Western Caucasus written artifacts and the Danube script

В рамках данной статьи рассматриваются западнокавказские письменные артефакты: проблемный аспект их изучения, основные тенденции предыдущих исследований, выдвигается гипотеза родства данных артефактов с протописьменными системами культур Восточной Европы и Ближнего Востока. Изучение данных культурных элементов в свете новых археологических данных позволяет рассматривать их как осколки неолитической знаковой системы. Наряду с цивилизационным скачком, произошедшим в неолите (земледелие и сельское хозяйство, крупные поселения и новый общественный уклад, значительно изменивший характер социально-экономических отношений), произошло переосмысление способов передачи и фиксации информации, тем самым образуя фундамент для возникновения протописьменных систем, распространившихся посредством культурной экспансии и миграций на большие территории, в том числе и Западный Кавказ. Также отмечается, что графическая основа кавказских памятников выходит за пределы кавказско-месопотамско-анатолийского ареала, подтверждением чего служит так называемое винчанское письмо. Делается вывод о том, что знаковый фундамент, сформировавшийся в дунайском энеолите, способствовал образованию первых цивилизаций в исследуемом регионе. This paper deals with the Western Caucasus written artifacts: the problematic aspect of their study, the main trends of previous studies, the hypothesis of the relationship of these artifacts with the oldest writing systems of cultures of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The study of these cultural elements in the light of new archaeological data leads to the conclusion that they can be considered as fragments of the Neolithic sign system, in particular their commonality with the so-called Danube script. Along with the civilizational leap which occurred in the Neolithic (land husbandry and agriculture, large settlements and a new social structure that changed significantly the nature of socio-economic relations), a rethinking of the methods of transmitting and fixing information took place. Thus, the foundation for the emergence of writing systems that spread through cultural expansion and migration to large territories, including the Western Caucasus, was formed. The author also notes that the graphic basis of Caucasus monuments goes beyond the Caucasus-Mesopotamian-Anatolian range, as confirmed by the so-called Vinca script. It is inferred that the glyph foundation formed in the Danube Eneolithic contributed to the formation of the first civilizations in the region under study.

Varia: Cultural Nationalism and Postcolonial Imperatives in Irene Salami-Agunloye’s Emotan: A Benin Heroine and Emmy Idegu’s Ata Igala the Great

This article examines the efforts of postcolonial creative writers, particularly dramatists, who attempt to rethink the seeming erosion of African culture in the face of western cultural expansion. The present research adopts the methods of descriptive and content analysis, as it dwells on books, journal articles, and internet materials to examine its subject. Of immediate interest are two Nigerian plays, Ata Igala the Great by Emmy Idegu and Emotan: A Benin Heroine by Irene Salami-Agunloye, which are read as paradigmatic texts for interpreting problematic postcolonial relationships. The article contributes to discussions related to colonialism and the hidden agenda of neo-colonialism, which are often interpreted in terms of western economic interests underlying cultural expansion. The article demonstrates how African postcolonial writers have striven to reverse this trend by promoting Africa’s cultural aesthetics as they represent indigenous ways of life and their problematic interaction with western cultural patterns. The discussed works focus on cultural canons related to African life, such as consultation with oracles, ancestor worship, and festivals; and they demonstrate the aesthetic specifics of African dance, music, songs, and their semiotic significance. The article concludes that even though the two plays “speak back” to power, their strength lies in the articulation of certain aesthetic patterns that contribute to African self-location. Thus, the plays not only attempt to assert African culture, but they also strive to rethink the meanings of western cultural imperialism.

