Tracking Hunter-Gatherer Impact on Vegetation in Last Interglacial and Holocene Europe: Proxies and Challenges

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - We review palaeoenvironmental proxies and combinations of these relevant for understanding hunter-gatherer niche construction activities in...     

Literary Works and Allusion in Three Biographies of the Hou Hanshu and Their Purpose

This article analyses pieces of literature included in Fan Ye’s chapters on Zhang Heng, Ma Rong, and Cai Yong. It interprets these pieces within the context of its authors’ biographies, coming to the conclusion that they represent different approaches to the Confucian theme of how to serve and survive in times when there is no good ruler. While Zhang Heng was able to make a career under such circumstances, Ma Rong survived but ran into great difficulties and Cai Yong was ultimately executed.     

Geisteswissenschaften in the Third Reich: Some Reflections

Professor Hans Reiss left Germany on 22 August 1939, ‘cuttingit rather fine’, as he puts it, for Ireland, where hestudied and subsequently taught at Trinity College Dublin. Helater held teaching posts at the London School of Economicsand Queen Mary College, London, and was professor at McGillUniversity and the University of Bristol. Professor Reiss haspublished twelve books and editions and over seventy articlesthat range widely across the fields of German literature, culturalhistory and political thought. In this historiographical review,he discusses recent research on the conduct of German literaryscholars during the Third Reich.     

On the Margins of Colonialism: Contact Zones in the Aru Islands

ABSTRACT

The Aru Islands are situated at the eastern end of the Indian Ocean, in the southern Moluccas. They are also one of the easternmost places in the world where Islam and Christianity gained a (limited) foothold in the early-modern period, and marked the outer reach of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The present article discusses Western-Arunese relations in the seventeenth century in terms of economic exchange and political networks. Although Aru society was stateless and relatively egalitarian and eluded strong colonial control up to the late colonial period, it was still a source of natural products, such as pearls, birds-of-paradise, turtle-shells, destined for luxury consumption in Asia and Europe. Aru society was thus positioned in a global economic network while leaving it largely ungoverned. Colonial archival data yield important information about the indigenous responses to European attempts to control the flow of goods. They both support Roy Ellen’s claim that the economic flows in eastern Indonesia extended beyond the control of VOC, and provide parallels to James Scott’s thesis of state-avoidance among the ethnic minorities in mainland Southeast Asia.