An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Hafting and Stone Tool Diversity among the Gamo of Ethiopia

The significance of flaked stone tool variation has been a source of great archaeological debate for over 100 years. Even though evidence for stone tool hafting exists as far back as the Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age, there is a dearth of information concerning how hafting affects stone tool technology. This ethnoarchaeological study of hafted stone scrapers among the Gamo of southern Ethiopia examines why a single cultural group utilizes two different hafts, which generate different lithic morphologies, technologies, and spatial distributions. The relationships between history, environment, and social group membership are explored to demonstrate how these associations create variation in technological practices.

Infanticide and infant abandonoment in the new South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1915

The Civil War and Reconstruction and the South's postbellum industrialization produced economic dislocation on a tremendous scale. One product of that economic upheaval was an increasing problem of infanticides and infant abandonments. This case study of Richmond, Virginia, examines patterns of abandonment and neonaticide as documented in records of the city almshouse and the city coroner. It demonstrates that race shaped the options available to women with problem pregnancies in that African American women had access to fewer social welfare unstitutions such as maternity homes. As a result, unmarried black women kept their out-of-wedlock babies more often than did whites, but they also committed infanticide at higher rates than did whites. Moreover, racial trends in infanticides and infant abandonment suggest that Ricomond's white working class experienced economic advancements at the turn of the twentieth century, while the city's black working class continued to live in depression-like conditions throughout the period.     

Evaluating consistency in typology and classification

Typological systems are essential for communication between anthropologists as well as for interpretive purposes. For both communication and interpretation, it is important to know that different individuals using the same typology classify artifacts in similar ways, but the consistency with which typologies are used is rarely evaluated or explicitly tested. There are theoretical, practical, and cultural reasons for this failure. Disagreements among archaeologists using the same typology may originate in the typology itself (i.e., imprecise type definitions, confusing structure) or in the classification process, because of observer errors, differences in perception and interpretation, and biases. We review previous attempts to evaluate consistency in typology and classification, and use consensus analysis to examine one well-established typology. Both consensus and disparity are apparent among the typologists in our case study, and this allows us to explore the kinds of forces that shape agreement and diversity in the use of all typological systems. We argue that issues of typological consistency are theoretically and methodologically important. Typological consistency can be explicitly tested, and must be if we hope to use typologies confidently.     

The Underside of Microfinance: Performance Indicators and Informal Debt in Cambodia

Microfinance is a dominant strategy used to promote rural development around the world. Rather than directly track its impact on borrowers, however, microfinance institutions rely on indicators of financial performance adopted from commercial banking as proxies for positive social impact. Yet, as critical research has shown, the industry depends on coercive peer pressure, social shaming and various forms of gendered exploitation to achieve its high rates of loan repayment. This article maintains that there is a need to investigate how the microfinance industry's own indicators of impact contribute to the ways microfinance can harm borrowers. Based on qualitative research in Cambodia during 2021 and 2022, the article demonstrates how financial performance indicators, most notably portfolio quality, both hide and exacerbate the ways that borrowers juggle debt between formal and informal lenders. In making this argument, the article advances critical scholarship on microfinance by showing how microfinance repayment structures debt-juggling practices in ways that put borrowers at greater risk of over-indebtedness. As a result, the microfinance industry is able to claim that it successfully helps to alleviate poverty, even as it accumulates profits by appropriating wealth from poor and low-income households across the global South.     

A preliminary study of patterns of replication in Scoring linear enamel hypoplasias

In order to investigate replicability in scoring linear enamel hypoplasias 59 anterior teeth were evaluated by three observers. Hypoplasias were identified with low-power microscopy and by the unaided eye. Location on the tooth was determined through caliper and micrometer measurement as well as assignment to tooth ‘thirds’. Hypoplasia size was determined through measurement of episode width and comparison with a cast designed to categorize types of hypoplasia severity. Intra-observer analysis showed consistent scoring of about 65 per cent of individual hypoplasias between rounds, with high replicability in episode location, size and severity using all methods tested. Inter-observer error was similarly low for episode size and location, but consistent scoring of individual hypoplasias between observer pairs ranged between 21 and 39 per cent. It is likely that the most important factor in the low level of replicability is the slight size of the majority of hypoplasias involved. Thus, the results suggest that further work should be directed toward developing the minimum threshold for scoring episodes. Other issues include measures to control ‘drift’ in scoring procedures over time, and procedures to score large cervical hypoplasias in canines, which can appear as multiple episodes with magnification. Among the various scoring methods tested, determination of episode location was highly replicable using all three techniques. Episode width was also highly replicable using the micrometer, but the cast association proved less successful.     

Reinventing Imperata: Revaluing Alang‐Alang Grasslands in Indonesia

This article takes a new look at the economic value and cultural significance of Imperata cylindrica grasslands in Indonesia, drawing particularly on fieldwork in Bali, Lombok and West Timor, where the focus is on the use of alang‐alang grass for roof thatch. The development of tourism has resulted in the commodification of thatch in Bali and Lombok for quality roofing and insulation. With its visual impact reinforcing its traditional cultural significance, the thatched roof has become a tourist artefact, its resulting high price elevating Imperata to the status of temporary cash crop and lucrative export. In West Timor, on the other hand, the grass has become a scarce commodity for roofing traditional houses. While it lacks the high prices of Bali‐Lombok, in Timor the cheapness of thatch in this time of economic crisis has increased its value over alternatives. This article explores the valuing and revaluing of Imperata within various agro‐ecological and economic niches, and provides case studies of some of the highly adaptive and opportunistic responses of local people to land‐use change. While the Bali case represents an extreme example of the grass as commodity, the more significant view of its value is the place it continues to occupy, in a subsistence or contingency sense, in many rural economies.