Reflections of faraway places: the Chalcolithic personal ornaments of Canhasan I

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Emma L. Baysal

AbstractExcavations during the 1960s of the site of Canhasan I in Karaman province in central Turkey revealed that the Chalcolithic ornaments of the region were both complex and varied. The ornaments of the site, consisting of beads (including pendants and plaques), bracelets and plugs or labrets, were made in many forms and from a variety of different materials, and thus hint at a connected world where ideas, resources and products moved from one place to another. While a catalogue of some of the artefacts has been produced previously (French 2010), this article details these ornaments and considers their temporal and geographical positions within the history of beads, bracelets and other decorative items for the first time. It explores legacies from the past, new fashions and the complicated relationships between material sources, technology, forms, style and use during a period and in an artefact category that have often been overlooked.

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Warfield Rawls

This is an article about the history of US sociology with systematic intent. It goes back to World War II to recover a wartime narrative context through which sociologists formulated a ‘trauma’ to the discipline and ‘blamed’ qualitative and values-oriented research for damaging the scientific status of sociology. This narrative documents a discussion of the changes that sociologists said needed to be made in sociology as a science to repair its status and reputation. While debates among sociologists about theory and method had always been contentious, the wartime narrative insisted for the first time that sociology be immediately unified around quantitative approaches. The narrative of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science that developed during the war not only undermined the efforts of social interactionists to theorize social action and social justice, but also derailed Parsons’ pre-war effort to bridge differences. The moral coding that is the legacy of the narrative stigmatized important approaches to sociology, leading to a ‘crisis’ in the 1960s that still haunts the discipline. Disciplinary history has overlooked the wartime narrative with the result that the role played by World War II in effecting this crisis has gone unrecognized.


Paleobiology ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (S4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy E. Plotnick ◽  
Tomasz K. Baumiller

Functional analysis of fossils is and should remain a key component of paleobiological research. Despite recently expressed doubts, conceptual and methodological developments over the past 25 years indicate that robust and testable claims about function can be produced. Functional statements can be made in at least three different hierarchical contexts, corresponding to the degree of structural information available, the position in the phylogenetic hierarchy, and the degree of anatomical specificity. The paradigm approach, which dominated thinking about function in the 1960s and 1970s, has been supplanted with a methodology based on biomechanics. Paleobiomechanics does not assume optimality in organismal design, but determines whether structures werecapableof carrying out a given function. The paradigm approach can best be viewed as a way of generating, rather than testing, functional hypotheses. Hypotheses about function can also be developed and supported by well-corroborated phylogenetic arguments. Additional functional evidence can be derived from studies of trace fossils and of taphonomy. New computer techniques, including “Artificial Life” studies, have the potential for producing far more detailed ideas about function and mode of life than have been previously possible. Functional analysis remains the basis for studies of the history of adaptation. It is also an essential component of many paleoecological and paleoenvironmental studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Nina М. Mitrakova ◽  
Oleg Yu. Aleinikov ◽  

The article analyses the specificity of reception of Mandelstam’s “Voronezh Notebooks” in the censored (prepublication) period during expertise of his works by independent researchers in Voronezh where his poems were created, recorded and authorized. The authors study the historical background and clarify some strategies of perception of Mandelstam’s lyrical poems and the problems of real and historical-literary commenting of his texts. The urgency of the study can be attributed to the need to investigate the history of accumulating precise knowledge about the poet and his creative activity recorded in personal documents such as letters, diaries, notebooks and transcripts of interviews kept in private collections of the scholars who took part in the search and systematization of historical and biographical data (and other reliable materials, facts and oral reminiscences) about Mandelstam’s life and his creative heritage. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that it includes in the scope of scholarly interest the notes of N. Mitrakova, written down in the 1960s–1980s during her communication with N. Shtempel (1908–1988) who, being a friend of N. Mandelstam, was involved in poet’s life, and saved and kept the major part of his archive. The article reconstructs the search for real Voronezh toponymy reinterpreted in the poet’s works. For the first time, the article provides extracts from previously unpublished and new diaries of Professor V. Svitelskiy (1940–2005), who was the founder of Mandelstam studies in Voronezh. The article publishes photos from N. Mitrakova’s private collection and photos made in the 1970s–1980s by the researcher, Candidate of Chemistry V. Gordin (1940–1992), who was N. Shtempel’s co-author of the album and the slide show “Mandelstam in Voronezh”. The text was prepared by O. Aleynikov. Quotes from the diaries of V. Svitelsky were prepared and provided by N. Mitrakova. Fragments of her memoirs about N. Shtempel and the search for real topography are highlighted in the text of the article as the author’s material.


