New World States and Empires: Politics, Religion, and Urbanism

The past decade has seen a veritable explosion in archaeological research on complex societies in Latin America. In 1993, Smith published an overview of research to that date; this article is one of two bringing that summary up to the present. Our first article, New World states and empires: Economic and social organization (Smith and Schreiber, 2005), dealt with issues regarding economic and social organization. The present article tackles political organization and dynamics, religion, urbanism, and settlement patterns. We also review recent research in the context of various theoretical perspectives, some traditional, some more contemporary, including approaches to history and process, cultural evolution, agency-based models, linguistic prehistory, migration theory, and the relationship between environmental change and cultural events. Our discussion blends empirical findings, methodological advances, and theoretical perspectives.     

Down Little Lon: An Introduction to the Casselden Place Archaeological Excavations, Melbourne

In 2002 Melbourne’s Casselden Place excavation provided a window into the urban past opened by an innovative relationship between the development industry, heritage consultancy and La Trobe University. The project demonstrated that with the support of consent authorities and the co-operation of the development industry, collaborations between the academic world and heritage consultants could be highly successful. The Casselden Place Project made a significant contribution to the ‘slum debate’ in Australia and delivered an enhanced understanding of the cultural, social and scientific significance of an inner-city block, and shed new light on a notorious chapter in the city’s history.     

On the ‘Meishan Phenomenon’ in Song culture

The Song Dynasty enjoyed a splendid culture. Meishan, a small county in Southwest Sichuan, was one of the most developed cultural areas. This is closely related to a large-scale immigration after the collapse of the Tang Dynasty and the ‘Jingkang defeat’ in the Song Dynasty. Meishan was an area receiving more immigrants than other regions. A great number of distinguished families from North China brought with them the advanced culture of the Yellow River areas to Meishan, which combined with native culture, and produced many “cultural clans” from this “clan culture.” Some of these people became elites in various areas through education and the Civil Service Examinations. The so-called “Meishan Phenomenon” was a result of cultural melting. Translated by Li He and Zhang Hai from the Journal of Sichuan University, 2004: 3     

Forum: Cultural Geography and Cultural Studies

This forum discusses linkages between cultural geography and allied ‘cultural’ disciplines. A symposium on this topic – held at the 2005 conference of the Institute of Australian Geographers in Armidale – was triggered by the targeted inclusion of geography in a cross‐disciplinary network funded by the Australian Research Council. Although non‐geographers in the network have articulated strong interest in and an enthusiasm for geography, their knowledge of, and everyday participation in its disciplinary travails have been limited. Given this, the papers in the forum review geography's long and dynamic consideration of the relations between place and culture, and raise a set of key issues for geographers to consider: how we might interact with other disciplinary debates about the ‘cultural’, retain distinctiveness as the home of intellectual inquiry around issues of space and place, and leverage opportunities to forge more permanent connections to geographers working not in our traditional institutional settings, but in a range of research centres, schools and disciplinary homes.     

China and Geography in the 21st Century: A Cultural (Geographical) Revolution?

A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia reviews the recent emergence of cultural geographic research on and within China and the implications of China's rise for the study of 21st century cultural geography more broadly. She identifies six major issues modern China is confronting that, when addressed from a cultural geographical perspective, may both enhance an understanding of the country and reshape the practice of cultural geography as a subdiscipline: agricultural reform, economic reform, urban change, rural-urban migration and related social inequalities, the changing family structure, and environmental change. The author argues that if China's cultural geography is to help the subdiscipline at large develop a more international and inclusive approach, it must be driven by questions of significance in China, yield constructive answers of relevance to China, and at the same time derive theoretical ideas that diversify the collective geographical imagination.     

Dangerous Places and Wild Spaces: Creating Meaning with Materials and Space at Contemporary Maya Shrines on El Duende Mountain

Ethnoarchaeological observations at Maya shrines on a sacred mountain suggest that three potent material strategies imbue ritual practices with different social meanings: 1) the use of different types of materials as offerings in various rites, 2) the ways in which the physical conditions of an offering are altered during deposition, and 3) the choice of location where the offering is deposited within the site relative to a ceremonial focal point. Through these strategies, individuals creatively negotiate limited access to material resources and assign diverse meanings to the material culture, practices, and places of ritual. Materials that represent commoners' rituals may primarily consist of quotidian items that are transformed in meaning by how and where they are deposited into an archaeological context.     

我国考古和文物保护工作中物探技术的应用

20世纪80年代以来,物探技术在考古和物保护方面应用越来越多,在古墓探查、大型古建筑地下遗存现状探查、重要古建基础状况探查、古遗迹断代等方面,地球物理技术都找到了发挥作用的机会。本通过地球物理技术在云冈石窟、龙门石窟、克孜尔石窟、北京故宫紫禁城、嵩岳寺塔、古泗州城遗址、风阳明中都等的物理探查实例,以及查找古墓、古遗迹断代等方面的工作,介绍了我国在考古和物保护领域应用地球物理技术的进展,并指出了物探在用于考古和保时的特点和展望。     

美国华人餐饮业及其文化认同

通过对1965年前后两个阶段美国中餐业的变迁,蒙特利尔公园市中餐业的兴起及影响,圣盖博谷地区中餐业更深刻、更广泛变化的阐述,本文分析了新一代华人移民在多元文化背景和与主流社会的磨合中,所追求的生活方式和包括饮食习惯在内的文化认同。     

焦虑与反思:当代中国对传统文化的认同

近代文化变迁以来,“中国哲学”这个称谓一直是一个有争议的问题,。但哲学作为一件“事情”,在中国是有的,哲学本也不是件东西。“事情”,德语为Sache,意指“争执”,“论争”。自古希腊,“哲学”就是对“智慧”的“爱”,是无尽的探问与追思,是爱者与被爱者之间的互通有无,即“对话”,因此对话是哲学的最为原初最为根本的形式,其表达形式则应该是多种多样并且与生活连在一起的。     

Mediterranean heritage: ancient marvel,modern millstone

ABSTRACT. The wealth, variety and seaborne accessibility of Mediterranean societies since late prehistory have made the region's cultural heritage the world's most widely acclaimed. But since the fall of the Roman Empire the Mediterranean has been increasingly disadvantaged, its history compromised, its legacy beleaguered. Two millennia of invasion and rapine, religious vendetta, foreign conquest, imperial dominion and colonial subjugation have left Mediterranean peoples with fewer resources and weaker infrastructures than those of transalpine and transatlantic nation‐states. The consequences for the care and control of Mediterranean heritage are parlous. That heritage is both the region's self‐defining pride and its economic mainstay, yet a crippling burden to protect and maintain, let alone to interpret and celebrate. It is everywhere beset by natural and human attrition. Weathering and erosion, illicit excavation and pillage, tomb robbery and the international antiquities market exact tolls that legal codes and police forces are all but impotent to stem. Recent social and political trends suggest potential remedies for some of these dilemmas.