Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest

Archaeological research in the Mimbres region (southwestern New Mexico) has focused on the post-A.D. 500 ceramic/agricultural occupations, especially the Mimbres Classic period (1000–1130). This work has advanced general anthropological issues regarding mobility, land use and human impact, and the concept of abandonment. Deeper understandings of some of these issues require more detailed demographic estimates, which in turn are dependent on methodological advances, particularly studies of site use life. Research on the production and distribution of Mimbres pottery—famous for its naturalistic black-on-white designs—is advancing rapidly. Although the designs have been well illustrated and much discussed, more systematic anthropological research on Mimbres design style is badly needed. Various aspects of Mimbres social and ideational realms (e.g., household and community organization, social hierarchy, the symbolism of the pottery designs) have received some attention but await new perspectives derived from current social theory.     

The Sociopolitics of Archaeology in Quebec: Regional Developments within Global Trends

In the 1960s, archaeology was a newcomer to Quebec’s cultural francophone scene, and commercial archaeology made its first appearance at the end of the 1970s. Today, in a context of global chronic economic crisis, we intend to examine the effects of provincial and federal ideological and economic trends on the praxis of archaeology in Quebec. These include a progressive deregulation of the public sector by weakening the institutions through the termination of archaeological posts or/and non-replacement of retired archaeologists, and a progressive disengagement of the public sector through conditional regulation, accompanied by a lax attitude towards entrepreneurs, and stickler regulations for archaeologists. We present a series of current issues and examples in Quebec archaeology which illustrate these trends, in particular two case studies occurring in Montreal and Northern Quebec, respectively.     

Truth as historical recapitulation: the dead of Cape Town’s District One

In this essay, I reflect on the massive and dramatic re-emergence of the dead of Cape Town’s District One in 2003, and its aftermath. I discuss how the resurfacing of these ancestors helps us understand how heritage discourses operate in Cape Town, and how their agency forces us to consider what it means to live in the city during post-apartheid urban renewal. I argue that the agency of the District One dead hinges on their exposure of the internal workings of discourse and the associated disciplinary practices through which we experience Cape Town and its heritage. This story ends ambiguously. I discuss how, following the storage of the District One dead in the Prestwich Ossuary, the gaze on Cape Town was redirected away from the city’s past and towards its future; I explore how their reinterment foreclosed a series of discussions regarding the reconciliation of past events with the present realities of Cape Town. I argue, finally, that truth at District One can be understood as a form of historical recapitulation.     

Empires for Peace: Denis Veiras’s Borrowings from Garcilaso de la Vega

Writing The History of the Sevarambians in the 1670s, the Huguenot Denis Veiras borrowed many ideas from Garcilaso de la Vega, also known as El Inca, whose Royal Commentaries of the Incas was published in 1609. Both works describe the history of an empire and justify it on the ground that it brought peace and unity. While Garcilaso’s book purported to be a history, his selection of facts reflected his goal of improving the treatment of the Incas by the Spanish. Veiras’s story also claimed to be a history, but it was transparently a fiction, even to the point of lifting many elements from Garcilaso’s book. What both works equally emphasized was that empires could aim at, and could be justified by, the benefits they provided their subjects. Both tell stories of benevolent and paternalistic rulers who founded nearly ideal societies in the countries they conquered. These were models of empire for peace and unity rather than merely promoting toleration of differences or concord among differing parties. Veiras’s utopia thus offers an instructive case study of the effects of cross-cultural borrowings of literary and political ideas.     

The New Cinema Going to the Dogs? The Encounter with Animal Otherness in the Film El aura

This paper explores the topic of animal alterity in Argentinian cinema in general, but primarily in Fabián Bielinsky's El aura. Through one of its much overlooked main characters, a wolfish dog, and her relationship with the human protagonist, this thriller develops a dialogue with the excluded and repressed visual subject status of animals. Historicizing this visual paradigm as originating in Renaissance perspectivism, and theorizing it alongside the gendered category of castration anxiety and the representation of women as to-be-looked-at-ness in film, this essay proposes that El aura reworks these traditions and comes to an innovative, even radical, conclusion about the possibilities of the human in relation to other, non-human forms of subjectivity. The dog fills the gap, and alters the parameters, of the missing femme fatale, if we read the film as pertaining to the noir (or neo-noir) genre. In its treatment of the relationship between the canine and human protagonists, it also reorients the viewer, thematically as much as esthetically, with regards to hegemonic binary categories such as active/passive, good/evil, predator/prey, and strong/weak. This article engages centrally with recent scholarship on human-animal relations.     

Policy Bubbles

We develop the concept of a policy bubble to capture the notion of long‐term overinvestment in a policy. In sketching the relation of policy bubbles to economic bubbles, we describe how these two concepts have similar origins but different trajectories because they are filtered by different institutions. We examine in some detail three likely instances of ongoing policy bubbles: crime policy, school reform (charter schools and private education vouchers), and the contracting and privatization of public services. We show how these cases differ from the housing bubble of 1997–2007, how they differ from each other, and the extent to which they can be considered policy bubbles. Last, we suggest this concept can help unify the policy process literature with the practice of policy evaluation and outline testable hypotheses for future research.