As Basket and Papu: Making Manus Social Fabric

Between 2012 and 2019, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, hosted Australia's offshore detention centre for asylum seekers and refugees, known as the Regional Processing Centre (RPC). This paper analyses some of the social impacts of the RPC on Lorengau town, the urban centre of Manus, through the analytical lens of the Manus idiom, as basket (Tok Pisin). Materially this refers to the everyday Manus basket whilst metaphorically, it refers to an individual's or community's social, cultural, political and economic base. First, I examine asylum seekers and refugees as a social category that emerged during this period when they were referred to as papu by locals. Papu is an honorific kinship term for grandfather or elder man; for men who are symbols for family identity, social belonging, and rights to land. Second, I examine the changing materiality of Lorengau's markets as indicative of wider societal transformations and dissonance brought about by the RPC. My ethnographic data are based on long term involvement in Manus, including three recent visits to Lorengau in 2017, 2018, and 2019 where I studied the social impacts and the changing social practices of Manus people in response to the RPC.     

The afterlife of earthen-core buildings: A taphonomic study of threatened and effaced architecture in Central Belize

Buried architecture poses an interpretive challenge to field archaeologists the world over. The depositional sequence of the site must be reconstructed through excavation and stratigraphic analysis, and the various phases of construction and use that occurred in the past must be inferred. Effaced earthen-core architecture (e.g., architecture that was once faced with a masonry outer layer that is no longer present) constitutes a heightened challenge in this regard, as events and layers are not always clearly distinguishable, an interpretive difficulty that can be compounded when such architecture is threatened and decay accelerated by modern-day land use activities such as bulldozing and plowing. The case study presented here focuses on an ancient Maya E-Group architectural configuration—a triangular arrangement of structures that served to commemorate astronomical events, among other functions—that is being degraded through repetitive plowing. The significance of this site in regard to Maya archaeology is undeniable, as it was used and reused over a period of at least eight centuries. The site warranted a salvage-based approach designed to gather maximal quantities and types of data when only a minimal amount of time, labor, and funding was available. The procedure presented here was developed for a specific example of endangered, earthen-core Maya architecture in Belize; however, it is applicable to any archaeological project that faces similar obstacles in examining and documenting architecture before it is either eroded or intentionally destroyed.     

A Model for Assessing the Reuse of an Ancient Place of Performance: The Bouleuterion of Teos

Ancient places of performance are often considered for reuse as a means of promoting archaeological sites. Therefore, local authorities and decision makers have a difficult task of balancing the conservation and management of the sites with the carrying capacity. In this paper, the bouleuterion, a ‘rediscovered’ structure, at the Teos archaeological site, in Turkey is evaluated and presented as a preliminary case study with the hopes that these issues will be taken into consideration by the managing body in the creation of a management plan for the site. The evaluation is made by assessing socio-economic and intangible heritage significance, policies guiding changes at the site, a qualitative survey at the site and by defining the structure’s carrying capacity. The site’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are used to create criteria and make proposals for its reuse. The study concludes that the bouleuterion cannot be reused as a venue in its present condition and makes recommendations for future use.     

Holy Fire and sacral kingship in post-conquest Jerusalem

ABSTRACT

In 1101 the Holy Fire failed to appear in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday, as tradition and liturgy dictated. Less a failure and more a deliberately precipitated crisis born of a political struggle of wills between Patriarch Daimbert and King Baldwin, the resolution of this event enabled the kings of Jerusalem to establish dominance over the ecclesiastical sphere for most of the kingdom’s history. A reading of the narrative sources against liturgical sources casts light on the intersection between liturgy and government and on how the simulation of miracles could be used to advance political causes.     

