The End of Ayawiri: Abandonment at an Andean Hillfort Town of the Late Intermediate Period

As the south-central Andes came under Inca control, many hillfort towns and villages were abandoned in favor of low-lying, non-defensive settlements. Recent investigation at Ayawiri (Machu Llaqta), a fortified hilltop town in the Titicaca Basin of southern Peru, sheds light on how such sites met their end. Ayawiri was abandoned in the 15th century a.d. with no reoccupation and little to no scavenging afterwards. Excavated house structures have whole or reconstructible artifacts left in situ on floors, including bronze adornments and other valuables. Expediently-prepared throwing stones or slingstones were stockpiled and used near the outermost wall, suggesting that the abandonment may have been precipitated by enemy attack. While the evidence indicates rapid abandonment overall, there were distinct and varied micro-processes of abandonment that took place among different family groups at Ayawiri, who engaged differently in rituals, abandonment caching, and departure.     

The Asaba massacre and the Nigerian civil war: reclaiming hidden history

This article explores the consequences of a massacre of civilians in Asaba, a town on the west bank of the river Niger, during the early stages of the Nigerian civil war. While ethnically Igbo, Asaba was not part of the Igbo-dominated Biafra, remaining part of the ethnically diverse midwest region. In the international memory of the war, the midwest action, which claimed several thousand lives, has been eclipsed by the catastrophic events east of the Niger, after the federal blockade of Biafra. This article sheds new light on the human cost of the war on civilian populations outside Biafra. Drawing on interviews with survivors and their descendants, we describe the killings, pillaging and rapes that followed the arrival of the federal troops, and trace the long-term impact and memory of the physical and human devastation in Asaba on family structure, gender roles, educational opportunities and social structure. We show how the official suppression of the massacres, coupled with Biafran awareness of the events, contributed to the subsequent course of the war, and we suggest that this suppression has left a legacy that perpetuates resentment and has kept ethnic tensions alive to this day.     

Aleatory Sovereignty and the Rule of Sensitive Spaces

Addressing life in borders and refugee camps requires understanding the way these spaces are ruled, the kinds of problems rule poses for the people who live there, and the abilities of inhabitants to remake their own lives. Recent literature on such spaces has been influenced by Agamben's notion of sovereignty, which reduces these spaces and their residents to abstractions. We propose an alternate framework focused on what we call aleatory sovereignty, or rule by chance. This allows us to see camps and borders not only as the outcomes of humanitarian projects but also of anxieties about governance and rule; to see their inhabitants not only as abject recipients of aid, but also as individuals who make decisions and choices in complex conditions; and to show that while the outcome of projects within such spaces is often unpredictable, the assumptions that undergird such projects create regular cycles of implementation and failure.     

Marine trophic levels targeted between AD 300 and 1500 on the Georgia coast,USA

The marine trophic levels targeted during Swift Creek (AD 300–700) and Savannah (AD 1200–1500) occupations at the Cathead Creek site (9Mc360) and at two sites from the Kings Bay Locality (9CAM171a, 9CAM177), coastal Georgia, USA, differ in a consistent temporal and spatial pattern. Vertebrate and invertebrate remains from these three coastal sites contain similar suites of estuarine animals. However, Swift Creek peoples at these distinct hydrological settings obtained more biomass from fishes and less from molluscs compared to the subsequent Savannah occupants. The two Swift Creek faunal collections are less rich, more diverse, and more equitable than the two subsequent Savannah collections regardless of location. Furthermore, the mean trophic level is higher in the Swift Creek collections compared to the Savannah ones at both locations. These observations apply to both biomass and Minimum Number of Individuals. These differences likely are defining characteristics distinguishing the Swift Creek and the Savannah economies. More research is needed to determine the extent to which these temporal and spatial patterns are attributable to environmental and cultural variables.     

Osteoarthritis and body mass

Osteoarthritis is the second most common pathology found in anthropological collections. Although a great deal is known about osteoarthritis, it is not yet known whether in skeletal populations there is a correlation between osteoarthritis and body mass. In this study, lower limb and spinal osteoarthritis scores were taken to determine whether body mass and femoral length correlate with osteoarthritis on weight bearing joints. Osteoarthritis was measured using a four-point ordinal scale on a sample of 114 adult prehistoric Californian Amerinds. Body mass was calculated from femoral head breadth; femoral length was measured using standard procedures; and age and sex were determined through standard osteological procedures. Using Spearman correlations, body mass and femoral length did not correlate significantly with any of the osteoarthritis variables. Age correlated significantly with nearly all of the osteoarthritis variables (hip, r = 0.507; knee, r = 0.528; cervical, r = 0.513; thoracic, r = 0.647; lumbar, r = 0.507, P-values < 0.001); and body mass and femoral length correlated with sex (r-values = 0.835 and 0.654, P-values < 0.001). With age and sex controls, body mass negatively correlated with the hip osteoarthritis variable (r = −0.202, P < 0.05), but not with any of the other osteoarthritis variables. Results concur with previous findings in the anthropological literature and highlight complexities of osteoarthritis etiology.     

‘Partner in his Calamities’: Pastors' Wives,Married Nuns and the Experience of Clerical Marriage in the Early German Reformation

This essay examines what factors led the first clerical wives to marry former Catholic clergy and nuns to marry in the first decade of the Reformation in Germany and seeks to explain the difference that social class, geography and gender made in those decisions. In contrast to the later Reformation, when pastors married same or higher social status women, the majority of women who married former priests and monks during the 1520s were often lower or, in the case of nuns, significantly higher social status than their husbands. Women married clergy for a variety of reasons that were counterintuitive to typical marital strategies for economic security and social networking, since clergy had neither in the 1520s. While sharing a common experience, clerical wives' reasons for marriage to a pastor varied greatly depending on class, local decision about the Reformation and numerous personal factors. Using a variety of sources including letters, civic records, court testimony and published pamphlets, this article demonstrates that these women did exhibit a limited agency that ultimately helped shape larger social and political acceptance of clerical marriage.     

Elemental analysis and characterization of ochre sources from Southern Arizona

Iron oxides and other associated minerals (ochre) were widely used in ancient times, however, the use and procurement of these materials is not well understood and there has been little research on the elemental characterization of the material compared to other artifact classes. To assess the possibility of identifying ochre differences between locations, the original potential geological sources should be thoroughly characterized. This paper describes the collection of potential geologic sources of ochre in the Tucson basin of Arizona, sampling of those sources, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), and subsequent multivariate analysis of the data. This paper has several goals, including characterizing geochemical trends within and between ochre sources, identifying the important elements in geochemical characterization of ochre, and establishing a database for further investigations. This preliminary study indicates that the inter- and intra-source variations in geological sources of ochre in the Tucson basin region can be differentiated. Future analysis of iron oxide artifacts will be performed to examine correlations between artifacts and sources and provide a basis for further deductions concerning ancient ochre procurement.