A Future for Archaeology: In Defense of an Intellectually Engaged,Collaborative and Confident Archaeology

Through a critical review of inter- and transdisciplinarity in archaeology, this paper examines the power relationships within archaeology with regards to collaborators within and beyond the academy. By making a case for an archaeology that openly collaborates across disciplines and knowledge systems, but also more firmly articulates itself and its value, the paper makes a case for an engaged and problematising archaeology for the future.     

ACCOUNTING FOR LOCAL SPATIAL HETEROGENEITIES IN HOUSING MARKET STUDIES

We adopt a novel method to deal with omitted spatial heterogeneities in hedonic house price analysis. A Gaussian variant of the conditional autoregressive (CAR) model is used to study the impact of spatial effects. In a general linear modeling framework, we include zone‐specific random effects that are allowed to interact spatially with neighboring zones. The results demonstrate that this estimator accounts for missing spatial information, producing more reliable results on estimated spatially related coefficients. The CAR model is benchmarked against a fixed effects model. Socioeconomic neighborhood characteristics are found to have only modest impact on spatial variation in housing prices.     

Comments on Charlotte Damm (2005): Archaeology,Ethnohistory and Oral Traditions: Approaches to the Indigenous Past. Norwegian Archaeological Review 38, 73–87.

Grave finds from the late Iron Age in the district of Sogn form the point of departure in this essay. Burial customs are regarded as conditioned by the society of the living in the sense that elements in the memorials built (or not) and rites performed at the burial are assumed to symbolize social relations—roles and ranks.

It is attempted to find out how these ranks are divided between men and women and why, and tentatively, what implications this division has for our general interpretation of the society in question.     

An Early Upper Palaeolithic Stone Tool Assemblage from Mughr El-Hamamah,Jordan: An Interim Report

Mughr el-Hamamah (Jordan) Layer B contains an Early Upper Palaeolithic stone tool assemblage dating to around 39–45 kya cal b.p. This assemblage is unusual in that it samples human forager activities around the ecotone between the Transjordanian Plateau and the palaeo-lake (Lake Lisan) that filled much of the Jordan Valley during Late Pleistocene times. This paper describes that assemblage, comparing it to other Levantine Upper Palaeolithic assemblages of equivalent antiquity. The Mughr el-Hamamah Layer B assemblage appears most similar to Early Ahmarian assemblages, but it departs from typical such assemblages in ways that may reflect local conditions’ influence on human activities carried out in and near the cave. Mughr el-Hamamah raises new questions about changes in residential mobility, off-site provisioning and foraging activity, and on-site task diversity in the Early Upper Palaeolithic period.     

The Sensitivity of Country Ranks to Index Construction and Aggregation Choice: The Case of Immigration Policy

How sensitive are country ranks to the aggregation function used in index construction? This paper tests whether different aggregation functions come to different results in regard to the ranking of countries. Indices within the field of immigration and integration policy are analyzed, yet, the results pertain to index building across the social sciences. The paper discusses three aggregation methods: the arithmetic mean, the geometric mean, and a noncompensatory/non‐linear aggregation function based on the Condorcet method. In the empirical part, these three aggregation functions are applied to the family indicators for the year 2010 of the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) dataset, a new dataset which measures immigration policies’ restrictiveness, as well as to the eight policy strands of the Migrant Integration Policy Index for the year 2014. Results show that the methods react differently to extreme values and thus result in different rank orders in the middle range. In the politicized field of immigration and integration policies, country ranks play a crucial role and this is shown to have profound real‐world implications. The paper thus urges researchers to be reflective of the assumptions of different aggregation functions, as these lead to different results.     

Children accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Finnmark

This article deals with six children accused of witchcraft in the district of Finnmark, Northern Norway, during a witchcraft panic in 1663. Through a narratological approach, the article presents close-readings of court records, trying to detect the various voices heard in the documents: the voice of the accused person, the voice of the law and the voice of the scribe. The article draws attention to four points discussed within ongoing witchcraft research: the role of the scribe, the individualized character of the children's confessions, oral transference of witchcraft ideas and the speed of transmission of ideas about witchcraft. The analyses show that children confessed to similar demonological elements as adults, similarly seen in other European countries. The contents must be known before the children were brought before the court, as their answers to leading questions were detailed. The voices of the children are individualized, there is no indication that the confessions are constructions made by the scribe. The influence of specific persons had great influence on transference of demonological ideas.     

Review - H. B. Clarke,M. N Mhaonaigh,R. Ó Floinn (eds.): Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age

Magdalena Midgley: The First Farmers of the North European Plain. Edinburgh University Press, 1992. XVI + 550 pp. 132 figs. ISBN 0 7486 0348 4.

Julian Thomas: Rethinking the Neolithic. (New Studies in Archaeology). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991. xvi + 212 pp. 60 figures. ISBN 0–521–40377–4 (hardback).

Stuart J. Fiedel: Prehistory of the Americas. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992. 400pp. ISBN 0–521–41532–2—ISBN 0–521–42544–1 (pbk.).

Timothy Earle (ed.): Chiefdoms: Power, Economy and Ideology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991. 34 pp. ISBN 0–521–40190–9.

J?rgen Steen Jensen, Kirsten Bendixen, Niels‐Knud Liebgott and Fritze Lindahl, with the cooperation of Keld Grinder‐Hansen and Gert Posselt: Danmarks middelalderlige skattefund c.1050‐C.1550/Denmark's medieval treasure‐hoards C.1050‐C.1550, I‐II. Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab, Copenhagen, 1992. ISBN 87–87483–23–2.     

NEW ASPECTS OF THE MESOLITHIC‐NEOLITHIC CEMETERIES AND SETTLEMENT AT ZVEJNIEKI,NORTHERN LATVIA

The paper reflects upon recent international research at Zvejnieki in northern Latvia, a renowned complex of a burial ground and two settlement sites used in the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Since its discovery and first excavations in the 1960s, Zvejnieki continues to produce evidence that provides new grounds for understanding mortuary practises and ancient lifeways. This information is relevant for other contemporary sites in Europe revealing new and hitherto unexpected elements of burial traditions. It is suggested that the Zvejnieki population was partly mobile, and the site was one of the places to bury the dead. The ancestral link was established through transportation and use of occupational debris from more ancient sites and through the incorporation of earlier burial space or even burials into the new graves. The depth of a burial also appears to be a significant variable in ancient mortuary practices.