1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-291
Author(s):  
P.S.M. PHIRI ◽  
D.M. MOORE

Central Africa remained botanically unknown to the outside world up to the end of the eighteenth century. This paper provides a historical account of plant explorations in the Luangwa Valley. The first plant specimens were collected in 1897 and the last serious botanical explorations were made in 1993. During this period there have been 58 plant collectors in the Luangwa Valley with peak activity recorded in the 1960s. In 1989 1,348 species of vascular plants were described in the Luangwa Valley. More botanical collecting is needed with a view to finding new plant taxa, and also to provide a satisfactory basis for applied disciplines such as ecology, phytogeography, conservation and environmental impact assessment.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Smith

This paper examines how the past of desert landscapes has been interpreted since European explorers and scientists first encountered them. It charts the research that created the conceptual space within which archaeologists and Quaternarists now work. Studies from the 1840s–1960s created the notion of a ‘Great Australian Arid Period'. The 1960s studies of Lake Mungo and the Willandra Lakes by Jim Bowler revealed the cyclical nature of palaeolakes, that changed with climate changes in the Pleistocene, and the complexity of desert pasts. SLEADS and other researchers in the 1980s used thermoluminescence techniques that showed further complexities in desert lands beyond the Willandra particularly through new studies in the Strzelecki and Simpson Dunefields, Lake Eyre, Lake Woods and Lake Gregory. Australian deserts are varied and have very different histories. Far from ‘timeless lands', they have carried detailed information about long-term climate changes on continental scales.


2020 ◽  
pp. 165-173
Author(s):  
Kostyantyn Chechenya

The article studies the development of guitar art in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXIst century. This topic is virtually not researched in domestic musicology. All the research is primarily devoted to pan-European trends or regional school. For the first time, this study analyzes various aspects of the activity of the Guitarists Association of the NUMU (National All-Ukrainian Music Union) presenting historical material on the formation of guitar art in Ukraine, and information on outstanding musicians of the past. Factual material on the history of the National All-Ukrainian Music Union and the Association of Guitarists as its creative center has been gathered. The article traces the development of the guitar movement in Ukraine at the beginning of the new century from the First All-Ukrainian Festival-Competition of Guitar Art of Valery Petrenko to the presentday events. It emphasizes ways of development of competitive activity, the case of Oleg Stefaniuk Open Competition of Music Masters (2019), online competitions of performers "Guitar Play" and competition "Compoguitar". The only specialized magazine Guitar in Ukraine, published regularly since 2008, facilitates the promotion of the guitar art. Hence, the active and diverse activities of Guitarists Association of the NUMU have significantly contributed to the development of Ukrainian guitar art in the performing and academic-pedagogical aspect.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-160
Author(s):  
Alexey V. Antoshin ◽  
Dmitry L. Strovsky

The article analyzes the features of Soviet emigration and repatriation in the second half of the 1960s through the early 1970s, when for the first time after a long period of time, and as a result of political agreements between the USSR and the USA, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews were able to leave the Soviet Union for good and settle in the United States and Israel. Our attention is focused not only on the history of this issue and the overall political situation of that time, but mainly on the peculiarities of this issue coverage by the leading American printed media. The reference to the media as the main empirical source of this study allows not only perceiving the topic of emigration and repatriation in more detail, but also seeing the regularities of the political ‘face’ of the American press of that time. This study enables us to expand the usual framework of knowledge of emigration against the background of its historical and cultural development in the 20th century.


