The Anthropology of Virtual Worlds: World of Warcraft

Three recent ethnographies of the well-known massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft demonstrate the health and vitality of the study of virtual worlds. In particular, they emphasize the importance of anthropologists reading ethnographic work done by researchers in other disciplines, and by connoisseurs and cultural practitioners of video games who deserve to be taken as intellectual interlocutors. It may be, however, that less and less work will be done on virtual worlds in the future as scholarly attention focuses on other, more novel forms of technology.     

Two AHA Sessions: The Revolutionary Mr. Kuhn and the Evolutionary Mr. Bertalanffy

Abstract

Quantitative methods of content analysis have become established in most subfields of political science, but remain relatively unutilized in studies of political theory, despite the exclusive focus of that subfield on textual sources. This article develops a variation of content analysis—termed usage analysis—and employs it to resolve a standing debate in scholarship on Cicero's political theory regarding the synonymy of the major Latin terms for the state (civitas and res publica). The resulting distinction between these concepts then informs an exposition of Cicero's ideal state not as the Roman Republic itself or the mixed constitution alone, but as a universal, everlasting political society supported by justice, a mixed constitution, and active citizenship.     

Domestic Pigs in Africa

The history of African pig breeds is still controversial due to the relative scarcity of archaeological and genetic data clarifying their origins. While these breeds might descend from Near Eastern pigs entering the continent via Egypt during the Neolithic, Africa may be a primary domestication locus for pigs, as indicated for other species such as cattle and donkeys. In this regard, characterisation of the mitochondrial gene pool of African pig breeds has revealed a very low frequency of Near Eastern alleles, suggesting that, if Fertile Crescent pigs played a part in the foundation of African breeds, their genetic signature has been substantially erased. Interestingly, genetic analysis of western and eastern African pig breeds has revealed a strong phylogeographic pattern, with the latter harbouring Far Eastern alleles at high frequencies. This finding is consistent with data obtained for chickens and confirms that livestock was transported in ancient times, from the Far East to Africa as a consequence of the Indian Ocean trade. European colonisation of Africa also involved the introduction of exotic swine breeds such as Iberian pigs. The confluence of the highly divergent European and Far Eastern Sus scrofa gene pools contributed to significantly enrich the genetic reservoir of African swine breeds, favouring their adaptation to environmental conditions that are often harsh. Conservation of this genetic legacy will be of utmost importance to ensure the prosperity of current resource-based subsistence farming systems in Africa.     

Late Devonian gastropods from the Canning Basin,Western Australia

Over 50 identifications of Tertiary pollen are reviewed. The pollen assemblages indicate rain-forest through most of the Tertiary, but the requisites for pollen preservation are biased towards the wetter climates.

The present day geographical affinities of the botanical groups are largely with taxa of the tropical zone and Australia-wide taxa. There is geographic variation in the fossil pollen assemblages when southeastern Australia is compared with Central Australia and Queensland.

The major changes in the fossil floras coincide with climatic change, indicating the influence of climate on the evolution of plant assemblages. The older phytogeographic concepts are inappropriate for the fossil record, especially when considered in conjunction with palaeoclimates and palaeogeography.

It is unfortunate that palynology has given little information of the evolution of floras in drier climatic regimes, or of the evolution of the eucalypts.     

Ichnofacies of the Stairway Sandstone fish-fossil beds (Middle Ordovician,Northern Territory,Australia)

The Stairway Sandstone is a 30–560 m thick succession of Middle Ordovician siliciclastic sedimentary rocks within the Amadeus Basin of central Australia, deposited in the epeiric Larapintine Sea of northern peri-Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone is significant as one of only two known Gondwanan successions to yield articulated arandaspid (pteraspidomorph agnathan) fish. Herein we use the ichnology of the Stairway Sandstone to reveal insights into the shallow marine habitat of these early vertebrates, and compare it with that of other known pteraspidomorph-bearing localities from across Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone contains a diverse Ordovician ichnofauna including 22 ichnotaxa of Arenicolites, Arthrophycus, Asterosoma, Cruziana, Didymaulichnus, Diplichnites, Diplocraterion, ?Gordia, Lockeia, Monocraterion, Monomorphichnus, Phycodes, Planolites, Rusophycus, Skolithos and Uchirites. These ichnofauna provide a well-preserved example of a typical Ordovician epeiric sea assemblage, recording the diverse ethologies of tracemakers in a very shallow marine environment of flashy sediment accumulation and regularly shifting sandy substrates. New conodont data refine the age of the Stairway Sandstone to the early Darriwilian, with ichnostratigraphic implications for the Cruziana rugosa group and Arthrophycus alleghaniensis.     

Local Markets and the Polarization of Public-Sector Schools in England and Wales

Notwithstanding the recent change of government, UK educational policy continues to stress school performance tables, parental choice and competition – reflecting an acceptance by New Labour of Tory notions concerning the role that market mechanisms play in improving school performance. In view of the 1997 Education White Paper's insistence that the new government's goal was to 'overcome the spiral of disadvantage … passed from one generation to the next', this implies that the DfEE remains unimpressed by long-standing arguments concerning the socially-divisive consequences of market forces in education.
This paper seeks to add empirical weight to this debate. Arguing that recent analyses of aggregate levels of social stratification have masked polarization occurring at the local level, our analysis places schools in the context of the local markets within which they operate. This yields clear evidence that educational markets tend to exacerbate existing differences between schools in terms of both their performance and social status.     

Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East

This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other, the games of senet, mehen and twenty squares provide evidence for social interactions. Cypriots had adopted Egyptian mehen and senet by the third millennium BC, and indigenized the games. This lies in contrast to the game of twenty squares, which had a particular role among elites in the Late Bronze Age interaction sphere. This anthropological discussion of evidence relating to gaming seeks to inspire further research on the role of board games in society.     

On the urns of a dilemma: radiocarbon and the Peterborough problem

Radiocarbon dates are presented for distinctive types of British Late Neolithic pottery, identifying questions which cannot yet be resolved.