Geologists and Folklorists: Cultural Evolution and “The Science of Folklore”

As has been made clear by recent inquiries in FLS News (Spittal 1996; Wylie 1966) and the republication of Kathleen Basford's 1978 book The Green Man (1996), there is a great deal of interest in the enigmatic “Green Man,” that foliate head which appears so frequently among medieval church carvings. The term itself came into general usage following Lady Raglan's 1939 article in Folklore, “The ‘Green Man’ in Church Architecture,” but examination of her original work reveals that her choice of the term “Green Man” was, on her own evidence, based more upon inspiration than fact. As a means of beginning an inquiry into the nature and meaning of the phenomenon, the present article is an investigation into the true name of the Green Man.     

William of Norwich and the Expulsion of the Jews

While conducting fieldwork in Croatia in 2000, the author identified and interviewed an elderly gentleman who was present when Milman Parry and Albert Lord recorded an epic singer in the village of Kijevo, Croatia, on 24 September 1934. During follow-up work, scholar Ante Juri?-Aramba?i? conducted interviews concerning the singer's biography. All material is here reported, translated, and interpreted for the purpose of thickening the corpus of Parry and Lord archival materials and for improving our reconstruction, based on the available evidence, of the traditions flourishing in the region during the first half of the twentieth century.     

IMAGINED DIVERSITY

The period that takes in the first term of New Labour in Britain also spans the empowerment of a new elected National Assembly for Wales and the designation of Objective One European structural funds to parts of Wales. Analysis of cultural policy documents from those years finds that the endorsement of an eclectic cultural style as a collective identity for a diverse citizenry is compromised by the implication that it is the Welsh language, rather than diversity itself, that signifies diversity. Scrutiny of proposals for, or assertions about, a “branded” cultural identity reveals inconsistencies between the cultural practices of place‐based communities and the opportunistic affiliations that are deployed in the interests of social and economic development in a “new” information economy.     

Past or present? Differentiating California prehistoric native American remains from forensic cases: An empirical approach

The goal of this project is to provide additional data and statistical analyses for differentiating between prehistoric/historic Native American remains and modern forensic cases that may be potentially confusing. Forensic anthropologists often receive requests from local law enforcement to infer whether skeletal remains are of forensic or non‐forensic significance. Skeletal remains of non‐forensic significance are commonly of Native American ancestry, but the empirical methods common for determining Native American affinity from skeletal remains have not been established for California prehistoric/historic Native Americans. Therefore, forensic anthropologists working in California lack empirical methods for not only identifying prehistoric California Native American remains, but also differentiating them from modern/forensic populations whose skeletal attributes are similar. In particular, skeletal remains of Latin American US immigrants of indigenous origins are becoming more present in the forensic anthropological laboratory, and can exhibit the same suite of skeletal traits classically used to identify Native American affinity. In this article, we initiate an investigation into this issue by analyzing both craniometric and morphoscopic data using a range of statistical methods for differentiating prehistoric Northern California Native Americans from modern Guatemalan Maya. Our discriminant analyses results indicate that by using nine craniometric variables, group classification is 87% correct. In addition, seven morphoscopic variables can predict group classification correctly for 77% of the sample. The results suggest that it is possible to differentiate between our two samples. Such a method contributes to the efficient and empirical determination of temporal and geographic affinity, allowing for the repartriation of Native American remains to their tribes, as well as the accurate analysis of forensically significant remains. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Archaeology of Occupation and the V-sign Campaign in the Occupied British Channel Islands

This paper charts the course of the V-for-victory campaign in the occupied British Channel Islands, set within its European context, from 1940–45, examining the manifestations of the V-sign in a material form, and how this changed with time. It highlights the use of the V as both an open and a hidden symbol of resistance, and the role it played both in “fighting” the German forces behind their backs and in boosting morale among the local population, even after the appropriation of the symbol by the occupiers.     

REVIEW

Aboriginal Frontiers and Boundaries in Australia. By S.L. Davis and J.R.V. Prescott. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. 1992. Pp. xiii + 169.