Pollen-Analytical Results from Lake Katajajärvi – Aspects of the History of Settlement in the Finnish Inland Regions

Abstract

The Early Metal Period (1800 cal BC–AD 300) of the Finnish inland regions is characterized by a scarcity of archaeological remains. Its latest stages, in particular, have proved to be difficult to interpret. This paper discusses the continuity of settlement in the Early Metal Period as indicated by archaeological survey and pollen-analytical data. The study area is situated in Repovesi National Park in southeastern Finland. The pollen analysis was constructed from a sediment sequence taken from Lake Katajajärvi. The archaeological survey data from Repovesi National Park supports earlier hypotheses of the small number of Early Metal Period sites. In the pollen data, the first anthropogenic impact is recorded from about 2600 BC onwards, with weak signs of cultivation around 2370 BC. From around 1900 BC onwards a clear change in tree, shrub and herb pollen percentages indicates anthropogenic impact, possibly grazing, in the area. The pollen-analytical results also revealed a cultivation period of about 900 years at the end of the Early Metal Period, providing proof of continuity in settlement during a period characterized by a scarcity of archaeological material. A new beginning of cultivation from cal AD 1160 to 1250 onwards can be considered as indicating population growth, developing settlements and the colonization of new areas. The results from Repovesi are challenging from an archaeological point of view, because they represent slash-and-burn cultivation that appears to have been practised in total wilderness conditions. Comparison of the Lake Katajajärvi results with other areas raises new questions that call for a discussion of early slash-and-burn cultivation in new perspective.     

Anthropological Neurology: Symptoms and Their Meanings According to Joseph Prick (1909–1978)

This article describes the life and work of the Dutch neurologist Joseph Prick (1909–1978) and his idea of an anthropological neurology. According to Prick, neurological symptoms should not only be explained from an underlying physico-chemical substrate but also be regarded as meaningful. We present an outline of the historical and philosophical context of his ideas with a focus on the theory of the human body by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) and the concept of anthropology-based medicine developed by Frederik Buytendijk (1887–1974). We give an overview of anthropological neurology as a clinical practice and finally we discuss the value of Prick's approach for clinical neurology today.     

Avenging ‘Bridget’: Irish domestic servants and middle-class America in the short stories of Maeve Brennan

This article will examine the representation of Irish women servants in Maeve Brennan's short stories, first published in The New Yorker in the 1950s, and collected in The Rose Garden (2001). The Irish ‘Bridget’, the most publicly visible, if troubling, image of Irish womanhood in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, has received much-needed attention from historians and social scientists in the last decade, and is a central figure in discussions of Irish women and diasporic identity in the American context. Drawing on this body of work, and focusing in detail on key stories from the collection, including ‘The Bride’, ‘The View from the Kitchen’, ‘The Anachronism’, ‘The Divine Fireplace’, and ‘The Servants’ Dance', I argue that Brennan's reimagining of the Irish Bridget can be approached as a form of feminist revisionism, as Brennan's stories enter into a charged dialogue with the history of imagining the Irish woman servant as an undesirable but necessary presence in middle-class American domestic culture. Brennan's self-reflexive reworking of this paradigm is informed by her work as a satirist for The New Yorker, and proves an effective means of writing back to this problematic history, as she takes up recognisable tropes and motifs from earlier representations of Bridget in popular and literary culture, and alters them in knowing and subversive ways.     

The man within the breast,the supreme impartial spectator,and other impartial spectators in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer (because unnecessary, just as we speak of ‘the world’). Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ (all new to edition 6), we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed (purported), not sup-pos’d (posited).     

美国第三次三K党运动的大众传媒方略

美国学术界一般认为,从三K党组织成立肇始,共经历三次连续的运动。第三次三K党运动开始于二战结束,持续至今。为了更加有效地迷惑民众,这一时期三K党采取的手段之一就是革新了该组织的宣传方略,不遗余力地利用美国当代大众传媒来宣传和标榜自己,并完成了由印刷媒体到电子媒体的转变。由于大众传媒和大众文化的密切关系,这种大众传媒方略直接影响到美国大众文化的变异,导致美国当代大众文化掺杂着三K党所宣扬的以白人种族主义为核心的消极成分,致使美国社会与文化的重构与异化。美国民众尤其是青年群体,深受此种文化理念和认知的麻痹与毒害:美国当代社会种族主义思潮的泛滥、白人至上主义运动持续、仇恨犯罪率的提升、暴力文化形式的盛行等现象便是例证。第三次三K党运动的大众传媒方略以及大众文化异化极具隐蔽性,由此导致的危害亦不容低估。