The Classic-period pictographs at Juliq’ Cave,Alta Verapaz,Guatemala: an interdisciplinary approach to cave art as organizing principle

The Cave of Juliq’ in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala contains an impressive corpus of ancient Maya rock art. Unlike other examples of rock art in this area, the Juliq’ pictographs are simply rendered, generally consisting of lines, handprints, and other basic shapes. We thus focus on context rather than on iconographic content in order to access the meaning of these ancient pictographs. We argue that they were used to record human presence in and movement through the alien cave environment in specific ways, demarcating procession routes, points of transition, moments of physical prowess, and places charged with sacred power. These circuits within Juliq’ reflect attempts to order the Underworld landscape and link it to the surface world through ritual movement akin to aboveground ritual processions.     

Interpreting the immature chicken bones from the Romano-British ritual complex on West Hill,Uley

The prehistoric to post-Roman site of West Hill, Uley in southwestern Britain was excavated between 1976 and 1979, and yielded a quarter of a million animal bones. Part of the site was a ritual complex, and this in particular produced a considerable amount of domestic fowl. A major problem has been to evaluate the immature domestic fowl bones and determine whether all ages are represented. This presents problems because the varieties of fowl represented are unknown. Therefore, can the osteometric data be seen as homogeneous? In fact the distribution of adult measurements suggests that one variety was mainly represented, that a wide range of ages of fowl were sacrificed, and that the selection of birds was probably not entirely random. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Archaeology and Folklore of Material Culture, Ritual, and Everyday Life

Archaeologists often make distinctions between ritual material culture and everyday or utilitarian material culture. I examine this differentiation model for understanding the complex relationships among material culture, ritual, and everyday life. Using folklore recorded in Scotland in the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, I suggest another, continuum-based model, and suggest how this model can enrich archaeological understanding of the meanings and beliefs that form the cultural contexts for the artifacts, features, sites, and landscapes we study.     

Sovereignty from ‘ground zero’: Power through performance in independent South Sudan

Through a reading of the South Sudanese independence ceremony as a ritual of statehood, I show how state actors in South Sudan declared and performed their claim to sovereignty in the face of extraordinary challenge. Central to their performance was their rendering of a national chronotope and their assertion of what I call rebel sovereignty: their articulation of themselves as both saviours from oppression and legitimate wielders of state power. State actors' equal appeal to local antipathy to centralised power and international norms of statehood, as well as their performative redefinition of international undermining as partnership, demonstrates the necessity of contemporary sovereign performance to define both the content and context of extant political realities. More broadly, the ritual demonstrates the performative basis of sovereignty and the increasing necessity of sovereign aspirants to acknowledge the impossibility of sovereign control and redefine challenges and critiques of this power as they assert it.     

Cultural Performance and the Reconstruction of Tradition among the Bunun of Taiwan

ABSTRACT This article aims to understand the meanings and impact of the reconstruction of tradition and the objectification of culture among the Bunun, an Austronesian‐speaking indigenous people of Taiwan. It situates the revival of tradition in the contexts of state appropriation and the development of ethnic tourism, and shows how the Bunun attempt to control their relationship with the state and the dominant society by reconstituting tradition in the present. The culturally specific ways in which the Bunun sustain local identity and sociality by reproducing their concept of personhood are highlighted. In doing so, I seek to move the analysis beyond the use of reified tradition as a political and identity symbol to address the broader theoretical concern of understanding tradition as a culturally specific mode of change.     

洛阳地区秦墓探析

本文首先从洛阳地区秦墓发现情况与地缘不相配称引出思考,然后将已知秦墓同关中秦墓进行简要对比找出洛阳秦墓探索的突破口——土洞墓;通过墓葬形制和随葬器物的分析归纳出土洞墓蕴含的一般丧制,并在此基础上对器物组合进行分组分期和验证,最后对周秦文化的融和过程作了探索。     

殷墟仿铜陶礼器墓试析

殷墟四期偏晚阶段出现仿铜陶礼器墓,其器物组合较固定,所含器类较全,学者对其认识不一。作者认为其出现有深刻的社会原因,同时又和人们的意识形态、思想变化密不可分,是人们对资源利用观念的一种转变。     

一部规范清代社会成员行为的图谱——有关《皇朝礼器图式》的几个问题

《皇朝礼器图式》是乾隆帝钦命绘制的一部与清礼息息相关的器物图谱。本文通过对该图所绘器物的含义及乾隆礼制思想确立的梳理,分析了乾隆绘制《礼器图》的本意是在表达一种治国理念,以期用图谱的形式为社会各等级人士设立行为规范,从而达到上下有序、尊卑有别的治国目的。透过这些器物,我们可以看到以服饰为代表的满汉文化的融合,以军器为代表的中国开始落后于西方的历史,以仪器为代表的中西文化的冲突等等很多重要的清朝社会波澜。此图不但是我们今天认识200年前天文地理仪器、冠袍带履、车马轿舆、枪炮军械、民族乐器等文物的重要参考文献,也是我们了解18世纪中国社会变化的一份珍贵的形象资料。     

北齐徐显秀、娄叡墓中的火坛和礼器

本文论述了北齐徐显秀墓和娄墓中的“灯”本是拜火祭坛,鸡首壶、尊、瓶等器则是礼器。隋虞弘墓中的石“灯”也应是火坛。由此说明祆教信众沿袭中国古来以礼器随葬的传统,将火坛及其礼器放入墓室作为祆教葬礼的一部分。