What Do Objects Want?

This paper develops an argument for the agency of objects, looking at the effects objects have on people. Groups of related objects, such as pots or metal ornaments, create stylistic universes which affect producers and users of new objects, bound by the canons of style. For an object to be socially powerful in a recognized manner, the form of the object lays down certain rules of use which influence the sensory and emotional impacts of the object. Formal properties of artifacts are influenced by the genealogy of the object class, including historical continuities and changes, and also its perceived source. The forms of objects, the historical trajectories of the class of objects and their perceived sources combine to have social effects on people, shaping people as socially effective entities. Britain’s incorporation into the Roman Empire between 150 BC and AD 200 provides an excellent case study through which to look at the changing corpora of objects, which had continuities and changes in form, a set of subtle attributions of sources and a complex range of social effects.     

Re-Inventing Mississippian Tradition at Etowah,Georgia

Frequent population movement and political re-organization spurred a pattern of repeated abandonment at the Mississippian mound center of Etowah in the southeastern United States. These processes also characterized the larger surrounding region in north Georgia and southeast Tennessee. The Etowah abandonments provided inflection points where interest groups were able to distance themselves from previous conventions of structure and reformulate new forms of sociopolitical organization. Re-invented traditions were embedded in changing definitions of genealogical and mythical time, and mediated through the built environment and iconography.     

Book reviews

CHINA

YI‐TSI MEI FEUERWERKER. Ideology, Power, Text: self‐Representation and the Peasant ‘Other’ in Modern Chinese Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 321 pp. $A90.00, hardcover.

PO‐CHING YIP and DON RIMMINGTON. Basic Chinese: a Grammar and Workbook. London: Routledge, 1998. vii, 221 pp. £12.99, paper.

MARY ANN FARQUHAR. Children's Literature in China: from Lu Xun to Mao Zedong. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. $US62.50, hardcover.

RAY HUANG. Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History. Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons. Armonk, NY; London, England: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. viii, 274 pp. Tables, graphs, notes, index. US$56.95, hardcover; US$22.95, paper.

GLORIA HEYUNG CHUN. Of Orphans and Warriors: inventing Chinese American Culture & Identity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000. 198 pp. Introduction, notes, bibliography, index. US$59.00, hardcover; US$19.00, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

PURNENDRA JAIN (ed). Australasian Studies of Japan: essays and Annotated Bibliography (1989–1996). Rockhampton, Queensland: Central Queensland University Press, 1998. 341 pp. Introduction, essays, annotated bibliography, index. $A34.95, paper.

SOUTH, WEST & CENTRAL ASIA

S. R. N. MURTHY. Vedic View of the Earth — aGeological Insight into the Vedas. Reconstructing Indian History and Culture, no. 14. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 1997. xxvi, 306 pp. Preface, figures, glossary, bibliography, index. Rs 400, hardcover.

SUBRATA K. MITRA and V. B. SINGH (eds). Democracy and Social Change in India: a Cross‐Sectional Analysis of the National Electorate. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 339 pp. Introduction, tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, index. Rs 425, hardcover.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

ALBERT LAU. A Moment of Anguish: Singapore in Malaysia and the Politics of Disengagement. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998. viii, 312 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. US$39.00, hardcover; US$25.00, paper (outside ASEAN and Hong Kong).

MICHAEL D. BARR. Lee Kuan Yew: the Beliefs Behind the Man. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph Series no. 85, 2000. £40.00, hardcover.

GENERAL ASIA

HUNG‐MAO TIEN and TUN‐JEN CHENG (eds). The Security Environment in the Asia‐Pacific. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. 368 pp. Tables, index. A$24.95, paper.     

A Mediaeval Case of Lepromatous Leprosy from 13–14th Century Orkney, Scotland

Erosion in the 1960s resulted in exposure of human skeletal remains from a Norse Christian cemetery at Newark Bay, Orkney, Scotland. One set of remains showed osteological evidence of advanced lepromatous leprosy, but the absence of bones from the lower limbs precluded definitive diagnosis. The aim of the present study was to determine whether Mycobacterium leprae could be detected in bone extracts, as a means of confirming the diagnosis of leprosy. Bone samples were examined from the suspected leprosy case and from a second contemporary burial thought to be free of disease. DNA was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using primers specific for a repetitive element (RLEP) characteristic of M. leprae. Additional PCR tests specific for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and for amelogenin (a human gene suitable for sex determination) were also applied to the samples. M. leprae DNA was detected only in the skull sample from the suspected leprosy case. The DNA sequence was identical to that found in present day isolates of M. leprae. Positive results were obtained only using a PCR reaction designed to amplify relatively short stretches of DNA (<175 bp), suggesting the microbial DNA had undergone extensive fragmentation. There was no evidence of M. tuberculosis DNA in bones from the leprosy suspect or control individual. The ability to recover ancient samples of DNA provides an opportunity to study long-term evolutionary changes that may affect the epidemiology of microbial pathogens.     

Integrating Transportation Network and Regional Economic Models to Estimate the Costs of a Large Urban Earthquake

In this paper we summarize an integrated, operational model of losses due to earthquake impacts on transportation and industrial capacity, and how these losses affect the metropolitan economy. The procedure advances the information provided by transportation and activity system analysis techniques in ways that help capture the most important ecomonic implications of earthquakes. Network costs and origin-destination requirements are modeled endogenously and consistently. Indirect and induced losses associated with direct impacts on transportation and industrial capacity are distributed across zones and ecomonic sectors. Preliminary results are summarized for a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Elysian Park blind thrust fault in Los Angeles.     

Being Toured While Digging Tourism: Excavating the Familiar at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

Chicago’s Jackson Park witnessed intense and sustained tourism during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Recent archaeological survey and excavation produced information about the tourist experience of the Fair in a somewhat familiar artifactural form. The dig drew local tourists whose appetites for the Exposition were whetted by a bestselling book. At the heart of these multiple touristic consumptions in, and of, Jackson Park lies the central issue—the way that tourists create themselves as modern subjects through the practice of tourism and how this process can be both helped and hindered by the presence of familiar objects.     

The Poverty Trap: Or,Why Poverty is Not About the Individual

Poverty is often thought of as an inevitable social condition, and the blame for any shortcomings in governmental welfare policies is frequently placed upon the failings of individuals, markets, and demography. By exploring the influence of neoliberal politics on archaeologies of slum-life this article makes the case that less emphasis should be placed upon the perceived failings of individuals and more effort should be placed on recovering the complex social networks which sustained community-life within Hungate and other so-called urban slums.