The canopic jars of Rameses II: real use revealed by molecular study of organic residues

Four blue-glazed faience jars, on exhibition in the Louvre Museum, are referred to as the canopic jars of Rameses II. Their recent typological re-examination rendered this original assignment questionable. In order to clearly determine their use, a study of two successive organic residues from the canopic jars, using molecular biomarkers analysed by GC-MS and LC-MS and absolute dating by ¹⁴C, was initiated. The results revealed that these two materials were not contemporary to the reign of Rameses II. The first one, scraped from the interior face of one jar, was identified as an unguent made of coniferous oil and animal fat and dated from the Third Intermediate Period. The second one, originally stored with glued linen inside one jar, is likely an embalming substance, made of pure vegetable resin (Pistacia) and dated from the Ptolemaic Period. These results clarify a controversy which has been lasting over a century. The famous blue-glazed faience jars are not the canopic jars of Rameses II but are confirmed as situlae which were reused at least two times: first to store unguents during the Intermediate Period and later to store embalming packages of an unknown person during the Ptolemaic period.     

Raspadita: a new lithic tool from the Isthmus of Rivas,Nicaragua

A new lithic tool type was discovered at the Pacific Nicaraguan archaeological site of Santa Isabel (AD 800–1350) and named raspadita (small scraper). Thousands of these small tools (1–2 cm in length) were found. They have a rounded proximal edge and a pointed distal end. In this study, the raspaditas are proved to be a coherent tool class with minimal variation in size, shape, material type and usewear. They were manufactured from white chert bladelet cores using soft hammer percussion and pressure flaking unifacial retouch. Usewear points to a composite tool form and a scraping function for the raspaditas. Scanning electron microscopy determined a ventral leading, dorsal following, unidirectional scraping motion for the raspadita proximal end. The material that was scraped has still to be definitely determined but phytoliths visible in the SEM images suggest that the composite tool was used for plant processing.     

Gender,Work and Fears of a ‘Hybrid Race’ in 1920s New Zealand

The 1929 New Zealand Committee of Inquiry into the Employment of Maori on Market Gardens affords insight into the ways in which masculine fears of racial degradation through miscegenation – of a ‘hybrid’ Chinese/Maori race – operated within a hierarchy of race, gender and Iwi (tribal) interests. The participation of Maori men in national politics contributed to a new articulation of ‘National Manhood’, in which Maori men and white men combined to express fears about women's work and sexuality and young women's potential to undermine a fragile and contested hierarchy of racial purity. Maori women, silenced in the cacophony of voices lamenting their plight, were at the centre of debates between Maori men, Pakeha (white New Zealander) employers, Chinese market gardeners, Anglican and Methodist interests and Pakeha women's groups. I argue that the Inquiry was about commerce, both in a business and a sexual sense. As a historical episode, it also serves to complicate the picture of New Zealand as a historically bicultural society, made up only of Maori and Pakeha, by signalling the importance of the Chinese in debates about national belonging.     

An Historian in the Amazon

However private they may seem, emotions depend for their meanings on the communities in which they are expressed. But if emotions are shaped by and for their communities, how can we account for emotional change? After briefly surveying how historians have (1) defined the communities in which emotions have been expressed and (2) explained how and why emotions have changed, this article turns to the community of the Waorani of Amazonian Ecuador. It explores whether anthropological explanations of emotional change in that “test case” may help the historian. The answer is not entirely positive. The article concludes with some thoughts about what sorts of collaborations between historians and anthropologists might be more productive for emotions studies.     

Were the Wars of Religion about Religion?

Abstract

William Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence raises important questions about the role of religion in society. It challenges all-too-common misunderstandings about the relationship between religion and politics and, most valuably, warns against any assumption that religion is peculiarly prone to violence. This essay nevertheless takes issue with his attempt to disprove what he calls “the myth of religious violence” with evidence from the Wars of Religion in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe and his claim that “the story of these wars serves as a kind of creation myth for the modern state” (10). The essay emphasizes the importance of understanding the religious dimensions of early modern Europe's wars but also of recognizing that, in both historical and contemporary situations, religious motivations are best understood not as independent variables but rather as catalysts that could exacerbate-or relieve-tensions rooted in other sorts of divisions or quarrels.     

The Politics of Emotion in Participatory Processes of Empowerment and Change

In this article I reflect on the role of critical analysis and emotions in participatory approaches to empowerment and change. I argue that, in participatory research and practice, certain cognitive and analytical knowledges are prioritized as principal catalysts of empowerment and transformation at the cost of recognizing, and making full use of, the empowering potential of emotional and embodied knowledges. This argument is developed based on 2 years of fieldwork in a local youth participation project in Mejicanos, a poor and violent neighborhood in El Salvador, aiming at empowering young people by involving them in participatory action research (PAR). ¹ As part of my research, I looked critically at the young people's PAR process, asking whether and how they felt empowered by it and whether and how social change came about. Originally, the research did not focus on emotions, yet, in an inductive fashion, emotions and embodied knowledges evolved from fieldwork as crucial elements in understanding participation, empowerment and social transformation.