MAYA ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: THE PROGRESS, THE PERILS, AND THE PROMISE

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur A. Demarest
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Institutional Research ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Maya Archaeology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Culture History ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Analytical Approaches

AbstractIn the past 20 years, what were once considered specialized auxiliary subdisciplines or analytical approaches such as bioarchaeology, paleozoology, subterranean archaeology, and material culture studies have become central to all research due to refinements of their analytic tools. Meanwhile, building on earlier progress in epigraphy, work on the Classic period truly has become historical archaeology. These advances provide a much greater understanding of ancient Maya ecology, economy, and politics and insights into the details, not just trends, in culture history. Realization of this potential, however, is imperiled by problems in research design and interpretation. Project structures rarely allows for complete and independent application of these enhanced fields, while the traditional elements of ceramic classification and chronology have not kept pace. The erratic sample of both Maya lowland and highland regions needs to addressed, rather than glossed over by extrapolations or assumptions about interaction and expansionism. Institutional structures and financial limitations have led to many superficial studies masked by quasi-theoretical terminologies. Constructive solutions, most exemplified in some current projects, include the obligation to try to apply all available techniques and approaches. To make that feasible, larger projects should be fragmented into multi-institutional collaborations. Greater emphasis must be given to classifications and excavations that generate ceramic microchronologies. Above all, we must investigate the extensive unstudied or understudied regions. Finally, most challenging is the need to collectively confront academic structures that encourage rapid, incomplete studies and discourage more substantial publications and long term multi-institutional research.

Who Runs the Firm? A Long-Term Analysis of Gender Inequality on Swiss Corporate Boards

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE GINALSKI
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Corporate Boards ◽  
The Past ◽  
Corporate Elite ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Recent Arrival ◽  
Women On Corporate Boards ◽  
Corporate Elites ◽  
Term Analysis

The recent arrival of women on corporate boards has been extensively discussed in the literature. However, most of the studies focus on very recent times. This article analyzes the presence of women on the corporate boards of the largest firms in Switzerland across the past hundred years. It shows that until the beginning of the 1970s, the very few women sitting on the boardrooms belonged to the families owning the firms. Two main factors contributed then to the progressive opening of the corporate elites to women. First, the extending in 1971 of “universal suffrage” to women led to a feminization of the political elites, and women with a political profile entered the boardrooms of firms in the distribution and retailing sector. Second, the increasing globalization of the economy at the end of the twentieth century contributed to weaken the cohesion of the very male and Swiss corporate elite. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, the presence of women remained low in international comparison, and they were still hitting the “glass ceiling” regarding the top positions in the firm.

Thing Theory: Towards an Integrated Archaeological Perspective

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. v-vi ◽  
Author(s):  
PROFESSOR IAN HODDER
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Origins Of Agriculture ◽  
Thing Theory ◽  
Behavioral Archaeology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Central Turkey ◽  
Shed Light

Lecture 1.  Humans and things - developing some ideas and terms Lecture 2.  Çatalhöyük: a Neolithic ‘town’ in Turkey Lecture 3.  Humans and things at Çatalhöyük Lecture 4.  Developing a long-term view: the ‘origins of agriculture’ in the Middle East This lecture series has two aims. One is to discuss a new theoretical framework for the relationships between humans and material culture which I am calling ‘Thing Theory’. This framework focuses on the co-dependencies and entanglements between humans and non-humans and argues that long-term change comes about through the dispersed interactions of these entanglements. The theory is integrated in the sense that it adopts aspects of many theoretical agendas in recent archaeology, from experimental and behavioral archaeology to neo-evolutionary and selectionist models. It is also integrated in that it links theoretical agendas with archaeometry and archaeological science. The second aim is to show the application of Thing Theory to the 9000 year old Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, and to the ‘origins of agriculture’ in the Middle East. My excavations at Çatalhöyük over the past 15 years have uncovered a rich world of human-thing entanglements and have shed light on the complex lived worlds within which agriculture and settled villages were produced.

