The Archaeology of Trading Systems,Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis

After almost three centuries of investigations into the question of what it means to be human and the historical processes of becoming human, archaeologists have amassed a huge volume of data on prehistoric human interactions. One of the largest data sets available is on the global distribution and exchange of materials and commodities. What still remains insufficiently understood is the precise nature of these interactions and their role in shaping the diverse cultures that make up the human family as we know it. A plethora of theoretical models combined with a multitude of methodological approaches exist to explain one important aspect of human interaction—trade—and its role and place in shaping humanity. We argue that trade parallels political, religious, and social processes as one of the most significant factors to have affected our evolution. Here we review published literature on archaeological approaches to trade, including the primitivist-modernist and substantivist-formalist-Marxist debates. We also discuss economic, historical, and ethnographic research that directly addresses the role of traders and trade in both past and contemporary societies. In keeping with the complexities of interaction between trade and other aspects of human behavior, we suggest moving away from the either/or perspective or strong identification with any particular paradigm and suggest a return to the middle through a combinational approach to the study of trade in past societies.     

Scales of Analysis, Scales of Value: Archaeology at Bush Hill House, Barbados

The excavations at Bush Hill House were sponsored because of its association with a notable historical figure, yet the archaeologists were more interested in what we saw as the “bigger” picture: colonialism; slavery; the Atlantic World. This paper addresses both the micro scale—individual deposits and individual people—and the macro scale—placing this site within the larger world of the British Atlantic of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Not surprisingly, both scales, when considered explicitly, offer insights into past social worlds and archaeologists’ means of discovering them.     

A Teapot, a House, or Both? The Material Possessions of Irish Women��s California Assemblages

Using a woman-centered approach, artifact assemblages and background documents are analyzed to discern gender behavior and ethnic variations in women’s work—cooking, dining, housecleaning—in more frivolous areas—flowers, pets, girls’ toys—and personal adornment. Issues of gender bias are discussed. The data show that negative evidence (absence vs. presence) is, at times, misleading and must be carefully considered. Detailed study of the artifacts connected with Irish women suggests their gender values that organized their lives differed from those of Anglo-American women who had a voice in small expressive purchases while men made final decisions on major household purchases. Irish women owned small items too. However, a crucial distinction was an element not covered by the archaeology: a house of their own and owner-occupied, a fact solely visible in documents.     

Settlement Form and Evolution in the Central Highlands of Scotland,ca. 1100–1900

Since 1996, archaeologists from Glasgow University have been involved in a research project on the north shores of Loch Tay in the Central Highlands of Scotland. This work—known as the Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project—was specifically focused on medieval and later settlement remains. For the purposes of this paper, the results of the archaeological work are contrasted with work from similar sites elsewhere in Scotland. The sweeping changes in tenurial, social and cultural spheres, known as the Improvements, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are considered in relation to the preceding six hundred years.     

Inside/Outside, Upside Down: Including Archaeologists in Communities

As social scientists, archaeologists have specialized ideas about what “community” entails. But the concept resonates well beyond the scholarly realm. What did “community” mean to the people whose lives we study? What does it mean to the groups with which we engage in the present? The answers to these questions have implications for the legitimacy of archaeologists’ claims to engage in “community archaeology.” Here, the author uses period texts—newspapers—and focus group data to explore the contours of “community” as understood at two sites with active community archaeology programs.     

A Trip to the Mountains: Travel and Social Relations in the Catskill Mountains of New York

The Catskill Mountains in upstate New York have been a tourist destination since the early nineteenth century. At a superficial level, the history of Catskill tourism follows a basic trajectory from elite destination in the nineteenth century to more inclusive tourist area in the twentieth century. This trajectory incorporates a “trickle down” theory of tourism and leisure that masks the complexity of changes in social relations. Jewish tourism in the Catskills evidences how class, ethnic, and gender relations intertwined in the creation of a specific place—the Borscht Belt. Archaeology in the Borscht Belt places tourism within larger capitalist relations in America and complicates concepts of tourism as consumption and leisure.     

