Agency in a Postmold? Physicality and the Archaeology of Culture-Making

Architecture embodies human agency in all of its dimensions and effective scales. Specifically, the wooden posts of Mississippian peoples in the American mid-continent were simultaneously spatial, material, and corporeal dimensions of the process of cultural construction and contestation. Our reconsideration of the lowly postmold is based on the principle of physicality that, in turn, alters the ways in which we pose research questions and interpret archaeological data. A historical-processual methodology involves three procedural fundamentals: identifying practical variability, comparing genealogies of practices, and tacking between lines of evidence at multiple scales of analysis.     

Haggling Highlanders: Marketplaces,Middlemen and Moral Economy in the Papua New Guinean Betel Nut Trade

The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea's marketplaces. Overt competition and haggling, once conspicuous by their near absence, are now commonplace in the country's betel nut marketplaces, and increasingly visible in many of the large urban fresh food marketplaces. This has emerged with the rise of long‐distance and intermediary trading, and with increasing numbers of people dependent on trade for their livelihood. This paper explores moral economy, and the interactions and negotiations around price between lowland betel nut producers and highland wholesale traders as they occur in marketplaces and in rural production areas. It documents how the moral obligations that arise from trade itself, and entangled with self‐interest, tempers competition and fosters solidarity amongst traders, redirects competition onto their interactions with producers, and in doing so reinforces existing power asymmetries.     

酋邦的演化

在文明与早期国家探源的战略性课题中,酋邦理论具有十分重要的意义。酋邦作为对19世纪摩尔根社会进化理论的发展和20世纪新进化论的重要概念,赋予了平等的部落社会与作为阶级社会象征的国家之间这个过渡阶段以明确的科学定义,使这方面的探索有了一个有用的分析工具。至于这个概念的具体内涵和分析视野,则是始终处于发展之中的。酋邦概念最早是20世纪50年代奥博格在对南美印第安人的研究中提出的,60年代塞维斯根据夏威夷群岛原始文化的资料提出了相对比较系统的酋邦理论。此后酋邦问题引起学术界越来越多的重视和关注,很多学者参与到这方面的研究和讨论之中,使研究深度和广度都达到了很高的水平。本文是美洲研究学会1988年1月举行的一个酋邦研讨会的纪要,曾发表在1989年2月号的《当代人类学》(Current Anthropology)上,稍作修改后又收入厄尔主编的《酋邦:权力、经济和意识形态》(Chiefdoms:Power,Economy,andIdeology)(1991年出版)一书中。这个研讨会是该领域一流学者们的一次集会,对酋邦问题进行了非常深入全面的探讨。会上所提出的一些问题,不仅仅是对当时酋邦研究成果的一次总结,而且对于后来包括今天在内的国家文明起源研究都有十分重要的意义。会议不仅探讨了酋邦的概念,更着重探讨了酋邦产生和存在的动力机制。首先,酋邦被认为具有极大的多样性。从规模上可分为简单酋邦和复杂酋邦;从财政基础而言,根据支付媒介的特点,可以区分为产品经济型酋邦和财富经济型酋邦;从结构上,酋邦可以分为集体型酋邦和个体型酋邦。其次,伴随对当时盛行的人口压力是社会演变主要原因学说的反思,学者们全面探讨了酋邦权力起源可能存在的所有动力,主要从三个方面(对经济、战争和意识形态的控制)总结为十项策略。与会者的一种共识是,权力的三个组成部分某种程度体现了不同的策略,而有效的统治似乎有赖于多种不同策略结合使用,以便集中权力并克服单一权力来源的局限性,这是各地案例中较为普遍的现象。另外,会议还讨论了环境在酋邦发展中的作用、酋邦的规模与层次、以及酋邦的轮回等等其它一些重要问题。酋邦概念在1980年代引入中国后也引起了我国学界的关注和讨论,然而由于对国外文献理解上的不足,一些介绍酋邦的文章难免传递一些误导性的观点。本文作为酋邦专题讨论的纪要或综述,体现了当今国际学界对酋邦概念的认识和研究,为我们了解酋邦探究的意义提供一个比较准确和全面的认识。     

