Early Maya Ritual Practices and Craft Production: Late Middle Preclassic Ritual Deposits Containing Obsidian Artifacts at Ceibal,Guatemala

This article examines Preclassic Maya ritual practices and craft production by means of a study of ritual deposits containing obsidian artifacts dated mostly to the late Middle Preclassic period (700–350 b.c.) at Ceibal, Guatemala. New ritual practices developed at Ceibal during this period, possibly through political interactions and negotiation involving emerging elites and other diverse community members. Common objects in ritual deposits in the public plaza shifted from greenstone celt caches to other artifacts, including those made of obsidian. The inhabitants of Ceibal engaged in various kinds of craft production, including the manufacture of obsidian prismatic blades. They also conducted public rituals in the Central Plaza, depositing exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores and other artifacts with symbolic significance in caches and as offerings in incipient elite burials and interments of sacrificed individuals. These cores clearly demonstrate the use of a sophisticated blade technology. Like greenstone objects, exhausted polyhedral obsidian cores deposited in cruciform arrangements along the east–west axis of the central E-Group plaza were used as symbols and markers of the center and four cardinal directions within the Maya cosmos. Public rituals were important for creating collective identities and for processes of political negotiation within the community. Emerging elites likely came to play an increasingly important role in public rituals as principal performers and organizers, setting the stage for later public events centered on rulers.     

Handcraft as Cultural Diplomacy: The 1968 Mexico Cultural Olympics and U.S. Participation in the International Exhibition of Popular Arts

Mexican post-revolutionary cultural institutions excelled at implementing Mexican art and popular arts as key elements in cultural diplomacy. However, while there is abundant research regarding these arts and their inclusion in international exhibitions during the first part of the twentieth century, there is little research on their role in international cultural diplomacy during the second half of that century. In the first part of this article I present a historiographical appraisal of the 1968 Mexican Cultural Olympiad and the resolutions of the “First Latin American Seminar on Popular Arts and Crafts” sponsored by UNESCO in Mexico City in 1965. In the second, I examine the case of U.S. participation in the “Exposición Internacional de Artesanías Populares” (International Exhibition of Popular Arts), which was part of the 1968 Cultural Olympiad’s programme – largely neglected by the historiography of the XIX Olympics – to explain how popular arts were made to perform as agents of cultural diplomacy in Mexico and the U.S. during the Cold War. In addition, I argue that U.S. participation in this exhibition also reveals negotiations and redefinitions of the concepts of handcraft and arte popular, and the economic and social situation of their makers in the United States.     

Provenance of Weeden Island “sacred” and “prestige” vessels: implications for specialized ritual craft production

ABSTRACT

Weeden Island mortuary ceremonialism united distinct cultures across the Late Woodland social landscape. The Weeden Island pottery series is central to recognizing regional ceremonial parity, with prestige (elite) and sacred (cult) wares showing strong similarities among distant sites. Finely made vessels and their ostensibly shamanistic themes led archaeologists to consider the liturgical and political roles of ritual specialists, whose tasks might have included vessel manufacture in centralized locations. This research evaluates the prospect of craft specialization and centralized production of sacred and prestige wares through comparisons of the provenance of vessels from three Florida localities: Palmetto Mound (8LV2), the mounds at Melton (8AL5, 8AL7), and McKeithen (8CO17). Results of Neutron Activation Analysis and petrographic analysis show that the majority of the sampled vessels were made far from the mounds in which they were deposited, from a variety of locations but especially within the area between Kolomoki and the Tallahassee Hills. We argue that production was not centralized but may have been specialized to the extent that an integrated ritual network was necessary to coordinate rules of manufacture and use that were evidently observed by all participants.     

The Use of Ethnoarchaeology for the Archaeological Study of Ceramic Production

Ethnoarchaeological studies have longed served as a critical source of hypotheses, comparative data, and explanatory frameworks for archaeologists interested in describing and explaining ceramic production. In this paper, I lay out the central questions addressed by archaeologists studying craft production, discuss how ethnoarchaeology has contributed to our understanding of ancient production systems, and suggest avenues of further research that can benefit archaeological investigation of the organization of ceramic production.     

