Indagaciones sobre alteridad e identidad: Puntos de contacto y puntos de partida en los estudios coloniales

Implicit Understandings. Observing, reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. Edición de STUART SCHWARTZ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xv, 637.

Coded Encounters. Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America. Edición de FRANCISCO JAVIER CEVALLOS‐CANDAU, JEFFREY A. COLE, NINA M. SCOTT, and NICOMEDES SUAREZ‐ARAUZ. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994. Pp. 298.

Literatura fundacional americana: El Espejo de paciencia. Por JUANA GOERGEN. Madrid: Editorial Pliegos, 1993. Pp. 142.

Cartas de relación. Por HERNAN CORTES. Edición de ANGEL DELGADO GOMEZ. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1993. Pp. 687.

Vitier, Cintio. 1970. Lo cubano en la poesía. La Habana: Instituto del Libro.     

Reduction Factors for Seismic Design Spectra for Structures with Viscous Energy Dampers

A simple mathematical expression is proposed to estimate spectra reduction damping factors for seismic design of systems with viscous dampers. The expression is obtained from the ratios between ordinates of uniform hazard spectra associated with two different return intervals (50 and 125 years), corresponding to sites with different types of soil within the Valley of Mexico. The expression proposed depends on the dominant period of the soil, and on both the vibration period and damping ratio of the structural system. Values of the damping factors proposed here are comparable to those recommended by different authors and seismic design building codes.     

Book reviews

The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction. By Melvin Richter (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), vii + 204 pp., £ 35 cloth.

The Life of Adam Smith. By Ian Simpson Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) xxviii + 495 pp. £25.00 cloth.

Martin Heidegger and the Holocaust. Edited by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1996) xiv + 271 pp. $60.00 cloth.

The Making of Portuguese Democracy. By Kenneth Maxwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 250 pp. £14.95/$19.95 paper.

Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763–1815. By Ken Alder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xvi + 476 pp. $59.50/£45 cloth.

The Wars of Eduard Shevardnaze. By Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvin A. Goodman (Unversity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 1997), xxiii + 331 pp. $29.95/£26.95 cloth.

The Legacy of the French Revolution. Edited by Ralph C. Hancock and L. Gary Lambert (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), viii + 299 pp. $19.95 paper.

Suffering and the Remedy of Art. By Harold Schweizer (State University of New York Press, 1997), xii +211 pp. $17.95 paper.

Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre‐Revolutionary Baden. By Dagmar Herzog (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), x + 252 pp. $49.50/£42.50 cloth, $16.95/£13.95 paper.

In Search of Dreamtime: The Quest for the Origin of Religion. By Tomoko Masuzawa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 223 pp. $15.95 paper.

Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. By Richard Adair (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), ix + 273 pp. £40 cloth.

Correlation and Regression Analysis: A Historian's Guide. By Thomas J. Archdeacon (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), xxi + 352 pp. $44.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Unified Theories of Cognition. By Allen Newell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), xiii + 549 pp. $19.95 paper.

Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. By Peter Dear (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), xii + 290 pp. $60.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: The case of Philip Melanchthon. By Sachiko Kusukawa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xv + 246 pp. $59.95/£35.00 cloth.

Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics. By Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, and Thomas E. Uebel (Cambrdige: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xii + 288 pp. $59.95/£35.00 cloth.

Aramis or The Love of Technology. By Bruno Latour. Translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), x + 314 pp. $45.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Galileo on the World Systems: A New Abridged Translation and Guide. Translated and edited by Maurice A. Finocchiaro (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), xi + 435 pp. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Europe's Economy Looks East: Implications for Germany and the European Union. Edited by Stanley W. Black (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xvi + 363 pp. £45.00/$ 64.95 cloth.

The Transformation of Capitalist Society. By Zellig S. Harris (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), xiii + 245 pp. £19.50 paper.

Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. By William Ian Miller (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997), xii + 407 pp. $17.95 paper.

From Virgil to Vietnam: The Founding Legend of Western Civilization. By Richard Waswo (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997), xvi + 356 pp. n.p.g. cloth.

Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Edited by Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), xv + 291 pp. $16.95 paper.

Nature and the Idea of a Man‐Made World: An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order in the Built Environment. By Norman Crowe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995 hardback, 1997 paper), 270 pp. $17.50 paper.

The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism and Degeneracy at the Fin de Siècle. By Kelly Hurley (Cambridge University Press, 1996), xii + 203 pp. £30.00 $49.95 cloth.

Russia's Constitutional Revolution: Legal Consciousness and the Transition to Democracy 1985–1996. By Robert B. Ahdieh (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), viii + 255 pp. £26.95 $30.00 cloth, £13.50 $14.95 paper.

Hunters and Collectors: the Antiquarian Imagination in Australia. By Tom Griffiths (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xiv + 416 pp. £45.00/$64.95 cloth.

Persecution, Extermination, Literature. By Sem Dresden, trans. by Henry G. Schogt (University of Toronto Press 1995), viii + 237 pp. N. America $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper, Europe $54 cloth, $2.55 paper.

Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. By Paul Rabinow (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996), vxii + 190 pp. $49.50 £40.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. By Charles S. Maier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xx + 441 pp. $29.95 cloth.

History: What & Why?: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Perspectives. By Beverley Southgate (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), xii + 167 pp. £11.99 paper.

Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France. By Jeffrey Mehlman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xi + 262 pp. $59.95 cloth.

Launching Europe: An Ethnography of European Cooperation in Space Science. By Stacia E. Zabusky (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), xii + 257 pp. $17.95 paper/$49.50 cloth.

Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years. By John Chapple (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), xviii + 492 pp. £25.00 cloth.

