Evidence of amputation as medical treatment in ancient Egypt

The use of surgical techniques in ancient Egyptian medicine has only been suggested indirectly through ancient medical texts and iconography, and there is no evidence of amputation as a means of therapeutic medical treatment. This paper presents four cases of amputation from the archaeological site of Dayr al‐Barshā, Egypt. Two of the cases (dated to the First Intermediate and Middle Kingdom periods, respectively) are from individuals that display bilateral amputations of the feet, one through the metatarso‐phalangeal joints, the other a transmetatarsal amputation. The exact reason for the amputation, perhaps from trauma or disease, is unknown. The particular healing patterns of the distal ends of the amputations suggest these individuals used foot binding or prosthetic devices. Another case represents a healed amputation of the left ulna near the elbow, dated to the Old Kingdom. The final case represents a perimortem amputation of the distal end of the right humerus. The exact date of this individual is unknown, but most likely pertains to the Old Kingdom or First Intermediate period. This individual seems to have suffered a traumatic incident shortly before death, sustaining many fractures, including a butterfly fracture on the right humerus. Several cut marks were identified on top of the butterfly fracture, indicating amputation of the arm at this point. All four cases support the hypothesis that the ancient Egyptians did use amputation as a therapeutic medical treatment for particular diseases or trauma. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TRAUMA DELEGITIMIZED: KARL LÖWITH AND THE COSMIC VIEW OF HISTORY

This article uncovers the work of trauma in Karl Löwith's historical thought. Although best known for his critique of the philosophy of history and for the conception of secularization in his 1949 book, Meaning in History, Löwith deepened his positive historical vision in several essays that he wrote in the 1950s and 1960s. From these texts emerges a unique historical orientation, which I call the “cosmic view of history.” This perspective was at once a critique of modern historical consciousness and an embodied corrective to that consciousness, one in which the catastrophes of the twentieth century were relativized and made endurable. In both the origin and structure of this historical orientation and in its textual expression in Löwith's work, trauma is a residual force that links Löwith's language, his experiences, and the postwar context. The role of trauma in Löwith's thought further reveals a process of delegitimization in which historical consciousness and historical events lose their power to determine historical meaning, thus enabling a response to and an escape from catastrophe. This article also explores the significance of this cosmic view of history for contemporary theoretical concerns related to the Anthropocene and its consequences for historical theory.     

SHORT COMMUNICATION Autopsy Practises for Brain Dissections and Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman

Illustrations, previous to the 19th century, provide evidence that brain dissections were executed on an isolated head, contrary to Rembrandt's anatomy lesson of Dr. Deyman. This paradox seems to be explained by clever biased composition.     

Coming to terms with a difficult past: the trauma of the assassination of Hrant Dink and its repercussions on Turkish national identity

This paper takes as its subject the question of why some nations are less willing to acknowledge past atrocities. To answer that question, it focuses on the assassination of Hrant Dink – a Turkish‐Armenian journalist – and its repercussions on Turkish national identity. Scrutinising newspaper articles written before and after the assassination (2004–2007), it casts a detailed glance at the struggle between two carrier groups – pro‐ and anti‐acknowledgement groups – and argues that the assassination increased the likelihood of the acknowledgement of the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 by creating a cultural trauma informed by collective guilt. However, the relief generated by the funeral, combined with the strength of the master commemorative narrative regarding the mass killings, decreased that likelihood, and despite the huge public reaction created by the assassination there was no attempt at acknowledgement. As such, the paper contributes to our understanding of the trauma of perpetrators and claims that, in addition to other factors listed by earlier studies, cultural trauma is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for coming to terms with difficult pasts.     

Where are the dead of medieval battles? A preliminary survey

Abstract

Only a handful of mass graves from late medieval battles in Western Europe have been subject to large scale excavation to modern standards. The principal reason is that these, and indeed even early modern battlefield graves, have proven extremely elusive, most being identified by chance. Despite a few successes, no combination of prospecting techniques yet provides a consistently effective method of locating such small archaeological features set almost anywhere within a site covering many square kilometres. But this important resource should be explored and conserved for, as Towton has shown, much can be learnt through modern excavation and analysis of the remains. While this paper does consider the existing archaeological record, its primary focus and the starting point for almost any search for mass graves on a battlefield, has to be the documentary record. Using this evidence one must debate the number who actually died, how they were interred and commemorated and whether this varied according to status or allegiance, and where on the battlefield the graves might lie. One must also consider how often we will need to look further afield for the dead, for it is unclear how often the desire for appropriate Christian burial meant some or even most were interred in, or later moved to, consecrated ground.     

