Anthropology and 1968: Openings and closures

It is now 50 years since 1968 and in this article we look back at the 1960s and the way that anthropology was shaped in those years. We find a period of rupture, generational upheaval, youthful exploration against authority and spiritual breaks with rationality and causality thinking, but also violent counter‐insurgency and inventions of new authoritarian state forms. Our purpose is to look back at that period and reframe how those years were formative for anthropology and neighbouring disciplines. We believe that anthropology experienced a liminal period, with Carlos Castaneda and Victor Turner as leading figures, and that the closures and denials of that sense of anti‐structure have marked the discipline after 1968. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari and their account of May 1968 as an event of ‘suffocation’ and a ‘return to the intolerable’.     

Why are artists getting poorer? About the reproduction of low income among artists

In the period 2006 to 2013, Norway has experienced a substantial increase in public subsidies to culture as well as a substantial increase in real income growth in general. This paper discusses different explanations for why Norwegian artists’ real artistic income has declined between 2006 and 2013, despite the positive economic development in Norway. We have based the study in particular on two comparable studies on the income and work situation of Norwegian artists in 2006 and 2013. We analyse and discuss why the artists’ real artistic income has declined during this period. We do not find a single, general, explanation for this, but the income decline does not primarily seem to be due to either an increasing number of artists or a decline in public scholarships to artists. Our two most striking findings are: (i) A substantial decline in most artists’ artistic working hours and a corresponding increase in artistically related and non-artistic working hours, and (ii) a tendency for artists to derive less of their income from the market, together with an apparent decrease in cultural consumption (spending) among Norwegians. These two factors – especially the latter – seem to be the major factors behind the decline in artistic income.     

Boats and meaning: A study of change and continuity in the Alta fjord,arctic Norway,from 4200 to 500 years B.C.

This paper is an analysis of socioeconomic and symbolic meaning associated with rock carvings of boats which were carved on rock surfaces between 4200 and 500 calendric years B.C. in the Alta fjord, arctic Norway. The carvings, which are divided into four diachronic phases, change in form and partly in content, approximately contemporaneous with the general archaeological record. The analysis of the human figures associated with the boats indicates that there were functional and possibly status differences, in the real as well as in the mythological world. There are also diachronic changes in the activities in which the boats are depicted. The changes in the carvings might be associated with other cultural transformations such as in material culture and socioeconomic and religious systems, among northern hunters and fishers. Some of the changes could be influenced by ideologies associated with Neolithic and Bronze Age socioeconomic systems further south in Scandinavia.     

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at site level come into focus, large-scale trends in cultural expansions remain poorly understood. This paper presents different ways to view diachronic datasets from localities in southern Africa and specifically tests hypotheses of environmental and cultural causality. We employ an array of analyses in an attempt to understand large-scale variability observed during the MSA. We evaluated the diversity of stone tool assemblages to model site use, examined transport distances of lithic raw materials to understand patterns of movement, assessed the cultural capacities required to manufacture and use different sets of tools, applied stochastic models to examine the geographic distribution of sites, and reconstructed biome classes and climatic constraints. Our large-scale analysis allowed the research team to integrate different types of information and examine diachronic trends during the MSA. Based on our results, the range of cultural capacity expanded during the MSA. We define cultural capacity as the behavioral potential of a group expressed through the problem-solution distance required to manufacture and use tools. Our dataset also indicates that the actual behavior exhibited by MSA people, their cultural performance as expressed in the archaeological record, is not equivalent to their cultural capacity. Instead we observe that the main signature of the southern African MSA is its overall variability, as demonstrated by changing sets of cultural performances. Finally, at the scale of resolution considered here, our results suggest that climate is not the most significant factor driving human activities during the MSA. Instead, we postulate that behavioral flexibility itself became the key adaptation.     

Who Can Govern? Comparing Network Governance Leadership in Two Norwegian City Regions

What social and structural mechanisms determine where hands-on leadership of city-region governance networks is anchored? In this article, we discuss the origin of city-region governance leadership in two Norwegian city regions. Based on empirical analysis, we argue that variations in terms of leadership practices cannot be fully explained in terms of levels of trust, social capital and institutional set-up. Issues related to how power is institutionalized needs to be explored and explained in order to improve our understanding of processes associated with the construction of leadership of governance networks. We also recognize that where this type of leadership is anchored can have important implications for both regional economic development as well as defining the qualities of local democracy.     

