Sexing the Archive

Despite being a widely consumed genre of visual culture, pornography remains a touchy subject in contemporary queer historiography. Queer archives overflow with it, but queer histories don’t. Historically associated with low culture and distrusted by value systems that have tended to privilege the “high” faculties of reason to the detriment of the “base” materiality of the body, its affects and appetites, porn is too rarely approached as a legitimate source with which to think cultural, affective, intellectual, and sexual histories. This article draws from porn studies and queer historiographies to draw some methodological considerations about the value, benefits, and challenges posed by porn archives to the writing of queer subcultural histories. Rather than trying to solve porn’s double ontological status as both documentary and fantasy, the authors locate in that defining feature of the genre porn’s value as a historical source. Simultaneously a document of sex cultures and of the edges of morality, and a historically and culturally situated speculation on what bodies and sex may become, porn offers both cultural critics and historians a rich archive for deepening their knowledge of the intersections of culture, morality, pleasure, community, embodiment, and the politics of belonging.

Problems of Criticism of the Communist Poland’s Security Service (SB) Files as Historical Sources

Despite the passage of 20 years since the opening of the archives of the former SB, historians have not developed the principles of criticism of SB files as historical sources, which is conducive to the so-called playing with folders, and consequently the destruction of historical narrative and social life. Among researchers and publicists, an affirmative attitude towards the SB files has been created, causing their criticism to be ignored. Researchers ignore the requirement to separate the theoretical-ideological and rhetorical layers of SB operational files. They also neglect to study the credibility of their authors. Rafał Łatka gave a justification for the affirmative attitude to the SB files. It has been shown that this justification is logically erroneous, and the affirmative attitude to the SB files is contrary to the rational concept of the historical source and to the examples of the lack of credibility of these files. Several ways of creating questionnaires to examine the credibility of SB files were proposed. The first question that was proposed: Was the work of officers and their superiors in the field of interest to the researcher focused on efficiency or on the statistics of results? Further proposals suggest questions about the internal control of the case under investigation. It was justified that it is not enough to state the fact of registration of a given person by SB as a collaborator, because it is necessary to demonstrate specific cooperation. It was justified that the reliability of a note decreases exponentially as a function of the number of intermediaries between it and the facts. The need to ask about the intentions of the officers doing reports, which could be related to their professional careers, the expectations of superiors, the need to demonstrate results, etc., was indicated. The need to investigate deviations of the examined case from the ideal instructional pattern was also indicated. Studies of the reliability of files have their ethical aspect. Studies that may threaten good name of the persons concerned should meet the highest methodological standards and be guided by the principle of in dubio pro reo.

Cultural Deposits of the Latest Time in the Context of Archaeological Research: Stratigraphic ‘Ballast’ or Historical Value

The article is written in the scientific polemic genre and it is a continuation of the discussion that began earlier in the professional environment. The author defends the position to give more attention to culture layers of the 20th during conducting an archaeological excavation. The problem is the uncertainty of the cultural deposits’ status of the 20th century. The purpose of the article is to determine the 20th century culture deposits historical value. Research methodology. Common-scientific methods are used. The typological method is also used, in particular, for 20th century culture deposits classification. The scientific novelty lies in the first, in Ukrainian historiography, attempt to argue a historical value of the 20th-century cultural layers. Conclusion. The modern culture deposits' historical value is in that they are at least a historical source and also an epoch monument. In addition to scientific, individual artifacts or complexes on cultural layers of modern times can have artistic, aesthetic, museum, tourist, anthropological, ethnographic, national, political, ideological, economic, social value.

Craniological sources on the problem of ethnogenesis of the Narym Selkups

The Narym Selkups are an indigenous population of the Middle Ob River region speaking various dialects of the Selkup language related to the South-Samodian branch of the Ural language family. In the course of the study of Medieval and relatively recent burial grounds in the territory of the Narym Ob area of Tomsk Oblast, considerable amount of craniological material has been collected, which constitutes an important historical source for solving general problems of their origins. According to the archaeological and ethnographic materials, the Medieval burials were left by direct ascendants of modern Narym Selkups, whereas the materials from the later burial grounds are directly associated with their specific local-dialect groups. This paper is aimed to introduce into scien-tific discourse virtually all craniological materials known today from the burial grounds left by the Narym Selkups, and, on the basis of the results of group cross-correlation, to identify trends of the territorial variability of the whole community. Significant increase of new finds from the vast territory of the Middle Ob region, population-driven approach to the data analysis and development of the craniometric technique warranted re-grouping of the finds by the territorial principle and their repeated measurement and analysis. In view of the current problem, all cranio-logical materials were grouped into ten sampling series, five of which are published for the first time (the burial ground of Ostyatskaya Gora and four combined craniological series from the burial grounds of Lower Chulym, Narym Ob, Upper Ket, and the Tym and Vasyugan rivers). Analysis of the variability of the series from the Narym Ob region in chronological and geographical bands showed their weak variability in space and time. Therefore, prior to the Russian colonization of Siberia, this region of the Middle Ob area was not invaded by considerably large groups of people of different anthropological appearance. All studied craniological series were samples from the single unity. Although the territorial variability of the anthropological features within the groups of the Narym Selkups is not large, in some cases an influence of territorially closest neighbours on the anthropological structures of particular Selkup populations can be discerned. It appeared that the southern groups exhibit resemblance with their territorially closest Turkic populations of the Chulym and Lower Tom regions, while in the composition of other Narym groups, there have been identified an admixture of the component genetically related to the Turkic populations of the Western-Siberian forest-steppe — Barabino and Tobol-Irtysh Tatars, and, although being very weak, an influence of the Ob Ugric populations can be discerned.

