Archaeometric analysis of ceramic production in Tiwanaku state (c.500–1000 ce): An exploratory study

The chemical and mineralogical characterization of seven ceramic fragments produced within Tiwanaku state (c.500–1000 ce ) is reported. The instrumental techniques used included X‐ray elemental and mineralogical chemical analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and scanning and light microscopy. The results indicate there are several clay types, although they show similarities, such as the use of a plant‐based temper. The red colour of the decoration is hematite, and manganese oxides such as jacobsite are present in the black. The white colour is a mixture of gypsum and clay, and the orange is a mixture of hematite and clay. The use of colours, the quality of the clays and the temperatures reached during pottery firing point to expertise in ceramic production and to complex decision‐making processes. The multi‐elemental archaeometric approach documented here could become an important tool to shed a light on ancient ceramic technology and the internal variance of Tiwanaku pottery.     

Gastrointestinal parasites in ancient South American camelid feces from the Atacama Desert (Pampa del Tamarugal,Tarapacá, northern Chile)

Faunal remains from archeological sites worldwide, especially feces and regurgitated pellets, are usually subjected to paleoparasitological examination, allowing the identification of past animal parasites. In this study, we analyzed 10 samples of South American camelid dung, which played an important role for the ancient human groups in the South-Central Andes, dated between 341 and 1635 calCE, from the Iluga Túmulos site (Pampa del Tamarugal, Tarapacá region, Atacama Desert, Chile). Microscopy examination revealed parasite remains in seven samples, in which oocysts of Eimeria macusaniensis and eggs of Lamanema chavezi/Nematodirus lamae, Trichuris sp., Moniezia sp., capillariids, strongylids, and unidentified nematodes were found. Although some of these species pose a potential health risk to camelids, most are not considered to be of major zoonotic importance, which could explain the absence of these parasites on human coprolites from this site analyzed previously. This first paleoparasitological study on camelid fecal remains from northern Chile sheds light on the occurrence of gastrointestinal parasites and its relationship with Andean ancient human populations and the environment.     

Overcoming barriers to institutional integration in European second-tier urban regions

Within the debates about the socio-economic advantages of cohesive urban regions, several barriers to institutional integration are said to exist, especially when a metropolitan government is absent and integration relies on inter-municipal cooperation. Some barriers are associated with different urban region structures, such as the asymmetric power relations and sociocultural contrasts between municipalities in systems with dominant core cities, or the lack of a leading city to overcome fragmentation and provide a shared identity in polycentric urban regions (PURs). This paper investigates whether urban regions formed around second-tier cities, whose features depart from both dominant core and PUR models, are able to mitigate these barriers when pursuing integration strategies. The analysis relies on interviews with municipal leaders in three representative European case studies, examining how they perceive the barriers to inter-municipal relations in second-tier urban regions. The findings show that perceptions vary not only between regions, with the three cases following different trajectories of integration, but also within regions, according to the geographical and socio-economic context of municipalities and the legacy of past relations. In general, barriers to integration are not minimized without explicit efforts to rebalance power relations, approach political cultures, mobilize core city leadership and develop a metropolitan identity.     

Producing African-descent: afro-peruvian music,intangible heritage,authenticity and bureaucracy in a Latin American music compilation

ABSTRACT

Policy and actions for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) are laced with politics of representation and meaning-making of expressive culture within and outside communities. This article explores how ICH experts, practitioners, activists, and other actors negotiate and re-construct ideas of racial identity and authenticity in one such initiative. Sponsored by CRESPIAL in 2012, the album Cantos y Música Afrodescendientes de América Latina is a compilation of music of Afro-descendant communities in Latin America. Conceived as a project for safeguarding the musical ICH of these communities, it involved participation from thirteen Latin American governments. This paper, centered on the Peruvian participation in this project, studies the bureaucratic intricacies of this project, exploring how ideas on racial identity and authenticity overlap with political agendas and administrative requirements in order to produce a unified representation of ‘Afro-Latin American’ music. My analysis highlights 1) the local knowledge systems that inform the ideas of racial identity and authenticity advanced by the project’s actors; 2) their adopted strategies within Peru’s bureaucratic network of heritage management; and 3) the positionality, capacity and agency of each actor for achieving their particular goals in this collaborative project.     

Tourism and nationalism in the production of regional culture: the shaping of Majorca's popular songbook between 1837 and 1936

This article offers a microhistorical approach to the shaping of regional cultures during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to show that this process was not only imposed from centres of nationalisation as a complement of national identity, but that it also had to be negotiated with elites in provinces at the periphery. Specifically, the article looks at how the regional songbook of Majorca took shape between 1837 and 1936. In this process of musical regionalisation, the cultural authority of the tourism and colonial discourse about the island was strategically exploited by local musicians to gain some share of power from below in negotiating their own regional identity with nationalising institutions. In this way, the Spanish and Catalan national identities being projected over the island were ultimately decentred and transformed.     

Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana and the American Georgic

Bernardo de Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana (1604) stands between two worlds. One of the earliest and most spectacular poetic celebrations of the wonders of the city of Mexico, this text was addressed both at the American and the Spanish audience, producing a duplicitous message. The capital of New Spain is presented as one of the most loyal and productive colonies of the Hispanic empire, though it is also celebrated for its economic autonomy and cultural supremacy with regards to the metropolis. These dualisms are also noticeable in the poetic style of Balbuena’s work, which, following the traditional idea of the Wheel of Virgil, adopts old classical models to portray the New World whilst anticipating Baroque poetics. Following the example of Virgil, Balbuena fashioned his literary career as a process organised in three distinct evolutionary stages, beginning with a bucolic text, Siglo de Oro en las selvas de Erífile, and culminating with an epic poem, El Bernardo. Grandeza stood between these two, adapting the rural setting of the Georgics to an urban context, and offering an idealised account of the Virgilian praise of human industry, which placed Balbuena and the other members of the lettered class on the forefront of Mexican society.     

POTENTIAL HISTORY: READING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES*

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, history, as a core concept of the political project of modernity, was highly concerned with the future. The many crimes, genocides, and wars perpetuated in the name of historical progress eventually caused unavoidable fractures in the way Western philosophies of history have understood change over time, leading to a depoliticization of the future and a greater emphasis on matters of the present. However, the main claim of the “Historical Futures” project is that the future has not completely disappeared from the focus of historical thinking, and some modalities of the future that have been brought to the attention of historical thought relate to a more-than-human reality. This article aims to confront the prospects of a technological singularity through the eyes of peoples who already live in a world of more-than-human agency. The aim of this confrontation is to create not just an alternative way to think about the future but a stance from which we can explore ways to inhabit and therefore repoliticize historical futures. This article contains a comparative study that has been designed to challenge our technologized imaginations of the future and, at the same time, to infuse the theoretical experiment with contingent historical experiences. Could we consider artificial intelligence as a new historical subject? What about as an agent in a “more-than-human” history? To what extent can we read this new condition through ancient Amerindian notions of time? Traditionally, the relationship between Western anthropocentrism and Amerindian anthropomorphism has been framed in terms of an opposition. We intend to prefigure a less hierarchical and more horizontal relation between systems of thought, one devoid of a fixed center or parameter of reference. Granting the same degree of intellectual dignity to the works of Google engineers and the views of Amazonian shamans, we nevertheless foster an intercultural dialogue (between these two “traditions of reasoning”) about a future in which history can become more-than-human. We introduce potential history as the framework not only to conceptualize Amerindian experiences of time but also to start building an intercultural dialogue that is designed to discuss AI as a historical subject.