First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies, by Peter Bellwood. Malden (MA): Blackwell, 2005; ISBN 0-631-20565-9 hardback £60; ISBN 0-631-20566-7 paperback £17.99, xix+360 pp., 59 figs., 3 tables

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bellwood ◽  
Clive Gamble ◽  
Steven A. Le Blanc ◽  
Mark Pluciennik ◽  
Martin Richards ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Movements ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Agricultural Origins ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Difference Of Opinion ◽  
Agricultural Societies ◽  
Interdisciplinary Synthesis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

There can be no doubt that Peter Bellwood's First Farmers is a major new statement which presents a robustly expressed solution to one of those classic problems which provides a benchmark for theorization and justifies archaeology as a field. But agreement stops there. Few academic books published recently have evoked such highly charged reactions. On the one hand, First Farmers has impressed many critics, reached audiences far afield from traditional archaeological readerships, and garnered major book awards from professional bodies such as the Society for American Archaeology. On the other hand, it has been subjected to a level of concerted criticism rare in the academic world. As the reviews below show, it has clearly hit a nerve; the gloves are off.First Farmers polarizes scholars in complex ways. Much recent work on agricultural origins, particularly in Europe, has had a strongly indigenist and particularistic tone, averse to mass movements of peoples and ‘grand narratives’ in general. But even advocates of grand narrative in general may take exception to Bellwood's ‘language dispersals’ thesis. Similarly, the very attempt to bring together linguistic, genetic and archaeological data in an account of the past is controversial to some, but even those who aspire to this kind of interdisciplinary synthesis rarely agree on how it can be carried out.Neither the book nor its critics here are likely to be the last word on the subject. But whether one agrees with it or not, First Farmers is a welcome addition to the agricultural origins scene, which, at least in Europe, has been evolving over the last two decades towards a sort of eclectic middle-ground consensus in which difference of opinion is accommodated by eschewing bold generalization.

scholarly journals Alienation of tradition as a way of person's relationship with the past

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Dmitry Vladimirovich Rakhinsky ◽  
Grigorii Andreevich Illarionov ◽  
Svetlana Yurevna Piskorskaya ◽  
Aleksei Gennadevich Rusakov ◽  
Evgenii Stepanovich Shcheblyakov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Intergenerational Communication ◽  
The Past ◽  
Active Subject ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Synthesis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The subject of this research is the alienation of tradition as a way of relating to the past. The goal of this article consists in conceptualization of an “alienated tradition” as a mode of relationship between the social present and the social past, generated by the historical dynamics of development of the tradition, which is simultaneously a factor of social development and a source of personal suffering. The research methodology leans on the principle of social epistemology, which implies following the mutual conditionality of evolution of representations on connection between the present and the past, reflected in the concept of tradition sociocultural mechanisms of the  tradition. The article analyzes the language of interpretation of tradition as a combination of sociocultural mechanisms connecting the social present and the past. The novelty of this work consists in interdisciplinary synthesis of the concepts and research positions: the classical concept of alienation, research on intergenerational communication and cultural memory, socio-criticism studies, and theory of suffering. The alienation of tradition suggests objectification of these connections, in terms of which the social past perceived by a person as the new and communicative grounds for the alienation of tradition, emerged as result of increasing vicariousness of intergenerational communication. The alienation of tradition has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it becomes the foundation for self-determination of a person with regards to cultural continuum, force of development, due to the fact that a person is no longer positioned as a result of determinacy by the past, but an active subject who transforms the world relying on own mind, rather than the legacy of the past. On the other hand, the alienation of tradition becomes a cause of suffering; the more vicarious becomes the person’s relationship with the past, the more antagonistic and alienated become the grounds for his existence in culture that are determined by the past.

TARP DVIEJŲ KOLONŲ: XVIII A. PABAIGOS – XIX A. PRADŽIOS VILNIAUS MASONŲ KASDIENYBĖ SIMBOLIKOJE

2018 ◽  
pp. 144-163
Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Secular World ◽  
National Characteristics ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Craft Guilds

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.

