Caddoan Area archaeology since 1990

This paper summarizes recent archaeological research efforts, and changing perspectives, about the native history of the Caddo peoples who lived in the Caddoan Archaeological Area, which centers on the Great Bend of the Red River in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Of particular focus are the origins and early developments of the Caddoan tradition, regional diversity, subsistence changes and agricultural intensification, sociopolitical dynamics, and Caddoan-European interaction.     

WHITE LUMPS IN FIFTH- TO SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY AD MORTARS FROM NORTHERN ITALY

Ancient mortars from northern Italy, dating from the fifth to the seventeenth century AD, were examined in order to formulate an hypothesis regarding the origin of the white lumps often observed in these mortars and in other samples of the same geographical provenance. Various characterization techniques were employed, including scanning electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and micro-FTIR spectroscopy.     

SOIL PHOSPHATE ANALYSIS: A NEW TECHNIQUE FOR MEASUREMENT IN THE FIELD USING A TEST STRIP*

A new method for soil phosphate analysis has been developed for field measurement which will increase the applicability of phosphate mapping in archaeological prospection.     

The Practice of Identity and an Irish Sense of Place

Following in the wake of Benedict Anderson's work in particular, cultural geographers and cultural studies scholars have analyzed the nation and nationalism as primarily 'imagined' or abstract entities. Coincidentally, the greatest analytic attention has been given to nationalist representations of place, rather than to the everyday discursive practices constitutive of the nation as lived. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory, in this paper I develop the beginnings of a corporeal approach to the nation. Here the relationship between the practice of identity (the embodiment of gendered and sexualized subjectivities via discursive practice within culturally defined spaces) and an Irish nationalist sense of place is explored. In this approach, analytic considerations of identity and space are collapsed within the shared material and metaphoric medium of the body. Irish nationalism and the nation are analyzed as corporeal materialities via an ethnohistorical focus on late nineteenth-century changes in the political economy of 'peasant' and nationalist bodies. The analysis suggests that a particular matrix of constructions of femininity and masculinity was extended paradigmatically throughout the society in the latter half of the nineteenth century. These paradigmatic changes are characterized as a 'heterosexing' of bodies and places linked to economic change and the rise of the confessional state.     

LIBERAL AND MARXIST THEORY WITH RESPECT TO WORK AND LEISURE: A GEOGRAPHER'S ANTITHESIS TO THEIR COMMON THESIS

The special number of the Canadian Geographer devoted to West Edmonton Mall raises important questions, notably that of the relative status, as values, of work (seen historically as fundamental to our culture), and of leisure, perceived, albeit controversially, as being embodied in wem. In preparing to present my principal thesis, I review recent reinterpretations of human behaviour advanced by workers in the fields of symbolic interaction and the sociology of knowledge. These schools ha ve given rise to the concept of, though not the term, functional religion. The meaning of this concept is close to that of ideology; a comparative analysis of the two terms justifies using the former. A survey of recent work by geographers who approach religion from a functional point of view closes the second part of the paper. In the course of this review the relative status of work and leisure emerges as a significant issue. The view of leisure as a norm presented in the third part of the paper is that advocated by Pieper, Huizinga, and de Grazia. They argue that the Classical view, according to which human life finds its meaning in activities that are carried on for their own sake (e.g., games), rather than in those pursued for the material rewards they offer, is correct. Following their lead, and in opposition to both Marxists and Liberals, I argue that the adoption of leisure as a fundamental value would provide a more satisfactory foundation for our culture than work has to this point. Le numéro spécial du Géographe canadien consacréà?étude du West Edmonton Mall soulève plusieurs questions importantes, notamment celle du statut relatif, comme valeur, du travail (valeur-clé historiquement dans notre culture) et du loisir, valeurs incarnées, bien que de façon controversées, dans le WEM. Pour établir les bases de la thèse principale, on examine les réinterprétations récentes du comportement hurnain avancées, dans les sciences humaines, par des chercheurs travaillant dans les domaines de ?interaction symbolique et la sociologie du savoir. Ces écoles ont engendré le concept, sinon le terme, de la religion fonctionelle. Le sens de ce terme est proche de celui de ?idéologie; une analyse comparative des deux termes justifie ?emploi du premier. Pour conclure la deuxièrne partie de ce mémoire, on passe en revue quelques écrits récents par des géographes qui abordent la religion ?un point de vue fonctionnel. De cet examen il ressort que le statut relative du travail et du loisir est ?une importance capitale. Dans la troisième partie, on présente une perspective sur le loisir qui est proche de celle qu'avancent Pieper, Huizinga, et de Grazia. Ceux-cisupportent la position des auteurs classiques, selon qui la vie humaine trouve sa signification dans les activités entreprises pour ellesměmes (par exemple, les jeux) plutǒt que pour le gain matériel. Appuyant leur argument, et m'opposant à celui des marxistes et des libéraux, je prétends que ?adoption du loisir comme vaieur fondamentale fournirait une meilleure assise à notre culture que celle offerte jusqu'ici par le travail.