Death as a Window to Life: Anthropological Approaches to Early Medieval Mortuary Ritual

Identity, personhood, ritual, religion, landscape, and the materiality of social practice have inspired anthropologists to advance exiting new agendas. Many of these issues coalesce in mortuary archaeology. This article reviews the dialogue between anthropological questions and the mortuary record through examining three books on early medieval archaeology. It focuses on theoretical developments rather than methodology, discussing key issues relating both to the study of early medieval mortuary remains and to broader anthropological agendas, such as modern political ideology and cultural identity.     

Millet and sauce: The uses and functions of querns among the Minyanka (Mali)

The central role of grinding activities in the dietary practices of traditional agricultural populations can be approached from an ethnoarchaeological point of view. The comparison of ethnographic references raises the question whether the function and the socioeconomic context in which grinding slabs are used allow to assess issues related to conclusions drawn from archaeological contexts. Our discussion is based on the analysis of the manufacturing of grinding slabs, their use cycles and their social status in several Minyanka villages (Mali), providing useful references when examining the way in which archaeologists explain and interpret technological, functional and spatial observations. The typological and technical evolution and variability of querns results from a combination of several factors determined by the available raw materials, the skill of shaping techniques, the organisation of manufacturing and the transference of the function of grinding tools. But these factors alone cannot explain the encountered range of variation. Our study thus emphasises the very role of cultural aspects within these temporal and regional developments, and the impossibility of dissociating the use of a quern from its socio-economic context.     

Funeral practices and foodstuff behaviour: What does eat meat mean? Stable isotope analysis of Middle Neolithic populations in the Languedoc region (France)

The aim of this study is to reconstruct the dietary patterns and economic behaviours of Neolithic populations in the Northwestern Mediterranean using isotopic and archaeological data. Burials come from four sites located in Languedoc–Roussillon region in French Mediterranean area. These sites are dated from the Middle Neolithic period (ca. 4500–3500 BC). They represent the Chasséen culture, characterized by regional features, such as economy management, resulting from territorial control. For this investigation, a stable isotopes (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) method has been used on 50 human bone collagens and 28 associated animal bones. This method provides direct dietary information on the protein consumed including the relative amounts of marine vs. terrestrial and animal vs. plant proteins in diets. Isotopic results are mainly compared to archaeological data to understand economic distinctions and potential social status variations between different groups using specific funeral practices, i.e. lithic chamber graves vs. domestic/funeral pits. Results show that individuals buried in lithic chamber graves and those buried in pits did not have the same dietary pattern. This result suggests a possible differentiation between two socio-economic groups, i.e. consumers of resources from herding and from farming. No aquatic food appeared to be routinely consumed by these individuals despite a relative close proximity to sea and freshwater sources. Moreover, these outcomes lead us to hypothesize that: (1) funeral practices could be linked to specific economies and/or (2) to different social status and that (3) burial type and foodstuff could be an expression of religious worship. Further research could include data from other areas, such as Spanish Catalonia where there are funeral structures similar to Languedoc lithic chamber graves.     

Reading versus Seeing? Winckelmann's Excerpting Practice and the Genealogy of Art History

From his arrival in Italy in 1755, Winckelmann's work is infused throughout by a fundamental antinomy: reading versus seeing. This antinomy possesses for him a decidedly epistemological significance: it allows him to present himself as the father of a discipline deserving of its name, i.e., the history of art. In Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764), he claims to break with a long tradition of art discourse which had been primarily supported by ancient texts, basing his book instead on the direct observation of the artworks. The aim of this paper is to critically examine this antinomy. How does seeing relate to reading in his working method? What relationship does art history, in the empirical dimension Winckelmann wanted to give it, have to book knowledge? Winckelmann's excerpts collection provides valuable answers to these questions. Following an old scholarly tradition, Winckelmann used to write down passages of his readings, constituting a vast handwritten library of excerpts which never left him. The result of this intense excerpting practice consists in some 7,500 pages, which allow to better define the share of empirical observation and book-based knowledge in his approach to ancient art.     

Socio-Spatial Strategies of Worker Centres: An Ethnography of Alt-Labour in NYC

This article examines the typology of worker centres from a socio-spatial perspective. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative fieldwork and applying the multidimensional TPSN (Territory, Place, Scale and Network) framework, it analyses three worker centres: Make the Road New York (MRNY), Retail Action Project (RAP) and Laundry Workers Center (LWC). Each model is the result of the predominance of certain logics of action, political strategies, and spatialities. The multidimensional socio-spatial approach allows us to identify the advantages and problems of each strategy. MRNY shows a territory-based strategy that combines membership participation with effective advocacy on different scales. RAP, despite focusing on services, has been able to overcome the fragmentation of the retail industry and escalate to regulating labour relations at the industry level. LWC prioritises workplace organising and shows a high level of experimentalism and grassroots base, although the results of their irradiation strategy are very modest.     

试论魏玛"福利国家"的早期实践(1918-1920)

一战结束后,德国社会遭遇了政治、经济与社会的多重危机,政府权力亟待合法性认同,社会期稳定。魏玛政府力图把福利国家作为控制与解决危机的一种手段。1918-1920年间,魏玛的福利国家建设曾规范劳动市场、协调劳资关系、改革保险和救济政策、解决住房问题以及调整经济运作模式等方面掀起高潮从短时段看,这些实践活动确立了基本的福利国家原则,维护了政府权威,初步解决了战后德国的社会危机然而从长时段看,这一时期的福利实践存在许多问题,埋下了日后经济危机、社会危机乃至民主危机的隐患。     

‘Balding Nevis’: Place Imperatives of an Invisible Cohort within Tasmania's Forest Communities

An under‐recognised cohort within Tasmania's forest communities is identified, one that shares the social and cultural background of Timber Communities Australia's constituency, but holding deeply antipathetic views toward current forest regimes. Deploying ethnographic data gathered in the upper North Esk country in Tasmania's North‐Eastern Tiers, where this cohort seems to predominate, the elements of a deep attachment to place are explicated: these include a desire to return to a past local economy based upon small but labour‐intensive sawmills with viable satellite hamlets, and a concern for water quality, for the integrity of forest ecosystems, and for the wellbeing of individual plant and animal species therein. Overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness, lacking political skills, and distressed by the dramatic economic and environmental changes within their community, this cohort is unlikely to organise politically, and is likely to remain relatively voiceless within the fraught dynamics of local politics within riven forest communities. Nevertheless, this ‘third cohort’ suggests wider issues for the politics of place. Its worldview constitutes a potent contemporary articulation of ‘the moral economy’, as described in the 1970s by E.P. Thompson, and extended to a conception of ‘moral ecology’ by Karl Jacoby. It also suggests, contra Doreen Massey, that the identity‐based place theory of the phenomenological tradition is compatible with a conception of places as sites of conflicted meaning, and that it is wrong to assume the vector of change within place to be progressive; rather it is as likely to conduce to a loss of individual and collective agency.     

再论东汉吐舌镇墓兽

吐舌镇墓兽流行于东汉峡江地区,除峡江外又以南阳襄阳地区所出最为集中,本文对这两地的吐舌镇墓兽进行了梳理。通过与南阳画像石中灵怪形象的对比,认为两地均继承了巴楚鬼神崇拜传统的一些因素,具有相似的文化背景。南阳襄阳突出的交通区位优势也是镇墓兽在此出现的重要原因。同时指出吐舌镇墓兽在南阳襄阳地区主要流行于大中型墓葬中,这反映了峡江与中原地区在东汉时期可能存在着较为密切的互动。