scholarly journals The Elephant in the Handaxe: Lower Palaeolithic Ontologies and Representations

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Ran Barkai
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
World Order ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Lower Paleolithic ◽  
The World ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
Lower Palaeolithic

Indigenous hunter-gatherers view the world differently than do WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) societies. They depend—as in prehistoric times—on intimate relationships with elements such as animals, plants and stones for their successful adaptation and prosperity. The desire to maintain the perceived world-order and ensure the continued availability of whatever is necessary for human existence and well-being thus compelled equal efforts to please these other-than-human counterparts. Relationships of consumption and appreciation characterized human nature as early as the Lower Palaeolithic; the archaeological record reflects such ontological and cosmological conceptions to some extent. Central to my argument are elephants and handaxes, the two pre-eminent Lower Palaeolithic hallmarks of the Old World. I argue that proboscideans had a dual dietary and cosmological significance for early humans during Lower Paleolithic times. The persistent production and use of the ultimate megaherbivore processing tool, the handaxe, coupled with the conspicuous presence of handaxes made of elephant bones, serve as silent testimony for the elephant–handaxe ontological nexus. I will suggest that material culture is a product of people's relationships with the world. Early humans thus tailored their tool kits to the consumption and appreciation of specific animal taxa: in our case, the elephant in the handaxe.

scholarly journals Is There Such a Thing as Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology?

Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 794-810
Author(s):  
Graeme Warren
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
European Context ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
The World ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Significant Opportunity ◽  
Different Parts

This paper examines two related questions: firstly, whether there is a distinctive field of practice that might be called “hunter-gatherer archaeology” and which is different than other kinds of archaeology, and secondly, how such a claim might be justified. This question is considered through four prisms: (1) whether hunter-gatherers provide a unitary object of research; (2) whether hunter-gatherer archaeology is the same in different parts of the world; (3) whether hunter-gatherer archaeology is characterised by distinctive forms of archaeological record; and (4) whether there are distinctive themes within the field. None of these approaches provide a single unifying core, with any definition at best a constellation of “partially shared features” and with considerable difficulties surrounding the uncritical continued use of the concept of hunter-gatherers, which is linked to colonial ideologies and practices. Rather than provide a single unitary answer, it is proposed that the value and legitimacy of the concept of “hunter gatherer archaeology” requires consideration in the local contexts within which it might be used. In the European context within which I work, the broader social significance of the idea of the hunter-gatherer provides a significant opportunity for the development of a self-reflexive and publicly engaged hunter-gatherer archaeology committed to decoloniality. In this context, the potentials that the idea of a “hunter-gatherer archaeology” provides can, with caution, justify the continued use of the term. This answer will not characterise other locations, especially in colonised nations.

scholarly journals The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Childhood

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Age And Growth ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Cultural Construct

Real understanding of past societies is not possible without including children, and yet they have been strangely invisible in the archaeological record. In this volume, experts from around the world investigate childhood in the past, showing why it is important to understand childhood, why different cultures construct different ideas of how to rear children, what part children play in the community, and when and why childhood ends. The contributors also question why childhood has so often been missing from archaeological interpretation. Their answers are astonishing and thought provoking, challenging archaeologists to reconsider common assumptions about ways of looking at material culture in the past, and to reconsider the place of children in creating the archaeological record itself. However marginal the traces of children’s bodies and bricolage may seem compared to those of adults, archaeological evidence of children and childhood can be found in the most astonishing places and spaces, as well as in the most mundane. The archaeology of childhood is one of the most exciting and challenging areas for new discovery about past societies. Children are part of every human society, but childhood is a cultural construct. Each society develops its own idea about what a childhood should be, what children can or should do, and how they should be trained to take their place in the world. The archaeological record for children and childhood is regionally and chronologically diverse. Children are also increasingly being recognised as having played a part in creating the archaeological record itself. In this volume, the contributors ask questions about childhood—thresholds of age and growth, childhood in the material culture, the death of children, and the intersection of the childhood and the social, economic, religious, and political worlds of societies in the past. The volume spans the periods from earliest prehistory to the present day to provide a rich and nuanced perspective on childhood, revealing the commonalities and the very great differences in childhood experiences the world over.

scholarly journals Animals for Tools: The Origin and Development of Bone Technologies in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuwen Ma ◽  
Luc Doyon
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Bone Tools ◽  
Early Evidence ◽  
The World ◽  
Variable Extent ◽  
Bone Fragments ◽  
Manufacturing Techniques ◽  
Late Palaeolithic

