scholarly journals Variability in an early hominin percussive tradition: the Acheulean versus cultural variation in modern chimpanzee artefacts

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1682) ◽  
pp. 20140358 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. J. Gowlett
Keyword(s):  
Discriminant Analysis ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Measurement And Analysis ◽  
Early Hominin ◽  
A Site ◽  
Access To Food ◽  
Early Human

Percussion makes a vital link between the activities of early human ancestors and other animals in tool-use and tool-making. Far more of the early human actions are preserved as archaeology, since the percussion was largely used for making hard tools of stone, rather than for direct access to food. Both primate tools and early hominin tools, however, offer a means to exploring variability in material culture, a strong focus of interest in recent primate studies. This paper charts such variability in the Acheulean, the longest-lasting tool tradition, extant form about 1.7 to about 0.1 Ma, and well known for its characteristic handaxes. The paper concentrates on the African record, although the Acheulean was also known in Europe and Asia. It uses principal components and discriminant analysis to examine the measurements from 66 assemblages (whole toolkits), and from 18 sets of handaxes. Its review of evidence confirms that there is deep-seated pattern in the variation, with variability within a site complex often matching or exceeding that between sites far distant in space and time. Current techniques of study allow comparisons of handaxes far more easily than for other components, stressing a need to develop common practice in measurement and analysis. The data suggest, however, that a higher proportion of traits recurs widely in Acheulean toolkits than in the chimpanzee record.

The Prehistory of Hawai‘i

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick V. Kirch
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Hawaiian Islands ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Sociopolitical Complexity ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Specialized Production ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Kingship

The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated inhabited archipelago in the world. Initially colonized around A.D. 1000, the environmental gradients of rainfall and island-age have influenced subsequent cultural variation and differentiation in the islands. Settlements are typically dispersed hamlets and integrated within agricultural facilities such as irrigated pondfields and dryland field systems. Populations were politically organized in idealized pie-shaped units or ahupua`a that typically encompass a cross-section of island resources. Material culture , including fishhooks, stone tools, and religious temples, is broadly similar within these units, but there is also much evidence for elite control of specialized production in some areas. The Hawaiian Islands are the archetypal chiefdom society, although based on changes in demography, monumental architecture (heiau) and royal centers, intensive agriculture, and divine kingship, the population had likely crossed the threshold of sociopolitical complexity to that of an archaic state prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1778.

scholarly journals Balancing Memory and Material at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Gabrielle A. Berlinger
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social History ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Lower East Side ◽  
East Side ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
Time Capsule ◽  
A Site

Abstract: Founded in a nationally landmarked apartment building on the ever-gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is an historic site of immigrant social history and material culture. Constructed in 1864 and occupied by over 7,000 immigrants until its closing in 1935, this building has withstood constantly rising visitorship each year since its opening as a museum in 1988. With apartment spaces restored for the public to explore without roped-off restriction, this time capsule of domestic immigrant life requires continual maintenance to preserve its historic physical fabric. Through interviews with the Museum staff and the Preservation Advisory Committee (conservators, architectural historians, curators), as well as documentation of technical processes carried out in the preservation process, this ethnographic study investigates the questions and compromises that arise in the preservation of the tangible and intangible heritage contained within an historic structure in constant use. Which narratives are reconstructed through the Museum’s decisions to restore certain material features of the building while allowing others to decay? What are best practices for interpretation and preservation when a museum’s success results in the gradual destruction of its main artifact (the building) through use? This study explores the intersection of museum mission and practice, heritage construction, and historic preservation at a site both sustained and destroyed by its increasing success.

The Changing Face and Function of Museums

1998 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Trotter
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
The Face ◽  
National Museums ◽  
And Function ◽  
A Site ◽  
Internal Pressures ◽  
New Museology

Museums are currently undergoing a number of changes as a repercussion of their histories and professional developments, and of new social and cultural contexts, not to mention as a result of pressure from competition and economic forces. This article explores the current ‘reinvention’ of museums — in particular, national museums — by examining some of the factors of change — some of the major internal pressures that have been the result of museological initiatives and also various exogenous influences. New museology and postcolonialism represent not only separate forces, but also a synthesis of pressures that are not only changing the face, but also the role, of museums, whilst also transforming relationships between museums and their users. A concern of this study is to look at those museums which have a ‘nationalising’ function, and to determine whether changing policies and practices are inhibiting or advance a renegotiation of the relationships between museums and their constituencies. In the last two decades, we have seen some trends confirmed. There has been a move from material culture studies to concern with the ideas contained in objects, whilst the older notion of the museum as a treasure house has given way to a stronger educative role and, more recently, an information centre and also a site of leisure, entertainment and identity-formation. These ‘reinventive’ processes, it is suggested, are closely allied to a postcolonial imperative.

