Ritual Patterns in the Deposits of Fauna Associated with Iberian Burials: The Necropolis of El Poblado During the Fourth to Second Centuries bc (Archaeological Complex of Coimbra del Barranco Ancho,Murcia)

The study of grave goods, including animal deposits, offers a deeper understanding of social issues. This paper presents the results of the analysis of human and animal bone samples from the Iberian necropolis of El Poblado, Murcia. The examination focusses on 18 deposits of ovicaprids radii and ulnae, mostly of the left side, that were derived from 14 cremation tombs of the 74 studied. By considering the human and animal remains together, it is possible to highlight differences in the rituals of certain graves and variations in animal symbolism related to human sex and age. This provides a new understanding of the social and cultural differentiation that existed in the Iberian communities of this period. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Keeping Pace With Rising Sea: The First 6 Years of the Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey,Gulf Coastal Florida

Low-gradient coastlines are susceptible to inundation by rising water, but they also promote marsh aggradation that has the potential to keep pace with sea-level rise. Synergies among hydrodynamics, coastal geomorphology, and marsh ecology preclude a simple linear relationship between higher water and shoreline transgression. As an archive of human use of low-gradient coastlines, archaeological data introduce additional mitigating factors, such as landscape alteration, resource extraction, and the cultural value of place. The Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey (LSAS) is an ongoing effort to document the history of coastal dwelling since the mid-Holocene, when the rate and magnitude of sea-level rise diminished and the northern Gulf coast of Florida transitioned into an aggradational regime. Results of the first 6 years of the LSAS suggest that multicentury periods of relative stability were punctuated by site abandonment and relocation. Subsistence economies involving the exploitation of oyster and fish, however, were largely unaffected as communities redistributed themselves with changes in shoreline position and estuarine ecology. After AD 200, civic-ceremonial centers were established at several locations along the northern Gulf coast, fixing in place not only the infrastructure of daily living (villages), but also that of religious practice, notably cemeteries and ceremonial mounds. Intensified use of coastal resources at this time can be traced to a ritual economy involving large gatherings of people, terraforming, feasting, and the circulation of socially valued goods. To the extent that religious practices buffered the risks of coastal living, large civic-ceremonial centers, like aggrading marshes, afforded opportunities to “outpace” sea-level rise. On the other hand, centers introduced a permanence to coastal land-use that proved unsustainable in the long term.     

Unity in the trees: Arbor Day and Republican China, 1915–1927

ABSTRACT

Scholars of modern China have overlooked the role environmental policy played in early Republican efforts to promote both modernization and national unity. Beginning in 1916, the national government in Beijing mandated that each province and county throughout the Chinese nation celebrate “Arbor Day” in order to foster a modern Chinese environmental culture. This change was made in response to global discourses that linked forest cover to a modern nation’s moral and economic health. Arbor Day coincided with the Tomb-Sweeping Festival, a day traditionally reserved for ancestor worship. Due to the vast climatic disparities within China, many governments planted Arbor Day trees under conditions that made it impossible for them to thrive. Nevertheless, officials throughout China continued to celebrate Arbor Day as proof of their loyalty to the government in Beijing. Arbor Day thus served more as an exercise in promoting national unity than in creating a viable reforestation campaign.     

The beads of Indian Knoll

ABSTRACT

Busycon discs, barrels, rings, and columellas, Leptoxis and Prunum shell beads, and stone and coal beads from Webb and Moore excavations at Indian Knoll (15OH2) are discussed in this paper as the author seeks to determine how beads were deployed to convey social information during the Archaic period. After wrestling with the count of beads (ca. 27,337) and the number of burials (ca. 260) with beads, the types of beads are tallied and measurements given based on the author’s examination of beads. The presence and distribution of beads in the shell-bearing stratum and the hardpan, and their distribution among women, men, and subadults, are explored. The beads appear to have been assembled rather than manufactured as sets. An argument is made that shell beads were used at Indian Knoll as regalia for members of and victims of a hunt god/spirit cult. Leptoxis sashes are identified in 36 burials and discussed as regalia. Bead co-occurrence with atlatls, faunal species, and violent death is examined as part of the hypothesized cult rituals.     

Mississippian religious beliefs and ritual practice: Earthen monuments,rock art,and sacred shrines

Abstract

The five books under review here explicitly call for archaeologists to place greater emphasis on agency and practice in understanding the role of religion and ritual in the ancient world. Four volumes, principally investigating Mississippian polities, draw our attention to the American midcontinent and its earthen monuments, magical plants, rock art, sacra, and sacred shrines. Although spanning a diversity of approaches and perspectives, the authors demonstrate how cosmograms, exotic objects, sacred landscapes, and transcendental beings articulate with people’s daily lives and lived experiences. Each work offers an awareness of religion as expressed through materiality and the ways past belief systems were bundled, constituted, entangled, and intermeshed with agentive things, built landscapes, humans, natural environments, and other-than-human-persons. The fifth book, by Brian Hayden, contributes a significant approach to these ongoing discussions by stressing the importance of secret societies for interpreting and understanding the power of ritual in the ancient world.     

