Alan Lomax, 1915-2002

The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life In Australia. By K. Langloh Parker, with an Introduction By Andrew Lang. London: Archibald Constable &; Co., Ld. 1905. By E. Sidney Hartland.

The Negritos of Zambales. By W. A. Reed. Ethnological Survey Publications, vol ii, Pt I. Manila, 1904. By W. Crooks.

Among the Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco : A Story of Missionary Work, in South America. Told by W. Barbrooke Grubb, and his Fellow-Workers in the Chaco Mission of the South American Missionary Society. Edited By Gertrude Wilson, B.Litt London: Charles Murray &; Co., 1904. By E. Sidney Hartland.

L'Origine Des Pouvoirs Magiques dans les Sociétés Australiennes. Par M. Mauss. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1884. By E. Sidney Hartland.

Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst. Von K. Th. Preuss. Globus, LXXXVI, LXXXVII. Sonderabdruck, pp. 54. By R. R. Marett.     

Breaking Ground: Hoes in Precolonial South Africa—Typology,Medium of Exchange and Symbolic Value

In sub-Saharan Africa, every cultivator of the soil in a precolonial, agriculturist society needed a digging implement, and this normally took the form of a hoe with an iron blade hafted on a wooden handle. This paper marks the first attempt to document the surprising variety of hoe blade styles and map their regional distributions within South Africa. While the primary function of the hoe—this key item of material culture in African farming communities—was to cultivate the soil, the large quantity of metal and therefore labour required to make a hoe blade accorded it great value in the years before European industrial copies flooded the market. The hoe was an important item in trade networks, in marriage transactions and in a number of symbolic contexts associated with individual and collective ancestry. This biographical approach to hoe exchange, use and recycling reveals the complex significance of this tool in the lives of precolonial farmers. In particular, we are able to show that hoes could in some circumstances be accorded the same values as cattle in marriage exchange.     

Caracol,Belize, and Changing Perceptions of Ancient Maya Society

Archaeological research at Caracol, an ancient Maya site that was rediscovered in 1937, has become a major resource in the interpretation and understanding of the ancient Maya. Caracol, in west-central Belize, is situated in a subtropical region once characterized as being unsuitable for the development or maintenance of complex societies, yet it is one of the largest, if not the largest Classic period Maya site in the southern Maya Lowlands, home to over 100,000 people at its height between AD 600 and 700. The investigations at Caracol underscore the utility of long-term archaeological projects incorporating large-scale settlement study that combine excavation with varied research designs and the use of a contextual approach. By employing Maya epigraphic history, traditional archaeology, and modern technology like LiDAR, research at Caracol details the rise, maintenance, and fall of an ancient Maya city, affording a large window into ancient Maya lifeways. Archaeological work provides evidence of sustainable agriculture, a market economy, city planning that included a road system, the impact of warfare on the site’s inhabitants, the sociopolitical status of women, the role that archaeology can play in refining written history, and the significance of commemorating the cyclical passage of time to the ancient Maya. This article summarizes archaeological research efforts at the site by the Caracol Archaeological Project over the last three decades.     

Ancient plant use and palaeoenvironmental analysis at the Gumugou Cemetery,Xinjiang, China: implication from desiccated plant remains

The Gumugou Cemetery is located in the Lop Nor region of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, northwest China. Radiocarbon dating found the site to be 3800 years BP. Due to the exceptionally arid conditions, most of the plant remains are well-preserved. Morphological and anatomical studies suggest that the plant remains consist of: Triticum cf. aestivum, Phragmites australis, Populus euphratica, Ephedra sp., as well as Typha sp. These ancient plants imply that the indigenous people lived in oases surrounded by extensive desert. Caryopses of T. cf. aestivum might have been used as funeral objects of the mummies as well as a subsidiary food source of the inhabitants, while the wild plants were used in other aspects of daily life.     

Rituals of Consumption and the Politics of Feasting on the Eastern African Coast,AD 700–1500

Historically, the Swahili of the eastern African coast have performed feasts through which they negotiated and contested social power. Feasts draw on tradition and practice, but create the space for, and conditions of, imbalance and social debt. Drawing on this historical frame, I examine the archaeology of feasting in the more distant Swahili past, AD 700–1500, in particular looking at how feasts can domesticate distant power—the power drawn from objects and practices from elsewhere. By charting changing assemblages of imported and local ceramics alongside settlement and food preferences, I examine developments in feasting patterns and the way feasts provided a social context within which local and distant power could be translated into authority.     

Fascist Colonialism: The Archaeology of Italian Outposts in Western Ethiopia (1936–41)

Despite the relevance of material culture in the politics and culture of Italian Fascism (1922–45), this phenomenon has rarely been approached from an archaeological point of view. In this article, I argue that archaeology can provide new insights into the study of this particular version of totalitarianism. I will show the connections that an archaeological study of fascism has with some concerns of historical archaeology, such as colonialism, power, conflict, and race. For this, three Italian military sites in Ethiopia will be examined.     

新传统的兴起——晚明观念变迁与生活方式

Ethics based on Confucian moral virtues and guides as core values have long formed the “old tradition” in determining the direction of China’s social development. Changes of urban residents’ values and corresponding changes in life styles in late Ming Dynasty demonstrated the emergence of a new cultural tradition that advocated for human freedom and the development of individuality, material enjoyment and pleasures in life, and questioned and critiqued Confucian moral virtues and guides. Although such a cultural tradition had not yet matured, its humanist values made deep imprints in that period. This tradition survived despite of the successions of dynasties and vicissitudes of the ages, although from time to time it became so weak as on the verge of extinction. It was this continuous and unceasing cultural progress that later laid the primitive but essential cultural foundation for the start of China’s efforts to achieve modernization after the middle of the 19^th century.     

A Report on Historical Archaeology Publications in Latin America

Historical archaeology is today widely practiced in Latin America. Scholars not living or working in the region often are unaware of the research conducted in the countries south of the United States. This brief report outlines some of the historical archaeology conducted in Latin America and provides a brief bibliography.