From Savages and Barbarians to Primitives: Africa,Social Typologies,and History in Eighteenth–Century French Philosophy

This article describes the conceptual framework (what I call a “style of reasoning”) within which knowledge about Africa was legitimized in eighteenth–century French philosophy. The article traces a shift or rupture in this conceptual framework which, at the end of the eighteenth century, led to the emergence of new conditions for knowledge legitimation that altered Europe’s perception of Africa. The article examines these two conceptual frameworks within the context of a discussion of the social theory of the time, which categorized Africans first as savages, and then, with the advent of our modern “style of reasoning,” as primitives. The argument used to demonstrate this change in categorizations is historical. (In the terminology of Michel Foucault, the paper is an “archaeological” investigation of knowledge about Africa.) The greater part of the article analyzes in detail the principal social theory of Enlightenment philosophy, the stadial theory of society, with the aim of demonstrating how it determined what could be affirmed about Africa. The shift in the perception of Africans from savages to primitives involved an epistemological change in how societies were grasped. The article provides a greater understanding of the constitution of Africa as a cognitive construct, which is not only of theoretical concern; this construct shaped Europe’s intervention in Africa, and continues to influence what we believe Africa is and should become.     

The manufacturing process of 3rd millennium BC bone based incrusted pottery decoration from the Middle Guadiana river basin (Badajoz,Spain)

The aim of this study is to present the manufacturing process developed on 3rd millennium BC white incrusted pottery from the middle Guadiana River basin (Badajoz, Spain), alongside the analytical procedure developed to determine the nature of these incrustations. The analytical procedure developed in this paper will assess the nature of these incrustations as burnt bone and in fewer cases as calcium carbonate, turning upside down the usual tendency for the Iberian Peninsula, where calcium carbonate has been the only kind of incrustation identified up until now. The analytical facilities used are: SEM-EDX, XRF microprobe, XRD and FTIR. The assessment of the nature of the incrustations as burnt bone has been a hazardous task and it has been necessary to develop a procedure using several analytical techniques and reference materials.     

Footpaths Marked by Changes in Geological Clasts as Indicators of Mobility in Tenerife,Canary Islands

Studies on the mobility of past populations are useful in the interpretation of trade and lifestyle. Preservation of ancient paths is uncommon. In Tenerife, a volcanic island of the Canary Archipelago, ancient paths are still preserved, due to the dry climatic conditions and the presence of extensive lava fields in inhospitable areas of the Island. The Guanches who inhabited this island before the Spanish conquest, those surviving in the highlands after the conquest, and modern goatherders, utilised a still identifiable net of paths to access the central mountains. Clasts in the beds of these paths have suffered variable abrasion, depending on the time during which the path was used and on the number of people and/or animals that have walked on it. We estimated roundness of 1819 clasts collected at different parts of the net of paths crossing different lava fields of known antiquity. Significant differences in roundness of clasts among different parts of the paths allowed an inference about the relative importance of each of the paths constituting the net. Therefore, assessment of roundness of the clasts of the beds of paths may aid in the understanding of the migrations of people.     

L'indigénisme au Brésil migration et réappropriations d'un savoir administratif

This article proposes to analyse the relationships betweenanthropology andindigenism in Brazil. To do so it considers the migration process of indigenism as a form of knowledge from the Mexican political field to the Brazilian. It affirms that this kind of knowledge had its reception considerably inflected by «traditions of knowledge» for governing populations which developed from colonial sources through time. This analytical perspective is part of an anthropology of colonialism, since it takes as its object Brazilian public administration considering some of its aspects as technologies for the government of multicultural populations.     

Imperial Expansion, Ethnic Change, and Ceramic Traditions in The Southern Chad Basin: A Terminal Nineteenth-Century Pottery Assemblage from Dikwa, Borno State, Nigeria

In the course of an archaeological project in the southern Chad Basin of Nigeria, excavations were conducted at several deeply stratified mound sites that date from the Late Neolithic to the Late Iron Age. As a way to complement the ceramic sequence obtained so far and to link it with today's pottery tradition, a small excavation was conducted at a site that dates to the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century A.D. A pottery assemblage was discovered that shows obvious links to today's tradition but notable breaks with those of the nineteenth century and earlier. This break in decoration style and technique is interpreted as an archaeologically visible expression of changing ethnic identity. This ethnic change and the associated spread of the ceramic tradition can be linked with the expansion of the sphere of power of the Kanem-Borno Empire into the area south of Lake Chad after the sixteenth century A.D.     

Frank H. Knight le risque comme critique de l'économie politique

In this paper we try to throw some light on the Knightian distinction between risk anduncertainty attending to a number of previous contributions to philosophy and economics. On the economists' side, we propose to read Knight's distinction in the light of the distribution controversy that took place in theQuarterly Journal of Economics at the end of the xix^th century. On the philosophers' side, the pair risk/uncertainty can be analysed in view of Knight's epistemological sources, as opposing a sort ofprobabilistic positivism to anagnostic variety of positivism. His philosophical commitments can be of use in explaining why Frank Knight closes down the distribution controversy, proposing instead a reconstruction of economics as a rational choice science.     

Raptor pellets as zooarchaeological material for paleoparasitological studies in Patagonia

Raptor pellets from Cerro Casa de Piedra archaeological sites, Patagonia, have yielded consistent evidence of parasitism and possible zoonoses in ancient times. Pellet samples analyzed were dated at 2740 ± 100 and 3.990 ± 80 years before present and have produced evidence of three intestinal parasite genera. Eggs of two nematodes Trichuris and Calodium, and one cestode, taeniid, were found. Its significance for rock shelters paleoepidemiology of the Holocene is discussed. This study increases the evidences that raptor pellets can be used as source of paleoparasitological information in archaeological sites.