The liminality in popular festivals: identity,belonging and hedonism as values of tourist satisfaction

Abstract

A Festa do Boi is a festive celebration linked to the Catholic liturgical calendar, which is celebrated in Allariz (Galicia-Spain). This festival reappears in the 1980s and like other popular festivals, it collects traditional elements and re-builds them into a new festive ritual, more in line with the new temporal and spatial configuration of the late 20th century. They are festivals in which tradition is combined, in representation of the local community, and the tourist approach (Prats, 1997 Prats, L. L. (1997). Antropología y patrimonio. Madrid: Alianza. [Google Scholar]). This event can be analysed as a spontaneous communitas (Turner, 1974a Turner, V. (1974a). Dramas, fields and metaphors. New York: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar]), a happening between hosts and guests (Smith, 1992 Smith, V. L. (1992). Anfitriones e invitados (Turismo y sociedad). Madrid: Endymion. [Google Scholar]), where the liminal space can be occupied by tourists as ‘others’ necessary for the identification of ‘ourselves’. The participation of tourists in the festive ritual is carried out from two liminal positions: an unstable state because their daily life has been broken by the movement and involvement required in the festivals with the role of equals, but different. Both actors are required for the exaltation of collective identity. The level of satisfaction of tourists with the liminal experience based on the feeling of belonging and identification with the host community and the hedonistic perception, to provide a more holistic view of the festive ritual. A self-administered on-site survey was conducted on 393 tourists attending the 700th edition of A Festa do Boi in Allariz (Spain). The results suggest that hedonism acts as a precedent for satisfaction evaluation, and satisfaction evaluation for the attendees´ future intentions. In addition, the liminal experience has a two-dimensional structure composed of the individual changes experienced and of the festive ritual.     

‘Which Way?’ Big Man,Road Man,Chief: Bernard Narokobi's Multifaceted Leadership Career

ABSTRACT

Among the topics that Bernard Narokobi addresses in his numerous writings is the place of traditional Melanesian leadership styles in a modern Papua New Guinea. This article explores Narokobi's leadership status to show how far-reaching and multifaceted his leadership career was: he was at once a traditional Melanesian bigman, a chief, and a modern public figure. The actions he took in these roles were for him a matter of the highest principle, something that at times had severe political consequences. Because in Melanesia the scope of the ritual that takes place upon an individual's death is an index of their status, an analysis of the mortuary rituals undertaken upon Narokobi's death provides insight into the significance of his leadership at every level from his clan up to the national level of Papua New Guinean society.     

The ultimate return: Dissent,apostolic succession,and the renewed ministry of roman catholic women priests

ABSTRACT

Significant numbers of practising Roman Catholics dissent from the Church’s orthodox teachings, especially those relating to sex, gender and contraception. Many such dissenters even occupy positions of ecclesiastical authority themselves. This raises interesting questions about how dissent manifests differently in various Christian traditions; how disagreement about fundamental principles only become legible if expressed in particular ways. This paper draws on research on Roman Catholic Woman priests whose claim to sacerdotal legitimacy rests on their having been ordained in apostolic succession by bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. It asks how do women priests negotiate both difference and repetition at the very same time. The ethnography prompts deeper reflection on Christianity’s long history of dissent which I argue has been written from a predominantly male and Protestant perspective. One in which dissent that leads to institutional differentiation is prioritized over dissent borne quietly that seeks to contain itself.     

Hazor rulership and ritual manipulation

ABSTRACT

Hazor was unquestionably the largest Bronze Age Canaanite site, standing as an anomaly in the southern Levant in terms of its size, elaborate public architecture, special geopolitical stature and far-reaching international networks. While the site has been well established as an urban center with many temples, the use of each of Hazor’s temples and how they relate to one another remains unclear. In this study, we analyze the rituals and other activities that were conducted within Hazor’s numerous temples. The methodology we employ stresses, fundamentally, the necessity to contextualize objects within entire assemblages – through spatial analysis – to most accurately assess how Hazor’s cultic spaces were actually used. We apply the same methodology to other MB and LB Canaanite temples to establish a generalized ideal-type temple assemblage for Canaanite temples. This study successfully demonstrates that Hazor’s temples substantially diverge from the ideal temple assemblage, indicating cult at Hazor was practiced differently than elsewhere in the region. This includes the atypical distribution of certain cultic vessels (e.g. miniature vessels), the appearance of special vessels in ritual contexts (e.g. cups), and a fundamentally different use of indoor and outdoor spaces when compared to other Canaanite temples. It turns out that Hazor’s elites were major factors controlling the anomalies of cultic practice at the site. Hazor’s rulers impacted cultic architectural forms and locations and played instrumental roles in dictating and manipulating the types of rituals and associated cultic paraphernalia that were allowed to be performed and used throughout the entire settlement landscape.