Paleodiet reconstruction of Bronze Age Siberians from the mortuary site of Khuzhir-Nuge XIV,Lake Baikal

Paleodiet reconstruction using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen was carried out on individuals from the Bronze Age cemetery, Khuzhir-Nuge XIV on the western shore of Lake Baikal, Russian Federation. The cemetery contained 79 graves with 89 individuals and was in use between approximately 2700 and 2000 cal. B.C. with the exception of one burial, dated to around 4000 B.C. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence indicates that hunting and fishing were the main subsistence activities while gathering was less important. δ¹³C from collagen and carbonate apatite was analysed, along with δ¹⁵N from collagen. Bone mineral preservation was evaluated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N of collagen are positively correlated and reflect varying reliance on terrestrial mammals, fish, and seals from Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal biota exhibit considerable variation in δ¹³C at the base of the food web thus; there is variation in human δ¹³C (−20.1‰ to −16.2‰) despite the fact that there are no C₄ plants in the region. δ¹⁵N results (range 10.3‰–16.5‰) indicate that fish, and possibly seals, made up some of the diet for everyone, but in varying amounts relative to terrestrial herbivores. δ¹³C from carbonate is not correlated with δ¹³C from collagen, a situation that has been found in remains from other coastal sites. A mixed diet from both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems is the most likely explanation. Analysis of mortuary variables within the cemetery reveals three distinct clusters of graves with variations in burial treatment among the clusters. δ¹⁵N values are significantly different among these clusters, suggesting an association between diet and mortuary customs.     

Social Reproduction of Post-Soviet Migrant Labour: Braiding the International Political Economy

In this article, we analyse the social reproduction of post-Soviet migrant labour. Our inquiry builds on artwork by Olga Jitlina and Anna Tereshkina and by Mahpora Kiromova dealing with the effects of migration on family relations in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. We have braided the artwork with strands of social reproduction theory to examine the transnational household as a set of relationships that enables post-Soviet and global capitalism to draw value out of unwaged work and to reproduce the differentiated (i.e. gendered and racialised) labour force. Our focus is on the tropes of family, weddings, love, and violence. The analysis of these tropes draws attention to the intersecting effects of globalised capitalism, local structures of value, the state, and patriarchy in post-Soviet political economy. Through them we detail the fundamental co-constitution of production and social reproduction, but also show that practices of social reproduction can be reservoirs of resistance and potential change.     

Reviews

A Persian Requiem , Simin Daneshvar, trans. Roxane Zand, New York: George Brazillier, Inc., 1992, 279 pp., $12.50.

Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh , Dick Davis, Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas Press, 1992, 222 pp., $30.00.

Modern Capitalism and Islamic Ideology in Iran , Cyrus Bina and Hamid Zangeneh, eds., New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992, 301 pp., incl. bibliography, index, $45.00 (cloth).

Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889 , R. D. McChesney, Princeton University Press, 1991, 319 pp. + Glossary, Bibliography, and Index, $49.50.

Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center , Carl W. Ernst, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992, xxxi + 381 pp.

The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard , Kenneth Katz‐man, Boulder, San Francisco and London: Westview Press, 1993, 180 pp., Bibliography to page 185, Index to page 192, $42.50.

The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism , Leonard Lewisohn, ed., London, New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi Publications, 1992, 434 pp.

Les otages américains à Téhéran , Nouchine Yavari‐d'Hellencourt, Paris: La Documentation Francaise, 1992, 128 pp., FF 95.

Entre l'Iran et l'occident: adaptation et assimilation des idées et techniques occidentales en Iran , Yann Richard, ed., Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1989, 242 pp.

Zerfall der Staatsmacht Persiens unter Nasir ad‐Din Schah Qa?ar (1848–1896): Einblicke in die Machtsverhältnisse am Teheraner Hof nach den Tagebüchern I'timad as‐Saltanas , Mostafa Edjtehadi, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen Bd. 161, 184 pp.

Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles , Ron Kelley, Jonathan Friedlander and Anita Colby, eds., with photography by Ron Kelley, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993, 381 pp., incl. index, $35.00 (paper).

Sociology in Iran , Ali Akbar Mahdi and Abdolali Lahsaeizadeh, Bethesda, Md.: Jahan Book Company, Middle Eastern Series N 27, 1992, 141 pp., $8.00.

Education and the Making of Modern Iran , David Menashri, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992, xvii + 328 pp., bibliography (p. 342), index (p. 352).

The Theology of .al‐'Allama al‐Hilli (d. 726/1325) , Sabine Schmidtke, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Band 152 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1991), 260 pp. + bibliography, indices.

Ay kūtah astinan , ’Ali Akbar Sa'idi Sirjani, Costa Mesa, Calif. and Bethesda, Md.: Mazda Publishers (in association with Iranbooks, Inc.), 1991, 263 pp., no price listed.

From Palace to Prison: Inside the Iranian Revolution , Ehsan Naraghi, trans. from the French by Nilou Mobasser, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994, ix + 283 pp.