Rituals of Consumption and the Politics of Feasting on the Eastern African Coast,AD 700–1500

Historically, the Swahili of the eastern African coast have performed feasts through which they negotiated and contested social power. Feasts draw on tradition and practice, but create the space for, and conditions of, imbalance and social debt. Drawing on this historical frame, I examine the archaeology of feasting in the more distant Swahili past, AD 700–1500, in particular looking at how feasts can domesticate distant power—the power drawn from objects and practices from elsewhere. By charting changing assemblages of imported and local ceramics alongside settlement and food preferences, I examine developments in feasting patterns and the way feasts provided a social context within which local and distant power could be translated into authority.     

For the Community: Scottish Historical Archaeology and the Politics of Land Reform

In Scotland, land reform is, historically and still today, a defining political issue and a subject of debate. Central to this debate are different ideological understandings of the rural past. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Scottish land question and explore several of the main—sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting—ideologies concerning land, as put forward or supported by different constituencies: politicians; landowners; crofters; Scots more generally; and members of the Scottish diaspora. I consider the histories to which these ideologies relate and seek to locate the historical archaeology of rural Scotland in its political and social contexts.     

Getting “Out of Africa”: Sea Crossings,Land Crossings and Culture in the Hominin Migrations

Palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists have advanced a wide range of explanatory narratives for the various movements of Homo erectus/Homo ergaster, and the first modern Homo sapiens, “Out of Africa”—or even back again. The application of Occam's razor—a parsimonious approach to causes—gives a more cautious approach. There is nothing in the available evidence that would require the ability for a human water crossing from Africa before the later Pleistocene, whether across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Sicilian Channel or the southern Red Sea (Bab el-Mandab). A parsimonious narrative is consistent with movements across the Sinai peninsula. The continuous arid zone from northern Africa to western Asia allowed both occupation and transit during wet phases of the Pleistocene; there is no requirement for a “sponge” model of absorption followed by expulsion of human groups. The Nile Valley as a possible transit route from East Africa has a geological chronology that could fit well much current evidence for the timing of human migration. The limited spatial and temporal opportunities for movements “Out of Africa,” or back again, also puts particular difficulties in the way of the gene flow required for the multiregional hypothesis of the development of modern Homo sapiens.     

明代地域商帮兴起的社会背景

In the mid-Ming Dynasty, the means of transportation were greatly improved; commodity production became more developed; silver was gradually monetized; commercial taxes became lighter; and social attitudes towards merchants changed. All these developments created a favorable environment for the formation of regional merchant groups. Meanwhile, social factors at the regional level—characteristics of local commodity production, favorable natural environment and production structures, as well as Ming government’s practice of border defense, border trade, foreign policy, local customs, and the interpretation of commercial activities of local people—all contributed to the emergence of merchant groups. Translated by Wu Yanhong from Tsinghua Daxue Xuebao 清华大学学报 (Journal of Tsinghua University), 2006, (5): 81–94     

In Search of the Social: Steamboats, Square Wheels, Reindeer and Other Things

This paper examines the concept of the ‘social,’ particularly from an archaeological perspective, and explores how it relates to the ways in which we seek to understand the processes of technological innovation and change. It is demonstrated that the concept ‘social’ is far from well defined and that enquiry is bedevilled by artificial polarization between subject-centred approaches and object-centred particularism. Through the medium of early United States steamboat technology a different approach is forged through the melding of people and things with the idea of viewing artefacts as active social actors along with people. Ultimately, it is argued that maritime archaeologists should be more bullish in their approaches to material things—instead of adopting social theories ‘wholesale,’ we should insist that they include the things we study: boats, material objects, people, artefacts, landscapes and animals.     