Late Preceramic Forager–Herders from the Copacabana Peninsula in the Titicaca Basin of Bolivia: A Bioarchaeological Analysis

The Titicaca Basin of Peru and Bolivia has been occupied by humans for millennia and was home to one of the first major state societies in the Andes. Many foundations of state power, however, developed much earlier, during the Late Preceramic/Terminal Archaic Period (3000 – 1500 BC), when people initially began herding, marking territories, and creating new metallurgy technology. We present a skeletal analysis of 14 individuals dating between 3000 and 1500 BC from Muruqullu, an archaeological site on the Copacabana Peninsula of Bolivia. These are the first Preceramic burials documented for the peninsula and contribute to the relatively small sample of Preceramic bodies from the Andean highlands more broadly. From this sample, we suggest that highland foragers and early herders suffered little nutritional stress and had limited violent interactions, perhaps related to a relatively mobile lifestyle and utilisation of lake resources. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Violent memories/memory violence

This review takes up three works that represent recent approaches to the anthropology of memory and affect. Echoing themes in Holocaust literature, a central issue here is the role of violent memory in forging collective identifications and sentiments. Taken together, these volumes suggest a continuing evolution of efforts to theorize the remembrance of violence and the social and bodily practices that mediate its reproduction. In particular, these studies demonstrate the value of ethnography in tracing the social career of violent memory as it is variously projected, suppressed, and transformed in moral communities and across generations.     

HOW WE LIVE WITH THE PAST NOW

Michael Roth's new collection of essays, written over the last two decades, is held together by its author's pervasive concern with human temporality: our individual and collective passages through time, recorded by the faculty of memory, which pose some of our most intractable problems. The essays treat, and indeed provide a map to, several adjacent areas of inquiry: the history of the psychopathology of memory in the long nineteenth century; the vicissitudes of the trauma‐concept from its relatively modest medical origins to its postmodern apotheosis; and photography as a medium and art form embroiled in our relationship with the past. Roth's major interventions are threefold. First, while persuaded of the value of the psychoanalytic version of the trauma‐concept, he critiques the so‐called traumatophilia of postmodern theorists who, usually with reference to the Holocaust, seek to invest trauma with ethical valences and powers of legitimation or even, as in the case of Agamben, raise it to ontological status. Second, through his fine‐grained account of Freud's convergence with and divergence from his French colleagues, especially Charcot and Janet, Roth argues that the stunning breakthrough of psychoanalysis was to take the past seriously, to recognize the inevitable penetration of the past into the present in the human psyche as well our affective investment in and need to narrativize the past. For Roth, Freud's continued relevance today resides in what he has taught us about living with the past. Finally, Roth begins to develop the concept of “piety” as an attitude toward the past that fuels the writing of history. He leaves the concept in rudimentary form, but his evocative remarks suggest the fruitfulness of developing it further.     

Women's Participation in Prehistoric Warfare: A Central Illinois River Valley Case Study

Considerations of Native American warriorhood are likely to conjure images of male‐bodied, masculine individuals. While the majority of formally recognized warriors may have indeed fit this mould, it is also true that female‐bodied/feminine warriors have been historically documented in many places, including North America. Further, even in cases where women were not formally recognized as such, it seems likely that they played offensive and defensive roles on an ‘as needed’ basis, such as on subsistence outings or when their homes and families were under attack. In this paper, we seek to explore the intersection of womanhood and warfare‐related violence at Morton Village (11 F2) and the associated Norris Farms #36 cemetery. This late prehistoric community in the Central Illinois River Valley has been the subject of extensive bioarchaeological interest regarding high levels of skeletally indicated violent trauma. We review this osteological evidence in addition to incorporating mortuary and subsistence perspectives on the ideology and practice of warfare at this time and place. A tripartite approach considering osteological trauma patterns, mortuary commemoration, and new interpretations of community life leads us to suggest an alternate interpretation—one in which Morton Village women are, in at least some instances, considered as active defenders of their community and lifeways rather than passive victims of violence. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.