The Eulau eulogy: Bioarchaeological interpretation of lethal violence in Corded Ware multiple burials from Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

The Corded Ware is one of the major archaeological traditions of Late Neolithic Europe. Its burial customs are characterized by single graves but multiple burials also occur. We present a detailed study of antemortem and perimortem trauma in a group of Corded Ware skeletons from four multiple graves and give the most probable interpretation of the site, based upon all available bioarchaeological evidence. The pattern of observed injuries in male, female, and subadult skeletons, including cranial trauma, arrow wounds, and fractures of the forearm and hands points towards a violent event that resulted in the death of all individuals, most probably a raid. In contrast to comparable Neolithic raid sites, there was no complete extermination of the local population and no use of mass graves. The burials have been arranged with care and detailed knowledge about biological kinship ties [Haak, W., Brandt, G., de Jong, H.N., Meyer, C., Ganslmeier, R., Heyd, V., Hawkesworth, C., Pike, A.W.G., Meller, H., Alt, K.W., 2008. Ancient DNA, strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organization of the Later Stone Age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, 18226–18231]. The combination of clear causes of death and the proven biological relationships among some of the individuals, including a nuclear family, provides new and important insights into Corded Ware mortuary customs and the reasons why and how multiple graves have been utilised.     

Blood talks: Eugenic modernity and the creation of new Japanese

In fin-de-siècle Japan, the ideal of "eugenic modernity," or the application of scientific concepts and methods as a means to constitute both the nation and its constituent subjects (New Japanese), crystallized in the space of imperialism. Three of the main themes explored are the application of eugenic principles to make connections between biology, kinship, and the plasticity of the human body; to contemporize historical stigmas; and to promote "pure-bloodedness" and "ethnic-national endogamy" as cultural ideals.     

Change and Continuity: Networking,Newspaper, Kinships and Twentieth Century Elite Women

This article examines the juncture point between British-(Anglo)-American elite women in the first half of the twentieth century, their female networks and newspapers. It considers the maternal background, reconstructing biological and fictive kinships, to illustrate generational patterns leading to both female barrier-breaking in elite western institutions and clustering in the political and charitable work environments. The paper covers a century of adult female life using a central stem matrikin whose activities can be recovered through press-cuttings which chart change and continuity of values, confidence, identity and self-awareness through the range of kin based networks. It reconsiders the background to the 1970s breakthrough of women in leadership within elite political and charitable western institutions which has previously been considered as a result of effective equal opportunities combatting barriers rooted in male networking patterns. Finally, it reflects on the nature of the press as encountered by, used by and marginalising of elite women during the period.     

The Construction of Continuity in Lesu: The Historical Anthropology of a New Ireland Society

This study examines features of social organization originally encountered in New Ireland in 1929–30 by the anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker. It aims to depict important aspects of social life before these were transformed by colonial and missionary influences. Kinship and marriage are discussed as topoi in discourses of continuity. It is suggested that in a social landscape of demographic limitations and widespread violence, social morphology was generated through categorical distinctions providing symbolic order in a dense texture of factual kinship, an order imposed to counteract the ever‐present shadow of incest. The social grammar prescribed a primary uterinely defined demarcation of belonging. As a parallel counterpoint, there was also an agnatically inspired alternative cultural modality. In this other possible world, the main distinction was that between men and women, uterine belonging being irrelevant.     

Mother Scorpion: Women’s Politics and Affinal Relations among the Miskitu and other “Brideservice Societies”

This article is concerned with modelling the logic of social processes and cultural representations that inform “politics and gender in simple societies” (Collier and Rosaldo 1981 Collier, J. F. and Rosaldo, M. Z. 1981. “Politics and Gender in Simple Societies”. In Sexual Meanings, Edited by: Ortner, S. and Whitehead, H. New York: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar]), and considers the well‐known ideal type presented by Collier and Rosaldo in which particular gendered practices and ideas are organized around a style of marriage commonly termed “brideservice”. These authors’ modelling of the cultural logic of so‐called “brideservice societies” provides in many ways a satisfyingly coherent analysis of this institution that offers considerable predictive power, but it remains in some respects a partial account neglecting important aspects of older women’s political motivations and representations and the role of these women in the context of corporate groups. I consider here ethnographic materials from the Miskitu of eastern Nicaragua, amongst whom brideservice is widely practiced, to highlight some limitations with Collier and Rosaldo’s ideal type, arguing that their model should be modified to accommodate these limitations.     

