Animate Objects: Shell Trumpets and Ritual Networks in the Greater Southwest

For over a millennium, shell trumpets have been an important part of Southwestern US ritual practice. We investigate the distribution of Southwestern shell trumpets, arguing that they are objects that are accorded animacy and can be used to track the history of different social networks. Using ethnohistoric and ethnographic documentation, at least two traditions of historically linked ritual practices are identified: one associated with serpent iconography and the other with curing, warfare, and sorcery. These two traditions represent enduring dispositions that link various regions of the Southwest through the introduction and adoption of ritual practices associated with migration and the transformation of late prehistoric societies.     

中原北方宋辽金时期涅槃图像考察

中原北方宋辽金时期涅槃图像,具有时代共通性的一面,同时呈现东部地区与西部地区的地域差异。在图像表现方面,两地区涅槃图像不同程度地继承了唐代因素,相对来说,东部地区沿用的唐代因素较多;西部地区在唐代基础上又部分地吸收了东部地区宋代因素,并获得新发展。在图像内涵方面,东部地区表现为涅槃与弥勒佛组合,延续了传统图像的做法,着意表述佛法传承的意图。涅檗与三身佛组合是这一时期的新现象,反映了大乘佛教权道、化现思想。西部地区表现为涅槃、罗汉、横三世佛(释迦·弥勒·阿弥陀)组合,一方面强调了罗汉守护和传承佛法的作用,另一方面凸显信徒向往并期望将来往生净土世界的心态。东西两地区有关摩耶夫人画面的流行,与当时社会大力倡导孝行的情况密切关联。涅槃升仙图像则是佛教进一步世俗化的表现。     

The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective

This article reviews recent archaeological research on warfare in prestate societies of native North America. This survey comprises six regions: Arctic/Subarctic, Northwest Coast, California, Southwest/Great Basin, Great Plains, and Eastern Woodlands. Two lines of evidence, defensive settlement behavior and injuries in human skeletal remains, figure prominently in archaeological reconstructions of violence and warfare in these regions. Burning of sites and settlements also has been important for identifying the consequences of war and investigating more subtle aspects of strategy and directionality. Weaponry and iconography have to date provided important but more limited insights. Although considerable disparities exist between regions in the archaeological evidence for intra- and intergroup violence, all regions show a marked increase after A.D. 1000. These findings suggest that larger forces may have been responsible for escalating violence throughout North America at this time.     

The archaic prehistory of the North American Southwest

Evidence today suggests that by at least 8000 to 8500 B.P., Archaic hunter-gatherer economies were established throughout the North American Southwest. The Early Archaic seems to be a period of considerable variability across the subregions; this may be a product of currently slim knowledge of the period, or it may indicate that the region witnessed considerable flux. With the Middle Archaic period from 5500 to 3500 B.P. there seems to be greater similarity in material culture across the region and a definite increase in the number of known sites. Finally, the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period from 3500 to 2000 or 1500 B.P. sees the establishment of a mixed farming-foraging economy in much of the Southwest with apparently major changes in subsistence-settlement systems. Preagricultural Archaic land use patterns are known in broad outline but not in detail; high mobility by small social groups in an annual round would have permitted exploitation of diverse biotic communities. In most parts of the region, significant socioeconomic change accompanies the incorporation of agriculture into the late preceramic period, as witnessed by the appearance of longer-term residential sites with pitstructures and storage features.     

Vocabularies of Slavery and Anti-Slavery: The North American Fur-Trade and the Imperial World

This article examines the particular work that languages of slavery and abolition did in British North American fur-trade territories with an eye to comparing these histories with those of slavery and anti-slavery in Australia. Temporally, it focuses on the two decades following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, and geographically it examines the parts of northwestern North America claimed by Britain and administered by the Hudson's Bay Company. Here traders, missionaries and critics wrote of slavery and anti-slavery in the fur-trade in ways that repeated metropolitan patterns but were also arguably distinct, and certainly merit our attention. In British fur-trade space, vocabularies of slavery and anti-slavery provided language for the particular unfreedom of Indigenous people, the experience of indentured migrant labourers, and the political arrangements of colonial space. Seeing how the vocabularies of slavery and anti-slavery tracked through different colonial spaces reminds us of the uneven and intertwined histories that cut across and through the nineteenth-century world.     

Higher ground: The archaeology of North American platform mounds

Platform mounds, as forms of monumental architecture, have long been central to inquiries into Native American social complexity. The archaeological literature produced over the last 5 years that pertains to North American platform mounds in the Southeast and Southwest is reviewed. Chronologies, forms, and functions of platform mounds are summarized. There are similarities in the platform mound characteristics and construction sequences found in both regions. It is proposed that these characteristics reflect similar social processes of integration and differentiation.     

The cultures of Native North American language documentation and revitalization

The reviewed books comprise an emerging ethnographic literature on endangered language documentation and revitalization in Native North America. Language loss and preservation are pressing concerns for tribal communities, galvanizing activists and researchers to develop classroom curricula and literacy traditions in hopes of producing new speakers. While the reviewed books show that this goal often goes unrealized, we nevertheless read them as grounds for optimism. Even if language revitalization rarely increases the everyday use of particular lexical and grammatical codes, it may succeed in accomplishing another important goal: facilitating indigenous communities’ efforts to create for themselves more meaningful contemporary cultures.     