Author(s):  
Maya Montañez Smukler

Elaine May began her career as a filmmaker during the 1970s when the mythology of the New Hollywood male auteur defined the decade; and the number of women directors, boosted by second wave feminism, increased for the first time in forty years. May’s interest in misfit characters, as socially awkward as they were delusional, and her ability to seamlessly move them between comedy and drama, typified the New Hollywood protagonist who captured America’s uneasy transition from the hopeful rebellion of the 1960s into the narcissistic angst of the 1970s. However, the filmmaker’s reception, which culminated in the critical lambast of her comeback film Ishtar in 1987, was uneven: her battles with studio executives are legendary; feminist film critics railed against her depiction of female characters; and a former assistant claimed she set back women directors by her inability to meet deadlines. This chapter investigates Elaine May’s career within the lore 1970s Hollywood to understand the industrial and cultural circumstances that contributed to the emergence of her influential body of work; and the significant contributions to cinema she made in spite of, and perhaps because of, the conflicts in which she was faced.


Author(s):  
Douglas R. Givens

The history of any discipline involves the explanation of its past and how the past has influenced its development through time. Its ‘objects are events which have finished happening, and conditions no longer in existence. Only when they are no longer perceptible do they become objects of historical thought’ (Collingwood 1946: 233). Writing the history of archaeology involves the analysis of past events and of the contributions that individual archaeologists have made to its development through time. The roles of individuals in archaeology are best seen in biographical accounts of their labours and in the contributions to the discipline that they have made. In general, historians of archaeological science, who are interested in explaining the roles of the individuals in its development, must focus their attention on three important items. First, the most important item is evidence that something has occurred. If individuals’ contributions have no basis in truth and cannot be justified, then they are of no value to the historian of archaeology. Second, the historical picture of individuals’ lives and work must have defined boundaries in space and time. These provide the area of focus for study and description of individuals’ activities. Third, the efforts of individual practitioners must be couched within the intellectual climate in which they are made. Individuals’ contributions are not made in an intellectual vacuum, apart from collegial or institutional influences. Biography, as a tool for writing the history of archaeology, must embrace all of these requisites. For those engaged in explaining archaeology’s past, historical evidence of event and period provide the foundation upon which we can trace our science’s development. Studying and evaluating past work can be helpful in separating useful and outdated methodologies of the field and laboratory. Moreover, the study of the history of anthropology may give the anthropologist needed ‘distance from their own theoretical and methodological preoccupations’ (Darnell 1974: 2). What we see anthropology today as being is certainly not what the ultimate science of humankind will be in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-408
Author(s):  
Thomas Zimmer

Polarization is everywhere. It is, according to the Pew Research Center, “a defining feature of American politics today.” Elected officials, journalists, and political pundits seem to agree that it is a severe problem in urgent need of fixing, maybe even the root of all evil that plagues the United States, from dysfunction in Congress to the decay of social and cultural norms. Many historians, too, have embraced the concept of polarization for its explanatory power: It has emerged as the closest thing to a master narrative for recent American history. In this interpretation, the “liberal consensus” that had dominated mid-twentieth-century American politics and intellectual life—the widely shared acceptance of New Deal philosophy and broad agreement on the desirable contours of society and the pursuit of certain kinds of public good—gave way after the 1960s to an age of heightened tension, dividing Americans into two camps that since then have regarded each other with deepening distrust. Yet too few historians have reflected on the limits and potential pitfalls of using polarization as a governing historical paradigm. It is high time, therefore, to pause to consider the larger implications of approaching the past through the prism of polarization.


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