The Shell Midden Sites of Senegambia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alioune Dème ◽  
Moustapha Sall
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Shell Midden ◽  
Shell Middens ◽  
Marine Transgression ◽  
Aquatic Fauna ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Iron Technology ◽  
Subsistence Activities ◽  
Shed Light

There are hundreds of shell midden sites along the Senegambian coastline. The shell middens were first formed during an eustatic event known as the Nouakchottien marine transgression (6,800–4,000 bp). During that marine transgression, the sea shoreline was pushed back hundreds of miles in the interior. This engendered the flourishing of malacological fauna and several fish species. As a result of this, several natural shell midden were formed. From the Late Stone Age to the 2nd millennium ce, populations exploited the aquatic fauna, which resulted in the formation of anthropogenic shell middens. The littoral where these shell middens are found is divided into three archaeological culture areas. Archaeological excavations at some of those sites, such as Khant and Dioron Boumak, have shed light on the nature of the material culture, subsistence activities, and the cultural history in these areas. Research at Soukouta has added new data on iron technology to understanding of the shell middens culture. These findings have also called into question the division of Senegambian prehistory into four distinct cultural areas known as aires culturelles.

The Exploitation of Aquatic Resources at Lake Cuitzeo, Michoacán, Mexico: An Ethnoarchaeological Study

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Williams
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Wild Plants ◽  
Agricultural Resources ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
West Mexico ◽  
Subsistence Activities ◽  
Human Subsistence ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThe ethnographic, archaeological, and ethnohistorical data discussed in this report help shed light on the cultural processes and the resulting archaeological correlates (i.e., artifacts and features) linked with aquatic subsistence in Lake Cuitzeo, Michoacán, México. This information is vital for interpreting the archaeological record not just in the study area, but also in all those parts of West Mexico and elsewhere in Mesoamerica where lakes, rivers, marshes, and streams offered a natural bounty for human exploitation. The Lake Cuitzeo Basin was a key economic area for the prehispanic Tarascan state, thanks to its wealth of mineral resources (primarily obsidian and salt). Although non-agricultural resources such as fish, wild plants, aquatic fowl and other wildlife were probably no less important for human subsistence than the area’s mineral riches, they have seldom been taken systematically into consideration by archaeologists in this part of Mesoamerica. This ethnoarchaeological research sheds light on ancient subsistence through the study of contemporary activities such as fishing, hunting, and gathering wild plants, and the associated material culture and work areas. This ethnographic information, as well as the extant ethnohistorical and archaeological records, offer an insight into prehispanic subsistence activities, which is critical for a better understanding of cultural and ecological adaptation in the study area through time.

Touchy-Feely History: The ‘Stuff’ of American Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
New Research

This state of the field essay examines recent trends in American Cultural History, focusing on music, race and ethnicity, material culture, and the body. Expanding on key themes in articles featured in the special issue of Cultural History, the essay draws linkages to other important literatures. The essay argues for more a more serious consideration of the products within popular culture, less as a reflection of social or economic trends, rather for their own historical significance. While the essay examines some classic texts, more emphasis is on work published within the last decade. Here, interdisciplinary methods are stressed, as are new research perspectives developing by non-western historians.

Narrated Photography

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Sarah Dunlop ◽  
Peter Ward
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Shed Light

This article describes how a recently refined visual ethnographic research method, “narrated photography,” contributes to the study of religion. We argue that this qualitative research method is particularly useful for studies of lived religion and demonstrate this through examples drawn from a study the sacred among young Polish migrants to England. Narrated photography, which entails asking people to photograph what is personally significant to them and then to narrate the image, generates visual and textual material that mediates the subjective. Through using this method we discovered that family was considered to be sacred, both in terms of links to religious practice and a desire for a secure home which family relationships provide. Additionally, narrated photography has the potential to expand our conceptions of lived religion through the inclusion of visual material culture and the visual context of the research participants. In this case the data revealed that the Polish young people view structures within their landscape through a particularly Polish Catholic lens. These findings shed light on the religious tensions that migrants encounter in everyday life.

The Identification and Study of Indian Shell Middens in Eastern North America: 1643–1861

1986 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew L. Christenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
North America ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Shell Midden ◽  
Shell Middens ◽  
Work Done

Although the interest in shell middens in North America is often traced to reports of the discoveries in Danish kjoekkenmoeddings in the mid-nineteenth century, extensive shell midden studies were already occurring on the East Coast by that time. This article reviews selected examples of this early work done by geologists and naturalists, which served as a foundation for shell midden studies by archaeologists after the Civil War.

Imagining the Woman Reader in the Age of Dante

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
Woman Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Literacy ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Shed Light

The literature of the Italian Due- and Trecento frequently calls into play the figure of a woman reader. From Guittone d’Arezzo’s piercing critic, the ‘villainous woman’, to the mysterious Lady who bids Guido Cavalcanti to write his grand philosophical song, to Dante’s female co-editors in the Vita Nova and his great characters of female readers, such as Francesca and Beatrice in the Comedy, all the way to Boccaccio’s overtly female audience, this particular sort of interlocutor appears to be central to the construct of textuality and the construction of literary authority in these times. The aim of this book is to shed light on this figure by contextualizing her within the history of female literacy, the material culture of the book, and the ways in which writers and poets of earlier traditions (in particular Occitan and French) imagined her. Its argument is that these figures of women readers are not mere veneers between a male author and a ‘real’ male readership, but that, although fictional, they bring several advantages to their vernacular authors, such as orality, the mother tongue, the recollection of the delights of early education, literality, freedom in interpretation, absence of teleology, the beauties of ornamentation and amplification, a reduced preoccupation with the fixity of the text, the pleasure of making mistakes, dialogue with the other, the extension of desire, original simplicity, and new and more flexible forms of authority.