Whirling Dervishes , Shems Friedlander, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991, 160 pp., hard cover $30.50 paperback $12.95.

The History of al‐Tabari (Ta'rikh al‐rusul wa'l‐muluk), vol. XV: The Crisis of the Early Caliphate: The Reign of ‘Uthman, A.D. 644–656/A.H. 24–35, Muhammad b. Jarir al‐Tabari, trans. and annot. R. Stephen Humphreys, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1990.cover $39.50, paperback $12.95.

An Ocean Without Shore: Ibn Arabi, the Book, and the Law , Michel Chodkiewicz, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993, 184 pp.     

Use of ulan-khada bay at lake baikal in the holocene (based on fauna remains)

The article presents the results of studies of faunal remains from the Ulan-Khada multilayered settlement – one of key habitation sites in the Cis-Baikal region providing information for reconstructing environmental and cultural changes during the Holocene. A complete analysis of the fauna assemblage obtained over the course of long-term excavations is given. For the fi rst time, the site's ichthyofauna is described. The mammalian species composition is revised. Species diversity is evaluated across the time span from the Final Mesolithic to the Late Iron Age. These studies have demonstrated that the main activities at the site during the Neolithic and Bronze Age included seal and ungulate (roe and red deer) hunting. Fishing was also important, especially 4.2–3.8 thousand years ago (Bronze Age).     

The Turkish Oedipus: National Self and Stereotype in the Work of a 1960s Greek Cartoonist 1

This article analyzes a particular type of radical political discourse in Greece—namely the articulation of stereotypes of Greek-ness and Turkish-ness in the work of Mendis Bostantzoglu, a Greek satirist and cartoonist. The author examines a poem and a sketch published in the 1960s, in which stereotypes of Greek-ness and Turkish-ness are presented and mocked. Relating their production to their specific historical context and current academic discussions in Greece on nationalism and Otherness, the author argues that the ways in which ethnic stereotypes of “self” and “other” are used to discuss political issues have more to tell about internal Greek issues (such as a critique of the government and its policies) than about Greece's foreign affairs. Such analyses, it is further argued, also lead to a greater appreciation of the complex and implicit sets of meanings negotiated by the stereotypes themselves.     

First evidence of white wine in ancient Egypt from Tutankhamun's tomb

Wine has been considered to be mainly red in ancient Egypt linked with the blood of Osiris, the God of resurrection. No text that refers to white wines from the Dynastic Period (3150–332 BC) exists. The first white wine from ancient Egypt was made near Alexandria during the third century AD. To investigate the presence of white wine in ancient Egypt, dry residue samples from King Tutankhamun's amphorae are studied in this article using the LC/MS/MS method for wine markers. This investigation into the existence of white wines in Tutankhamun's tomb allows us to shed new light on the symbolism of white wine in ancient Egypt.     

Creating meanings and traps: competing interpretations of the idea of nation in the debates of Russian Slavophiles and Westernisers in the 1840s

To use Benedict Anderson's metaphor, there are different ways to ‘imagine’ the nation. This means that in the same community there might be various competing interpretations of ‘an idea of nation’. They contribute to some kind of ‘repertoire of meanings’, to which participants of nationalist discourses consciously or unconsciously appeal. If so, it is useful to explore the process of shaping and interaction of competing interpretations of ‘an idea of nation’, resulting in (terminal) domination of particular cohesions of meanings in the public discourses. This article offers a case study of the debates between Russian Slavophiles and Westernisers in the 1840s that are treated as the controversy between two distinct models of ‘an idea of nation’, the conservative-traditionalist and the liberal-progressivist. This distinction, familiar for many countries, was especially evident in Russia with regard to the problem of the preservation of ‘the national self’ in the context of ‘catch-up’ modernisation which took a significant place amongst the complex of issues that shaped the nationalist ‘repertoire of meanings’.     

Stable isotope analysis of Late Upper Palaeolithic human and faunal remains from Grotta del Romito (Cosenza), Italy

Stable isotope analysis of carbon (δ¹³C), nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) and sulphur (δ³⁴S) were carried out on one of the largest assemblages of Late Upper Palaeolithic human remains in Southern Europe, at Grotta del Romito (Cosenza), Italy. The burials were stratigraphically dated from ca. 18,000 to 13,000 cal BP, which was confirmed by a series of new AMS dates made directly on the bone collagen. Dietary reconstruction from carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes revealed that eight of the nine individuals analysed, dating to the Final Epigravettian, had very consistent diets, rich in terrestrial animal protein, regardless of their age or sex. These included two individuals who were suffering from severe pathologies. A single individual, dating to the Evolved Epigravettian had a more variable diet, which was significantly enriched in protein from marine or freshwater fish compared to the later burials. Overall, the results are consistent with the very limited number of other studies which describe a change to more specialised and less variable subsistence strategies, in this case the hunting of large herbivores, towards the end of the Palaeolithic period. Sulphur isotope values of all of the nine burials and several faunal samples were notably consistent, showing no evidence of long-distance migration to the site from a different geological zone.