The Janulis Burial: A Case of Gender Fluidity in the Middle Archaic Period?

ABSTRACT

An amateur 1969 excavation at the Middle Archaic period Janulis site in Ontario unearthed the skeletal remains of three individuals and a dog. One of these, an adult female with an extensive offering, displayed several changes in the bones of her right arm and shoulder caused by the repetitive and intensive practice of an overhand throwing motion. The association of eight projectile points with her skeleton indicates that the activity was projectile throwing, suggesting a strong emphasis on hunting, normally a masculine role. She also had a turtle-shell rattle, an instrument usually associated with men in that time period. In contrast, the presence of two deer styliform bones in the burial point to a feminine role. These anomalies raise the possibility that this individual had adopted a nonbinary gender status, but the paucity of reliable comparative data makes it difficult to precisely define that status.     

The Enlightenment,Pyropolitics, and the Problem of Evil

Abstract

In this article I argue that the ideal of rationality espoused by the European Enlightenment hinges on the separation of the light of reason from heat, with which it had been conjoined in the classical element of fire at least since the Greek antiquity. As a result, evil, from the standpoint of the Enlightenment is tantamount to heat without light, while evil, critically viewed outside this tradition, inheres in the absolute separation between the two aspects of the life-giving, albeit ineluctably dangerous, fire.     

Australindia: the geography of imperial desire

A tradition of imperial geographical fantasy fuses India and Australia. This paper discusses the strategic role these utopian proposals played in imperial erotics, in aiding the foundational ambition of empire, which is to connect. The proponents of these geographical hybrids (T.J. Maslen, W. Pickering and Thomas Livingston Mitchell) occupied very different positions in Greater Britain's colonial administration and the minority knowledges represented by their speculative overlays of India onto Australia circulated in very different cultural circles. The insider/outsider status of these ex-army, turned surveyors suggests a more complex ecology of alternative discourses circulating in the imperial imaginary: as proposals for future places, the schemes discussed in this article were fictions that aestheticized invasion, making it a metaphor for ultimate unity.     

Embodied intergenerationality: family position,place and masculinity

The aim of this article is to further understandings of performances of family position, place and masculinity in what I call ‘embodied intergenerationality'. I build on research with 38 men across three generations within 19 families of Irish descent to discuss masculinity, intergenerationality and place. These men are living, or have recently lived, in the region known as Tyneside, in the North East of England. Secondary to this contribution is an acknowledgement of the significance of changing positionalities as research insider and participant observer by addressing both intersectional and intergenerational identities involved in geographic research. The article therefore responds to recent work in the discipline which has called for more critical attention towards experiences in the field, with its central contribution – embodied intergenerationality – advancing knowledge of masculinities and place for those who analyse masculinities within the research encounter. This work explores the performances and relationalities of masculinities amongst men of Irish descent on Tyneside as well as between the participants and the researcher. In working with men of different ages both within and between families, I draw conclusions on masculinity, intergenerationality and place: the roles of researcher and participant can become embodied as ‘son' and ‘father' in the research encounter and where the research takes place matters.