The 13th century polynesian colonization of Hawai’i Island

We assess 926 radiocarbon dates from Hawai’i Island, the largest assemblage of dates compiled from a single island in Oceania. Based on a classificatory approach that arranges the dates based on their reliability, accuracy, and precision, our results indicate that the most reliable estimate for the initial Polynesian colonization of Hawai’i Island is AD 1220–1261, ∼250 to 450 years later than the current consensus. This conclusion is strikingly convergent with recent estimates for the colonization of remote East Polynesia. Our analysis highlights the need for wood charcoal identification to insure selection of short-lived plants/plant parts for radiocarbon dating, and that a reliance on dating unidentified wood charcoal is a waste of resources that only serves to retard progress in refining the settlement chronology of Hawai’i Island and other locations.     

The Colocation Quotient: A New Measure of Spatial Association Between Categorical Subsets of Points. 协同区位商：点集分类子集间空间关联性的新度量标准

This article presents a new metric we label the colocation quotient (CLQ), a measurement designed to quantify (potentially asymmetrical) spatial association between categories of a population that may itself exhibit spatial autocorrelation. We begin by explaining why most metrics of categorical spatial association are inadequate for many common situations. Our focus is on where a single categorical data variable is measured at point locations that constitute a population of interest. We then develop our new metric, the CLQ, as a point‐based association metric most similar to the cross‐k‐function and join count statistic. However, it differs from the former in that it is based on distance ranks rather than on raw distances and differs from the latter in that it is asymmetric. After introducing the statistical calculation and underlying rationale, a random labeling technique is described to test for significance. The new metric is applied to economic and ecological point data to demonstrate its broad utility. The method expands upon explanatory powers present in current point‐based colocation statistics.     

Can Affirmative Motivations Improve Compliance in Emissions Trading Programs?

Early emissions trading programs have obtained a very high rate of compliance, in part by using continuous emissions monitors (CEMs) that automatically record emissions data on a 24‐hour basis. As they expand into a wider range of pollutants and sources, however, such policies will have to rely on less automated forms of self‐reporting. This article asks if improved “affirmative motivations” for compliance based on perceptions of a policy's fairness could reduce the likelihood of underreporting, thereby lowering verification costs without unduly jeopardizing environmental integrity. Using a computerized laboratory emissions trading market, we find that many subjects reported emissions honestly in situations where dishonest reporting would have been more profitable, as well as a statistically significant association of affirmative motivations based on perceptions of a policy's fairness with honest reporting. These results suggest that designing an emissions trading program to increase its perceived fairness among users has the potential to increase honest emissions reporting and reduce monitoring costs.     

Deciphering the inorganic chemical record of ancient human activity using ICP-MS: a reconnaissance study of late Classic soil floors at Cancuén,Guatemala

Inorganic chemical analysis of soil floors using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was undertaken to provide information on the nature and location of past human activity in the ancient Maya city of Cancuén, Guatemala. The use of ICP-MS to detect trace and ultra-trace elemental enrichment of two excavated soil floors from the late Classic period is the first study of its kind in Mesoamerican archaeology. Geochemical background of the site was established by the analysis of palaeosols and nearby undisturbed ‘off-site’ soil profiles. Robust statistical methods used in the study clearly distinguished the level of anthropogenic enrichment across the former floors. Many elements measured showed only minor departures (10–20%) from the site's background soil chemistry. The greatest levels of elemental enrichment were detected in the rare earth elements, mercury, and gold. The latter is of particular interest considering the consensus that gold was absent from the world of the Classic-period Maya. Comparisons of the spatial pattern of mercury enrichment with lithic and archaeological data show strong linkages to past industrial and ritual activities. Elevated rare earth element concentrations were recorded broadly across both soil floors and are considered to be related to concentrated human occupation in antiquity.     

Osteological applications of high-resolution computed tomography: a prehistoric arrow injury

In comparison to conventional computed tomography (CT) and radiography, high-resolution CT is a superior means of visualizing and quantifying fine structures in a wide range of materials. Here the shape and size of a chert arrowhead lodged in a 700-year-old tibia from Norris Farms #36, Illinois, are identified, as are the bony response and the arrow's probable trajectory through the bone. The use of high-resolution CT – in this instance, to identify structures down to the level of individual trabeculae – can be used in other archaeological applications when fine details are important and specimens cannot be damaged by invasive (i.e., destructive) procedures.