Adam Ferguson: An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edited by Fania Oz‐Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xxxv + 283 pp. £37.50/$54.95 cloth.

Greek Heroine Cults. By Jennifer Larson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) xv + 235 pp., £33.50 cloth, £16.00 paper.

Florence Nightingale: Letters from the Crimea 1854–1856. Edited by Sue M. Goldie (Oxford: Mandolin, 1997), xx + 326 pp. £9.00 paper.

A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence. By Jeffrey Burton Russell (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), xv + 220 pp. $24.95 cloth.

Heidegger's Silence. By Berel Lang (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), xi + 129 pp. $19.95 cloth.

Simon de Montfort. By J. R. Maddicott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xxiii + 404 pp., 14.95/ $24.95 paper.

Communities of Violence: Persecutions of Minorities in the Middle Ages. By David Nirenberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), viii + 301 pp. $29.95/£23.95, cloth.     

Modeling Mechanisms of Cultural Diversity and Ethnicity in Hunter–Gatherers

This paper aims to analyze the emergence of ethnicity and cultural differentiation in hunter–gatherer groups, using computer simulation methods. The existence of differences and similarities between populations has long been a major topic of investigation for archaeologists, who have traditionally used material culture as a means to identify different human groups. Today, this approach is perceived as being too simplistic. However, in the absence of satisfactory models, it often continues to be assumed as valid. In this paper, we present a preliminary model and its computer implementation to predict how hunter–gatherer societies interacted and built cultural identities as a consequence of the way they interacted. Our starting point for such analysis assumes the definition of ethnicity as the production and reproduction of group identity among members of a community, resulting from restricted cooperation flows. Results are compared with ongoing ethnoarchaeological research of Patagonian hunter–gatherers.     

Archaeogenetic study of prehistoric rice remains from Thailand and India: evidence of early <Emphasis Type="Italic">japonica</Emphasis> in South and Southeast Asia

We report a successful extraction and sequencing of ancient DNA from carbonized rice grains (Oryza sativa) from six archaeological sites, including two from India and four from Thailand, ranging in age from ca. 2500 to 1500 BP. In total, 221 archaeological grains were processed by PCR amplification and primary-targeted fragments were sequenced for comparison with modern sequences generated from 112 modern rice populations, including crop and wild varieties. Our results include the genetic sequences from both the chloroplast and the nuclear genomes, based on four markers from the chloroplast and six from the nuclear genome. These markers allow differentiation of indica rice from japonica rice, the two major subspecies of Asian rice (O. sativa) considered to have separate geographical origins. One nuclear marker differentiates tropical and temperate forms of subspecies japonica. Other markers relate to phenotypic variation selected for under domestication, such as non-shattering, grain stickiness (waxy starch) and pericarp colour. Recovery and identification of sequences from nuclear markers was generally poor, whereas recovery of chloroplast sequences was successful, with at least one of four markers recovered in 61 % of archaeological grains. This allowed for successful differentiation of indica or japonica subspecies variety, with japonica identified in all the Thai material and a mixture of indica and japonica chloroplasts in the two Indian assemblages. Rice subspecies was also assessed through conventional archaeobotanical methods relying on grain metrics, based on measurements from 13 modern populations and 499 archaeological grains. Grain metrics also suggest a predominance of japonica-type grains in the Southeast Asian sites and a mixture of japonica and indica in the Indian sites with indica in the minority. The similar results of grain metrics and ancient DNA (aDNA) affirm that grain measurements have some degree of reliability in rice subspecies identification. The study also highlights the great potential of ancient DNA recovery from archaeological rice. The data generated in the present study adds support to the model of rice evolution that includes hybridization between japonica and proto-indica.     

The Potential of EBSD and EDS for Ceramics Investigations—Case Studies on Sherds of Pre‐Columbian Pottery

The work focuses on the potential of structural and chemical examinations by scanning electron microscopy based methods for archaeometric studies on ceramics. Achieved by a single preparation technique (polished block sections), the feasibility and benefits of electron backscatter diffraction are demonstrated as case studies using polychrome examples of pre‐Columbian pottery (Wari, Moche and Cajamarca). Elemental and phase maps allow for separate consideration of clay and temper. Identification of mineral phases and intergrowths of temper particles provide information for clarifying clay procurement and firing techniques with respect to local versus non‐local pottery to enlighten trade relations, technological transfer and shared heritage of pre‐Columbian cultures.     

Consilience of genetics and archaeobotany in the entangled history of rice

Major leaps forward in understanding rice both in genetics and archaeology have taken place in the past decade or so—with the publication of full draft genomes for indica and japonica rice, on the one hand, and with the spread of systematic flotation and increased recovery of archaeological spikelet bases and other rice remains on early sites in China, India and Southeast Asia. This paper will sketch a framework that coherently integrates the evidence from these burgeoning fields. This framework implies a reticulate framework in the phylogeny of early cultivated rice, with multiple starts of cultivation (two is perhaps not enough) but with the key consolidations of adaptations that must have been spread through hybridisation and therefore long-distance cultural contacts. Archaeobotanical evidence allows us to document the gradual evolutionary process of domestication through rice spikelet bases and grain size change. Separate trends in grain size change can be identified in India and China. The earliest centre of rice domestication was in the Yangtze basin of China, but a largely separate trajectory into rice cultivation can be traced in the Ganges plains of India. Intriguingly, contact-induced hybridisation is indicated for the early development of indica in northern India, ca. 2000 BC. An updated synthesis of the interwoven patterns of the spread of various rice varieties throughout Asia and to Madagascar can be suggested in which rice reached most of its historical range of important cultivation by the Iron Age.