Living Mesolithic Time: Narratives,Chronologies and Organic Material Culture

British and Irish Mesolithic studies have long been characterized by a reliance on broad-scale lithic typologies, both to provide chronologies, and in discussion of ‘cultural’ groups. More recently, traditional narrative structures—period definitions of ‘Early’ and ‘Late’, or culture typologies—have been complemented by a host of other evidence. This has included new studies of site stratigraphy, evidence for seasonality, and material culture chaîne opératoire chronologies, which place a greater emphasis on both temporal precision and the lived experiences of Mesolithic peoples. This paper will consider how the study of organic artefacts forces these narrative scales into acute focus, and presents an opportunity to explore the challenges in synthesizing different forms of data. We discuss how the evidence from sites in Ireland and Britain allows for new approaches, and highlight some of the challenges that this evidence presents, not least the perennial issue of moving from site-specific data to broader narratives. While the nature of earlier prehistoric evidence makes this an especially obvious issue for Mesolithic studies, it is one which generally besets archaeology. We suggest that in order to move beyond this in earlier prehistoric studies specifically, we need to make better use of all evidence sources, however seemingly prosaic, including antiquarian collections in museums, and chance and casual finds. Only by including the raft of available data, and recognizing its utility beyond the sum of individual apparently uninspiring parts, can we begin to move from generalizing narratives to more nuanced archaeological understandings of past material worlds.     

Omniscience in the Mahāyānasūtrālankāra and its commentaries

I am indebted to Charles Hallisey, Matthew Kapstein, John Keenan, and J. W. de Jong, each of whom read an earlier draft of this paper and gave me useful criticisms. I have adopted some of their suggestions, and this paper has benefited considerably therefrom. I alone am responsible for deficiencies and errors that remain.     

Short notices on books received

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A Bayesian Radiocarbon Chronology of the Early Neolithic of Yorkshire and Humberside

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition is one of the mostly hotly (and vociferously) debated periods of British prehistory. Chronology has been key to this discussion. Informal ‘visual’ interpretations of radiocarbon data used both to argue for a rapid uptake of Neolithic practices by indigenous Mesolithic populations, and for the introduction by Continental settlers and then the rapid acculturation by local populations. This paper offers new evidence for the timing of the beginning of the Neolithic in Yorkshire and Humberside, an area with a range of monuments that have been a focus of research into early Neolithic communities. From this new synthesis it is possible to suggest implications for our understanding of ‘neolithization’, but also as to provide the basis for critical future research themes.     

John Burton versus international relations: the costs of criticism

This article explores the intellectual legacy of John Wear Burton, who died in June 2010. Widely lauded as a pioneer in the fields of conflict resolution and peace studies, Burton's legacy in the broader study of international relations (IR) is more ambiguous. The author argues that Burton is best remembered as a critic of IR rather than as a contributor to the discipline, particularly as it evolved from the mid 1980s to the present. Burton's most trenchant criticisms of IR in the 1960s and 1970s were really directed against a superficial version of realism. Burton's work on human needs and conflict resolution, in contrast, has had a more enduring legacy.     

Systematic seasonal land use by late Pleistocene Tasmanian Aborigines

New research on the odontochronological (dental growth-increment) analysis of marsupial teeth provides opportunities to estimate with more certainty the time of the year Tasmanian Aborigines inhabited sites during the late Pleistocene. Here we focus on the Bennett's wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) as a proxy for understanding seasonal human land use patterns and occupation of four southwest Tasmanian caves. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether caves at different altitudes were occupied in alternating seasons, and determine if the ‘Patch Model’ developed to explain the archaeological variability of late Pleistocene human behavior should be modified accordingly. The data presented here support the original observations that these sites, although reflecting extreme richness, were occupied in a punctuated seasonal manner with visits probably separated by a considerable time of unknown duration.     

The Pāśsupata Observance (Atharvavedapariśsista 40)

Indo-Iranian Journal -