Belonging to Bad: Ambiguity,Parramatta Girls and the Parramatta Girls Home

From 1887 to 1974, ‘corrupt’ adolescent girls were incarcerated in Parramatta Girls Home, a New South Wales state government facility charged with their ‘care and protection’. This paper examines the experiences of former inmates of Parramatta Girls Home (PGH) and explores their ongoing connections to the Home. Using the narratives of former inmates and submissions to public inquiries, the relationship that these women have with the Home and each other is explored. There is a strong thread of connection to place amongst former inmates, with their identity as ‘Parra girls’ shaping aspects of their post‐incarceration lives. For those women who were incarcerated at PGH, the connection to people and place focuses on the Home and is a powerful influence on their subsequent experiences of security and belonging.     

Memory,Identity and Aspiration: Early Modern Jewish Maps of the Promised Land

In the sixteenth century Jews began to produce maps showing the Exodus to the Promised Land. My aim in this article is to show that, through unique compositions of written biblical references and pictured symbolism (both Jewish and Christian), maps such as the Mantua map (1560s) and, a century later, the Amsterdam Haggadah [Passover] map (1695) were a means of constructing Jewish cultural memory and identity in the Diaspora and fostering aspiration for a second salvation through a return to Zion. I also explore the Jewish approach towards the biblical land as this was reflected in the maps.     

Sacred Geography,Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible

The final volume of the Polyglot Bible, edited by Benito Arias Montano and printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin, was published in 1571–1572. Forming part of the Bible's Apparatus, the volume contains a number of essays, illustrations and maps by Montano relating to questions raised by the biblical text. Montano's maps were a product of his philological training in Oriental languages and exegesis, his profound interest in antiquarianism and geography and his practice of visualizing and tabulating knowledge. He designed his maps both as study aids and as devotional‐meditative devices. Moreover, the maps reflect his wider philosophical outlook, according to which Holy Scripture contains the foundations of all natural philosophy. Montano's case encourages us to re‐examine early modern Geographia sacra in the light of the broader scholarly trends of the period.     

Symbolic Places of National History and Revival: A Study in Zionist Mythical Geography

Symbolic places that celebrate history and invest locations with mythical meaning provide a sense of identity in place and time; they fuse history and geography in terms of myth and memory. The retrieval and evocation of ancient history in terms of symbolic places seems to be especially significant in periods of national revival, when the invention and reinvention of tradition feature prominently in the framework of nation-building. This study examines an important aspect of the formation of the mythical geography of Zionist restoration: the retrieval and evocation of ancient Jewish history in terms of Modi'in, Massada, Beitar and Yavneh. These four places have figured prominently in the shaping of the symbolic matrix of Zionist revival. The article examines the emergence of these symbolic locations and elaborates on the cultural and political meanings assigned to them in different periods and political contexts. It further elucidates their association with particular sectors of Zionist society, and their affiliation with ideological perspectives, and focuses on particular symbolic places that have emerged in the course of Zionist restoration and the conflation of a Jewish past and a Zionist present. At the same time, this is a case study of the politics of symbolic places and their role in the shaping of the mythical geography of national revival.     

石门坎现象成因分析

石门坎,云贵乌蒙山区的一片蛮荒、高寒之地。石门乡至今仍是贵州屈指可数的边远贫困乡。但在20世纪上半期,石门坎竟成为＂西南苗族最高文化区＂、＂文化圣地＂,创造了数个文化奇迹。分析其成因有：特殊的社会、历史背景;基督教进入、认同、互动与大环境建设;创制苗文及乡村教育网络的形成等。     

Historic preservation in Nazi Germany: place, memory, and nationalism

While numerous studies have examined the post-war contestation surrounding commemorative sites associated with the legacy of Nazi Germany, relatively little attention has been dedicated to the ways in which the Nazi regime itself sought to create places of memory congruent with the movement's political and cultural goals. Indeed, party leaders sponsored a variety of disparate, and at times contradictory, programs to re-orientate some of Germany's most prominent historic places to better serve the needs of the regime. To expand our understanding of this process, this article examines the practice and rhetoric of historic preservation in Bavaria during the Nazi period with a focus on the preservationist program sponsored by Bavarian President Ludwig Siebert. Nazi propaganda promised to rejuvenate and protect Germany's architectural heritage for the public good, but the regime's actual priorities and policies led to widespread confiscation, damage, and eventually destruction.