Nationalisms and the Orthodox worlds

This review article explores the role nationalism has played in the world dominated by the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The focus is on the recent contributions of Paschalis Kitromilides who has written extensively on this topic. The article assesses the four books dealing with the relationship between religion, politics, Enlightenment and nationalism in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The analysis emphasises the complex and contradictory relationship between nationalisms and the Orthodox Churches pointing to the profound transformation that has taken the place in this relationship over the last 250 years.     

COVID-19 is expanding global consciousness and the sustainability of travel and tourism

Abstract

The sustainable development model has largely failed to address the social and environmental challenges of the 21^st century. True sustainability will only occur when it is valued as a part of the taken-for-granted daily life of individuals and cultures across the globe. This has not yet happened because humanity has not evolved a global consciousness quickly enough to match the global advances in telecommunications and transportation technologies that have created a socially and economically ever-shrinking planet. Travel and tourism contributes to the expansion of global consciousness, although only in a haphazard and unintentional manner. The COVID-19 pandemic is a result of planetary time-space compression and is forcing an expansion in human consciousness that will make humankind better able to address global problems. There will still be considerable diversity on the planet, as now, but the pandemic will stimulate growing numbers of people, businesses and governments to adopt new ways of thinking, behaving and operating that are more closely aligned with the goals of sustainable development. This could be further enhanced if travel and tourism were to adopt the expansion and awakening of global conscious as a fundamental and transformational value in the products and experiences that it offers.     

Horticulturists and oxygen ecozones in the tropical and subtropical forests of Southeast South America

We analyse the isotopic values (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N) of the diet of pre-Columbian horticulturalist populations from tropical and subtropical areas of southeastern South America, belonging to the Guarani and Taquara archaeological units. The data indicate different trends in each one (T?=?4.21; P?=?0.0004), showing a mixed diet with maize consumption in the Guarani samples (δ¹³C_co?=??15.5?±?1.8‰; δ¹³C_ap ?10.4?±?0.8‰) and a depleted one in the Taquara ones (δ¹³C_co ?18.2?±?1.7‰; δ¹³C_ap ?11.9?±?0.9‰), with a significant internal dispersion in both populations. The first population has higher nitrogen values (δ¹⁵N 11.1?±?0.6‰) compared to the Taquara samples (δ¹⁵N 9.3?±?1‰), suggesting a more carnivorous diet. The recognition of these pre-Columbian mixed diets involves the identification of maize cultivation on the Atlantic side of the southernmost area of South America (Parana Delta, 34° SL). Through the analysis of δ¹⁸O we have identified two isotopic ecozones, the first along the Paraná River Valley, with an average value of δ¹⁸O ?3.7?±?0.5‰ (CV?=?13.5%; CI?=??3.83 / ?3.16), and the second one, located in the Planalto of southern Brazil (Araucaria Forest), with a mean value of δ¹⁸O ?1.5?±?0.3‰ (CV?=?16.5%; CI?=??1.69 / ?1.29). The isotopic data (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N and δ¹⁸O) suggest human movements between these two ecozones.     

Gamming Chairs and Gimballed Beds: Seafaring Women on Board Nineteenth-Century Ships

During the nineteenth century, many captains’ wives from New England took up residence on the ships their husbands commanded. This article focuses on how those women at sea attempted to use material culture to domesticate their voyaging space. While writing in their journals, they referred to not only the small personal things such as books and knitting needles that they brought in their trunks, but also large items, built for and used by women, such as gamming chairs, deckhouses, parlor organs, sewing machines, and gimballed beds. Mary Brewster attempted to retreat from the ship’s officers in her small deckhouse, Annie Brassey slept in the gimballed bed, and Lucy Lord Howes disembarked in a gamming chair when captured by Confederates during the Civil War. Evidence of these artifacts found during shipwreck archaeology could be used to further what is known of the culture aboard ships on which women lived. Analysis of the material culture reveals how a captain’s wife domesticated space, altered her environment, and made a home on the ship for her family.     

