Supra-Regional Networks in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia

When prehistoric archaeologists write accounts of the Epi-palaeolithic or Neolithic of southwest Asia, they resort to an archaic narrative style of culture-history that was formulated by Gordon Childe in the first half of the last century. These narratives frame their account of events within the format of a succession of archaeological cultures. In addition, the received form of the narrative is founded within a core-area of the Levant, the Mediterranean corridor zone; it is assumed that all the important social and economic innovations of the Epi-palaeolithic and early Neolithic occurred within that corridor, from where the cultures and their innovations spread through diffusionary processes to dominate wider parts of the region. The first part of this paper is a critique of the unwarranted assumption of the existence of archaeological cultures, and of the Levantine primacy hypothesis. The second part proposes an alternative to the notion of the archaeological culture. First, we review the evidence for wide-area cultural networking through the exchange of goods and materials and the sharing of cultural behaviours that characterises the Neolithic. We can view the Epi-palaeolithic and early Neolithic periods as a time when new cultural processes were being employed to build and maintain novel sedentary, permanently co-resident communities of unprecedented scale. At a higher level, we see communities engaged in the construction and maintenance of more and more extensive networks of communities, in a form similar to, but not identical with, the peer polity interaction sphere model first described by Colin Renfrew in a different context.

Linguistic Imperialism and Minoan Archaeology (Greece)

This contribution to the debate about Anglo- and non-Anglo archaeologies briefly describes the issue from the point of view of Minoan Archaeology (Crete, Greece). The authors seek to problematise (English) language use within this discipline and highlight the complexity of archaeological discourses.

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Resumen Esta contribución a la discusión sobre arqueologías anglófonas y no anglófonas describe brevemente el asunto desde el punto de vista de la arqueología Minoica (Creta, Grecia). Los autores buscan a problematizar el idioma (en este caso el inglés) utilizado en esta disciplina y destacar la complejidad de los discursos arqueológicos.

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Résumé Cette contribution au débat entre archéologues anglophones et archéologues non-anglophones présente brièvement la question du point de vue de l’archéologie minoenne (Crète, Grèce). Les auteurs cherchent à problématiser l’utilisation de la langue (anglaise) dans le cadre de la discipline et à souligner la complexité du discourt archéologique.

     

Fornicating with nuns in fifteenth-century Bologna

The article opens with the prosecution in 1432 of a spicer for abducting a nun. This is first of all presented as the story of a trial: the formation of the indictment, the defence tactics, the deposition of witnesses, and only then are the experience of the nun, and the gender relations in the event, examined. This leads to numerous contexts: legal (the development of the law on sexual relations with professed nuns); judicial (similar cases in late fourteenth-/fifteenth-century Bologna); monastic (the unstable history of convents); social (the place of the nunnery in the local sexual economy); and historiographic (Ruggiero's ‘culture of illicit sexuality’).     

Intensification revisited: assessing resource specialization at Crystal River (8CI1) and Roberts Island (8CI41), Florida

ABSTRACT

Archaeologists typically associate resource intensification with population expansion, environmental change, and political strategizing. Many Late Woodland and Mississippian societies of the Southeast eschewed dietary diversity in favor of harvesting fewer types of resources that could meet the subsistence demands of incipient aggregation. Foods such as maize and shellfish can provide humans with predictable caloric yields and are amenable to control by individuals or corporate groups. However, some archaeologists have identified scenarios in which small-scale societies intensified resources in the absence of population growth and social inequality. Ritual economies can periodically place high demands on the materials used for gatherings and ceremonies. These events then may leave material residues of economic intensification, which archaeologists might easily mistake as evidence for population expansion or social evolution. We use diversity and equitability estimates of zooarchaeological deposits from Crystal River (8CI1) and Roberts Island (8CI41), Florida, to demonstrate that some Woodland period societies periodically intensified their use of resources amidst population decline and heightened ritual activity. We suggest that the inhabitants of the area harvested shellfish at increasingly high rates to provide the material basis for a series of ritual interventions that aimed to circumvent the effects of rapid social and ecological change.     

The accuracy of enclosure estimates: some evidence from northern England

Michael Turner's edition of Tate's Domesday draws upon the uneven estimates provided in enclosure acts and awards. For 35 sample acts and awards in Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and Westmorland estimates of the acreages enclosed are compared with actual acreages of land allotted. Estimates in early acts are less accurate than in later acts, and estimates for parishes where only small areas were enclosed are proportionately less accurate than those for which large areas were enclosed.