affect agency, differentiated according to strength and color, and compared to plants once used by their ancestors, the drug is attributed with properties that do in fact change the substance of the body. Contrary to Strathern (1987), marijuana is now seen as transforming the bodies of its users, giving the power to overcome shame, understand ancestral stories, and work without tiring. Non‐users' discourses against use likewise evoke changes in substance, drying the blood of men who smoke it and oversee its circulation. Offspring of such men are characterized by their weak bones and they often die as infants. In this paper, I will examine these competing discourses of marijuana as they emerge in the communities around Wau (Morobe Province, PNG). I examine the way in which this new commodity begins to take on locals meanings and emerges as a powerful substance in the lives of young men and women.