清理与重构:吕思勉的神话研究

上古史是中国近代历史学的重要研究对象,有关上古神话的研究更引起了广泛关注。吕思勉利用文献考据、社会从低级到高级的发展规律及“统属思维”塑造的“同质人类群体”的概念,对上古神话进行清理和重构,形成了区别于传统的新解释,并尝试以此取代传统思想中有关上古神话的“旧常识”。这种新旧知识迭代背后隐藏着吕思勉以“统属性思维”取代“关联性思维”的研究理路,是近代新史学打造学科话语体系的尝试,也彰显出历史学家普遍面对的“当下主义”的困境,以及这种困境对于历史知识迭代的意义。     

Feeding the Community: Women’s Participation in Communal Celebrations,Western Sicily (Eighth–Sixth Centuries BC)

In the study of the Sicilian Iron Age, most of the works devoted to their main communal ritual spaces—the so-called “acropolis”—have stuck mainly to describe both their architectures and those artifacts registered in them. However, in the realization of this practice, those objects traditionally considered as imported or exceptional have been emphasized. The return of this selective practice is that other artifacts could not be considered as extraordinary, but being also present in these spaces and, therefore, with a certain role in these celebrations, they have long been dismissed and undervalued. This is the case of all those objects that are directly related to the domestic sphere and, particularly, with those activities usually associated with the women’s world, such as cooking pots or loom weights. The invisibility of these objects relative to the domestic sphere and, above all, to the feminine sphere has led to validate and perpetuate a biased glaze over these ceremonies where only male elite actors could participate. In response to these androcentric and classist discourses, the main aim of this paper is to recover the agency of certain women in the development of these communal celebrations and to show their importance in the construction and representation of a sense of community that was created constantly through these ceremonies through the study of these long-forgotten household objects.     

Introduction to “Binary Binds”: Deconstructing Sex and Gender Dichotomies in Archaeological Practice

Gender archaeology has made significant strides toward deconstructing the hegemony of binary categorizations. Challenging dichotomies such as man/woman, sex/gender, and biology/culture, approaches informed by poststructuralist, feminist, and queer theories have moved beyond essentialist and universalist identity constructs to more nuanced configurations. Despite the theoretical emphasis on context, multiplicity, and fluidity, binary starting points continue to streamline the spectrum of variability that is recognized, often reproducing normative assumptions in the evidence. The contributors to this special issue confront how sex, gender, and sexuality categories condition analytical visibility, aiming to develop approaches that respond to the complexity of theory in archaeological practice. The papers push the ontological and epistemological boundaries of bodies, personhood, and archaeological possibility, challenging a priori assumptions that contain how sex, gender, and sexuality categories are constituted and related to each other. Foregrounding intersectional approaches that engage with ambiguity, variability, and difference, this special issue seeks to “de-contain” categories, assumptions, and practices from “binding” our analytical gaze toward only certain kinds of persons and knowledges, in interpretations of the past and practices in the present.     

Feminist Theorizing of Patriarchal Colonialism,Power Dynamics,and Social Agency Materialized in Colonial Institutions

In the twenty-first century historical archaeologists have increasingly drawn on post-colonial theory to analyze the European conquest and colonization of the Americas, Australasia, and Africa. However, few have employed feminist theories to gain insights into the patriarchal power dynamics that were fundamental to institutionalized colonial ideologies and practices. This paper provides feminist theorizing of new concepts and a heterarchical model of multiple interacting powers that increase understanding of complex gender and sexual power dynamics between colonizers and colonized.     

Imposed and Home-Grown Colonial Institutions: The Jesuit Chapels of St. Mary’s City and St. Francis Xavier,Maryland

We compare the settings and architecture of a small, community based church in Maryland (US), to that of the Jesuit church in the colony’s capital, St. Mary’s City. The State of Maryland researches and interprets St. Mary’s City, while the parish of St. Francis Xavier supports the search for its first sanctuary. We explore the differences between the sites and their institutions sponsoring the studies, and reflect on what these differences might mean for the relationship of church and state in twenty-first-century Maryland.     

Water for the City,Ruins for the Country: Archaeology of the New York City Watershed

Two New York City institutions, the Board of Water Supply (BWS) and Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), have shaped rural regions far outside city boundaries. The BWS depopulated places selected for reservoir construction. Residents were evicted and towns were demolished then submerged. Those who remained struggled to reorganize their lives amid the landscape clearance. Once the reservoirs were complete, the DEP replaced the BWS as the institution in charge of ensuring the city’s water supply. The DEP Police patrols around the reservoirs and enforces land-use regulations. Archaeological survey of city-owned watershed lands reveals a scarred landscape of ongoing colonial conflict.     

The Archaeological Study of an Inner Asian Empire: Using new Perspectives and Methods to Study the Medieval Liao Polity

Archaeological and historical data, combined with GIS analysis gives us new perspectives on 11th c. medieval period envoy missions from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) to the Liao Empire (907–1125) Middle Capital in Chifeng Inner Mongolia, China. The envoys’ routes can be recreated on maps, and optimal route and viewshed analyses give us insight into the Liao’s concerns about these foreign missions crossing their territory and how they addressed them. Furthermore, population estimates can be made from envoy information that can be used to extrapolate population density estimates from archaeological data for other areas in Chifeng.     

Playing with Fire: Children at Fort York’s Ordnance and Supply Yard

Though not plentiful, it is common to find toys on military sites. While such objects may at times be attributed to the recreation of soldiers, the documentary evidence for children at military installations makes it possible to link some of these objects to children’s play. Here, several toys and other child-related artifacts recovered from a former munitions depot are used to delve into a discussion of children within these military landscapes. In doing so, an alternative conceptualization of the landscape is proposed as a means to encourage development of an archaeology of childhood in military contexts.     

“Removes All Obstacles”: Abortifacients in Nineteenth-Century Toronto and Beyond

Exploring the biographies of small artifacts from archaeological contexts is an endeavour that can expose unrealized or forgotten historical and cultural meaning at local, regional, national, and international levels. The recovery of a small glass bottle embossed with the name “Sir J. Clarke’s Female Pills” from a site in Toronto has drawn together the production history and advertising during the nineteenth century of a patent medicine product classed as an abortifacient. Furthermore, it connects the history of women’s health and fertility rights to the social and economic motivations influencing control over family planning.     

The Reconstitution of Aapravasi Ghat,a Nineteenth-Century Immigration Depot in the Capital City of Port Louis,Mauritius, through Archaeology

Aapravasi Ghat is a World Heritage property and represents the mass immigration of Indentured Laborers after slavery. The Indenture Labor System started in 1834 but the site was established as a permanent immigration depot in 1849. For about a century the depot was used for arrival and departure of indentured laborers from Asian and African countries. Archaeological investigations highlighted the space distribution and everyday functioning of the depot. Simultaneously, structural modifications made before, during and after its occupation as a depot, could be identified. This paper relates the findings made through historical archaeological research and reconstruct the site during the different time period while focusing on the indenture period.