Consensus and the Fringe in American Archaeology

Is the “consensus of the scientific community” to reject transoceanic diffusion as an explanation for cultural change in the Americas justified by logic, data, or disciplinary politics?     

Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Southwestern China

Archaeology of ancient China’s periphery has traditionally been examined through the historiographic lens of Chinese textual sources. Social developments in the periphery are often explained in relation to accounts of migration from “core” regions of China. Setting conventional paradigms and textual sources aside, this article examines prehistoric developments in southwestern China in conjunction with broader trends in Southeast Asia. This comparative approach reveals that the development of bronze metallurgy in southwestern China parallels trends observed among Neolithic communities in Southeast Asia. Using recent data and a reassessment of radiocarbon dates for the Bronze Age, I propose that sociopolitical complexity emerged in southwestern China as part of a multiregional phenomenon that had its beginning with the formalization of trade networks during the Neolithic period.     

Scratching beneath iconographic and textual clues: A reconsideration of the social hierarchy in the Dian culture of Southwestern China

The use of historical texts to interpret archaeological data is a common practice in Chinese archaeology. The selective use of archaeological material as evidential support to textual accounts can however project a limited view of ancient societies, where social behavior from distinct contexts are conflated to produce a single coherent narrative. This paper addresses this prevalent interpretational approach to the Dian polity, a Bronze Age culture located in southwestern China, through a systematic analysis of the mortuary evidence from four cemeteries. Results from the multivariate analysis are contrasted against the textual and iconographic materials to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Dian social organization and to demonstrate social patterning that challenges conceptions about the nature of Dian social hierarchy.     

The Upper Palaeolithic Lithic Industry of Nazlet Khater 4 (Egypt): Implications for the Stone Age/Palaeolithic of Northeastern Africa

Between Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 and 2, Northeast Africa witnessed migrations of Homo sapiens into Eurasia. Within the context of the aridification of the Sahara, the Nile Valley probably offered a very attractive corridor into Eurasia. This region and this period are therefore central for the (pre)history of the out-of-Africa peopling of modern humans. However, there are very few sites from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic that document these migration events. In Egypt, the site of Nazlet Khater 4 (NK4), which is related to ancient H. sapiens quarrying activities, is one of them. Its lithic assemblage shows an important laminar component, and this, associated with its chronological position (ca. 33 ka), means that the site is the most ancient Upper Palaeolithic sites of this region. The detailed study of the Nazlet Khater 4 lithic material shows that blade production (volumetric reduction) is also associated with flake production (surface reduction). This technological duality addresses the issue of direct attribution of NK4 to the Upper Palaeolithic.     

The Spirits are Crying: Dispossessing Land and Possessing Bodies in Rural Cambodia

In 2009, a land spirit disrupted plantation development within a contested Economic Land Concession in Cambodia. The spirit, along with efforts of a monk and NGO, ultimately persuaded state officials to return 5 ha of land to the local temple. In this paper, we bring together literature on the anthropology of religion, political economy of land possession, and critical development studies; we demonstrate that land spirits continue as members of political patronage chains at both the state and the local level, and show how the non‐capitalist logics of spirit negotiations both challenged and legitimized large‐scale land acquisition projects. The spirit was not subsumed by, but rather shaped, contemporary capitalist expansion in ways that call for a critical examination of the ontological certainty that all land is designed for human production and consumption.     

Women anthropologists look at women

Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds. Woman, Culture, and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. xi + 352 pp. Figures, tables, references, and index. $12.50 (cloth), $3.95 (paper).