Boundaries are Made for Crossing: The feminized spatiality of Puerto Rican Espiritismo in New York City

Espiritismo is a system of ritual healing indigenous to the Caribbean. Nearly 3 years of fieldwork in an Espiritismo worshipping community in Manhattan has produced a rich and textured source of ethnographic information that is analyzed in terms of its feminized spatiality. The central figure in this community is Maria; the priestess/medium who negotiates the exigencies of this world and the world of the spirits through trance-possession performance. Her articulation of Espiritismo uses the boundaries between self and community, male and female, Catholic and non-Catholic, the human world and the spirit world, and racial identities as resources for solving problems of well-being such as poor health, lost love, and economic deprivation for herself and her community of devotees. Maria's body is the primary site where these issues are resolved in that her body (re)presents, (re)produces and (re)valorizes the Espiritismo community's use of (in)visibility, particularity, trance-possession and inclusivity as a means for healing everyday problems in familiar spaces.     

Factors Controlling Pre-Columbian and Early Historic Maize Productivity in the American Southwest, Part 2: The Chaco Halo, Mesa Verde, Pajarito Plateau/Bandelier, and Zuni Archaeological Regions

Chemical and nutrient analyses of 471 soil samples from 161 sites within four archaeological regions (Pajarito Plateau/Bandelier, Zuni, Mesa Verde, and the Chaco Halo) were combined with historical climate data in order to evaluate the agricultural productivity of each region. In addition, maize productivity and field-life calculations were performed using organic-nitrogen (N) values from the upper 50 cm of soil in each region and a range (1?C3%/year) of N-mineralization rates. The end-member values of this range were assumed representative of dry and wet climate states. With respect to precipitation and heat, the Pajarito Plateau area has excellent agricultural potential; the agricultural potentials of the Zuni and Mesa Verde regions are good; and the agricultural potential of the Chaco Halo is poor. Calculations of N mineralization and field life indicate that Morfield Valley in Mesa Verde should be able to provide 10 bu/ac of maize for decades (without the addition of N) when organic N-mineralization rates exceed 2%. Productivity and field-life potential decrease in the following order: Zuni, Mesa Verde, Bandelier, Chaco Halo. The Chaco Halo is very unproductive; e.g., 10 bushels per acre can be achieved within the Halo only from soils having the highest organic N concentration (third quartile) and which undergo the highest rate (3%) of N mineralization.     

Starch grain analysis for groundstone tools from Neolithic Baiyinchanghan site: implications for their function in Northeast China

Large numbers of groundstone tools have been uncovered from archaeological sites in the Early Neolithic period in China. Traditionally they are often regarded as agricultural tools for processing cereals. In this paper we report preliminary starch grain analysis of groundstone tools from Baiyinchanghan site to gain a better understanding of use of these tools in the Northeast China. We found that starch grains on these groundstone tools are most likely from Quercus sp. The result of this study indicates that many groundstone tools for the Early Neolithic period were used to process wild and domesticated plants alike.     

美索不达米亚早期食物生产的生态学——史前农人与牧人开发一系列位置相邻却差异显著的气候区

大美索不达米亚,在这里广泛地定义为阿拉伯河（Shattal—Arab）各支流汇人的整个地区,长期以来它是公众兴趣和学术研究的舞台。近年来,关注点转向这样一个事实,即它是世界上少数几个农业与动物饲养独立出现的地区之一。虽然已有许多近东粮食生产起源方式出色的文化历史学复原,但是大多数并未直接解决感兴趣的非专业人士最常提出的一些生态学问题。本文研究其中的某些问题。     

Optically stimulated luminescence dating of heated materials using single-aliquot regenerative-dose procedure: a feasibility study using archaeological artefacts from India

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of heated/fired materials of archaeological importance from various parts of India was attempted. A single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) procedure was used for palaeodose determination in the quartz grains extracted from the heated materials using the luminescence produced by blue light stimulation. In most pottery samples, the palaeodose obtained using SAR-OSL is ∼6% lower than the palaeodose measured using thermoluminescence (TL) method. Broadly, there is good agreement between the SAR-OSL and TL ages of the artefacts and their archaeologically expected ages. The results suggest that routine dating of heated/fired materials using the SAR-OSL procedure is more practicable, especially when the TL sensitivity of the quartz grains is poor and availability of datable material is limited.     

Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the Kanjera Formation

The archaeological record of Oldowan hominins represents a diverse behavioral system. It has been suggested that exploitation of lithic resources by Oldowan hominins was simplistic and represented mostly use of local sources of stone. Here we investigate the raw material selection and transport behaviors of Oldowan hominins reflected in the stone artifact assemblages from the Kanjera South Formation, South Rachuonyo District, Kenya. Using geochemical methods (ED-XRF) artifacts are linked to primary and secondary source outcrops throughout southwestern Kenya. These data show that hominins selected raw materials for transport at frequencies that are significantly different from their availability on ancient landscapes. Furthermore, a substantial proportion of the assemblage represents transport over relatively long distances (>10 km). Our study further suggests that in the early stages of stone tool use hominins used a wide variety of raw materials and selected these materials at some distance from their eventual discard locations. Early hominin behavior may have incorporated an understanding of raw material source distributions across a more extensive landscape than has been previously documented. This supports the growing perspective that Oldowan technology represents a more complex behavioral pattern than is usually associated with the beginnings of hominin tool use.     

Precipitation of lead–zinc ores in the Mississippi Valley‐type deposit at Trèves,Cévennes region of southern France

The Trèves zinc–lead deposit is one of several Mississippi Valley‐type (MVT) deposits in the Cévennes region of southern France. Fluid inclusion studies show that the ore was deposited at temperatures between approximately 80 and 150°C from a brine that derived its salinity mainly from the evaporation of seawater past halite saturation. Lead isotope studies suggest that the metals were extracted from local basement rocks. Sulfur isotope data and studies of organic matter indicate that the reduced sulfur in the ores was derived from the reduction of Mesozoic marine sulfate by thermochemical sulfate reduction or bacterially mediated processes at a different time or place from ore deposition. The large range of δ³⁴S values determined for the minerals in the deposit (12.2–19.2‰ for barite, 3.8–13.8‰ for sphalerite and galena, and 8.7 to ?21.2‰ for pyrite), are best explained by the mixing of fluids containing different sources of sulfur. Geochemical reaction path calculations, based on quantitative fluid inclusion data and constrained by field observations, were used to evaluate possible precipitation mechanisms. The most important precipitation mechanism was probably the mixing of fluids containing different metal and reduced sulfur contents. Cooling, dilution, and changes in pH of the ore fluid probably played a minor role in the precipitation of ores. The optimum results that produced the most metal sulfide deposition with the least amount of fluid was the mixing of a fluid containing low amounts of reduced sulfur with a sulfur‐rich, metal poor fluid. In this scenario, large amounts of sphalerite and galena are precipitated, together with smaller quantities of pyrite precipitated and dolomite dissolved. The relative amounts of metal precipitated and dolomite dissolved in this scenario agree with field observations that show only minor dolomite dissolution during ore deposition. The modeling results demonstrate the important control of the reduced sulfur concentration on the Zn and Pb transport capacity of the ore fluid and the volumes of fluid required to form the deposit. The studies of the Trèves ores provide insights into the ore‐forming processes of a typical MVT deposit in the Cévennes region. However, the extent to which these processes can be extrapolated to other MVT deposits in the Cévennes region is problematic. Nevertheless, the evidence for the extensive migration of fluids in the basement and sedimentary cover rocks in the Cévennes region suggests that the ore forming processes for the Trèves deposit must be considered equally viable possibilities for the numerous fault‐controlled and mineralogically similar MVT deposits in the Cévennes region.