Virginia Woolf's Imaginary Museum of the Medieval in ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn’

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-184
Author(s):  
Caroline Marie
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
British Museum ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article shows that the Middle Ages Virginia Woolf imagines in her 1906 short story ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn’ are influenced by the staging of the medieval in late-Victorian museums and reflects late-Victorian medievalism. From the perspective of material culture studies, Woolf's tale reflects the representation and fabrication of the medieval by the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum and shapes a similar narrative of the Middle Ages. Relying on Michel Foucault's definitions of ‘heterotopia’ as well as on Tony Bennett's analysis of Victorian museums, this article argues that Woolf's fictionalisation of the medieval evidences a new, complex temporality of knowledge and consciousness of the past which also defines late-Victorian curatorial philosophy and practices. It analyses each regime of that new temporality: first, the archaeological gaze and its contribution to the grand national narrative via the literary canon and, second, the theatrical gaze, with its focus on spectacularly displayed artefacts, that partakes of an image's mystique. In temporal terms, this results in a tension between the tangible remains of a past clearly separated from the present and the mystical fusion of past and present reinscribing Woolf's poetics of the moment within a sense of history.

Out of the Past. The biography of a 16th-century burgher house and the making of society

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Thomasson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Culture History ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Nearby City

This paper is an attempt to understand how people, in the daily practice of interacting with material culture, created, dealt with and interpreted complex and socially stressful historical processes. A 16th-century timber-framed burgher house, the Reformation and industrialization are the focus of attention. Today the house stands in a museum of cultural history in the south Scandinavian town of Lund, but it once was built in the nearby city of Malmö. Through studies of architecture and spatial analysis, as well as studies of alterations to the house and its surroundings, the biography of the house is followed back to its physical and mental origins. The architecture as well as changes in its appearance can be understood by the use of space as well as the concept of topophilia. The paper ends by relating results to contemporary sociological theories. It is argued that humans structure society through material culture, history (remembrance) and space.

scholarly journals Chinese Economic Statecraft: A Comparative Study of China's Oil-backed Loans in Angola and Brazil

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina Alves
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Supply Contracts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Economic Statecraft ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Oil Sector ◽  
Resource Security

Africa's and South America's rich endowments of resources and great need for infrastructure development make them perfect candidates for China's “infrastructure-for-resources” loans. Over the past decade, such an arrangement for pursuing China's resource-security goals overseas – namely, securing long-term supply contracts and accessing exploration rights – has proved more effective in Africa than in South America. This article discusses the reasons for this regional variation by providing a comparative study of China's economic statecraft in Angola and Brazil, focusing on the deployment of infrastructure-for-oil deals. It argues that the variation in China's energy-security outcomes (long-term supply and access to oil equity) in Angola and Brazil can be attributed mostly to fundamental differences between the institutional structures of each country's oil industry. Although this foreign policy instrument has worked well for the centralised structure encountered in Angola, it has been less suitable for the far more liberalised and regulated environment that characterises Brazil's oil sector.

scholarly journals EATING IDENTITY: AN EXPLORATION OF FIJIAN FOODWAYS IN THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PAST

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharyn R Jones
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Eating Behaviors ◽  
Pacific Island ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fiji Islands ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Eating Identity

<p class="Normal1">I argue that group identity may be used to address fundamental anthropological concepts that are critical for understanding Pacific Island peoples and their cultures from a long-term perspective. Specifically, I explore foodways as a locus of archaeological material culture through the theoretical lens of materiality. I examine archaeological and ethnographic data that illuminate foodways in the Fiji Islands. The archaeological information derives from four islands and a variety of coastal sites across the Fiji archipelago. I illustrate that in both the past and present food, zooarchaeological remains, and associated material culture may be used to understand social changes and identity as expressed in eating behaviors and patterns in archaeological fauna. By using materiality and a broad comparative frame of reference archaeologists may better understand what it means to be Fijian.</p>

scholarly journals Missing interactions: the current state of multispecies connectivity analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia L. R. Wood ◽  
Kyle T. Martins ◽  
Veronique Dumais-Lalonde ◽  
Olivier Tanguy ◽  
Fanny Maure ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Interactions ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Reserve Design ◽  
Connectivity Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Data Requirements