Trade,tribute and household responses

During the Late Middle Ages the combined pressures from the stately tributary organizations of Novgorod and Norway, in cooperation with the capitalist organization of the German Hansa, seem to have driven the hunting population of Varanger in East Finnmark to exploit the wild reindeer resource heavily. The article deals with how a Saami household who lived in a turf house on a peninsula in the present municipality of Nesseby (Unjárgd) dealt with the situation.     

Fixed or free book prices: is a hybrid system superior?

One of the main issues in the literature on the economics of books is whether or not a fixed‐price system is better than a free‐price system in providing a wide variety of cheap books. Although numerous studies have been carried out, this issue remains unresolved. Since 1962 Norway has had a fixed‐price system, regulated by a book trade agreement between the publishers’ and booksellers’ associations. On 1 May 2005, Bokavtalen, a new book trade agreement was introduced, representing a new step in a long‐term trend towards a less regulated book trade, and the price system is now actually a hybrid of fixed and free prices. The evaluation is mainly based on extensive use of multivariate regression analyses. Some of the results suggest that the hybrid price system is superior to the old one with regard to each of price, sales, reading and number of titles.     

Ancient DNA reveals a major genetic change during the transition from hunting economy to reindeer husbandry in northern Scandinavia

The timing and origin of reindeer domestication has been highly debated. Recent molecular analyses show several mitochondrial lineages of domestic reindeer across Eurasia suggesting different origins of Fennoscandian and Siberian domestic reindeer. In order to investigate the origin of domestic Fennoscandian reindeer, we sequenced a mitochondrial control region fragment of 68 ancient reindeer remains from archaeological sites in Finnmark, the major county for extant reindeer husbandry in Norway, spanning from ca. BC 3400 to AD 1800. The majority of the Stone and Iron Age reindeer assemblages in Finnmark are from settlements in the eastern part of the county, in the Varangerfjord area. The reindeer remains from these settlements show affiliation to the large and complex Beringian haplotype cluster, found in extant reindeer from the Kola Peninsula to north-eastern Russia. A distinct haplotype shift is observed in the late medieval period, when the typical haplotype signatures of extant domestic Fennoscandian reindeer appeared in coastal regions of both eastern and western Finnmark. These haplotypes were not found among the Stone and Iron Age wild reindeer samples of Finnmark, suggesting that this population was not ancestral to extant domestic reindeer of Fennoscandia.     

Evaluating morphological variability in lithic assemblages using 3D models of stone artifacts

Technological and morphological variability in lithic artifacts is commonly used to identify taxonomic entities in Paleolithic research contexts. Assemblages are mainly studied using either linear distance measurements or qualitative assessments of morphologies. Here, we present a method to quantify morphological variability in lithic artifacts using 3D models of stone artifacts. Our study on the sequence of the Upper Paleolithic layers V–I from the site Yabroud II in western Syria, demonstrates that utilizing 3D models provides a new insight into the variability of lithic technologies. We use quantitative data on convexities, twist and scar patterns on cores and blades, attributes previously not readily quantifiable, to trace technological change through the archaeological sequence. We are able to identify differences and translate these findings into a grouping of the layers. While layers VI–II are characterized by technological continuity and were grouped together, layers V and I can be separated from this group and represent technologically different groups chronologically before and after. Our results demonstrate the potential of 3D models for studying morphological variability in lithic assemblages.     

Water availability and landuse during the Upper and Epipaleolithic in southwestern Syria

Paleolithic research often assumes that environmental conditions played a major role in shaping human evolution. To study this relationship we present a spatially explicit approach based on the assumption that the distribution of water within the landscape is an essential component of local environmental conditions. Here, we analyze the relation of wetness and human landuse patterns from the Upper Paleolithic (UP) and Epipaleolithic (EP) of Western Syria. In particular the spatially explicit character of the approach enables the detection of a significant change in landuse patterns during the UP and EP accompanied by a significant shift in the wetness characteristics of the preferentially used areas. These results are discussed against the background of published data on climatic conditions in order to identify both a possible time frame and triggers for this change in landuse. While we conclude an increased influence of natural conditions on the spatial behavior for the UP, we suggest an additional influence of cultural circumstances in shaping EP spatial behavior. For the region studied we argue that the bounded pattern observed during the UP changes to a spatially flexible pattern during the Late Natufian.