1638 Cossacks Register as Historical Source

The article gives the analysis of the register of cossacks in 1638 as one of the Ukrainian historical sources which contain data about the structure and special ethnic origin of the Zaporozhian Host before the beginning Liberation war in the middle of the 17th century. Attention is focused on the fundamentals of register formation based on the territorial principle which was initiated by the Kurukovo Agreement. The reasons for the absence of key positions such as a quartermaster (obozny), a judge (suddia) and a chancellor (pysar) in the registered army are being clarified. Information about the amount of payment for the service of Cossack officer is also valuable. The continuity of Cossack family traditions was traced, in particular through participation in the resistance to Turkish aggression and armed uprisings.

Dissemination of village archive management as a historical source

The community service provided in Karang Indah Village aims to disseminate and assist village officials in preparing archives. This activity involves students of the History Education study program as the implementation of archival and museum science. The preparation of archives, both manually and digitally, is very important for all agencies, especially in the village office. This is done, of course, to make it easier to serve the community. When needed, archives that have been well organized will be easy to find. Archives contain primary data and play an important role in the process of reconstructing history. The archive's position is so critical that it must be managed properly and appropriately. The implementation method consists of three steps: planning, implementation, and evaluation. The service activities have resulted in increased knowledge and skills among village officials in the preparation and management of archives, both manually and digitally.

Childhood in the memoirs of Russian female historians of the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries

The present paper studies ego-documents of Russian female historians written in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries, with a focus on the works of N.I. Gagen-Thorn, E.V. Gutnova, M.M. Levis, V.N. Kharuzina, S.V. Zhitomirskaya, E.N. Shchepkina, and N.D. Flittner. How do these authors, in their childhood descriptions, discuss their professional choices? By producing ego-documents, the female historians wanted to preserve their memory of childhood events in the form of a new historical source. In so doing they followed the principles that they also adhered to when wri- ting historical essays. At the same time their texts are very subjective: each reflects the respective researcher's personal experiences. Each text is unique, and there are few overlaps with the memoirs of other female historians of their time, or with those of younger colleagues. In many ways, the women were influenced by authors of the Russian memoirist tradition; they often adhered to self-censorship (even when there was no clear ideological pressure from society). As a result, the narrative about childhood turned into a narrative about the prerequisites for the self-identification of women as scientists. Memories became a form of self-representation, and this conditioned the selective nature of childhood narratives; later success in the profession was projected back onto childhood memories. The childhood narratives of Russian female historians differ from texts of their male colleagues: women preferred to describe their impressions with references to material artifacts and to everyday rituals, writing carefully about their emotional experiences. One of the most important subjects in these womens memoirs and diaries was when they for the first time experienced the gender conflict in their lives: when they understood that their scholarly ambition runs against the common attitudes about gender attitudes that they had internalized in early childhood.

Bog Bodies: Archaeological Narratives and Modern Identity.

<p>Lindow Man, the British Bog Body discovered in 1984, and the Danish examples Tollund and Grauballe Men, discovered in 1950 and 1952, represent quite literally the violent face of a confrontational past. But what exactly do the archaeological narratives say? When presented with the forensic evidence can we explicitly conclude they were murdered as human sacrifices to appease the Germanic and Celtic gods and goddesses during times of affliction? Or are they simply an example of our own imposition of modern assumptions onto the past in a flare of sensationalism and mystical dramatization of the tumultuous affairs of noble savages? How have these narratives played out in the public sphere, particularly museum and heritage, and in modern culture such as the Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s bog poems. Do they reinforce harmful myths of an excessively violent past dominated by innately uncivilized natives? Who does the past really belong to and who has the authority to voice it? Many facets of bog body scholarship remain hotly contested including the human sacrifice interpretation, the usage of Tacitus as the only remaining historical source and Heaney’s use of the bog victims as a metaphorical analogy for the Northern Ireland sectarian violence. My contribution is precisely to present these interpretational narratives from a critical perspective and question scholarly assumptions of ritualism. Further, I will explore how archaeological narratives are presented to the public through the unique heritage that bog bodies embody. Lastly, I will investigate the conceptualization of the “other” through Tacitus’ Germania and Heaney’s bog poems.</p>

Bog Bodies: Archaeological Narratives and Modern Identity.

<p>Lindow Man, the British Bog Body discovered in 1984, and the Danish examples Tollund and Grauballe Men, discovered in 1950 and 1952, represent quite literally the violent face of a confrontational past. But what exactly do the archaeological narratives say? When presented with the forensic evidence can we explicitly conclude they were murdered as human sacrifices to appease the Germanic and Celtic gods and goddesses during times of affliction? Or are they simply an example of our own imposition of modern assumptions onto the past in a flare of sensationalism and mystical dramatization of the tumultuous affairs of noble savages? How have these narratives played out in the public sphere, particularly museum and heritage, and in modern culture such as the Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s bog poems. Do they reinforce harmful myths of an excessively violent past dominated by innately uncivilized natives? Who does the past really belong to and who has the authority to voice it? Many facets of bog body scholarship remain hotly contested including the human sacrifice interpretation, the usage of Tacitus as the only remaining historical source and Heaney’s use of the bog victims as a metaphorical analogy for the Northern Ireland sectarian violence. My contribution is precisely to present these interpretational narratives from a critical perspective and question scholarly assumptions of ritualism. Further, I will explore how archaeological narratives are presented to the public through the unique heritage that bog bodies embody. Lastly, I will investigate the conceptualization of the “other” through Tacitus’ Germania and Heaney’s bog poems.</p>