MINIATURE IN EVERYTHING BUT MEANING: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MINIATURE VESSELS AT HOMOL'OVI I

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha G. Fladd ◽  
Claire S. Barker
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Learning Theories ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Northern Arizona ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Ritual Spaces ◽  
Two Alternatives

The most common explanations for the appearance of miniatures in the archaeological record are drawn from practice theory. Two alternatives stem from learning theories, while a third is based in ritual practice and performance. First, miniatures may represent early attempts at craft production by children or novice adults. Second, they could serve as children's toys used for enculturation purposes. Third, miniatures may be produced for use in rituals or as offerings. These explanations are not mutually exclusive; all may be part of the life history of a single artifact. Previous archaeological and ethnographic work on miniature ceramic vessels in the Southwest has variously supported all three prominent explanations. In this article, we examine the miniature vessel assemblage from Homol'ovi I, a prehispanic pueblo in northern Arizona, through a synthetic analysis of craft mastery, use, and deposition. While various life history trajectories are indicated, the miniature vessels at this ancestral Hopi village appear in similar depositional contexts. Specifically, these objects serve as important components in the preparation or closure practices of ritual spaces throughout the pueblo.

Planting the Bones: Hunting Ceremonialism at Contemporary and Nineteenth-Century Shrines in the Guatemalan Highlands

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Unique Feature ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Animal Remains ◽  
History Of

AbstractFrom the Classic period to the present, scholars have documented the widespread Maya belief in a supernatural guardian of the animals who must be appeased in hunting rituals. Despite this resilience, features and deposits entering the archaeological record as a result of hunting ceremonies remain largely unknown. I describe several contemporary and nineteenth-century shrines used for hunting rites in the Maya highlands of Guatemala. These sites contain a unique feature, a ritual fauna cache, which consists of animal remains secondarily deposited during hunting ceremonies. The formation of these caches is informed by two beliefs with historical time depth: (1) the belief in a guardian of animals and (2) the symbolic conflation of bone and regeneration. The unique life history of remains in hunting-related ritual fauna caches suggests a hypothesis for puzzling deposits of mammal remains recovered archaeologically in lowland Maya caves. These may have functioned in hunting rites designed to placate the animal guardian and ensure the regeneration of the species via ceremonies that incorporated the secondary discard of skeletal remains. A review of the ethnographic literature from the Lenca, Huichol, Nahua, Tlapanec, and Mixe areas reveals similar hunting rites indicating a broader Mesoamerican ritual practice.

Experimental life history of Echinostoma cinetorchis

1990 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
S H Lee ◽  
J Y Chai ◽  
S T Hong ◽  
W M Sohn
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
History Of

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

Applying analytical procedures for performance audit of customs authorities

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 1035-1055 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.V. Pankova ◽  
V.V. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Distance Method ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Scientific Hypothesis ◽  
Financial Audit ◽  
Promising Area ◽  
History Of ◽  
Performance Audit ◽  
Analytical Procedures ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Customs Administration

Subject. The article considers the development of a set of methods and indicators of economic analysis, which can be used for performance audit of customs authorities, using the Volga Customs Administration case. Objectives. The aim is to justify the use of analytical procedures to rank the effectiveness of customs payments for the purpose of performance audit of customs authorities. Methods. We employ general scientific methods of research, i.e. dialectical and monographic methods, logical analysis, comparison, as well as the Euclidean distance method. Results. We reviewed works by Russian and foreign scholars on the history of customs audit development and internal financial control of customs authorities, gave scientific credence to attributing the system of customs payment and performance to the indicators of economic activity of customs authorities. Due to the lack of methods for assessing the performance of customs authorities, the use of analytical procedures during the performance audit seems to be a promising area. Conclusions. When verifying the scientific hypothesis put forward in the study, we established that the introduction and development of the ranking system for the performance of customs authorities related to the collection of customs duties can contribute to effective financial audit of customs authorities in general.

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