Socio-economic status and religious identity in medieval Iberia: The zooarchaeological evidence

This paper synthesises faunal data from medieval archaeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula, aiming to identify zooarchaeological evidence that can improve our understanding of socio-economic status and cultural identities. The main zooarchaeological indicators for social differentiation are explored: food procurement and cuisine (taking into account different types of sites – high status, urban and rural), and different socio-political systems (Islamic and Christian regions), from a diachronic perspective.     

Losing the Blanket,Building a Fence: Australian Anxiety and the End of Military Colonialism in Malaysia

From 1955 to 1988, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) maintained a large airbase in Northern Malaysia. For the first 15 years of its existence, RAAF Butterworth had a modest and incomplete perimeter fence. With the end of British military colonialism in Malaysia and Singapore following the implementation of the ‘East of Suez’ policy, the Australians became preoccupied with their physical security and the role of the perimeter fence. By exploring the adoption of practices of exclusion via physical barriers in the wake of British withdrawal, this paper argues that the changing psychological outlook of Australian military officials reflected broader Australian anxieties about their own sense of ‘Britishness’ and the nation’s place in a decolonising Asia. As the Australians lost their British ‘blanket’ they built a fence.     

Organized Materiality

In the late medieval period the religious guilds along with trade guilds grew in importance, as did the role of material culture related to the guilds. This history has seen little examination from a Fenno-Scandinavian and particularly a Swedish vantage point. In order to analyse the role of material culture in the formation of this way of organizing people, the article investigates the existence of late medieval guildhalls, especially rural ones, and discusses remains of other material culture that can be connected to the guilds. The halls, drinking vessels and other material things were activated in the growth of a new more substantial way of organizing society outside the boundaries of feudal society and family control. It is argued that material culture had a significant role in the recurrent activities of the guilds of the Middle Ages and in the shaping of new ways of organizing people.     

An Enlightened path towards conservatism: critical junctures and changing elite perceptions in early nineteenth-century Russia

This article explores the historical roots of Russian conservatism by analyzing the evolution of Russia’s Westernized, Enlightenment-minded nobility to a conservative segment of Russian society in the early nineteenth century. The events of 1789 and 1812 were critical junctures that made the Russian nobility painfully aware of their own deep level of Westernization. The article first describes the reverberations of the French Revolution among the Russian elite. It also discusses the internal and external scrutiny of Russia’s relations with France under Napoleon, which made Russian conservatism a contingency. It then describes the evolution between 1789 and 1812 of a corpus of conservative ideas ranging from traditionalism to ardent patriotism and xenophobia. Napoleon’s 1812 campaign against Russia overshadowed the generational gap and diverging political and literary preferences among the elite. The reaction to it illustrates the intrinsic duality of the Russian elite: culturally Westernized, yet politically conservative. Yet the influence of several Western defenders of the ancien régime on Russia’s conservatives shows that the essentially conservative Russian identity as propagated by Putin these days originally might have been more pan-European than purely Russian.     

Economics and freedom of navigation in East Asia

Public calls for a more aggressive regional response to China’s pressing of its territorial claims in the South China Sea are typically couched in terms of the threat posed to freedom of navigation. Yet this invites an obvious question: If freedom of navigation, a vital interest for nearly every country in the region, is at risk, why has the regional response to China’s actions to date been so limited? This article argues that one compelling explanation lies in the economics of freedom of navigation in East Asia. Put simply, the risks of freedom of navigation being impeded are frequently overstated, and a more sober assessment of these risks can reduce the incentive that countries have to take more dramatic action.     