Designing effective habitat and protected area networks, which sustain species-rich communities is a critical conservation challenge. Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of new computational methods for analyzing and prioritizing the connectivity needs of multiple species. We argue that the goal of multispecies connectivity prioritizations be the long-term persistence of a set of species in a landscape and suggest the index of metapopulation capacity as one metric by which to assess and compare the effectiveness of proposed network designs. Here we present a review of the literature based on 77 papers published between 2010 and 2020, in which we assess the current state and recent advances in multispecies connectivity analysis in terrestrial ecosystems. We summarize the four most employed analytical methods, compare their data requirements, and provide an overview of studies comparing results from multiple methods. We explicitly look at approaches for integrating multiple species considerations into reserve design and identify novel approaches being developed to overcome computational and theoretical challenges posed by multispecies connectivity analyses. We conclude that, while advances have been made over the past decade, the field remains nascent in its ability to integrate multiple species interactions into analytical approaches to connectivity. Furthermore, the field is hampered in its ability to provide robust connectivity assessments for lack of a clear definition and goal for multispecies connectivity, as well as a lack of common metrics for their comparison.

Fate, Choice and the Birth of Risk

Futureproof ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 19-41
Author(s):  
Jon Coaffee
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
First Century ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

This chapter tells the story of how ideas of resilience emerged as the go-to futureproofing idea in the early years of the twenty-first century. It has a long history dating back to pre-modern times and extends through the advancement of associated ideas of ‘risk’. Tracing the deeper development of changes in the way hazards and disasters have been historically viewed, and vulnerability felt, by human civilisations of the past, is vital to understanding the roots of contemporary dilemmas and the growing influence of ideas of resilience in the twenty-first century. There are long-term historical processes that have defined the contours of society and the slowly evolving structures that collectively symbolise how the need to be able to account for hazards and disasters has reshaped our world. As such, this is a story of religious versus scientific explanations, and of enhancing the ability to control the future through better knowledge about what is in store and the likelihood of certain events occurring.

scholarly journals Animals in Saami Shamanism: Power Animals, Symbols of Art, and Offerings

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 256
Author(s):  
Tiina Äikäs ◽  
Trude Fonneland
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Spiritual Practices ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Northern Norway ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Combine Material

In this paper, we study the role of power animals in contemporary Saami shamanism and how past and present are entwined in the presentation of power animals. In the old Saami worldviews, in addition to animals, spirits and sacred rocks (sieidi, SaaN) were also considered to be able to interact with people. Animals were an important part of offering rituals because livelihood and rituals were intertwined. Past “religions” are used as an inspiration for contemporary shamanistic practices, in line with one of late modernity’s core concepts, namely creativity. Present-day shamanistic practices can be described as ritual creativity, and they combine traces of old and new ritual activities. At the shamanistic festival Isogaisa, organized in northern Norway, these different roles of animals and ritual creativity become evident. Here, animals appear as spirit animals, as well as decorative elements on drums and clothes and as performance. In this paper, we combine material culture studies, interview data, and participatory observations in order to reflect the meanings and use of power animals in contemporary spiritual practices. How are traces of the past used in creating contemporary spirituality? How are animals and their artistic presentations entangled in contemporary shamanism?

The Romans in Britain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hingley
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
First Century ◽  
Imperial Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Colonial Contact ◽  
And Control

This chapter addresses the ways in which Roman colonization operated within the Roman Empire’s province of Britannia during the first century CE, and analyzes theoretical aproaches to colonialism, colonisation, Romanisation, and imperalism. Roman colonies were formally established settlements of Roman citizens and several existed in Britain. But Britain was also colonized through additional mechanisms, including large-scale migration, a substantial military presence, and an incorporative imperial culture. Questions about the extent to which the indigenous people became Romanized or retained native ways are explored, and the chapter questions how thoroughly indigenous frontier populations adopted colonists’ ideologies and material culture. The evidence suggests a wide range of different responses to colonial contact and control, issues that have been drawn upon by the British in their colonial activities over the past centuries.

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