Charlotte Sophia Burne: Shropshire Folklorist,First Woman President of the Folklore Society,and First Woman Editor of Folklore . Part 2: Update and Preliminary Bibliography

THE EVIL EYE IN THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS. By R. C. MACLAGAN, M.D. pp. 232. London: David Nutt. 1902. Reviewed by John Abercromby.

WITCHCRAFT AND SECOND SIGHT IN THE HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND. By the late JOHN GREGORSON CAMFHELL. pp. 314. Glasgow : James MacLehose. 1902. Reviewed by John Abercromby.

OUTER ISLES. By A. GOODRICH-FREER. pp. 448. Westminster: A. Constable and Co. 1902. Reviewed by John Abercromby.

POPULAR RELIGION IN THE PANJAB. Report of the Census of the Panjab and North-West Frontier Province of 1901. By H. A. ROSE. Simla. 1902. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

LA VIE FUTURE D'APRÉS LE MAZDÉISME À LA LUMIÈRE DES CROVANCES PARALLÈLES DANS LES AUTRES RELIGIONS. ÉTUDE D'ARCHÉOLOGIE COMPARÉE. Par NATHAN SÖDERBLOM. Paris: Leroux. 1901. Reviewed by Alfred Nutt.

THE ORIGIN OF CIVILISATION AND THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MAN. By the RIGHT HON. LORD AVEBURY, P.C., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D. Sixth edition, with numerous additions. Longmans, Green, &; Co. 1902. 8vo. Price 18s. Reviewed by A. C. Haddon.

THE MABINOGION. Translated by Lady C. GUEST, and Edited by A. NUTT. D. NUTT. 2s. 1 vol. Reviewed by Margaret Eyre.

THE LITERATURE OF THE CELTS, ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE. By MAGNUS MACLEAN, M.A., D.Sc. 8vo. Blackie and Son. London. 1902. Reviewed by F. York Powell.     

Towards a Revaluation of the Legend of “Saint” William of Norwich and its Place in the Blood Libel Legend

The legend of William of Norwich is extremely well known and often quoted in discussions of defamatory folklore. However, since I started working on it three or four years ago I have found that there are surprisingly few folkloric analyses. Leaving aside those who have attempted to believe the story and to use it as anti-Jewish propaganda, most of the respectable work has been done by historians and has tended to concentrate either on debunking the legend or on attempting to reconstruct events in Norwich during Easter 1144. My aim in this paper is to redress this balance and tackle a couple of the more folkloric questions.     

Objects and interactivity: A conflict or a collaboration?

The rapid growth in the number of hands‐on centres has led to fears of museums being taken over by interactive exhibits. These are expensive to develop and maintain, causing a problem for traditional museums faced with ever‐expanding collections and diminishing resources. This article considers whether objects and interactive exhibits are inevitably in conflict or whether they can coexist in harmony. The implications for future developments at the Science Museum in London are considered in detail.

The authors conclude that, far from conflicting with traditional museum functions, interactive exhibits and new technologies will help to ensure that museums are able to compete in an increasingly complex marketplace. Their vision of the interactive gallery of the future incorporates exhibits which enhance understanding of artefacts. In short, the objective will be to ensure that visitors interacting with ‘hands‐on’ exhibits will take away ‘minds‐on’ understanding of the museum as a whole.     

The ‘Dividual Androgyne’ and Me: a Personal Affair

In the 25 years since Marilyn Strathern published The Gender of the Gift (1988) its signature concepts of the ‘dividual androgyne’ and ‘sociality’ have received almost no criticism in the anthropological literature and are now widely accepted as true. The ‘dividual’ is considered to be ‘a new, non‐unitary model of embodiment and … one of the most important theoretical accomplishments to emerge from Melanesian ethnography in the latter part of the 20^th Century’ despite the fact that it erases affect, agency, identity and other essential features of human beings (Lipset 2008). The present critique of Strathern's concept of the androgynous ‘dividual’ challenges its legitimacy as a Melanesian or any other ‘premodern’ form of personhood and suggests that it expresses the wish of academic feminists in the 1970s and 1980s to locate an indigenous model for androgyny and to characterise patriarchy, misogyny and sexual segregation as peculiarly Western. The article explores aspects of Gimi myth, ritual and exchange which Strathern claims helped her to formulate the concept of the ‘dividual’ (especially those surrounding men's sacred bamboo flutes) and concludes that she mistook a virulently anti‐female ideology – including a fantasy in which men may subsume or incorporate certain aspects of female anatomy – for benign accommodation between the sexes. The ‘dividual’ does not correspond to social reality among the Gimi and paradoxically affirms Lévi‐Strauss' classic demonstration in the Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) that ‘the gender of the gift’ is invariably female.     

Medieval Britain in 1965

A study was undertaken to assess the potential of the integrated analysis of metalwork excavated from medieval (late 13th–16th-century) rural settlements in the midlands of England and inventories (dating from c 1370–c 1440) drawn from the royal escheators’ records for the same region. The study aimed to explore the value and meaning of objects to the non-elite members of rural communities and focussed on three classes of artefact: metal vessels, tools and dress accessories. The analysis investigates medieval value systems by exploring evidence for aspiration, recycling and differences between town and country.     