Can We See the “Hoplite Revolution” on the Ground? Archaeological Landscapes, Material Culture, and Social Status in Early Greece

Men of Bronze ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Foxhall
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Site Survey ◽  
Archaic Greece ◽  
History Of ◽  
Small Scale Farmers ◽  
A Site

This chapter considers what a site survey might reveal about the appearance of a new class of small farmers in archaic Greece. It gives a brief history of the discipline and explains the strengths and limitations of using its findings for historical analysis. This study of eight survey projects across Greece, including Boeotia, the Argolid, Laconia, and Pylos, focuses on data for the Geometric through the Hellenistic periods. The chapter suggests that the archaeology tells us a different story than the historical record of citizens, soldiers, and property owners. The survey data show the rise of a densely populated countryside of small-scale farmers neither in the eighth century nor, universally, in the sixth century.

From Ajanta to Sydenham: ‘Indian’ art at the Sydenham Palace

After 1851 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Victoria Turner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The South ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
A Site ◽  
Victoria And Albert Museum ◽  
Great Exhibition ◽  
Indian Art

Discussions about the display of Indian art and material culture in the Victorian imperial metropolis have largely focused on the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its progeny, the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). However, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill was an important, but much overlooked, location of imperial and colonial display well into the twentieth century. This essay begins by examining the Sydenham Palace at a site of imperial spectacle from its opening in 1854 and well into the twentieth century. Relevant events included the African Exhibition of 1895, the opening of the Victoria Cross Gallery in the same year and the Colonial Exhibition of 1905, and the display of Major Robert Gill’s copies of the frescoes from the Buddhist rock-cut temples at Ajanta in India (until they were destroyed by fire in 1866). The crowning occasion in the Sydenham series of imperial events was the Festival of Empire in 1911 which celebrated the ascension of George V as ‘King-Emperor’. Taking the 1911 Festival as a case study, this essay explores the complex and often conflicting narratives of empire that were communicated through the courts and grounds at Sydenham.

scholarly journals On Vastness and Variability: Cultural Transmission, Historicity, and the Paleoindian Record in Eastern South America

2015 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 1239-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
ASTOLFO G.M. ARAUJO
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
South America ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
South American ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Early Human

Eastern South America, or what is today Brazilian territory, poses interesting questions about the early human occupation of the Americas. Three totally distinct and contemporaneous lithic technologies, dated between 11,000 and 10,000 14C BP, are present in different portions of the country: the Umbu tradition in the south, with its formal bifacial industry, with well-retouched scrapers and bifacial points; the Itaparica tradition in the central-west / northwest, totally unifacial, whose only formal artifacts are limaces; and the "Lagoa Santa" industry, completely lacking any formal artifacts, composed mainly of small quartz flakes. Our data suggests that these differences are not related to subsistence or raw-material constraints, but rather to different cultural norms and transmission of strongly divergent chaînes opératoires. Such diversity in material culture, when viewed from a cultural transmission (CT) theory standpoint, seems at odds with a simple Clovis model as the origin of these three cultural traditions given the time elapsed since the first Clovis ages and the expected population structure of the early South American settlers.

