scholarly journals Representing a Past: A Historical Analysis of how Gender Biases Influence the Interpretation of Archaeological Remains

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saliha Chattoo

The cultural and temporal context that any archaeologist is a part of will necessarily bias the way in which he or she interprets material remains. While interpretation is a crucial part of the archaeological process, the preconceived notions an archaeologist may hold can colour their interpretation of the society in question. Through examples such as the excavations at Knossos in Crete, the effect such biases can have on archaeological interpretation and discourse is studied.

2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162097477
Author(s):  
David Kellen ◽  
Clintin P. Davis-Stober ◽  
John C. Dunn ◽  
Michael L. Kalish

Paul Meehl’s famous critique detailed many of the problematic practices and conceptual confusions that stand in the way of meaningful theoretical progress in psychological science. By integrating many of Meehl’s points, we argue that one of the reasons for the slow progress in psychology is the failure to acknowledge the problem of coordination. This problem arises whenever we attempt to measure quantities that are not directly observable but can be inferred from observable variables. The solution to this problem is far from trivial, as demonstrated by a historical analysis of thermometry. The key challenge is the specification of a functional relationship between theoretical concepts and observations. As we demonstrate, empirical means alone cannot determine this relationship. In the case of psychology, the problem of coordination has dramatic implications in the sense that it severely constrains our ability to make meaningful theoretical claims. We discuss several examples and outline some of the solutions that are currently available.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kellen ◽  
Clintin Davis-Stober ◽  
John C Dunn ◽  
Michael Kalish

Paul Meehl’s famous critique laid out in detail many of the pathological practices and conceptual confusions that stand in the way of meaningful theoretical progress inpsychological science. Integrating some of Meehl’s points, we argue that one of the reasons for the slow progress in psychology is the failure to acknowledge the problem of coordination. This problem arises whenever we attempt to measure quantities that are not directly observable, but can be inferred from observable variables. The solution to this problem is far from trivial, as demonstrated by a historical analysis of thermometry. Also, it is not a problem that can be solved by empirical means. At its center is the need for a clear understanding of the functional relations between theoretical concepts and observations. In the case of psychology, the problem of coordination has dramatic implications in the sense that it severely limits our ability to make meaningful theoretical claims. We discuss several examples and lay out some of the solutions that are currently available.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Myriam Southwell

Agricultural Family Schools have been the way to concretize a model of pedagogy of alternation, an education modality that has been little investigated from a historical point of view. This article aims to present the emergence of alternating pedagogy in Europe, its influence in the South American territory, and to analyse in more detail its expansion in Argentina from the late 1960s. We are interested in dwelling on these alternative modes of conceiving and building schools not only because of their value as a contribution to agricultural education at the secondary level, but also as a contribution to research on specific historical experiences which constitute areas for inscription of school innovations, pedagogical debates, struggles and resistance (McLeod, 2014). Likewise, we are interested in analysing this alternative modality of schooling from the conceptual debate on the tension between the particular and the universal, which is expressed in this different way of conceiving teaching and learning and analysing the hegemony of the school format (Southwell, 2008). To do this, we carry out a historical analysis of the testimonies that recorded the emergence, debates and expansion of these institutions, as well as the educational concepts that were configured in the historical journey developed until today.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
NFn Wasita, M.A.