The origin and development of bone technologies in China are reviewed in the light of recent discoveries and compared to trends emerging from the European and African archaeological records. Three categories of osseous tools are targeted: 1) unmodified bone fragments bearing traces of use in technological activities; 2) bone fragments modified to a variable extent with techniques generally used in stone technologies; 3) osseous fragments entirely shaped with techniques fit for the manufacture of formal bone tools. Early evidence of bone technologies in China are sporadically found in contexts dated between 1.8 and 1.0 Ma. By the late MIS6–early MIS5, bone tools are well-integrated in the technological systems of Pleistocene populations and the rules guiding their use appear increasingly standardized. In addition, the first evidence for the use of osseous material in symbolic activities emerges in the archaeological record during this period. Finally, between 40 and 35 ka, new manufacturing techniques and products are introduced in Late Palaeolithic technological systems. It is first apparent in the manufacture of personal ornaments, and followed by the production and diversification of formal bone tools. By that time, population dynamics seem to become materialized in these items of material culture. Despite regional specificities, the cultural trajectories identified for the evolution of bone technologies in China seem entirely comparable to those observed in other regions of the world.

scholarly journals Russia’s Strategies towards BRICS: Problems and Opportunities

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 534-542
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Anatolievich Sergunin
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
The West ◽  
World Community ◽  
Brics Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
Status Seeking ◽  
The One

This article aims to examine Moscow’s policy motives regarding BRICS as well as priority areas in Russia’s strategy towards this grouping. The Russian policies towards and within BRICS represent a combination of ideational and material motives. On the one hand, BRICS is important for the Kremlin in terms of status seeking: with the BRICS’ help Russia tries to return its status of a great power, shape the future world order and to make the West abide by the rules of that order. On the other hand, Moscow values its economic and strategic partnerships with the BRICS states which are important for Russia’s well-being and for counter-balancing the West in the global geopolitical and geoeconomic game. In other words, BRICS provides Russia with additional prestige in the international arena as well as greater legitimacy to its international activities. In contrast to the West’s accusations, in case of BRICS Russia’s foreign policy behavior does not fall into the category of the revisionist one. Rather, Russia (similar to other BRICS countries) prefers to act on the basis of existing international rules and norms rather than to challenge or keep them intact. Russia aims at reforming these rules to adapt them to new global realities and make them acceptable for all the members of the world community.

scholarly journals Homer's Entangled Objects: Narrative, Agency and Personhood In and Out of Iron Age Texts

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitley
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Classical Archaeology ◽  
Narrative Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Of Greece

In recent years, material culture studies have come to embrace contemporary Melanesia and European prehistory, but not classical archaeology and art. Prehistory is still thought, in many quarters, to be intrinsically more ‘ethnographic’ than historical periods; in this discourse, the Greeks (by default) become proto-modern individuals, necessarily opposed to Melanesian ‘dividuals’. Developments in the study of the Iron Age Mediterranean and the world of Homer should undermine such stark polarities. Historic and proto-historic archaeologies have rich potential for refining our notions both of agency and of personhood. This article argues that the forms of material entanglements we find in the Homeric poems, and the forms of agency (sensu Gell 1998) that we can observe in the archaeological record for the Early Iron Age of Greece (broadly 1000–500 bc) are of the same kind. The agency of objects structures Homeric narrative, and Homeric descriptions allow us precisely to define Homeric ‘human–thing entanglement’. This form of ‘material entanglement’ does not appear in the Aegean world before 1100 BC.

Globalization and Nation-State: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
V. Kuvaldin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
World Order ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Fundamental Possibility ◽  
The World

The fairly common pandemic of the coronavirus has paralyzed the global world. The material damage it inflicted amounts to trillions of dollars. It is unclear how long it will take for humanity to overcome the consequences of the most serious socio-economic crisis after the World War II. The contours of the “new normal” after the pandemic are even vaguer. The “perfect storm” of the pandemic was created by a combination of three destructive forces: the coronavirus, the cyclical crisis of the economic conjuncture, and the nefarious trends of neoliberal globalization. The political practice of neoliberalism in recent decades, which has brought the world a number of significant achievements, has created a tangle of intractable contradictions in all areas of modern life. Both of its main drivers – capital accumulation on the basis of expanded reproduction and the global hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon elite – were called into question. Issues such as a more equitable distribution of the created wealth and expanding the membership of the elite club of global regulation are going to the forefront. At the same time, protecting the environment and preventing other cataclysms that threaten the well-being and even the very existence of mankind have become urgent imperatives of the political agenda. However, it seems that the world elite is not ready for a profound correction of the existing world order yet. The most likely scenario for the foreseeable future seems to be attempts, in one form or another, to return to the unconditional hegemony of the collective West under the aegis of the United States in world affairs. This portends a turbulent decade filled with conflicts of varying severity and duration. Although there is a fundamental possibility of another, much more positive scenario for the development of globalization processes. In it, the coordinated actions of national and global elites would focus on finding solutions to the most pressing problems of the world community, namely environmental protection, human rights upholding, the unhindered development of world trade, the prevention of pandemics, and the fight against terrorism.

