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.     

“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.     

Murder or mortuary behaviour? An Iron Age enigma from Northeast Thailand

During the excavation of the Iron Age site of Noen U-Loke, in the Mun River Valley, northeast Thailand, in 1998 an unusual case of possible fatal cranial trauma in an elderly woman was recovered. Her skull was cleaved across the centre from side to side. The woman was buried with her head inside a ceramic pot, which is unusual for the site, but with jewellery similar to that in other burials. She was interred in a large cluster of graves, with a high proportion of infants and children. Her burial treatment suggests that she was not being treated punitively. The position of the mandible shows that the cleavage is not a postmortem artifact but it is not possible to determine the reason for it or whether it was the cause of her death or occurred immediately afterward. It is an unusual and intriguing enigma. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On Skin and Bone: Samoan Coconut Oil in Indigenous Practice

ABSTRACT

International promotional material on coconut oil commonly references its centuries of use as a beauty and health aid by Pacific Islanders. However, this gesture towards Indigenous Pacific use of coconut oil is rarely accompanied by substantive information. This paper explores the topical application of coconut oil in three Indigenous Samoan practices: fofō, or massage by taulāsea and other forms of customary healers or medical attendants; samaga, the anointing with coconut oil of the newly inked pe‘a or malu to mark the completion of these customary tattoos; and liutofaga, the ritual ‘washing’ of the bones of a deceased relative with coconut oil prior to reinterment. This paper argues that there are interrelated practical, medicinal, and spiritual dimensions to Samoan uses of coconut oil, and that these are usefully understood through reference to Samoan conceptions of sociospatial relationship, or vā.     

西周初期墓葬铜礼器器用区位研究——以随州叶家山为中心

随葬礼器在墓中的区位特征对于判断随葬品的性质与用途,探求墓葬器用观念等都具有重要意义。随州叶家山、宝鸡石鼓山墓地可分别作为西周初期诸侯国与王畿地区随葬青铜礼器组合的特点的代表。结合过去发现的同时期墓葬资料可以发现早在西周初期周人已建立起一套较完备的以食器为中心的器用组合关系。就其在墓葬中的区位而言,存在着(1)按大类分置;(2)食、酒水器分置;(3)酒水器聚置,食器分置于酒、水器两端等三种情形,前两种体现出周人重食的文化特征,后一种强调酒器似与周初西迁的殷遗民有关。