An investigation of the frequency of squatting facets in Later Stone Age foragers from South Africa

Distinctive morphological changes attributed to a habitual squatting posture were observed on the distal femur, distal tibia and on the talar neck of Later Stone Age (LSA) foragers. The frequency of squatting in LSA foragers (n = 56) was determined by the presence of anatomical features of joint hyperflexion. Three South African comparative skeletal groups from different time periods were also analysed: skeletal remains of early farming populations (n = 17), 18th century ‘Free Blacks’ and/or slaves from Cobern Street, Cape Town (n = 21), and a modern cadaver sample (n = 29). The results show that 28 out of 56 LSA foragers (50%) were habitual squatters; 13 out of 17 farmers (76.5%) and one of 21 individuals from the Cobern Street collection (4.8%) demonstrated squatting facets. No anatomical squatters were found in the modern cadaver sample. There was no significant sex difference between squatters and non‐squatters. Hence at least half of the LSA foragers and farmers were habitual squatters, according to the signs of joint hyperflexion. Squatting is a comfortable position for those used to it because the body weight is supported with minimal muscular activity. Two probable reasons are suggested for the difference in postures adopted by the different groups: (1) availability or lack of availability of furniture and (2) cultural and individual differences in resting posture. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three-dimensional laser scanning: potential uses for museum conservation and scientific research

Recent technological advancements have made a tremendous impact in the fields of biological anthropology and archaeology. Although advancements in DNA analysis have overshadowed other areas of progress in the subfields of biological anthropology, bioarchaeologists are now utilizing many other new forms of technology in their work. In particular, three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning offers a sophisticated method of documenting and studying prehistoric human skeletons. In recent years, portable laser scanning devices capable of creating high resolution images have become available, enabling researchers to scan and archive skeletal collections from archaeological sites and museum collections around the world. 3D laser scanners are inexpensive, simple to operate, and completely non-destructive to human skeletal material. A major benefit is that they offer a cost-effective method of creating a digital record of skeletal collections for museum archives. Since published research using 3D methods typically focuses on sophisticated analyses used to analyze 3D data that are difficult for the novice user to follow, in this paper we provide a simple and straightforward overview of 3D scanning methods aimed at non-specialists. We discuss how these methods can be used to preserve and document osteological material in museums, develop research ideas in the subfields of biological anthropology, and increase the potential for scholarly collaboration.     

Introduction

Abstract

This paper examines mechanical drawings made between 1811 and 1835 by Cesar Nicolas Leblanc, draftsman and engraver for the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, for publication by the French patent ministry. It compares Leblanc's engravings with the original drawings of the same machines, drawings which mechanics and inventors had submitted with their patent applications and upon which Leblanc based his published copies. The paper further compares Leblanc's patent engravings with his engravings of other machines, ones of proven utility. Leblanc developed a visual vocabulary to accompany Conservatoire Director Gerard‐Joseph Christian's philosophy of industrial mechanics, and used it to expose a crucial ambiguity in French patenting practice. Patented machines were unproven machines, Leblanc's patent engravings argued, while his other engravings endorsed machines of known value.     

From private to public: Alba de Céspedes' agony column in 1950s Italy

A unique, if problematical, historical source for the study of the ‘private sphere’, the problem page has, as yet, been the subject of little serious attention. This article initially considers the problem page in general terms, and with particular reference to 1950s Italy, a time when a notable feature of the changing patterns of cultural consumption was the emergence and upsurge in popularity of the weekly magazine. The rest of the paper is devoted to an analysis of best‐selling author Alba de Céspedes' agony column, ‘Dalla parte di lei’, published in the magazine Epoca. The article shows that the column provides intriguing insights into the state of family and marriage during a time of transition. It discusses the idea of the agony column as a commodity, but also highlights de Céspedes' aim of providing a kind of compendium of lay morals, arguing that any attempt to provide an alternative to the Catholic Church, and the prevailing conservative attitudes of the time, was a matter of careful negotiation.     

‘Come Buy,Come Buy’: Christina Rossetti's ‘Goblin Market’ and the Cries of London

Placing Christina Rossetti's ‘Goblin Market’ (1862) within the rich context of children's London guidebooks establishes a literary tradition in which readers are counseled to be wise urban consumers. During this period of rapid industrialization, exotic foods appeared on English tables amid public fears about food adulteration. Rossetti's poem and contemporary guidebooks transmit the anxiety surrounding food selection and consumption. From Aunt Busy-Bee's New London Cries (1852) to Aunt Louisa's London Alphabet (1872), London is depicted as an urban sounding board for commercial opportunities and moral choices. Removed from agrarian sites of production, urban readers are urged to select food according to the moral character of the vendor. In Rossetti's famous poem, Lizzie's and Laura's choices are immediately relevant to readers who hearkened to similar cries shouted daily in their neighborhoods. Rossetti herself would have heard them growing up in London, and these traditional cries bear semantic and metaphoric similarities to the goblins' cries. Apart from serving as inspirations for Rossetti's work, guides to the cries are also important documents in their own right, part of the corpus of near-forgotten work penned for children to amuse them in their idle hours as well as to instruct them in proper practices of commercial enterprise and moral consumption. The child reader is invited to know London and to absorb lessons by piecing together the letters and sounds of the metropolis.     

Pre-pottery farmers on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico

Large island-like shell mounds along the southern coast of Mexico are the earliest known archaeological sites on the Pacific margin of Mesoamerica. These aceramic deposits date to between 7500 and 3800 cal BP and have been interpreted as locations where foragers, living elsewhere seasonally on the coastal plain, harvested shellfish and other estuarine resources. Based on an accumulation of paleoecological data from elsewhere in the lowland Neotropics of Mesoamerica, southern Central America and South America we pose and provide a first test of an alternative subsistence model: that the Archaic Period populations in this area were slash and burn farmers. Burned maize phytoliths first appear in these sedimentary records at 6500 cal BP in association with macroscopic charcoal and forest disturbance plant taxa. Periodic burning and forest disturbance, consistent with farming activities, are also evident in the macroscopic charcoal record between 6500 and 4700 cal BP. Pollen, phytolith and charcoal records all point to sustained burning, forest disturbance and the cultivation of maize between 4700 and 3800 cal BP. These data suggest that people were slash and burn farming during the Archaic Period prior to the adoption of pottery and the proliferation of Early Formative Period villages and full-fledged agriculture based on near or total reliance on crop plants after ∼3800 cal BP.     

‘Aristocracies of thought’: social class in the early folklore of Yeats and Hyde

The years 1888–89 saw the production of two influential collections of Irish folklore: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by William Butler Yeats and Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta by Douglas Hyde. These works broke strongly with the unscientific and patronising tone of the Buchmärchen tradition in Ireland and established a new theory of folklore. In this theory, Yeats and Hyde distanced peasant narrators in an attempt to secure literary and, ultimately, aristocratic origins for their tales. As a result, Hyde and Yeats, despite their Ascendancy upbringings, could view themselves (and not the peasant narrators) as the legitimate inheritors of folklore narratives. The very stories collected, however, challenge this power dynamic. Stories such as ‘Monachar agus Manachar’ directly critique the perceived unjust division of labour and profit in rural Ireland in a way that parallels the act of folklore collection. The tales themselves resist the rhetorical frameworks of their Ascendancy collectors.