Archaeology and the Body

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie K. Wesp ◽  
Rosemary A. Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Body ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Research Questions

The body has become a central focus of archaeological research as practitioners ask questions about the role of individual human beings, their engagement with things, and the effects of embodied actions in the past. The body can serve as a starting point for analyzing diversity in past populations in terms of sex, gender, status, ethnicity, ability, and other aspects of identity. Study of the human body allows practitioners to reconstruct how culture change affected portions of populations in different ways. Archaeologists draw on a wide range of social theories from allied disciplines that have explored gender, race, ability, and philosophical understandings of living in a body to explore how material remains of past populations can be used to provide temporal depth to questions about embodiment. Archaeologists employ a variety of materials to address embodiment, ranging from human skeletal remains, materials used as clothing and adornment, tools employed as extensions of the body, and objects and immobile features that structure embodied experiences. This diversity of materials facilitates examination of similarly diverse research questions, including phenomenological understandings of how the world is experienced through the body and the senses; how cultural practices modified bodies; how visual culture, including representations of bodies, create and change body ideologies; and how skeletal remains were shaped by daily life in the past. In recent years, archaeologists have begun to reflect on the ethical implications of archaeological research on human bodies and how this research can be conducted to include perspectives from descendant communities and the public regarding research questions and the presentation of results. Archaeologists also consider how their own experiences are shaped by working with human remains.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

Minds and brains: angels, humans, and brutes

1982 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-315
Author(s):  
Mortimer J. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Conceptual Thought ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Fine Print

✓ In his 1982 Cushing oration, a distinguished philosopher, author, and discerning critic presents a distillate of his phenomenally wide range of personal experience and his familiarity with the great books and teachers of the present and the past. He explores the differences and relationships between human beings, brute animals, and machines. Knowledge of the brain and nervous system contribute to the explanation of all aspects of animal behavior, intelligence, and mentality, but cannot completely explain human conceptual thought.

Threshold

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Castrucci
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Basic Material ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Biological Basis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Mind

The human mind has phased out its traditional anchorage in a natural biological basis (the «reasons of the body» which even Spinoza’s Ethics could count on) – an anchorage that had determined, for at least two millennia, historically familiar forms of culture and civilisation. Increasingly emphasising its intellectual disembodiment, it has come to the point of establishing in a completely artificial way the normative conditions of social behaviour and the very ontological collocation of human beings in general. If in the past ‘God’ was the name that mythopoietic activity had assigned to the world’s overall moral order, which was reflected onto human behaviour, now the progressive freeing of the mind – by way of the intellectualisation of life and technology – from the natural normativity which was previously its basic material reference opens up unforeseen vistas of power. Freedom of the intellect demands (or so one believes) the full artificiality of the normative human order in the form of an artificial logos, and precisely qua artificial, omnipotent. The technological icon of logos (which postmodern dispersion undermines only superficially) definitively unseats the traditional normative, sovereign ‘God’ of human history as he has been known till now. Our West has been irreversibly marked by this process, whose results are as devastating as they are inevitable. The decline predicted a century ago by old Spengler is here served on a platter....

scholarly journals Stamselnavorsing en -terapie: ’n oorsig oor die uitvoerbaarheid daarvan met meegaande etiese implikasies

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. Rheeder
Keyword(s):  
Stem Cells ◽  
Stem Cell ◽  
Stem Cell Research ◽  
The Body ◽  
Embryonic Cells ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Stem Cell Technology ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Stem Cell Lines

Stem cell research and therapy: an overview of its feasibility with accompanying ethical implications Stem cell research is a breathtaking technology where man’s own cells are used to effect a cure for certain ailments. Stem cells are specially developed cells that contain the ability to develop into any cell in the body and to cure or replace defective cells. Researchers isolated stem cells from the human (and animal) embryo, foetus, umbilical cord, and adult body and developed them to stem cell lines for therapy. Astonishing results have already been shown. In some instances research- ers achieved full cure or at least huge improvement in animals (and in a few instances with human beings) with diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and auto-immune diseases. The broken spinal marrow of rats has also been repaired through this technique. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the technical feasibility and advancement of this field of research. It will become apparent from these facts that there are a large number of general and technical problems with the accompanying ethical implications, that will have to be resolved before this therapy can be applied. Problems that have been identified include the necessary destruction of the human embryo, the consideration of therapeutic cloning, the placing of human embryonic cells in embryos of primates such as apes and a series of technical problems in the development of stem cell technology.

Translating the Biblical Hebrew WordNepheshin Light of New Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-166
Author(s):  
Richard Pleijel
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Hebrew Word ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
New Directions ◽  
New Research

In this paper, the translation of the Biblical Hebrew word nephesh is discussed in light of new research. The starting point for the paper is a 1976 article in The Bible Translator that discusses the translation of nephesh based on the idea that it is a monistic entity referring to human beings as such. It is shown that this view was most representative for the exegetical consensus of the time of the article. However, a fair amount of new research points out new directions for interpreting nephesh as an entity or essence that was perceived as being separable from the body. This is also confirmed by research on cognate ancient Near Eastern concepts. It is argued that this should affect our way of translating the word nephesh.