An inquiry into the causes for the multiple goals of the United States Antitrust Law from a historical perspective

It is not the case as Robert Bork claims that the U. S. antitrust law had only one goal—maximization of consumer welfare of efficiency—at the very beginning and should have been kept that way for its later development. Partly because of the fighting among different interest groups as well as spokesmen of different regions at the 51st Congress, the Sherman Antitrust Act came out as a legislation with multiple goals, which were also taking shape under the influence of the Republican idea of balance of power, the liberal belief in property rights, the freedom of contract of classic economics, and the price theory of neoclassic economics. In more than a hundred years after that, the U.S. antitrust law has shifted the center of its goals as a result of the change of regulatory regimes with different emphases such as market function, economic stabilization, social concern, and economic efficiency during different periods. From a historical perspective, it is beyond dispute that the U.S. antitrust law has had multiple goals instead of only one. __________ Translated from: Shixue Yuekan 史学月刊 (Journal of Historical Science), No.6, 2004     

多情境下城市时空间行为的社会分异——以北京不同住房来源居民为例

近年来,居民时空间行为的社会分异已成为学者们广泛关注的话题。然而,已有关于居民时空间行为的社会分异研究中,缺少对于居民活动情境的社会分异的研究。因此,本研究基于时间地理学中对人类活动的情境嵌入性与情境的不同维度的相关理论,以北京清河街道为例,分析不同住房来源居民在日常情境、地理情境和社会情境下的时空间行为的社会分异,尝试从多个情境维度拓展对时空间行为社会分异的理解。研究发现,市场性住房居民“朝九晚五”的活动特征明显,活动同伴选择外向性突出;单位性住房居民职住相对接近,在社区空间内分配时间最长且活动目的多样;安置性住房居民活动较为分散,地理情境与社会情境都呈现出“家庭内向性”特征;保障性住房居民非工作活动的“滞后性”明显,对社区空间的时间分配总体较低。除住房来源因素与个人社会经济因素外,建成环境因素对于居民对社区空间的使用有显著影响。     

The Writing on the Wall: The Concealed Communities of the East Yorkshire Horselads

This paper examines the graffiti found within late 19th and early 20th century farm buildings in the Wolds of East Yorkshire. It suggests that the graffiti were created by a group of young men at the bottom of the social hierarchy—the horselads—and was one of the ways in which they constructed a distinctive sense of communal identity, at a particular stage in their lives. Whilst it tells us much about changing agricultural regimes and social structures, it also informs us about experiences and attitudes often hidden from official histories and biographies. In this way, the graffiti are argued to inform our understanding, not only of a concealed community, but also about their hidden history.     

Archaeology as Built for the Tourists: The Anasazi Cliff Dwellings of Manitou Springs,Colorado

Anasazi-era archaeology sites have been extremely popular tourist attractions since the 1890s, but one site—the cliff dwellings in Manitou Springs, Colorado—stands apart because it is a fake. The site was constructed at the turn of the twentieth century as a more accessible tourist alternative to Four Corners-area Anasazi ruins. The story of its construction and how it continues to cater to its visitors offers insight into the ways in which archaeology sites function as tourist destination. The Manitou Cliff Dwellings forces scholars to consider questions of authenticity, authority, and how people engage the past.     

Studies of Gender in the Prehispanic Americas

In the past ten years archaeologists have produced a vast literature on the study of gender in the prehispanic New World. This review defines key concepts, identifies three major themes within this tradition—gender in native cosmologies, intersections of gender and the body, and studies of work and specialization—and explores the significant contributions of engendered archaeology to the broader field. Final suggestions for linkages with queer studies and indigenous feminism point the way to where this field might develop productive new avenues of research.     

Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa: Breaking the Silence

Postcolonial archaeologies in Africa are engaged in a variety of agendas including the decolonization of everyday practices in the field and in the classroom. Postcolonial theory, concerned with issues of power and the Other, is increasingly being invoked to examine how archaeologists conduct their field research and how archaeology is used to dismantle essentialized histories—the metanarratives that arose in the colonial as well as the postcolonial era. Easily misunderstood, however, is the passion expressed by some African archaeologists who are voicing their own views while simultaneously trying to free themselves from dominating “expert” voices. These occurrences create tensions in archaeological discourse that are a natural part of decolonizing archaeology, joining other forms of disenchantment, particularly the disenchantments arising in contemporary African communities about social services, civil society, and human rights. Archaeologists are also implicated in disenchantments as they conduct investigations in the midst of people who may be without water or are suffering from HIV/AIDS—conditions that starkly contrast with their own comfortable lives. We may also need to reconsider how to deal with states that see archaeological research as contrary to nation building. This essay responds to some current misunderstandings that have arisen over these and related issues.     

Hatching seeds before they’re counted

Like other analytic aspects of archaeology, archaeobotany has been growing progressively more quantitative in the past few decades. This may be a sign of the proliferation of increasingly mature and sophisticated methodologies for analyzing botanical data, but associated with the sophistication of quantitative methods is their inherent opacity: the value and applicability of anthropological conclusions drawn from quantitative archaeobotanical data are not only limited by the amount of information that can be extracted from data by sophisticated statistical tools, but also by our ability to draw reasonable anthropological—as opposed to merely statistical—conclusions. Even the words “classification” and “significance” have different meanings in statistics and in anthropology. In this paper, I propose the use of graphical analysis for archaeobotanical data in addition to, or instead of, typical statistical tools like significance tests, variable reduction, and clustering. Applied to data from charred seed assemblages from the ancient Near East, the visual representation of quantitative data has the advantage of handling semiquantitative data better and being interpretable without reliance on the paradigm of a formal statistical test.     

The Chalcolithic Period of the Southern Levant: A Synthetic Review

In the southern Levant, the late fifth millennium to mid-fourth millennium BC—traditionally known as the Chalcolithic period—witnessed major cultural transformations in virtually all areas of society, most notably craft production, mortuary and ritual practices, settlement patterns, and iconographic and symbolic expression. A degree of regionalism is evident in material culture, but continuity in ceramic styles, iconographic motifs, and mortuary practices suggests a similar cultural outlook linking these sub-regions. Luxury items found in group mortuary caves provide good evidence for at least some inequality in access to exotic materials. The level of complexity in social organization, however, is still debated. Divergent interpretations of Chalcolithic socio-economic organization suggest that, with the large amount of new information now available, a reevaluation of the debate is due. In this article we synthesize the more recent evidence and weigh interpretations of processes that led to the widespread fundamental changes witnessed during the late fifth to early fourth millennium BC.     

The territorial dynamics of innovation: a Europe United States comparative analysis

The United States and European Union differ significantly interms of their innovative capacity: the former have been ableto gain and maintain world leadership in innovation and technologywhile the latter continues to lag. Notwithstanding the magnitudeof this innovation gap and the political emphasis placed uponit on both sides of the Atlantic, very little systematic comparativeanalysis has been carried out on its causes. The empirical literaturehas emphasized the structural differences between the two continentsin the quantity and quality of the major ‘inputs’to innovation: R&D investments and human capital. The verydifferent spatial organization of innovative activities in theEU and the US—as suggested by a variety of contributionsin the field of economic geography—could also influenceinnovative output. This article analyses and compares a wideset of territorial processes that influence innovation in Europeand the United States. The higher mobility of capital, populationand knowledge in the US not only promotes the agglomerationof research activity in specific areas of the country but alsoenables a variety of territorial mechanisms to fully exploitlocal innovative activities and (informational) synergies. Inthe European Union, in contrast, imperfect market integrationand institutional and cultural barriers across the continentprevent innovative agents from maximizing the benefits fromexternal economies and localized interactions, but compensatoryforms of geographical process may be emerging in concert withfurther European integration.