Photographs as Artifacts

Anthropos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dánae Fiore
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Tierra Del Fuego ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Large Samples ◽  
Two Agents ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Indigenous Society ◽  
Shed Light

This article presents key concepts and methods used to develop a visual archaeology of two Indigenous societies of Tierra del Fuego (Shelk’nam, Yámana/Yagan). Photographs are conceived as artifacts, which condense the traces of at least two agents: photographers and photographed subjects. These visual records are not only biased by the different photographers who took them, but also shed light on the different material culture patterns produced by each Indigenous society, which are visible on the images when studied in large samples. The article discusses some results of systematic investigations carried out on a corpus of 847 photographs taken by 39 photographers of Shelk’nam and Yámana/Yagan persons (19th and early 20th centuries). These are compared to materials found in the archaeological record in order to generate new data about the material culture used by Fueguian hunter-gatherers.

scholarly journals Beyond Tools and Function: The Selection of Materials and the Ontology of Hunter-Gatherers. Ethnographic Evidences and Implications for Palaeolithic Archaeology

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-291
Author(s):  
Ella Assaf ◽  
Francesca Romagnoli
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
The World ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
And Function ◽  
Aesthetic Values ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Palaeolithic Archaeology

In this paper we discuss the universal selection of exceptional materials for tool making in prehistory. The interpretation suggested in the literature for these non-standard materials is usually limited to a general statement, considering possible aesthetic values or a general, mostly unexplained, symbolic meaning. We discuss the implications of viewing these materials as active agents and living vital beings in Palaeolithic archaeology as attested in indigenous hunter-gatherer communities all around the world. We suggest that the use of specific materials in the Palaeolithic was meaningful, and beyond its possible ‘symbolic’ meaning, it reflects deep familiarity and complex relations of early humans with the world surrounding them—humans and other-than-human persons (animals, plants, water and stones)—on which they were dependent. We discuss the perception of tools and the materials from which they are made as reflecting relationships, respectful behaviour and functionality from an ontological point of view. In this spirit, we suggest re-viewing materials as reflecting social, cosmological and ontological world-views of Palaeolithic humans, and looking beyond their economic, functional aspects, as did, perhaps, our ancestors themselves.

Russian Citizens' Representations of the Country's Position in the Geopolitical Space of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, and the World

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-251
Author(s):  
Victor F. Petrenko ◽  
Olga V. Mitina ◽  
Kirill A. Bertnikov
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Multidimensional Space ◽  
Commonwealth Of Independent States ◽  
Repertory Grids ◽  
Implicit Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Invariant Factors

The aim of this research was the reconstruction of the system of categories through which Russians perceive the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Europe, and the world as a whole; to study the implicit model of the geopolitical space; to analyze the stereotypes in the perception of different countries and the superposition of mental geopolitical representations onto the geographic map. The techniques of psychosemantics by Petrenko, originating in the semantic differential of Osgood and Kelly's “repertory grids,” were used as working tools. Multidimensional semantic spaces act as operational models of the structures of consciousness, and the positions of countries in multidimensional space reflect the geopolitical stereotypes of respondents about these countries. Because of the transformation of geopolitical reality representations in mass consciousness, the commonly used classification of countries as socialist, capitalist, and developing is being replaced by other structures. Four invariant factors of the countries' descriptions were identified. They are connected with Economic and Political Well-being, Military Might, Friendliness toward Russia, and Spirituality and the Level of Culture. It seems that the structure has not been explained in adequate detail and is not clearly realized by the individuals. There is an interrelationship between the democratic political structure of a country and its prosperity in the political mentality of Russian respondents. Russian public consciousness painfully strives for a new geopolitical identity and place in the commonwealth of states. It also signifies the country's interest and orientation toward the East in the search for geopolitical partners. The construct system of geopolitical perception also depends on the region of perception.

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