Radical Tense-Indexical Historicality and the De Se

KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Alternative View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
De Se ◽  
Temporal Expressions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
A Current ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’

To what question is the Badiouan notion of the subject an answer? On the dialectical elaboration of the concept in his early work

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Jan-Jasper Persijn
Keyword(s):  
Direct Consequence ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Work Up

Alain Badiou’s elaboration of a subject faithful to an event is commonly known today in the academic world and beyond. However, his first systematic account of the subject ( Théorie du Sujet) was already published in 1982 and did not mention the ‘event’ at all. Therefore, this article aims at tracing back both the structural and the historical conditions that directed Badiou’s elaboration of the subject in the early work up until the publication of L’Être et l’Événément in 1988. On the one hand, it investigates to what extent the (early) Badiouan subject can be considered an exceptional product of the formalist project of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse as instigated by psychoanalytical discourse (Lacan) and a certain Marxist discourse (Althusser) insofar as both were centered upon a theory of the subject. On the other hand, this article examines the radical political implications of this subject insofar as Badiou has directed his philosophical aims towards the political field as a direct consequence of the events of May ’68.

The Kingdoms in Illyria Circa 400–167 B.C.

1966 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 239-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. G. L. Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Political Organization ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Almost All

The positions and the extent of these kingdoms have been disputed in the past, especially by Droysen, Zippel, Meyer, and Beloch, and they are the subject now of an interesting and well-documented paper by F. Papazoglou, entitled ‘Les origines et la destinée de l'état Illyrien: Illyrii proprie dicti’. His conclusions are that there was a specific political ‘Organization’ called ʾΙλλυριοί that almost all the known kings of Illyria—he gives fifteen of them between 400 and 167 B.C.—were rulers of this organization; and that this organization was not the one and only tribal organization known by this specific name, the ‘Illyrii proprie dicti’ of Pliny, HN iii. 144 and P. Mela ii. 55. In the course of the paper he does not mention any use of the term ʾΙλλυριοί before 423 B.C.; he shows no knowledge of the topography of the areas and little concern with topography; and he makes some statements which are erroneous, at least in part, e.g. that when Glaucias took the title ‘king of the Illyrians’ the Taulantii disappeared for ever from history—yet he quotes from Livy the terms given to the Taulantii by Rome in 168 B.C. Moreover, his conclusions do not seem to me to be probable.

scholarly journals Manchester and Salford Politics and the Early Development of the Independent Labour Party

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Hill
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Local Strategy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One

The grass-roots activities of the Independent Labour Party have been the subject of increased scrutiny from historians over the past few years, especially in the pages of this journal. Consequently we can now be a little surer about the contribution of the party to the development of an independent labour movement in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, though with every fresh case-study a different local strategy seems to come to light. The one outstanding profile in this field is the closely observed account of the ILP in Bradford by J. Reynolds and K. Laybourn, who identify several key features in the party's growth in that city, notably the reformist nature of ILP socialism and the close associations with local trade unionism. “From the outset”, they tell us, “Bradford trade unionism and the Bradford ILP were seen as two aspects of a single homogeneous labour movement aimed at the emancipation of the working class from poverty and exploitation.”

The Natural History of Philosophy in Canada

Dialogue ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Thomas Mathien
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Evolutionary Study ◽  
Major Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Intellectual Discipline

Some writers about the history of philosophy in Canada have wondered why it should be studied. That is a worthy question, but it is not the one I want to discuss here. I am going to assume there are good reasons for doing so because I want to consider some general features of the subject of such studies and to determine what has to be done to establish certain descriptive claims about it. I will also point out some concerns I have about the proper explanation of certain interesting features of Canadian philosophic activity, and I will present a brief evaluation of one major study. I will do this with the aid of a contention that the study of the history of an intellectual discipline is a little like an evolutionary study of a biological species, but I will close by pointing out one reason for doing history which goes beyond description, and even explanation, of the past.

scholarly journals Visit Transylvania! Transylvania Representations of Tourists Coming from Abroad

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
Gyöngyi Pásztor ◽  
Anita Dózsa
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Other ◽  
International Tourism ◽  
Tourist Destination ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The subject of the present study is Transylvania as a tourist destination, more precisely the analysis of what Transylvania means for the foreign tourists visiting here, and what meaning they attach to it. The timeliness of the issue is given by two factors. On the one hand the number of events with a touristic appeal has grown in the past years in Transylvania, and similarly the number of tourists has risen. On the other hand, writings that recommend Transylvania as an outstanding destination are more and more frequent in the international public sphere, in other words, it increasingly appears on the map of international tourism.

