Landscapes of the Ghost Dance: A Cartography of Numic Ritual

Recent historical and ethnographic research indicates that the study of ritual behavior could be greatly enhanced by combining parameters of place and landscape use with interpretation of material culture. This strategy is especially useful for identifying the archaeological record of ritual among societies that incorporated topographic features and natural resources into their liturgical order. In this article we apply a behavioral framework to the study of Numic ritual technologies. By intergrating ethnographic and historic data on the geography, practice, and material culture of the nineteenth-century Nevada Ghost Dance, we demonstrate how this framework helps to determine the configuration of a ritual place and its position relative to other ritual and nonritual places.     

从曲阳到浑源:北岳移祀过程补考

顺治十七年(1660年),自汉代以来就在直隶曲阳县举行的祭祀北岳礼改在山西浑源州举行。这次移祀事件有复杂的历史背景,首先五代之际北岳祭祀地点确实存在变化,其次至少金元之际就已经出现了浑源北岳说,到了明代弘治六年(1493年)马文升提出北岳移祀一事时,浑源北岳说无论是在以方志为代表的文本上,还是在实际的祭祀活动中都得到了延续和发展。     

The Discourse of Fengsu in the Song Literati’s Writing: The Example of Boat Racing

The category of “customs,” or fengsu, was important for the literati of the Song dynasty in writing local histories. It covers local practices of festival rituals, weddings and funerals, rites for passage into adulthood, sacrificial rites, and the like. The main purpose behind the literati’s efforts to record fengsu was not to acknowledge local variations but to censor local customs and transform society. This paper looks at these type of texts as a discourse that is meant to promote the correct, standard performance of rites and suppress those deemed improper. It uses boat racing in Song records of fengsu as a case study to illustrate how the imperial spectacle of boat racing in spring was propagated and how the linkage between the death anniversary of Qu Yuan and Duanwu were reinforced. Meanwhile, the popular ritual of boat racing during the summer, which bore distinct violent and shamanic attributes, was strongly criticised. Through these efforts by the literati, a normative discourse of the boat-racing ritual was repeated and reinforced in the fengsu recording.     

湖南衡阳县赤石天门山西汉墓发掘简报

该墓是带墓道长方形土坑竖穴墓,出土随葬器物54件,其中有5套陶礼器鼎盒壶钫完整组合,出土30件日常生活陶器,还伴出大量泥郢称、泥半两.随葬器物从侧面反映了楚国故地衡阳在西汉早期,一方面承袭战国晚期楚国的礼制习俗,另一方面又开启西汉中晚期的封建田园经济生活新风尚.     

中国史前音乐文化区及相关问题初论

本文从史前乐舞材料入手,对中国史前音乐文化区进行了全面的探讨,将其划分为中原区、海岱区、甘青区、江汉及邻近区、环太湖区、辽河区等六大区域。在此基础上,对中国史前音乐文化的承传方式以及礼乐文化的发展模式予以解析。     

Civil-military tensions during the Kangxi emperor��s first southern tour

Starting with a court debate which broke out in the spring of 1684, this essay explores the multivalent symbolism of the Kangxi emperor’s first imperial tour to Shandong and Jiangsu provinces in the fall of 1684. Some courtiers advocated treating the Kangxi emperor’s touring activities as a rite of conquest, while others saw them as an exercise in sagely rule and benevolent civil governance. Here I suggest that this ritual controversy revealed a tension between civil and military values within the political culture of the Qing court. Furthermore, this ideological tension became most acute and apparent during the Kangxi emperor’s “eastern” and “southern” tours of 1684, when the imperial procession approached and crossed certain culturally and symbolically significant locations. As such, we are reminded that the legitimization of Qing rule was never fully complete, but was rather an open-ended and ongoing historical process.     

丽水胡椒坑畲族祖图

畲族是中国现存的较古老的民族之一,具有悠久的历史和独特的传统,其中各支族自行绘制的祖图是最富特色的民族文化遗存之一。本文以丽水联城镇胡椒坑村现存的绘制于清光绪四年(1878)的祖图为例,介绍完整的一套畲族祖图所包含的主要内容,以及它在祭祀仪式上的使用情况等相关问题。     

Two decapitations from Roman Towcester

Two young adult males from a Roman cemetery at Towcester show unambiguous evidence of decapitation In one, the skull had been placed over the lower legs, and in the other, the skull was in its correct anatomical position. The significance of this variation and the reasons for decapitation are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From the Ground Up: Agency,Practice, and Community in the Southwestern British Bronze Age

Embodied, sensual, engagements between people, earthly elements, and celestial bodies during focused, periodic acts of ritual construction and artifact deposition in the southwestern British Bronze Age resulted in the remaking of identities, local communities, symbolic/mythical knowledge, and the landscape itself. To appreciate how material culture, time, and space were employed to define the criteria by which people understood themselves and their world necessitates an archaeological focus upon shared practices in particular settings that served to define rules of engagement with the environment based upon shared human perceptions. Agency appears in this encounter as central in the construction and perpetuation of symbolic perception, shared social memory, and community identity.     

The iron age in Mediterranean France: Colonial encounters, entanglements, and transformations

During the last seven centuries of the first millennium BC, the indigenous societies of Mediterranean France underwent a series of gradual social and cultural transformations that are linked in complex ways to their encounter and increasing entanglement with the broader Mediterranean world. This article presents a synthesis of current knowledge of this issue and explores some of the main themes guiding research. New evidence concerning the alien colonial agents (Etruscan, Greek, Punic/Iberian, and Roman), and the contrasting nature of their presence and power in the region, is discussed, as is evidence concerning forms of indigenous engagement with colonial states and paths of social and cultural change. The consumption of alien goods (wine, ceramics) and the adoption of foreign techniques and practices (ceramic production methods, coinage, writing) are examined in terms of the locally situated logic of demand and the ramifications for entanglement and change. Transformations in settlements, ritual spaces, funerary practices, and the agrarian landscape are discussed.