Linguistics for Archaeologists: a Case-study in the Andes

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Heggarty
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Previous Issue ◽  
Paradigm Case ◽  
Ideal Case ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Andes

In the previous issue of CAJ, Heggarty (2007) set out how certain key principles and methods of historical linguistics can be exploited to open up another window on the past, from a perspective quite different and complementary to that offered by the archaeological record. Following this up, we turn here to an ideal case-study for exploring how the various patterns in linguistic (pre-)histories can be matched with their most plausible correlates in the archaeological data. Beyond our initial illustration of the Incas we now look further afield, to set the sequence of major civilizations of the Andes into its linguistic context, tracing the expansion trajectories of the main Andean language families further back in time, stage by stage, ultimately to their most plausible original homelands. The linguistic story emerges starkly at odds with assumptions widely held among archaeologists of the region. Indeed we encounter a paradigm case of how only a radical rethinking can reconcile our two disciplines' findings into a single, coherent, holistic prehistory for a human population — in the Andes, a prize now tantalizingly within our reach.

scholarly journals Cultural Transform di Situs Benteng Putri Hijau

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (27) ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Stanov Purnawibowo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past

AbstractArchaeology not only describing about the past, but also present. The form of cultural transformation process which describe the process of archaeological record disposition in the post-depositoanal factors, one of example form describe from present. Cultural transformation of archaeological record was found in Benteng Putri Hijau site. Precipitation position of archaeological data and stratigraphy can give information about cultural transformation data and contexts remain found in archaeological deposition.

Smudge Pits and Hide Smoking: The Use of Analogy in Archaeological Reasoning

1967 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis R. Binford
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Behavioral Context ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIt is argued that as a scientist one does not justifiably employ analogies to ethnographic observations for the "interpretation" of archaeological data. Instead, analogies should be documented and used as the basis for offering a postulate as to the relationship between archaeological forms and their behavioral context in the past. Such a postulate should then serve as the foundation of a series of deductively drawn hypotheses which, on testing, can refute or tend to confirm the postulate offered. Analogy should serve to provoke new questions about order in the archaeological record and should serve to prompt more searching investigations rather than being viewed as a means for offering "interpretations" which then serve as the "data" for synthesis. This argument is made demonstratively through the presentation of formal data on a class of archaeological features, "smudge pits," and the documentation of their positive analogy with pits as facilities used in smoking hides.

scholarly journals Artefact collecting: creating or destroying the archaeological record?

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 39-91
Author(s):  
Paul M. Barford
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Past ◽  
Made In

This paper examines some of the arguments used by archaeologists in favour of collaborating useful for archaeological research and is a form of public engagement with archaeology. It takes as a case study records of 48 600 medieval artefacts removed from archaeological contexts by artefact hunters and recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme in England and Wales. The past and potential uses of these records as an archaeological source are objectively reviewed, together with an assessment of the degree to which they provide mitigation of the damage caused to the otherwise unthreatened archaeological record. It is concluded that, although information can be obtained by studying records of findspots of addressed artefacts such as coins, in general the claims made in support of professional archaeological collaboration with this kind of activity prove to be false.

scholarly journals WAR OF THE HASHTAGS: TRENDING NEW HASHTAGS TO OVERRIDE CRITICAL TOPICS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Debashmita Poddar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Previous Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trending Topics ◽  
A Current

— Hashtags play a cardinal role in the classification of topics over social media. A sudden burst on the usage of certain hashtags, representing specific topics, give rise to trending topics. Trending topics can be immensely useful as it can spark a discussion on a particular subject. However, it can also be used to suppress an ongoing pivotal matter. This paper discusses how a significant economic crisis was covered by triggering a current trending topic. A case study on politics in India has been studied over the past two months. The analysis shows how the issue on inflation was attacked by the exercise of a new constitutional law over media. Hashtags used to discuss the topics were scrutinized, and we notice a steep ascend of the more recent topic and an eventual drop in discussions over the previous issue on inflation. Balancing the influence of hashtags on social media can be employed. Still, it can be equally challenging since some hashtags that represent the need of the hour topics should be given more importance, and evaluating such issues can be hard.

Introduction

Vessels ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Brittenham
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ancient Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Intellectual Power ◽  
Good Proportion

The vessel might seem an unproblematic category. Vessels are, after all, essential to human survival. They are necessary to contain water, to cook, to store food and goods for future use. Nearly all societies have made and used them; indeed, clay vessels, or their fragments, are one of the principal kinds of archaeological data that give us empirical access into distant worlds of the past. A good proportion of ancient art in museum collections around the world consists of things we would categorize as vessels. Such ubiquity makes vessels central to many kinds of historical investigation. Archaeologists rely on quantitative surveys of durable potsherds to answer questions about chronology, population, trade, and the function of particular spaces, while close attention to the iconography on vessels furnishes important documentary evidence about many aspects of ancient society. Yet as the essays in this volume demonstrate, such approaches by no means exhaust the perspectives that vessels may offer on ancient societies. Many vessels—and assemblages of vessels— were in their own time sites of considerable intellectual power, smart and sophisticated commentaries on the very categories that they embody. On closer examination, the category of the vessel is complex. A vessel is defined not only by its shape, but also by its function, by the presumption that it contains something, though that something may be concealed when the vessel is in use and is not always easy to reconstruct from the archaeological record. But what about a Greek rhyton, a drinking horn with an opening at the bottom, so that liquids poured into one end stream out the other? What about an unused vessel that never held its intended contents; a Maya chocolate pot, broken and then repaired in a way that is no longer watertight; or a thin and fragile gu cup from a Chinese tomb, the form so attenuated that it could never be used? “Is it really a vessel?” is perhaps the least interesting question we can ask about these objects. As Richard Neer argues in his essay in this volume, for us as much as for the ancient Greeks, the value of the category “vessel” might lie precisely in its openness.