Sebagian rangkaian aktivitas ziarah di beberapa situs arkeologi di KabupatenTapin dan Hulu Sungai Utara, Kalimantan Selatan menunjukkan adanya perilaku dan situasi di tempat ziarah yang mendukung kegiatan pelestarian tinggalan arkeologi. Oleh karena itu, peluang ini perlu dimanfaatkan agar pihak arkeologi mendapatkan cara pelestarian yang melibatkan masyarakat dan murah biayanya. Berkaitan dengan itu, maka penelitian ini ditujukan untuk menemukan cara dalam memanfaatkan perilaku dan situasi untuk pelestarian tinggalan arkeologi dengan tidak mengganggu kegiatan ziarah, namun kegiatan pelestarian yang diinginkan dapat dipertanggungjawabkan secara keilmuan (arkeologi). Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan metode deskriptif. Implementasinya di lapangan dilakukan dengan mendeskripsikan tinggalan arkeologi untuk mengetahui kondisi eksistingnya dan riwayat pemugaran yang pernah dilakukan. Pendeskripsian ini untuk mengetahui hal-hal apa saja yang dapat dimanfaatkan dalam mendukung kegiatan pelestarian. Hasil yang diperoleh menunjukkan bahwa di situs-situs arkeologi yang diziarahi terdapat situasi dan perilaku para peziarah yang mendukung kegiatan pelestarian, seperti harus bersikap sopan, tidak merusak barang-barang yang ada di tempat ziarah (dalam konteks ini termasuk tinggalan arkeologi) dan situasi di tempat ziarah yang sakral, serta adanya teguran dari orang yang hidup di alam sebelah jika tidak sopan atau melanggar tata cara ziarah. Jadi kesimpulannya, situasi dan perilaku tersebut perlu dimanfaatkan untuk mendukung pelestarian tinggalan arkeologi. Caranya dengan memberi dukungan, karena perilaku yang baik (tidak merusak warisan budaya) merupakan bagian dari isi undang-undang cagar budaya. Selain itu, juga menghormati situasi yang tercipta di tempat ziarah karena itu merupakan pemaknaan oleh sebagian masyarakat. Agar cara mendukung dan menghormati dapat dipertanggungjawabkan, arkeolog harus jujur dan netral dalam kegiatan pelestarian.Kata kuci: tinggalan arkeologi, ziarah, situasi, perilaku, pelestarianSome parts of pilgrimage activities at several archeological sites in Tapin and Hulu Sungai Utara Districts indicate the existence of behaviors and conditions that support the conservation of archeological remains. This opportunity needs to be utilized, therefore the archeological party can obtain conservation methods that involve the community and the cost is cheap. The research goal is to gain proper method on utilizing pilgrim behaviors and situation for preserving archeological remains without interfering the pilgrimage activities, but the desired of conservation activities can be scientifically accounted (archeology). This research was conducted by using descriptive methods. Its implementation in the field was carried out by describing the archaeological remains of the existing conditions and the history of restoration that had been carried out. The describing of the pilgrim behaviors and the place conditions of pilgrimage is to find out what things can be utilized in supporting conservation activities. The results indicate that at the visited archeological sites there are conditions and behavior of pilgrims who supported conservation activities, such as having to be polite, not damage the items that are in the place of pilgrimage (in this context including archeological remains) and the situation in the sacred place of pilgrimage, as well as the rebuke of people living in the adjoining realm if they are not polite or violate to the procedure of pilgrimage. It is concluded that the situation and behavior need to be used to support the preservation of archeological remains. The way is by giving support, because good behavior (not damaging cultural heritage) is part of the contents of the cultural heritage law. In addition, it also respects the situation created in the place of pilgrimage because it is a meaning by some people. In order to be able to support and respect ways, archaeologists must be honest and neutral in conservation activities.Keywords: archaeological remains, pilgrimage, situations, behavior, preservation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-135
Author(s):  
Guanqiong Lin

As a Russian mountain-forest policeman and writer of the Harbin diaspora, B. M. Yulsky combined in his prose the experience of the police service and ideas about the ethnoculture of the Chinese who inhabited the territory of the Far East. This article contains a hermeneutic and comparative historical analysis of the short story The Way of the Dragon (1939) by B. M. Yulsky. The artistic morphology of the dragon is built on the comparison of its image in Chinese, Amur, Slavic and European cultures. One of the key images in the Russian heroic epic, in the Christian legend of Saint George, in Western and Northern European mythology, the dragon is actualized in modern literature. The analysis involves a philosophical treatise and a Chinese classic novel. It is shown that in the Chinese mythopoetic consciousness the temper and morphology of the dragon is different from its interpretation in European and Russian texts. The content of the short story by B. M. Yulsky speaks about his acquaintance with the understanding of the dragon, which is more characteristic in Chinese culture. The writer integrated the archaic image of the werewolf dragon into the real situation and brought a legend to the history of Honghuzi. The facts set forth in the monograph by D. V. Ershov are the real confirmation of the story described by B. M. Yulsky. The Way of the Dragon is an example of the artistic ethnography and the authorial frontier mythology that have developed in Russian literature in Harbin.


1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Morris

Since the mid-1980s, debates between competing schools of archaeological interpretation have become more theoretical and abstruse, moving away from confrontations over specific methods of analyzing our data. This article reopens arguments over one of the more controversial propositions of the New Archaeology - Saxe's claim that the emergence of formal cemeteries corresponds to the appearance of agnatic lineages monopolizing vital resources through inheritance. The hypothesis is examined in three ways: through a generalized ethnological model; through specific ethnographic data from Taiwan and Kenya; and through a historical comparison of Athens from 500 to 100 BC and Rome from 200 BC to AD 200. It is argued that all three methods lead to a similar conclusion, that many societies do indeed talk about the dead in the way the Saxe/Goldstein hypothesis maintains, but that in any specific instance the cemetery/property message may well be subverted by other arguments which the buriers are making.