Hohokam Craft Economies and the Materialization of Power

The Prestige Goods Economy Model invoked by archaeologists to explain the development of power in middle-range societies generally fails to discriminate the varied roles of social valuables. This study illustrates a multi-faceted approach for identifying the symbolic utility of craft economies among the Hohokam in North America. Contextual analyses of marine shell artifacts disclose their functions as material symbols of group membership and identity, ritual performance paraphernalia, instruments of power, and insignia of office. These valuables were imbued with ideological meanings that legitimized the emergence of corporate modes of power from individualized networks. Applications of the Prestige Goods Economy Model in other world regions would also be enriched by more detailed examination of the meanings of social valuables.     

国内区域贸易、国际贸易与国家竞争力

大国国内区域贸易与国际贸易关系主要表现在两个方面:一是国内区域贸易与国际贸易存在一定程度上的相互替代的关系;二是国内区域贸易与国际贸易存在相互促进的关系,发展国内区域贸易能提升大国在国际经济中的竞争力。     

Does the Standardization of Ceramic Pastes Really Mean Specialization?

In the literature dealing with the development of ceramic specialization, paste uniformity has been suggested as a surrogate index of product standardization and the result of a more intensive level of specialization. More recently, the amount of paste variability has been seen as an indicator of different types of production organization. Ethnoarchaeological data from Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala suggest that a variety of environmental, technological, and social factors influence paste variability. These factors are important in all production contexts and complicate inferences drawn about production organization in antiquity. As a consequence, social and economic inferences derived from ancient ceramic pastes need to be understood in relation to numerous other factors such as natural variability of the ceramic raw materials, their procurement, and their use in paste preparation. Furthermore, changes in resource use and paste preparation over time can obscure intracommunity and other fine-scale patterns. As a consequence, it is argued that little, if anything, can be learned about the organization of production below the level of the local production community. Rather, the primary usefulness of paste compositional analyses lies in the identification, in geographic and geological spaces (community signature units), of source communities that exploit raw materials within a limited range of probably no more than 3 to 4 km. Paste analyses thus provide important information about the organization of ceramic distribution, revealing the emergence and demise of source communities and the movement of their ceramic products.     

河南信阳战国楚墓出土彩席漆膜的成分、表面形态及髹漆工艺分析

河南信阳城阳城遗址M8为高等级战国晚期楚国贵族墓,该墓出土了以漆木器为主的各类文物400余件,其中尤以黑、红两色竹蔑编织而成的髹漆竹席最为精美。为开展彩漆竹席脱水保护提供基础数据,采用激光共聚焦显微镜、拉曼分析仪和傅里叶红外吸收光谱仪(FTIR)及扫描电镜-能谱(SEM-EDS)等现代分析仪器对竹席漆膜的成分及表面形态进行了分析,并在此基础上,结合传统髹漆文献资料探讨了漆膜的制作工艺。结果表明:城阳城彩席中的黑色漆膜为大漆自然显色,红色漆膜是大漆掺加朱砂调制而成;黑色漆膜表面较为平整,漆膜与胎体结合紧密,红色漆膜表面相对粗糙,结构较为疏松;竹席漆膜的厚度在0.02~0.03 mm之间,应是由大漆涂刷至少3~5次制备而成。研究结果可为下一步的彩漆竹席的脱水保护及展示提供基础数据。     

Gender,precarity and hybrid forms of work identity in the virtual domestic arts and crafts industry in Canada and the US

Over the last several decades, there has been a growing recognition of the precarious nature of employment in creative economies, including craft industries. Despite this work, little research has explored how the rise of the platform economy is affecting labour market precarity. Our article explores the nature of precarity in craft blogging, looking in particular at the domestic arts and crafts. We examine how a growing number of women have left other forms of employment to engage in sewing, knitting, quilting, cooking and baking. Many women have also taken to blogging about their endeavors. However, there is a paucity of research on the variety of types of work that craft bloggers engage in and the challenges they face. Drawing upon interviews with female domestic arts bloggers in Canada and the United States, the article explores the work that craft bloggers engage in, the space and time of labour, and the variable sources of income that they access through their work. The article analyzes the experiences of precarious labour that arise at the interface of craft and the internet, and the multiple identities that stem from hybrid forms of creative work.