scholarly journals FROM LANDSCAPES OF MEANING TO LANDSCAPES OF SIGNIFICATION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Liebmann
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dynamic Studies ◽  
European Colonization

This article builds upon two convergent trends in landscape archaeology: (1) investigations of symbolic meaning and (2) collaboration with descendant and stakeholder communities. The recent merger of these research agendas in the Southwest US provides an innovative approach to addressing meaning in the past. But the interpretations that result can inadvertently propagate notions of static and unchanging indigenous landscapes. Archaeologists can develop more dynamic studies of meaning and landscape by paying greater attention to the indexical properties of the archaeological record. To illustrate this point, I present a case study focused on ancestral Jemez (Pueblo) meanings associated with the Valles Caldera in northern New Mexico between AD 1300 and 1700. By combining contemporary Jemez understandings of this landscape with the indexical properties of obsidian revealed through pXRF analysis, this study illustrates how the uses of this landscape changed through time, particularly as a result of European colonization in the seventeenth century. It concludes that increased attention to the indexical properties of the archaeological record is critical for archaeological studies of meaning to reconstruct more robust and dynamic past landscapes.

Archaeology without -isms

2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Baines ◽  
Kenneth Brophy
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Two Sides

This paper examines the division that has grown up in contemporary archaeology between practical and theoretical branches of the discipline. It argues that the two sides of this schism are archaeological versions of objectivism and subjectivism, and that they really represent a single dualism. To break out of this, what is needed is an approach to thinking and doing archaeology that recognizes the embodied nature of archaeological engagements with material culture, together with an understanding of the emergent, relational character of archaeological data. In the light of this discussion, we attempt to redefine the building blocks of archaeology (material culture and the past), and to show with a case study how such an archaeology might generate new insights in practice.

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AND PRE-COLUMBIAN MESOAMERICA

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence Kaufman ◽  
John Justeson
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
North America ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Spread Of Agriculture

AbstractThis article presents some of the authors' perspectives on the past 20 years of work that applies the results of research in historical linguistics to the understanding of the histories and cultural practices of pre-Columbian Mesoamericans. It focuses on major cultural transformations to which both historical linguistic and archaeological data can contribute, such as the spread of agriculture, and migrations in Mesoamerican prehistory. It also addresses major culture-historical studies on narrower topics: on Nawa and its place in the prehistory of Mexico, in particular confirming standard views that Nawas were immigrants into Mesoamerica; on Archaic and Formative period interactions involving Oto-Mangeans, which is work that is largely still to be done; on the prospects for work on long-distance contacts between Mesoamerica and North America; on the contributions of historical linguistics in Mesoamerican epigraphy; and on the value and prospects of updating the methodology of glottochronology.

Special Finds: Locating Animism in the Archaeological Record

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy B. Groleau
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Past ◽  
Object Categories ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Importance ◽  
Water Plants

Ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of the Andes are rich with descriptions of animated landscapes, substances and objects. It is widely held that these beliefs have deep roots in the pre-Columbian past, and archaeological literature on the Andes routinely draws upon these sources describing the religious importance of mountains, water, plants and animals. While this generalized sense of animism in prehistory is accepted, locating animism archaeologically presents more of a challenge, and like investigations into religion and ritual more broadly, often focuses on special object categories. Spectacular items of fine-quality, exotic materials, or restricted circulation are singled out as ‘special’ by archaeologists, while objects such as plain pots or tools are interpreted as mundanely functional. Further, animistic interpretations that lean heavily on ethnographic analogy run the risk of simply identifying traits in the past which match up with accounts from more recent times. Using materials from the Wari site of Conchopata in the central Andes of Peru, I take up the idea of animism as a ‘relational epistemology’ (Bird-David 1999). This view repositions animism as something that arises out of an ongoing engagement between humans and the world they inhabit rather than as a set of beliefs. This move begins to dissolve the categories of sacred and profane that are embedded in historical studies of religion. Recent shifts in archaeological approaches to ritual provide methodological frameworks for exploring how mundane objects may be transformed into sacred and further allow us to interrogate changes in practice and highlight variation in how animism was deployed in specific locales concurrent with larger social changes.

The Body Context: Interpreting Early Nasca Decapitated Burials

2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa DeLeonardis
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
The Body ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Body Images ◽  
Phase 3 ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Notable Increase ◽  
Trophy Heads ◽  
Extended Posture

AbstractOne of the most enigmatic aspects of decapitation practices among south coastal Peruvian Paracas and Nasca cultures (900 B.C.-A.D. 750) is the near absence of headless bodies in the archaeological record. Drawing on a case study of an Early Nasca, Phase 3 headless burial at Site PV62D13 in the lower Ica Valley, together with examples of headless interments reported in the literature, I examine the nature and disposition of headless burials. Three burial patterns, or forms, are proposed. The burial at PV62D13 is distinguished for its extended posture and interment in a non-cemetery setting and is proposed to be a dedicatory burial. Burial forms for disembodied heads are also examined, and over time, a notable increase in cached heads, buried without grave offerings is observed. Painted ceramic images of Nasca trophy heads and headless bodies are reviewed diachronically and a marked increase in decapitation scenes is noted for Late Nasca. Attention is drawn to the limited number of headless body images overall, and possible solutions to reconcile the visual imagery with the archaeological data are offered.

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