The Personal is Personal (Review Essay)

Book reviewed in this article:
John B. Boles (ed.), Autobiographical Reflections on Southern Religious History     

Book reviews

CHINA

CHARLOTTE FURTH. A Flourishing Yin: gender in China's Medical History, 960–1665. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. A Philip E. Lilienthal Book. xiv, 355 pp. 20 halftones, 13 line figures. US$45.00, hardcover; US$17.96, paper.

MOBO C. F. GAO. Gao Village. A Portrait of Rural Life in Modern China. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1999. xiv, 286 pp. Maps, illustrations, preface and acknowledgments, appendixes, index. £16.95, paper.

JAMES R. LILLEY and DAVID SHAMBAUGH (eds). China's Military Faces the Future. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. 368 pp. Illustrations, tables, graphs, index. US$74.95, hardcover; US$29.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

MITSUHIRO YOSHIMOTO. Kurosawa: film Studies and Japanese Cinema. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000. 485 pp. Introduction, bibliography, index. US$64.95, hardcover; US$21.95, paper.

YASUNORI FUKUOKA (trans. Tom Gill). Lives of Young Ethnic Koreans in Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000. 300 pp. Introduction, tables, figures, notes, references, glossary, index. A$39.95, paper.

AH‐JEONG KIM and R. B. GRAVES (trans). The Metacultural Theater of Oh T'aeSok. Five Plays from the Korean Avant‐Garde. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999. 164 pp. Preface, introduction, translators' note, photographs, bibliography. US$33.00, hardcover; US$14.95, paper.

ANDREW COBBING. The Japanese Discovery of Victorian Britain: early Travel Encounters in the Far West. Surrey: Japan Library, 1998. 257 pp. Illustrations, preface, introduction, biographical appendix, notes and references, index. £45.00, hardcover.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

SATISH BALRAM AGNIHOTRI. Sex Ratio Patterns in the Indian Population: a Fresh Exploration. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. 379 pp. Tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, index. Rs 475, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

ROBERT CRIBB. Historical Atlas of Indonesia. Richmond: Curzon Press (in cooperation with the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, Copenhagen), 2000. 256 pp. £75.00, hardcover.

STEFAN EKLOF. Indonesian Politics in Crisis: the Long Fall of Suharto, 1996–98. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1999. 288 pp. Introduction, bibliography, index. A$33.00, paper.

BARBARA LEIGH. The Changing Face of Malaysian Crafts: identity, Industry and Ingenuity. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 2000. Glossary, bibliography, index. 124 pp. 59 colour and 92 b/w illustrations. A$85.00, hardcover.

KRISHNA SEN and DAVID T. HILL. Media, Culture and Politics in Indonesia. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000. 245 pp. A$35.00, paper.

GENERAL ASIA

DAVID HANLON and GEOFFREY M. WHITE (eds). Voyaging Through the Contemporary Pacific. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000. 443 pp. US$75.00, hardcover; US$24.95, paper.

LAKSIRIJAYASURIYAandKEEPOOKONG, (eds.) TheAsianisation ofAustralia?:someFacts about the Myths. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999. 114 pp. A$16.95, paper.     

Maize, Matrilocality, Migration, and Northern Iroquoian Evolution

The co-occurrence of matrilocality and maize-based agriculture among historical northern Iroquoian groups of New York and southern Ontario has long been of interest to anthropologists and archaeologists. The traditional explanation of this association is that gradual evolution of maize-based agriculture through female labor enhanced female status in families, which resulted in matrilocality. Dean Snow (1995a) recently challenged this in situ hypothesis of matrilocality by arguing that the sudden appearance of maize-based agriculture and matrilocality can only be explained by the migration of ancestral Iroquoian agriculturists into areas already inhabited by other people. Matrilocality arose because it allowed a focus on external warfare by men against the hostile original inhabitants. In contrast, and based on a general model of maize agriculture evolution and the effects of postmarital residence patterns on that model, I argue that neither in situ development hypothesis nor Snow's migration hypothesis affect the coevolution of matrilocality and maize agriculture, and that their sudden appearance cannot be used as evidence in support of either hypothesis. I also show that current archaeological evidence for maize agriculture and matrilocality support a gradual coevolution of maize agriculture and matrilocality rather than the sudden appearance argued by Snow.     

Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age‐Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy,II: Chemical Biomarkers and Microbial Signatures

As discussed in Part I, a large accumulation of mammalian faeces at the mire site in the upper Guil Valley near Mt. Viso, dated to 2168 cal ¹⁴C yr., provides the first evidence of the passage of substantial but indeterminate numbers of mammals within the time frame of the Punic invasion of Italia. Specialized organic biomarkers bound up in a highly convoluted and bioturbated bed constitute an unusual anomaly in a histosol comprised of fibric and hemist horizons that are usually expected to display horizontal bedding. The presence of deoxycholic acid and ethylcoprostanol derived from faecal matter, coupled with high relative numbers of Clostridia 16S rRNA genes, suggests a substantial accumulation of mammalian faeces at the site over 2000 years ago. The results reported here constitute the first chemical and biological evidence of the passage of large numbers of mammals, possibly indicating the route of the Hannibalic army at this time. Combined with the geological analysis reported in Part I, these data provide a background supporting the need for further historical archaeological exploration in this area.