The Maritime Cultural Landscape of Northern Patagonia

This article is a contribution to the study of the indigenous navigation and its boats in the region of northern Patagonia. This article also aims to contribute to the understanding of indigenous navigation practices and technologies and their origins from prehistoric times to the mid-twentieth century. It presents and discusses the concept of Westerdahl’s Maritime Cultural Landscape in relation to other landscape concepts. This model is applied to northern Patagonia in order to discuss if it is possible to speak of a true maritime culture in the region. For this purpose, archaeological, historical and ethnographic data are presented in an integrative and innovative methodology for the discipline. Finally, the Maritime Cultural Landscape model will allow the integration of aquatic and terrestrial landscapes as routes traveled by native inhabitants of northern Patagonia and southern Chile, and propose an important and diversified maritime, river and lake tradition.     

Prehispanic Dugout Canoes in Mexico: A Typology Based on a Multidisciplinary Approach

Navigation implies a deep knowledge of the environment in which it is practised as well as the development of correlated technologies and techniques. In fact, sailing in lakes, rivers, along coasts or in high seas requires specific skills. This is why watercraft reflect the specific expertise of cultures in relation to the available resources and materials. Navigation as a means of movement and boats as modes of transportation is a well-documented topic in Europe, Asia and the Pacific Ocean, whether focusing on antiquity or the present. Nonetheless, in the New World, especially in Mesoamerica where the Aztec, Tarascan and Mayan Empires flourished, indigenous maritime history has been thoroughly under-investigated. This article explores the first prehispanic dugout canoes of the region, based on a multidisciplinary approach for the Mexico and Pátzcuaro Basins, in the Late Postclassic period (AD 1325-1521). For the first time, a typology of these dugout types is proposed, with a discussion of the importance of dugout canoes as a means of transportation in Mesoamerican civilizations, where wheels and draught animals did not exist.     

Nationalising indigenous peoples,legalising indigenous lands: a (post)colonial critique of the land demarcation process in Brazil by the analysis of the Guarani-Mbyá case

The Brazilian 1988 constitution recognises indigenous peoples as ‘first and natural owners of Brazilians land’ and the 231st Article ensures their right to special territories where they could live their culture and traditions without colonising presence. The authentication of these territories, however, requires Public Power promotion, which lies on colonising, juridical accounts and depends on anthropological, scientifically historical research. Our argument here is that the bureaucratisation of the land demarcation process is only possible within a context of epistemological advantage of science, i.e. modernity, which ignores indigenous territory and time conceptions. We will also argue that this bureaucratisation has been contributing to the (neo)colonisation of the territory by retarding the recognition and protection of indigenous rights.     

Walking the Land: Aboriginal Trails,Cultural Landscapes,and Archaeological Studies for Impact Assessment

Aboriginal people have occupied northern Alberta since the end of the last ice age. For most of that time they travelled across the land by foot, producing complex networks of trails, many of which may have great antiquity. Aboriginal people also modified the landscape extensively by the use of controlled burning. Lastly, they are immersed in and “read” the land as places with multiple cultural meanings, which in turn helped shape their cultures and identities. Together, these elements indicate the existence of a series of overlapping cultural landscapes for which the cross-country trails and waterways provide the grid. This article addresses the importance of traditional trails for identifying the cultural landscapes of northeastern Alberta and points to the rapid disappearance today of knowledge about such trails. It considers how archaeological investigations done in Alberta for Impact Assessment purposes fail to consider either trails or cultural landscapes in their surveys or to consult with Aboriginal people. As a result, government Review Panels making recommendations for whether or not an industrial project should be approved are basing their findings on incomplete information about Aboriginal land uses and meanings.     

Unpacking Neoliberal Archaeological Control of Ancient Indigenous Heritage

Archaeologists often discuss the First People of the Western Hemisphere (the Americas) and their descendants, as Immigrants from Asia or Solutreans from France. In this paper, I discuss how archaeologists as handmaidens of the late modern state control the past in the present. This control keeps Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere as recent migrants on a global history time scale. Arguing against recent initial migration time frames to the Western Hemisphere, I discuss the Indigenous Palaeolithic of the Americas; and what an acknowledgement of the ancient past may bring to contemporary Indigenous communities.