DEDICATORY BURIAL/OFFERING COMPLEXES AT THE MOON PYRAMID, TEOTIHUACAN

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saburo Sugiyama ◽  
Leonardo López Luján
Keyword(s):  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Ritual Sacrifice ◽  
Ruling Elites

AbstractA series of highly elaborated burial/offering complexes have been discovered recently in association with seven superimposed monumental constructions at the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological contexts excavated during the past seven years indicate that these dedicatory complexes were symbols of a state religious ideology and communicated sociopolitical information on behalf of ruling elites. Rich artifacts made of obsidian, greenstone, shell, pyrite, ceramics, wood, and textile, as well as abundant skeletal remains of sacrificed animals and human beings, stand out in these unusual ritual deposits. Many of the offerings possess strong connotations of warfare and ritual sacrifice. After describing the five burial/offering complexes and discussing their possible function and religious significance, we conclude that, when the expanding Teotihuacan state orchestrated these monumental constructions, the most important ritual paraphernalia was buried in the new enlargement programs to express the ideology of sacred rulership.

Yiddish Linguistics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac L. Bleaman
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
Research Information ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
New Research

Linguistic studies of Yiddish span several centuries and incorporate a wide range of research questions and methodologies, from philological analyses of Old Yiddish texts to generative approaches to particular grammatical constructions. The historical development of the language has undoubtedly been, and continues to be, the most hotly debated research topic in Yiddish linguistics. However, other productive areas of inquiry have included structural analysis (e.g., syntax, semantics, and phonology), dialectology and other fields of sociolinguistics (e.g., language contact and interspeaker variation), and, increasingly, computational approaches (e.g., the construction and use of linguistic corpora). Historically, Yiddish linguists have often played a major role in language planning efforts, including the production of style manuals, dictionaries, and textbooks—so much so that “Yiddish linguist” has often been understood as synonymous with “Yiddish standardizer.” However, the primary focus of this bibliography is descriptive linguistic research. (Information on standard Yiddish reference works, which can be unparalleled sources of linguistic data and a useful starting point for new research projects, can be found in the more general Oxford Bibliographies article “Yiddish.”) The works included here represent a curated sample, rather than an exhaustive list, of publications and research tools in the various subfields of Yiddish linguistics. (See Bibliographies for more comprehensive references.) Due to the centrality of language in research on the history, literature, and folk culture of Ashkenazic Jews, this bibliography is likely to be useful not only to linguists, but also to researchers in related disciplines within Yiddish and Jewish studies.

The body of the martyr. Between an archival exercise and the recovery of his suffering. The need for a recovery of humanity in osteoarchaeology

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Ion
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Catholic Bishop ◽  
Ethical Discussion ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Scientific Objects ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper addresses the limits of the methods and questions asked by osteoarchaeologists when dealing with human remains. Osteoarchaeologists seem to take for granted that through the study of such remains they can say something relevant about a past individual's identity, something about the nature of their being. Since the early 1990s various voices have questioned these assumptions, also claiming that the study and display of human remains are unethical. It is my intention to rethink the topic of ethics in osteoarchaeology by shifting the focus to the research questions and methods we employ – what kind of evidence are we looking for and what kinds of relationship are we establishing with those earlier lives? By taking as a starting point the analysis of the remains of the Greek Catholic Bishop Vasile Aftenie, killed during the Communist regime, I explore the view practitioners take as the legitimate way of framing the relationship between past and present and the transformation of bones into scientific objects. In the end I propose that such a re-evaluation, alongside an opening of our discipline towards anthropology, can contribute to a recovery of humanity as part of the academic discourse, which should be the key element in any ethical discussion.

scholarly journals “The Skin is the Cradle of the Soul”: Didier Anzieu on the Skin-Ego, Boundaries, and Boundlessness

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Werbart
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Severe Mental Disorders ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Tactile Contact ◽  
Common Skin ◽  
Skin Ego ◽  
Body Ego ◽  
Psychic Function

Didier Anzieu’s notion of the skin-ego builds on a long psychoanalytic tradition that began with Freud’s idea that the ego is first and foremost a body ego, a projection in the psyche of the surface of the body, or, in other words, the idea that psychic phenomena are always embodied. An interface, a container for the ego, but also its origin: thus did Anzieu conceptualize the skin’s psychic function. The baby’s fantasy of having a common skin with the mother is the concrete starting point for a development that, through the prohibition on touching, leads to the experience of being a separate and individual person. Psychoanalytic work with severe mental disorders makes it necessary to investigate deficiencies in the skin-ego’s containing function before the patient’s psychic contents can be explored. In the psychoanalytic situation, the analyst’s words replace tactile contact and thereby contribute to healing injuries to the skin-ego. The clinical implications of Anzieu’s theoretical model are illustrated by examples from psychoanalyses of children and adults. The close connection between touch, psychic envelopes, and thinking opens a wider perspective on the necessity of setting limits to violence, against both nature and human beings.

The Origins of Totalitarianism

1953 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Voegelin
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Past

The vast majority of all human beings alive on earth is affected in some measure by the totalitarian mass movements of our time. Whether men are members, supporters, fellow-travellers, naive connivers, actual or potential victims, whether they are under the domination of a totalitarian government, or whether they are still free to organize their defenses against the disaster, the relation to the movements has become an intimate part of their spiritual, intellectual, economic, and physical existence. The putrefaction of Western civilization, as it were, has released a cadaveric poison spreading its infection through the body of humanity. What no religious founder, no philosopher, no imperial conqueror of the past has achieved — to create a community of mankind by creating a common concern for all men — has now been realized through the community of suffering under the earthwide expansion of Western foulness.

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