Working Without a Net: Recent Trends in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology

This paper reviews ceramic ethnoarchaeological research conducted subsequent to Kramer's (1985) seminal stock-taking. Among current trends are a continued interest in the relationship between ceramics and economic specialization, the degree to which manufacture constitutes a technological style, and the link between pots and formation processes as represented in assemblage sizes, use-lives, and recycling. At the same time, some pesky theoretical issues continue to be sidestepped in the current literature. Despite its reputation as a pleasant break from the real business of archaeology, this paper argues that ceramic ethnoarchaeology can and should play a more substantial role in archaeological investigations.     

The Statistical Style of Reasoning and the Invention of Bose‐Einstein Statistics

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the connections between the statistical style of reasoning and the research practices of statistical mechanics in the early period of the long quantum revolution. It suggests that before 1925 the instantiations of the statistical style in physics went through two phases. The first phase consisted of the formulation of the Maxwell‐Boltzmann statistics on the basis of the population‐gas analogy. The second phase was characterized by the generalization of the Maxwell‐Boltzmann statistics through analogies between ideal gas molecules and other microphysical entities, analogies that shaped and were shaped by the rise of quantum theory. Einstein's invention of the Bose‐Einstein statistics started a third phase and created the conditions of possibility for a new classification of microphysical entities according to their different statistics.     

Substance,sign, and trace: performative analogies and technologies of enfleshment in the transnational adoption archives in Guatemala

In Kinship, Law and the Unexpected, Marilyn Strathern (2005, Kinship, Law and the Unexpected: Relatives are Always a Surprise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) shows how, through analogies, Euro-American knowledge practices turn offspring into property, information into knowledge, and relations into relations. This article takes this Strathernian insight as a point of departure for a consideration of the analytical possibilities – and the instances of incommensurability – of a juxtaposition of transnational adoption and migration. Drawing on ethnographic research in Guatemala, the article argues that kinning in this context relates not only to the construction of new forms of relatedness, but also, crucially, to the suspension and severing of relations, and to politically charged claims for the reactivation of connections and enfleshment. Against figurations of kinning as commodified and inequitable relations of ownership and exchange, struggles for ‘searches’ and ‘reunions’ in contemporary Guatemala bring into view a range of subjectivities and relations ‘under erasure,’ within the horizon of the Guatemalan conflict (1960–1996). Analogizing transnational adoption and migration is a cultural and analytical practice that performatively reveals and occludes. The article proposes a historically and idiomatically grounded reorientation of the analogic flow sideways, in the directions of the archive, as substance, sign, and trace.     

谈考古学中的民族学类比方法

考古学中的民族学类比方法即是运用民族学材料做类比范本,综合其他文献及考古资料,研究解释考古材料,复原社会群体全貌的方法。这里的民族学材料作广义的解释,既包括现今仍存的民族学材料,也包括历史记载的民族学材料。...     

Why Do Languages Lose Grammatical Categories?: Latin and Romance Evidence

Although sound change may contribute to the loss of grammatical categories, such as the Latin future and passive, comparative data show that phonological change alone cannot account for these morphological changes. Syncretism can arise from sound change, but patterns of sound change within Romance falsify the homonymy avoidance argument. Furthermore, Italian and Occitan provide models for analogical "solutions" to syncretism. Patterns of loss of grammatical categories must be contextualized cross-linguistically without preconceptions about which categories may be lost. Close analysis of phonological and morphological factors will facilitate the establishment of a typology of category loss.     

Scientific Visualizations: Bridge-Building between the Sciences and the Humanities via Visual Analogy‘Everything one invents is true’ Gustave Flaubert

Abstract

Text-based reasoning has, naturally, been crucial to intellectual activity; but it does not represent the entire map in cognition and education. With modern students so responsive to visual stimuli, visual analogy provides a fascinating resource in the exploration of fresh learning interfaces between subject areas, galvanising important new modes of creative-critical teaching across the disciplines and carrying the potential to ignite deeply participatory interdisciplinary discussions. The type of analogy emphasised here is termed a ‘scientific Visualization’; it derives from observable phenomena in technology and science, and is put to use, in this paper, chiefly within literary studies. A spectrum analogy for intertextuality is introduced, developed later into a filter analogy providing a particular perspective on translation. Further analogies examine various aspects of textual reception through genetics, crosstalk and chaos theory. Attractive, novel and accessible, these materials open up a range of cross-disciplinary prospects in research and teaching. Offered in a spirit of serious play, the examples presented in the figures establish the basis for a much wider pilot study; the hope is that the approach will eventually be deployed across many fields.     

Gender-informed archaeology: The priority of definition, the use of analogy, and the multivariate approach

Despite recent efforts to construct gender theory in archaeology, I assert that no methodological or theoretical breakthroughs have occurred. This lack of progress is due to several factors. First, fundamental terms such as “theory,” “gender,” and “sex” have been used inconsistently; I suggest some working definitions for these terms. Second, researchers have resorted to the use of analogical arguments that implicitly deny the role of gender in the organization of human relations. Third, feminist political agendas have been conflated with research questions. In order to address some of these issues, I suggest that the application of a multivariate approach to the study of gender can avoid the problems inherent in any one line of evidence. Finally, I argue that a consideration of the scale of gender questions is essential to the application of existing theoretical frameworks to gender archaeologically.     

Considering gender analogies in southeastern prehistoric archaeology

Prehistoric archaeologists have done very little yet to explore how gender “works” within the historical processes of social construction during the long prehistory of the Southeast. As we undertake examinations of gender ideologies, roles, and relationships, applications of analogs play an important role. This is despite a distinctly unsettled agreement on uses of analogy in archaeology. In this piece, I explore archaeologists’ continued unease with the use of analogy in archaeological interpretation, assigning part of the blame to underlying and unresolved epistemological issues. A disciplined and studied use of formal analogies is suggested.