The new Basrah Museum: dedicated to the archaeological and historical inheritance of Basrah and Iraq

Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (369) ◽  
pp. 811-813
Author(s):  
Adil Hashim Ali
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
A Site ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The City

Located in the Fertile Crescent and at the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the city of Basra is steeped in history. Close to the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the territory of modern Iraq was occupied variously by Achaemenids and Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sassanids, before the arrival of Islam in the early middle ages. In more recent history, the city's strategic position near the Gulf coast has made Basra a site of contestation and conflict. This exposure to so many different cultures and civilisations has contributed to the rich identity of Basra, a wealth of history that demands a cultural museum able to present all of the historical periods together in one place. The original Basra Museum was looted and destroyed in 1991, during the first Gulf War. The destruction and loss of so much of Iraq's history and material culture prompted official collaboration to build a new museum that would represent the city of Basrah and showcase its significance in the history of Iraq. The culmination of an eight-year collaborative project between the Iraq Ministry of Culture, the State Board of Antiquities and the Friends of Basrah Museum, the new museum was opened initially in September 2016. Already established as a cultural landmark in the city, with up to 200 visitors a day and rising, the museum was officially opened on 20 March 2019. The author was fortunate to be present for this event and able to explore the new galleries (Figure 1).

Archaeology of Oceania

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan E. Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Oceanic Islands ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Political Complexity ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Late Start

Oceania comprises the islands of the Pacific Ocean and nearby seas originally settled from Island Southeast Asia by variably related populations over the last 50,000 years. The region is commonly divided into Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia, but much archaeological research also references the biogeographic regions Near and Remote Oceania. Near Oceania includes New Guinea and the neighboring Admiralty, Bismarck, and Solomon Islands, all inhabited in the Pleistocene and early Holocene, while Remote Oceania includes the remaining Oceanic islands to the north and east of the Solomons that were settled in two waves beginning approximately 3,000 and 1,000 years ago. Modern archaeology in Oceania has its roots in the comparative ethnology of the region at the beginning of the 20th century, an ethnology influenced by the accounts of European explorers and missionaries from the previous 200 years. This ethnological research described archaeologically relevant behavior, material culture, and landscapes, but it was not until 1947 that the first archaeological excavations were conducted—a late start on the world stage owing to the mistaken belief that there was little time-depth to Oceanic cultures. In the second half of the 20th century, the pace of archaeology in Oceania quickened, with research focused on the chronological sequences of various islands and archipelagos, the geographic origins of particular groups, and changes in political complexity over time. Archaeologists still investigate many of these issues, but the diversity of research topics has increased. Theoretically, archaeological research in Oceania is solidly processual (although additional frameworks are beginning to appear) and this is born out of a decades-old approach to islands as laboratories for comparisons of cultural variation and attendant explanatory processes, particularly evolutionary and ecological ones. More recently, historical archaeology and indigenous archaeology have become prominent perspectives.

Gath of the Philistines

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
The Creation ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

Chapter 2 begins a series of case studies that are devoted to exploring what knowledge was drawn on by the biblical scribes to develop stories about the early Iron Age period. This chapter’s investigation is devoted to the Philistine city of Gath, one of the largest cities of its time and a site that was destroyed ca. 830 BCE. Significant about Gath, consequently, is that it flourished as an inhabited location before the emergence of a mature Hebrew prose writing tradition, meaning that the information recounted about the city was predicated primarily on older cultural memories of the location. Comparing the biblical references to the site with Gath’s archaeological remains reveals moments of resonance between these stories and the material culture unearthed from the location. Accordingly, what comes to light through this chapter’s analysis is one mode of remembering that informed the creation of these biblical stories: that of resilience.

Simulations and Outputs

Radiocarbon ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 871-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seren Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Data Selection ◽  
Multiple Model ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Site Chronology ◽  
A Site ◽  
Regional Analyses

Bayesian analysis is now routinely applied for the construction of site-specific stratigraphic chronological models. Other approaches have analyzed the chronology of phases of archaeological activity across regions. The available radiocarbon results—the nature of the samples and their associations—provide the basis for what chronological questions it is possible to address for any site or region. In dealing with regional analyses, due consideration must be made of data selection. While data selection might be a relatively self-evident consideration in the analysis of a site chronology, working with data from a larger region poses a number of specific data selection issues. Robust association between dated samples and a particular type of diagnostic material culture or site may provide one means of producing regional chronologies. However, if the activity under investigation includes a number of different cultural traits, which are related but with each having a slightly different chronological currency, defining the temporal end of data selection becomes more problematic. This article presents one approach, using a case study from the British Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, with 880 simulation OxCal models used to investigate the effect of variously defining the end of a regional archaeological phase. The results emphasize that for a regional case study, sensitivity analysis may provide a useful tool to ensure representative models; the study also highlights the importance of comparing multiple model posteriors.

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