Fact or speculation? How a feminist perspective can help students understand what archaeologists know and why they think they know it

Si somos serios respecto la importancia de la educación pública y la comunicación, entonces necesitamos considerar la pedagogía de la arqueología. Ense?ar a los universitarios sobre arqueología tendrá más éxito cuando los temas sobre método, teoría, y ética se se?alan como aspectos integrados y centrales de la práctica arqueóloga. Tomando ejemplos de mi experiencia en la ense?anza en varias instituciones académicas norteamericanas, yo se?alo como la investigación inspirada por el feminismo sirve como un método pedagógico práctico para ense?ar a los estudiantes las realidades del dise?o de investigación, el uso de múltiples líneas de evidencia, y verificaciń de las interpretaciones.

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Résumé Si nous voulons prendre au sérieux l'importance de l'éducation publique et de la communication, alors nous devons considérer la pédagogie dans l'archéologie. Enseigner l'archéologie aux étudiants sera plus fructueux quand les questions de méthode, de thérie et d'éthique seront mises en avant en tant qu'aspects intégrés et centraux de la pratique de l'archéologie. En illustrant mon discours d'exemples tirés de mon expérience d'enseignante dans différentes institutions académiques américaines, je montre comment la recherche marquée par le féminisme, peut servir d'approache, pédagogiquement utile, pour présenter aux étudiants les réalités des plans de recherche, l'utilisation de lignes d'évidences multiples et la vérification des interprétations.

     

Controlling for Doubt and Uncertainty Through Multiple Lines of Evidence: A New Look at the Mesoamerican Nahua Migrations

Nahuatl represents a relatively recent extension of the Uto-Aztecan language family into Mesoamerica. Ethnohistorians have linked Nahuatl's arrival to the historically attested migrations of nomadic people into central Mexico in the last centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Archaeologists have tended to treat migration as an explanation for a change in material culture rather than a social question to be examined theoretically. We approach this migration through the comparison of multiple data sets and conclude that what has previously been treated as a historical event is instead part of a longer term process tying together Mesoamerica's northern periphery with its highland core. While we find that certain themes from migration theory are reflected in this preindustrial migration as well, other variables are unique and bode well for archaeology's ability to address and contribute to theoretical issues relating to migration.     

The Un-European Idea: Vichy and Eurafrica in the Historiography of Europeanism

Imperialist and collaborationist conceptions of Europeanisms have generally been excluded from mainstream historiography with reference to their alleged un-Europeanness. However, by discussing the ideas and writings of two French Europeanists—Louis Le Fur’s and René Viard’s—in the years 1940–41, I argue that it is precisely their Vichyite and imperialist conceptions of Europeanness that underpin their political ideas of a united Europe. Their works therefore call into question a prevailing historiographical narrative of Europeanism as a benign counterpoint to a dark European past. Since, as demonstrated in this article, French Europeanist visions have often been bound up with both collaborationist and imperialist interests, I argue for the need to develop a more inclusive and critical historiographical perspective on the history of Europeanism.     

‘Walking … just walking’: how children and young people's everyday pedestrian practices matter

This paper considers the importance of walking for many children and young people's everyday lives, experiences and friendships. Drawing upon research with 175 9- to 16-year-olds living in new urban developments in south-east England, we highlight key characteristics of (daily, taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) walking practices, which were of constitutive importance in children and young people's friendships, communities and geographies. These practices were characteristically bounded, yet intense and circuitous. They were vivid, vital, loved, playful, social experiences yet also dismissed, with a shrug, as ‘just walking’. We argue that ‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require critical reflection upon chief social scientific theorisations of walking, particularly the large body of literature on children's independent mobility and the rich, multi-disciplinary line of work known as ‘new walking studies’. In arguing that these lines of work could be productively interrelated, we propound ‘just walking’—particularly the often-unremarked way it matters—as a kind of phenomenon which is sometimes done a disservice by chief lines of theory and practice in social and cultural geography.     

Going Outside Together: Good Practice with Respect to the Inclusion of Disabled Children in Primary School Playgrounds

This paper reports some of the findings of research which has investigated the inclusion of disabled children in six primary school playgrounds in Yorkshire, in England. Initially the paper sets the policy context before moving on to discuss the importance of play for children, especially in a primary school setting and particularly for disabled children in such a setting. The inclusion of disabled children is discussed with respect to a series of social and organisational issues and the good practice identified relating to these issues. The social issues include the relationships the disabled children have with their peers and with the staff. The organisational issues relate to the individual routines, moving to a new school, the benefit of staff experience and training, encouraging activity in physical education lessons which can be translated in to the playground and the benefits of extra time outside for some disabled children. All these aspects can influence whether all the children can go outside together—an important underlying factor for the inclusion of disabled children in primary school playgrounds.