Classics and Irish Politics, 1916-2016

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Northern Irish ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
Irish Politics

This collection addresses how models from ancient Greece and Rome have permeated Irish political discourse in the century since 1916. The 1916 Easter Rising, when Irish nationalists rose up against British imperial forces, was almost instantly mythologized in Irish political memory as a turning point in the nation’s history and an event that paved the way for Irish independence. Its centenary has provided a natural point for reflection on Irish politics, and this volume highlights an unexplored element in Irish political discourse, namely its frequent reference to, reliance on, and tensions with classical Greek and Roman models. Topics covered include the reception and rejection of classical culture in Ireland; the politics of Irish language engagement with Greek and Roman models; the intersection of Irish literature with scholarship in Classics and Celtic Studies; the use of classical allusion to articulate political inequalities across hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and class; meditations on the Northern Irish conflict through classical literature; and the political implications of neoclassical material culture in Irish society. As the only country colonized by Britain with a pre-existing indigenous heritage of expertise in classical languages and literature, Ireland represents a unique case in the fields of classical reception and postcolonial studies. This book opens a window on a rich and varied dialogue between significant figures in Irish cultural history and the Greek and Roman sources that have inspired them, a dialogue that is firmly rooted in Ireland’s historical past and continues to be ever-evolving.

Coda: Repositioning Early Modern Prague on the Global Stage

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Musical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The City

The question that sparked this forum was to what extent we can see Prague as an important stage for Renaissance and Reformation exchange and as an internationally connected city. It is striking, though not unexpected, that all the authors have been drawn to some extent to sources and subjects in Rudolfine Prague. It must be stressed, however, that the emphasis of each of these studies is somewhat different to an older field of “Rudolfine studies.” The researchers here do not focus on the emperor's court but use it as context. It is tangential to their main focal points—on Jewish communities, religious change, and the exchange of scientific and musical knowledge—and these are first and foremost historians not of Prague but of social and cultural history, music, art, material culture, and religion. This indicates a marked shift from the historiography. For this generation of scholars, Prague is not only a city that is home to a fascinating and intriguing art historical moment but is also a city of early modern international connections. It provides a unique context for understanding communities, everyday experiences, religion, and culture in early modern Europe—a multilingual, multiconfessional, and multicultural mixing pot whose composition changed dramatically across the early modern period. Rudolf's court was certainly a catalyst for these crossings and encounters, but they did not fade away after his death in 1612, nor were they limited to the confines of the castle above the city.

scholarly journals A Sinicised Religion Under Foreign Rule: Buddhism in the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115–1234)

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-52
Author(s):  
Hang Lin
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Southern Song ◽  
Jin Dynasty ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Medieval China ◽  
Historical Writings

Buddhism in the Jurchen Jin (1115–234) dynasty has been regarded as a peripheral phenomenon; as such, it remains largely overlooked by traditional historiography. When placed into a broader context, however, both Buddhism under Jin rule and the dynasty itself functioned as a significant link in the long chain of Chinese cultural history. The Jin witnessed a crucial time period during which Chan (Zen) Buddhism, later the most popular Buddhist school in China, gained dominance and began its transmission of several major lines. Jin Buddhism also created a large corpus of material culture, thereby providing invaluable primary sources for the study of Buddhism in China. Based on an analysis of historical writings and archaeological evidence, this article examines the development and various characteristics of Buddhism during the Jin, its relationship with the Jurchen rulers and its influence on the Jin society as a whole. To a large extent, the Jin was at least as important to the development of Buddhism as the Southern Song (1127–276). Moreover, knowledge of Jin Buddhism is indispensable to understanding the Jin culture which, in turn, is essential to understanding the general development of the multifaceted cultural traditions in medieval China.

SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OXUS CIVILIZATION IN THEARABIAN GULF

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 97-103
Author(s):  
Khayitmurod Khurramov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Unique Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
Marine Shell

It is known that the Oxus civilization in the Bronze Age, with its unique material culture, interacted with a number of cultural countries: the Indian Valley, Iran, Mesopotamia, Elam and other regions. As a result of these relationships, interactions and interactions are formed. Archaeologists turn to archaeological and written sources to shed light on the historiography of this period. This research is devoted to the history of cultural relations between the Oxus civilization and the countries of the Arabian Gulf in the Bronze Age. The article highlights cultural ties based on an analysis of stamp seals and unique artifacts.Key words: Dilmun, Magan, marine shell, Arabian Gulf, Bahrain, Mesopotamia, Harappa, Gonur, Afghanistan

Gustav Klemm, Cultural History, and Kulturwissenschaft

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter N. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
German Culture ◽  
High Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Cultural Science ◽  
History Of Culture

This chapter examines a new material-based history of German culture and looks at how a study of material culture had since evolved into “cultural history.” It traces the history of culture in nineteenth-century Germany, at the same time puzzling out the ambiguity of such a category as it was applied during the period. Encompassing both high culture and low, the popular and the elite, cultural history has often seemed borderless and indefinite—leading even its admirers to “search” for it or to see it as a “problem.” The chapter then turns to a study of Gustav Friedrich Klemm (1802–1867), the most important of the cultural historians of the 1840s and 1850s. His General Cultural History (1843–1852) and General Cultural-Science (1855) are both significant works in the field.

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