The Illegal Excavation and Trade of Syrian Cultural Objects: A View from the Ground

The illegal excavation and trade of cultural objects from Syrian archaeological sites worsened markedly after the outbreak of civil disturbance and conflict in 2011. Since then, the damage to archaeological heritage has been well documented, and the issue of terrorist funding explored, but hardly any research has been conducted into the organization and operation of theft and trafficking of cultural objects inside Syria. As a first step in that direction, this paper presents texts of interviews with seven people resident in Syria who have first-hand knowledge of the trade, and uses information they provided to suggest a model of socioeconomic organization of the Syrian war economy regarding the trafficking of cultural objects. It highlights the importance of coins and other small objects for trade, and concludes by considering what lessons might be drawn from this model to improve presently established public policy.     

The Retreat of the North American Ice Sheet and Shifts in Cyclone Tracks

The alternating retreats and readvances of the North American ice sheet from 18,000 years to 6000 years ago are attributed to shifts in storm tracks. According to the author's theory, proglacial lakes formed during the retreat of the ice sheet became the paths of cyclone tracks whose precipitation led to an accumulation of ice and a readvance of the ice sheet. The readvance into the proglacial lake basins resulted in a reduction or southward shift of cyclone tracks, and this in turn led to a halt of the readvance and a retreat of the ice sheet. As soon as the ice had vacated the Great Lakes basin, the cyclone tracks would once again shift northward and the process of readvance would start all over again.     

Engineering the North American waterscape: The high modernist mapping of continental water transfer projects

Starting in the late 1950s, at least fifteen separate proposals to radically alter the North American waterscape emerged. These proposals typically sought to bring water from northern regions (especially in Canada) to southern ones in the United States and Mexico through canal construction, the massive alteration of river flow, and (in some cases) nuclear excavation. This study analyzes the cartographic strategies used in support of re-engineering the continent’s water flow. The project maps promoted a specific political agenda that sought to redistribute North America's water resources by transcending political boundaries and physical barriers. Furthermore, conventions of cartographic representation, particularly the need for generalization and simplification, worked to reinforce and heighten the original modernist, engineering ethos. This led to representations that de-emphasized political communities and boundaries, that both assumed and hid nuclear technology, and that ultimately removed water from the natural environment by treating it as a purely abstract resource.     

Using finite element methods to analyze ancient architecture: an example from the North American Arctic

Developing theories of vernacular architecture in archaeology has been hindered by the lack of a defined methodology for studying ancient buildings, and the absence of information on the mechanical properties of construction materials uncommon in today's building practices. In this paper we use Finite Element Methods and recent research on the structural properties of whalebone to analyze the architecture of Thule semi-subterranean houses. These unique dwellings were constructed and used by the ancestors of Inuit/Eskimo peoples in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. Little is known about how they were designed and constructed because few have ever been discovered intact. The substantial weight of whalebone roof frames suggests that some designs would have performed better than others. Poorly planned houses, or the use of whalebone in a symbolic rather than strictly utilitarian capacity, may have resulted in higher maintenance costs, thereby shortening their anticipated use life. In extreme cases, errors in design, or the failure of materials may have caused dwellings to collapse, resulting in injuries or possibly even death. We demonstrate through this case study that Finite Element Methods constitutes an effective methodology for studying ancient buildings, with the proviso that more research is needed on the mechanical properties of building materials used in the past.     

英属北美殖民地法律的早期现代化

关于英属北美殖民地社会经济属何种性质的讨论,涉及到对当时法律制度的历史地位进行评价的问题,美国学术界在这些方面至今还存在很多争议。从美国学者的学术交锋来看,尽管英属北美殖民地是否已进入资本主义发展阶段仍有待商榷,但当时市场经济的扩张确实已达到了一定的程度,从而使殖民地的法律制度出现了早期现代化的趋势,主要表现为陪审团在民事审判中的初步式微、从事实性答辩向法律性答辩的转变、普通法令状制度的逐步健全、专业律师队伍的出现和仲裁的正规化或边缘化。因此,英属北美殖民地法律在美国法律史上占有重要地位,殖民地时期绝不是美国法律的“黑暗时代”,当然也不可和19世纪混为一谈。     

The diversity of North American projectile-point types,before and after the bow and arrow

Mimicking paleobiological studies of biodiversity, changes in the diversity of temporal types of North American projectile points are modeled to reveal evolutionary patterns of origination and extinction. Origination is modeled as rapid innovation of multiple point types (high diversity), and extinction is modeled as gradual winnowing of less-efficient types. Introduction of the bow and arrow as a new weapon-delivery system is modeled as an increase in point diversity. Six sequences of points (dart + arrow), six sequences of dart points, and six sequences of arrow points from western North America best match the model when the number of time periods ?5 and the number of types is >3.     

处女地假说与北美印第安人的命运

在白人殖民者到来前,北美印第安人已经在美洲大陆上生活了数万年,并对周围的环境产生了重要的影响。白人殖民者来到美洲后,一方面出于欧洲种族主义的文化偏见,一方面出于剥夺印第安人土地的现实利益需要,建构出处女地假说,并根据自身需要将北美大陆上的原住民简单形容为高贵的印第安人和嗜血的野蛮人两种非此即彼的刻板形象。处女地假说成为白人殖民者向西部边疆扩张、驱逐和剥削印第安人的理论工具。对于美洲白人来说,该假说意味着机会和希望,而对于北美印第安人来说,该假说则代表了种族主义偏见和殖民主义的罪恶。随着现代环境主义的兴起,处女地假说和印第安人的传统生态智慧受到热捧,印第安人也试图利用这一工具为其当前争取资源控制权的斗争服务,但收效不大。