Building More Inclusive Solidarities for Socio‐Environmental Change: Lessons in Resistance from Southern Appalachia

It is increasingly recognized that socio‐environmental justice will not be achieved through liberal and cosmopolitical forms of activism alone. Instead, more diverse and inclusive solidarities must be achieved across political ideologies for transformative change. By engaging with one constituency often overlooked by mainstream environmentalists—rural, conservative Americans—we argue for a situated solidarity that can be forged among people whose views of nature, community, and politics differ significantly. This framework rejects totalizing expressions of global ambition that erase important place‐based differences. To explore this ethic, we examine a localized anti‐fracking campaign in western North Carolina to determine how place‐based forms of environmental resistance can be brought in closer connection with the cosmopolitical movement for climate and energy justice. This requires that cosmopolitical movements make room for more customary forms of cultural politics, while conservative movements look beyond their own place‐based struggles to resist mutually experienced forms of oppression.     

On the Origins of Pottery

Renewed research interest in the origins of pottery has illuminated an array of possible precipitating causes and environmental contexts in which pottery began to be made and used. This article is an attempt at synthesizing some of these data in hopes of stimulating further research into this intriguing topic. Following a review of theories on the origins of pottery, discussion proceeds to a survey of geographic and cultural contexts of low-fired or unfired pottery, highlighting the role(s) of pottery among contemporary hunter-gatherers and summarizing data pertaining to varied uses of pottery containers. It is argued that objects of unfired and low-fired clay were created as part of early prestige technologies of material representations beginning in the Upper Paleolithic and are part of an early software horizon. Clay began to be more widely manipulated by nonsedentary, complex hunter-gatherers in the very Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in areas of resource abundance, especially in tropical/subtropical coastal/riverine zones, as part of more general processes of resource and social intensification (such as competitive feasting or communal ritual). Knowledge of making and using pottery containers spread widely as prestige technology and as practical technology, the kind and timing of its adoption or reinvention varying from location to location depending on specific needs and circumstances.     

Political-Ecology Perspectives on New World Loza (Majolica)

Political ecology, with its focus on twenty-first century power relations and resource access, also provides a perspective on commodity production in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century emergent global economy. The focus here is on majolica pottery (tin-enameled ware; loza) and the spread of its technology from Spain to the Americas. Topics discussed include: the formation of business clusters and cluster regions, and their shifting patterns of decline, survival, and adaptability; access to resources used in making the vessels, the enamel, and decorative pigments (especially cobalt); the role of Muslim artisans; and the sources of innovation and entrepreneurship in loza production.     

Maya Crocodilians: Intersections of Myth and the Natural World at Early Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Petén,Guatemala

This essay pursues a four-pronged, interdisciplinary approach in considering the possibility that the unusual layout of the lowland Maya site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in the lakes region of central Petén, Guatemala, might have been modeled on the scaly back of a crocodile. Part 1 summarizes the biological characteristics of crocodilians, particularly Crocodylus moreletii, and their habitats in lowland Mesoamerica. Part 2 reviews interpretations of these reptiles in myth and art, and exploitation of the creature in the lakes area. Third, the ceremonial core of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, established in the Middle Preclassic (800–400 BCE) period, is discussed. It exhibits an unusual grid of corridors creating a landscape resembling the bony plates of a crocodilian’s back, and a natural cenote-like fosa is proposed to relate to a mythical “Starry Deer Crocodile.” Part 4 discusses probable social and political characteristics of early community leaders who planned this site’s atypical layout, viewed through selectionist theories of cooperation and costly signaling. Designed to mimic the mythical crocodile of creation, Nixtun-Ch’ich’ illustrates the role of ideological power in the development of complex societies.     

Recent ceramic analysis: 2. Composition,production, and theory

This is the second of two articles reviewing the burgeoning literature on recent ceramic analysis. The first (Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1996) (pp. 133–163) surveyed functional and stylistic analyses and pottery origins. This article reviews compositional investigations and studies of pottery production, both of which have flourished in a period of heightened examination of specific techniques, assumptions, and concepts, such as standardization. In addition, researchers are exploring new analytical methods as well as approaches to ceramic theory. The review closes with a series of observations and critiques of current directions.     

A Preamble to Family Policy: Issues of the Past and Present

The subject of family appears appropriately related to social policy, since family functions interface with society so closely. Moreover, U.S. families have been changing rapidly enough in this decade to warrant new attention to policy development. Public and political interest in family policy has been growing. Yet, historical barriers to government targeting family issues for policy development abound. While some intellectual, organizational, and bureaucratic mobilization has occurred, producing broad family policy declarations, interest groups are in the process of positioning themselves differentially, and disagreement about the value of explicit family policy is on the increase. The author believes that family policy will develop slowly in the D.S., and that comprehensive and cohesive family policy can better be considered a goal rather than a readily implemented public activity.