Kinship and mobility in 11th-century A.D. Gammertingen,Germany: an interdisciplinary approach

Excavation in and around a Medieval church in Gammertingen, Germany, revealed the skeletal remains of eight individuals dating to the 10th and 11th century AD. Archaeologists hypothesized that the individuals were the first members of a family later known as the Counts of Gammertingen, a medieval high nobility family. In an interdisciplinary approach, Strontium isotope and ancient DNA techniques were performed in order to test the hypothesis that the church was used as a family burial site and to investigate the provenance of family members. Seven of the eight individuals can be placed in a three-generation genealogy. The isotope analyses establish that the eighth individual had a different birthplace and possibly became a member of the Counts of Gammertingen through marriage. Further, genetic data revealed that distant relatives of the paternal lineage are still present in this area today. Thus, the combined results lead to a very detailed knowledge about a 1000-year old noble family.     

The Capetian apanages and the nature of the French kingdom

The Capetian apanages have traditionally been studied from the perspective of the developing national monarchy. This approach is anachronistic; its premises are drawn from a later century, and even within the Capetian period it groups together with little differentiation the attitudes and intentions of five generations of kings.The context for the early Capetian apanages is the successional customs of the nobility, which the kings knew well from having seen them practised by their baronial neighbors. The determining concepts behind these measures were not those of the crown and the royal domain, but rather the societal ones by which, through the succession, the individual members of the family were ordered in relation to the family's lands.Only in the last quarter of the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth centuries did the kings and the Parlement impose the series of rulings which molded Capetian practice into a distinctively royal pattern. For most of the period under consideration, the territorial kingdom was treated as an aggregate of separable holdings, most of which were the private inheritance of the ruling family.     

How elections are fought in Ascoli: kinship,politics, history and culture

Based on fieldwork and archival study in a small north Puglian town, this article explores the complex interrelationship between kinship and politics. In the context of a recent local election, it seeks to show how ties of kinship and affinity provide a moral framework and idiom for civic cooperation, and how shared political ideologies and a common political heritage define and reinforce a sense of lineage identity. It argues that a failure to engage with the implications of 'kinship beyond the household' has both detracted from the analysis of Italian local politics and impeded our understanding of the long-term resilience of wider kinship forms,especially in periods of acute system change.     

Repertoires of Family Life and the Anchoring of Afghan Trading Networks in Ukraine

This article examines the “repertories” of family life of men of Afghan background in Odessa, Ukraine. It focuses on these men's intimate relationships with “local women” and challenges the notion that such unions merely offer a form of emotional escape for migrants or refugees far from home. Instead, we advance two arguments: first, that Afghan men in Ukraine form part of a complex transnational trading network, rather than a bounded group of refugees or migrants; second, that the cross-community relationships between Afghan men and “local women” play a significant role in the spatial anchoring and commercial fortunes of transnational Afghan traders in Ukraine. In the analysis of our ethnographic data, we consider the importance of the aftermath of the Cold War in shaping the diverse forms of family life within these trading networks.     

Urbanities: Grecanici Migration to the City of Reggio Calabria,South Italy

This paper discusses degrees of urbanity or urbanities using ethnographic data from research conducted among the Grecanici communities in the city of Reggio Calabria, south Italy. Urbanization in south Italy is usually associated with social and territorial mobility, education and natural disasters. It is further discussed in terms of a rural/urban duality that masks rather than reveals possible diversities concerning the social life in the city and the links between rural and urban which in the urban environment follow different trajectories. Following the premise that the effects of urbanization cannot be homogenously felt by the actors, I follow the Grecanici migration to the city of Reggio Calabria in the decade of the 1950s in order to argue that urbanities are directly informed by factors such as kinship, neighbourhood identification, education and socio‐economic status.