Cleft Lip Case in a Middle Bronze Age Young Man from Altai,Russia

Oral cleft (OC) is a common congenital anomaly in humans, which occurs in approximately one per 700 live births. However, cleft skulls are found relatively seldom in archaeological specimens, especially for the bc period. Mortality of infants with OC was apparently high because of breastfeeding difficulties and culturally sanctioned rejection of them in the past. This paper presents one of the most ancient cases of OC in Eurasia. The finding comes from the Middle Bronze Age pastoralists' cemetery in Altai, Russia. The skeletal remains have been radiocarbon dated to 1883–1665 cal bc . Cranial and dental measurements, computed tomography and radiography have been used to examine this malformation. The facial sculpting reconstruction has been performed to visualise the ante mortem appearance of the cleft face. Besides, δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N isotope analysis was used for a comparative study of the diet of the cleft individual. It has been established that a young man from Altai was affected by complete bilateral cleft lip and alveolus, which is a very rare form of typical OC. This defect is associated with dental anomalies such as hypodontia, microdontia, and ectopia as well as with dysmorphology of the facial complex outside the cleft area, including mild hypertelorism, hypoplasia of nasal bones and antheroposterior maxillary deficiency. Furthermore, aplasia of the frontal sinuses and the sacral spina bifida occulta have been observed. These findings are consistent with clinical data indicating strong correlation between development of a major defect and multiple minor anomalies. The results of the study also suggest that there was tolerant attitude towards the facial deformities among the ancient Altai pastoralists. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nami's Middle Bronze Age Suburb: The Coastal Settlement at Site 104–106

This study presents a late 19th to early 18th cent. BCE, MBIIA settlement in the immediate vicinity of Tel Nami on the Carmel Coast of Israel. Site 104–106 has been all but destroyed by modern agricultural activity as well as quarrying, but a large number of ceramics and small finds were salvaged during a 1985–6 survey of Tel Nami?'s hinterland as well as subsequent geoarchaeological research of the area. Little of the site remains, and the current study functionally amounts to a salvage project for an MBIIA coastal site, which was mentioned in an earlier survey. Geomorphology reveals how the sandstone kurkar ridges in this area of the coast governed the dynamic relationship between Tel Nami and its hinterland. Comparable ceramic chronology for Site 104–106 presented derives from Aphek-Antipatris, Megiddo, Kabri, Tel Ifshar, Tel Nami itself, and other MBIIA coastal sites of the Southern Levant. The ceramics include well-produced local wares as well as imports from coastal Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus confirmed by petrographic analyses. Finds suggest a small agro-industrial site in the immediate periphery of the coastal Tel Nami.     

Ruy Cinatti,the French–Portuguese mission and the construct of East Timor as an ethnographic site*

The French–Portuguese Ethnological Mission to Portuguese Timor (1966/1969) financed by French and Portuguese research bodies and initially directed by Louis Berthe was the first mission that conducted lengthy and thorough ethnographic research in East Timor vernaculars and with East Timorese communities. Using personal and scientific archives, printed and oral sources, this article analyses the mission’s background, the role of Ruy Cinatti (a Portuguese poet, former colonial official in Timor and anthropologist trained in Oxford) in its launch, and its political and scientific context. The mission, undertaken during the Portuguese late colonial period and subject to the Portuguese authorities’ approval and surveillance, marked East Timor as a site of anthropological inquiry into the Anthropology of European tradition produced in Southeast Asia, affiliated to post-war structuralism. This case study throws light on individual agency, Portugal’s shortcomings in modern anthropology training, the international competition for Portuguese Timor as part of the Indonesian “field of ethnological study” and the transnational connections in its construction in the era of decolonization.     

The Late Krotovo (Cherno-ozerye) Culture in the Irtysh Forest-steppe,Western Siberia

The study explores the origins and evolution of the Late Krotovo (Cherno-Ozerye) – a Middle Bronze Age culture in the Irtysh drainage. The Late Krotovo culture emerged in the late 3rd – early 2nd millennium BC in the Baraba forest-steppe as the final stage of the Krotovo culture proper. The people associated with the Late Krotovo were natives influenced, first indirectly and then directly, by the Andronovo (Fedorovka) tribes. The Andronovo impact is mirrored by the material culture, burial rites, decorative art, and paleogenetics. The outcome of the interaction constitutes a new archaeological phenomenon, represented by sites such as Cherno-Ozerye-1 and Tartas-1.