Lytton Strachey's Conception of Biography

PMLA ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-315
Author(s):  
Charles Richard Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Value ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Reference ◽  
Individual Human

Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal processes—which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.“ These two sentences, embedded in the well-known Preface to Eminent Victorians, must always be the starting point and a constant point of reference in any discussion of Strachey's conception of biography. The basis of all good biography must be, he firmly held, the humanistic respect for men—men in their separateness as distinct from lower creatures and in their separateness apart from economical, political, ethical, and religious theories; men in their separateness as distinct from one another, men as individuals, various, living, free. It has been well said that Strachey wrote with ”a glowing conviction that character is the one thing that counts in life“ and with a realization that individual human beings, however simple they may appear, are enigmatical, complex, and compact of contending elements. Each person carries his secret within him, and the biographer is one who has the gift for discerning what it is. Hence individual human beings are not only highly important; they are also highly interesting. The puzzle which the biographer has to solve in dealing with ordinary people is fascinating enough; but when the subject is a great man, the biographer works with his problem in an atmosphere of intense excitement, for about all great men there is something wondrous and incredible.

scholarly journals LATE ANTIQUE SEALS FROM ANCIENT SERDICA

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
Dr. Dochka Vladimirova-Aladzhova
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Metro Station ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Saints ◽  
Important Indication

The subject of this publication is three seals, each raising interesting questions. During the archaeological explorations of the ancient city of Serdica (now Sofia) conducted in the past ten years, 48 lead seals from the 4th – 7th A.D. period have been discovered. The scientific novelty of the discovered bullae are little-known specimens, or not described until now in the specialized literature. The description of all of the seals is given. The first one relates to John, excavated at the ‘Metro station 8 II’. The print is perfectly preserved with a very strong relief of the images of the Virgin with Child between two cypresses is relatively rare in combination with various reverses unpublished till now. It dates back to the 6th A.D. The second Byzantuim seal excavated at ‘Vesletz’ 13. (the territory of ancient Serdica) and there are there are no analogues.During the early Byzantine Empire, only the first or baptismal name was used on seals. The parents had a large choice of names: Latin names or their Hellenized versions were used in the eastern part of the empire, traditional Greek names with regional traditions were widely used, also names of Christian saints appeared, which gradually became very popular. As a result, every twelfth child was baptized with the name John, and as a result there are a large number of bulls named John , and some have the same name on both sides, which is usually explained by the kinship between the two persons . In order to identify the person, in some cases his position or title is added, but even this information is not enough to identify the owner of the seal, known to us from documentary or epigraphic sources.Another seal from ‘Vesletz’ 13 has an image of the Mother of God that is of the earliest type presented on the seals. There are different variants of the described monogram, there is no identical to the one on the seal from Serdica, also difference being in the position of the letter Р. In Bulgaria, only 3 copies of persons with the title patricius (VI–VII c.) are described, two with a block monogram and one with an inscription. In the seals discussed above, the names and the title of the owner are given in monogram form. Generally there are two types of monograms: block and cruciform. It is accepted that the first type appeared not earlier than the fifth century, when on the coins the name was also written in this way. The letters are located at the ends of the cross or at the intersection of its shoulders. This shape, as well as the angles formed, allows a large number of letters to be used. Conclusions. Usually, seals like the ones presented above dated to the period 6th-7th A.D. An important circumstance for the bullae from Serdica is that they were found during archeological excavations, in stratified sites and in layers with dated numismatic material, in which the coins of Emperor Justinian I (527–565) and Tiberius Constantine (578-582) predominate. This is an important indication, which makes it possible to specify the dating of the bulls no later than 2½ of the 6th A.D.

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