Comments on archaeology into the 1990s

This article focuses on the complexity of Early Bronze Age weapon depositions. While some of the deposited weapons have been disabled by intentional breakage, others seem to be more or less unused. A plausible explanation for the variability is that the surrender of lethal weapons to land or water was a means of coping with their power or agency – their individuality. We suggest that weapons, in their capacity as extensions of warriors’ bodies, may have substituted for humans in ritual depositions. The metalworkers also come into play, due to their capacities in the processes of making weapons and shaping weapon technologies. Although we consider the three depositions that we discuss to relate to rituals on the occasion of warfare, we are not aiming for a uniform explanation. In the same way as the patterned human behaviour of a ritual is a means of subsuming individual events into a greater order, so a focus on general patterns may subsume the complexity of the past by ignoring the many different events leading to, e.g., the deposition of metalwork. Far from seeing these perspectives as contradictory, we try to use three well-documented individual cases to shed light on the variability within the pattern.     

“If I were hungry,I would not tell you” (Ps 50, 12): Perspectives on the Care and Feeding of the Gods in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

In the Hebrew Bible, sacrifices are described as food for Yahweh and thus the sacrificial system corresponds with the general Ancient Near Eastern system of the “care and feeding of the gods” At the same time, human-divine commensality is problematized in narrative texts such as Judges 6 and 13, where the burnt offering is stressed as the only and necessarily different way the deity may consume food. Finally, some passages, such as Psalm 50, quoted above, explicitly reject the notion that sacrifices and offerings should be required as sustenance for Yahweh since he is the creator and owner of the world and everything in it.

This article offers a survey of various views on sacrifice as food for the deity in the Hebrew Bible and discusses these views in their Ancient Near Eastern context. It is suggested that the main understanding of sacrifice as meal in the Hebrew Bible is one that emphasizes difference through commensality and stresses the incompatibility of the human and the divine sphere through the social locus of the meal.     

Building Monks Mound,Cahokia, Illinois,a.d. 800–1400

Abstract

Cahokia (a.d. 800–1400), located near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, was the largest settlement in ancient North America. Monks Mound occupies the center of Cahokia and provides both a modern and ancient focal point for the site. Past investigations of Monks Mound explored issues of mound chronology and use. Recent soil coring around the perimeter clarifies the geological context and degree of preparation necessary before the mound was built. The results suggest that the mound is not optimally positioned for stability and its location may ultimately accelerate deterioration. Moreover, evaluation of the mound features and fill indicates that maximization of the geotechnical potential of sediments was not a primary concern for the Cahokians. Although poorly engineered relative to modern standards, the suitability of the mound as a platform may have been secondary to other design choices made while building the largest single mound in ancient North America.     

Pre-Columbian Ring Ditches along the Yacuma and Rapulo Rivers,Beni, Bolivia: A Preliminary Review

Abstract

Pre-Columbian farmers built a variety of earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos, part of the Bolivian Amazon. Raised fields, canals, causeways, and mounds of various types in this region date to ca. 800 B.C.–A.D. 1600. In central Mojos, archaeological work was carried out along the Yacuma, a large west-bank tributary of the Mamoré River. Four ring ditches and two areas of associated raised agricultural fields were mapped. The Global Positioning System was used to document earthworks under the forest canopy which were analyzed within a Geographic Information System. Ceramic evidence is also included. The ring ditches in this study expand the known range of such earthworks in Mojos by 200 km. This revised distribution of ring ditches changes interpretations of the long-term history of Arawak speakers in Mojos and throughout Amazonia. While earthworks in Mojos clearly represent systems of intensive agriculture, they cannot be associated only with Arawak speakers or with Arawak languages.     

Anthropology,Festival, and Spectacle

This article weaves together analyses of three recent books which, despite their being compiled primarily by scholars outside of the discipline of anthropology, make theoretical and methodological contributions useful to the anthropology of festivals and ritual, both religious and secular. These works demonstrate that spectacle has been ritualized into festive practices of modernity and identity in multiple places, times, and cultural contexts. Greater attention to how this works from a general anthropological perspective is needed.     

Alcohol Studies and Anthropology: Broadening the Venture

Caplan, Pat, ed. The Cultural Construction of Sexuality. London: Tav‐istock, 1987. xi + 304 pp. including name and subject indexes. $44.00 cloth; $16.95 paper.

Williams, Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. xi + 344 pp. including 16 black‐and‐white plates, bibliography, and index. $21.95 cloth.     

Übersicht der Tätigkeit internationaler Geographenkongresse auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte der Kartographie

Abstract

This paper surveys the career of Benedetto Bordon as a miniaturist, designer of woodcuts, and cartographer. Although from Padua, Bordon worked primarily in Venice where he illuminated religious and classical texts and official ducal documents destined for Venetian noblemen. The writer argues that Bordon designed woodcut illustrations for books printed by Aldus Manutius and others, in addition to the woodcut maps in his 1528 book on islands in the MediteiTanean, Atlantic, and Caribbean. Bordon's lost world map of 1508 is discussed in relation to the map‐making activities of Francesco Rosselli, the Florentine miniaturist and engraver who was in Venice in 1504 and 1508, and in relation to a circle of Venetian scholars and patricians interested in Ptolemy's Cosmographia and in the mapping of the New World.     

A vernacular way of “safeguarding” intangible heritage: the fall and rise of rituals in Gouliang Miao village

This paper documents a vernacular method of interpreting and safeguarding intangible heritage in an ethnic Miao village in China. Tracing the conflicting discourses of ritual in different stages of the past and the present, it shows how ritual practices were transformed by imperial Qing officials in the mid-nineteenth century, demonised and denounced as feudal superstition during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), exploited as cultural resources for ethnic tourism since the early twentieth century and involved in the evaluation system of intangible cultural heritage in the twenty-first century. Based on ethnographic materials collected in 2008 and 2009, this paper argues that it is the inherited vernacular narratives and ritual performances that are negotiating with the state’s constant effort of shaping the ritual through various discourses, constructing the meaning of inheritance and safeguarding the intangible heritage within the community.     

吴文化与江苏经济

本文以江苏省为例,分析改革开放20多年来作为主导性地域文化的吴文化对全省经济发展的影响;同时,探讨在新世纪经济与文化的共生互动中,如何进一步充实吴文化的内涵,以开创江苏现代化建设的新局面。     

Trepanation in the Chachapoya region of northern Perú

This paper discusses trepanation frequency data from the Chachapoya region of the northern highlands of Perú. New data from three skeletal samples are presented: Kuelap, Laguna Huayabamba, and Los Pinchudos, as well as isolated crania housed at the Chachapoya Museo Instituto Nacional de Cultura. The vast majority of the trepanations are circular in shape, except for one individual exhibiting as many as three roughly square trepanations. Evidence for healing is prevalent, with examples of both associated periosteal reaction of nearby outer table bone, as well as for healing of the insult itself. Only one case demonstrates a clear association between a traumatic injury and a trepanation event. The purpose or function of the remaining cases of trepanation, however, remains elusive. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.