2020 ◽  
pp. 036168432097717
Author(s):  
Nazlı Bhatia ◽  
Sudeep Bhatia

We combined established psychological measures with techniques in machine learning to measure changes in gender stereotypes over the course of the 20th century as expressed in large-scale historical natural language data. Although our analysis replicated robust gender biases previously documented in the literature, we found that the strength of these biases has diminished over time. This appears to be driven by changes in gender biases for stereotypically feminine traits (rather than stereotypically masculine traits) and changes in gender biases for personality-related traits (rather than physical traits). Our results illustrate the dynamic nature of stereotypes and show how recent advances in data science can be used to provide a long-term historical analysis of core psychological variables. In terms of practice, these findings may, albeit cautiously, suggest that women and men can be less constrained by prescriptions of feminine traits. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at 10.1177/0361684320977178


1994 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 191-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Newbury

Chronology used to be an object of great interest among African historians because it was seen as essential to history, it provided exactitude where so much else was analytic, and it was such a difficult feature to handle in oral accounts. More recently, historical analysis has been concerned more with processes and periods than with defined events and dates. Although deemed to be useful when available, precise chronology is now seen as less essential to historical reconstruction; it is accepted that chronologies are subject to interpretation and debate, and that these debates themselves illuminate the way in which local communities reconstruct—and historians understand—history.This paper addresses such issues of debate, contestation, and negotiation—that is, it explores the nature of intellectual hegemony—but it does so across cultural boundaries. It thus illustrates a fundamental contradiction in the manner by which historians have treated cultural units defined as distinct: while as independent polities they have been assumed to be culturally autonomous, source material from one is often drawn on to fill in the gaps of others. This procedure was especially common where there were powerful kingdoms whose political boundaries were assumed to be rigid and inviolate. The states of the western Interlacustrine area, each believed to be ruled by an established dynastic line whose origins reached far back into antiquity, provide an exemplary illustration of this process.By the early twentieth century, at the time of European conquest, Rwanda was one of the most powerful of these states, having either conquered and absorbed, or at least dominated, many of the distinct kingdoms with which it formerly competed.


1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Allyn

Alfred Kinsey has long been recognized for his crucial role in the history of American sexual science. Kinsey's massive studies of American sexual behavior changed the way social scientists studied sexuality by breaking from the accepted social hygienic, psychoanalytic, psychiatric and physiological approaches. Scholars have noted that Kinsey's efforts paved the way for the work of Masters and Johnson and contributed to a postwar climate of “openness” about sexual behavior. In effect, Kinsey's studies signaled the final triumph of scientific candor over the nineteenth century “conspiracy of silence.” Furthermore, Kinsey's quantitative approach advanced what Paul Robinson has called the “modernization of sex,” and Kinsey's discussion of homosexuality inspired both the homophile movement of the 1950's and the anti-homosexual moral panic of the same decade. Yet for all of Kinsey's significance, his part in shaping the social policies of the 1950's and the “sexual revolution” of the 1960's has received surprisingly little historical analysis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farzad Sharifian ◽  
Mehri Bagheri

Abstract This paper explores conceptualisations of xoshbaxti (‘happiness / prosperity’) and baxt (‘fate / luck’) in Persian, adopting a combined historical and contemporary analysis. The expression xoshbaxti consists of the free morphemes xosh (‘pleasant’) and baxt (‘fate’). The root of baxt originates from the Proto-Indo-European language (bʰeh₂g). An historical analysis returning all the way to the Proto-Indo-Iranian religion shows that the concept of baxt captured the idea of a pre-determined destiny by conceptualising Bhaga as a god who dispenses fortune. Data from a number of Persian encyclopaedias, dictionaries and weblogs, as well as a word association task carried out by a group of speakers of Persian, revealed that xoshbaxti in contemporary Persian is largely associated with what is considered to be a “good” married life. Overall, the findings of this study illustrate the usefulness of combining diachronic and synchronic approaches when analysing cultural conceptualisations. The study also shows that attempts to trace the historical roots of cultural conceptualisations may benefit from insights gained in other fields, such as the history of religions. In this context, the multidisciplinary nature of the newly developed field of Cultural Linguistics provides an effective basis for cross-disciplinary openness, which has the potential to deepen the scope of analyses undertaken.


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