The Spatiotemporal Pattern of Cultural Evolution Response to Agricultural Development and Climate Change From Yangshao Culture to Bronze Age in the Yellow River Basin and Surrounding Regions, North China

The processes and mechanisms of cultural evolution provide helpful insights into the origin and development of civilizations. This study analyses data from the national archaeological survey using kernel density analysis, a geospatial tool provided by ArcGIS10 software, to explore the spatiotemporal pattern of cultural evolution from the beginning of the Yangshao cultural period to the Bronze Age in the Yellow River basin. Agricultural development and the environmental background of this region were reconstructed using published flotation materials and high-resolution paleoclimate records. The results indicate that cultural expansion and differentiation from Yangshao (7000–5000 BP) to Longshan period (4600–4000 BP) are responding to the establishment and strengthening of millet-based agriculture and the appearance of multiple subsistence strategies in the context of environmental deterioration. To the Bronze Age, the center of sites accumulates to the Central Plains and Shandong, in contrast to the continuous cultural expansion and differentiation. The opposite circumstance may result from early urbanization along with the formation of a social system with high centralization of power.

Signs of desacralization of eastern slavic food in modern conditions: culturological analysis

The purpose of this article is to highlight the ways in which some foods in the modern East Slavic diet lose their sacred significance and acquire the status of everyday food, and to highlight the consequences of these processes as well. Methodology. In the work the complex of the following methods was applied: comparative, logical-analytical, semiotic, synchronic, diachronic. The scientific novelty is to implement a culturological analysis of the food products’ image the main desacralization signs in the East Slavic culinary traditions, which have been transformed at the present stage due to the development of globalization and integration processes in the world cultural space. Conclusions. It was the study found that the format of food consumption "fast food" with its principles of universality and speed, sustainable development of new food technologies, the availability of variety in food, numerous promotional products on the gastronomic theme, the emergence of catering establishments in East Slavic cities with elements of other gastronomic traditions have led to a certain situation: 1) leveling of national traditions in food culture; 2) devaluation of the sacred status of certain types of food, which were sacred among the Eastern Slavs a century ago; 3) resacralization in gastronomic culture. Traditional edible products have been replaced by other products from different cultures, that is, some sacred objects have been replaced by others depending on social, historical, political conditions. This occurs against the background of cultural expansion (Americanization, Easternization, and other processes in the culture of cooking and eating); 4) remythologization of modern culture, when the process of myth-making is revived. It was revealed, that new myths are being created in society, which is often illusory.

Education as an instrument of cultural expansion

Статья посвящена анализу роли школьного образования в экспансионистских процессах. Опираясь на современные отечественные исследования, автор определяет сущность экспансии и колониализма как одного из ее видов. Разграничивая такие формы экспансии как политическая, экономическая и культурная (религиозный прозелитизм относится к культурной экспансии), автор полагает, что организация начального образования в колониях гарантирует прочность результатов колониальной экспансии, в какой бы форме она ни происходила. Но если учреждаемая система образования не будет гармонировать с культурной картиной мира потенциальных учеников, то ее применение окажется бесполезным. Автор рассматривает применение школьного образования в процессе колонизации на широком круге примеров от Сибири до индейских резерваций. This work is devoted to the analysis of the role of school education in expansionist processes. Based on modern domestic studies, the author discovers the sense of expansion and defines colonialism as one of its types. Distinguishing between such forms of expansion as political, economic and cultural (religious proselytism refers to cultural expansion), the author believes that the organization of primary education in the colonies is a guarantee of the strength of the results of colonial expansion, in whatever form it takes place. However, if the educational system being established does not harmonize with the cultural picture of the world of potential students, then its application will be useless. The author examines the application of school education in the process of colonization on a wide range of the examples — from the Siberia to the Indian reservations.

Climate Change along the Silk Road and Its Influence on Scythian Cultural Expansion and Rise of the Mongol Empire

Climate change and cultural exchange both influenced cultural development along the continental Silk Road during the late Holocene, but climate change and its influence on nomadic civilizations during that time has yet to be systematically assessed. In this study, we analyzed records of climate change along the Silk Road covering key periods in the late Holocene, based on multiproxies from various archives including lake sediments, shorelines/beach ridges, peatlands, ice cores, tree rings, aeolian sediments, moraines, and historical documents. Combined with archaeological data, we assessed the influence of climate on development and expansion of representative pastoral nomadism. Our results show that the most notable climate changes in Central Asia were characterized by decreasing temperature, expanding glaciers, increasing precipitation, and increasing humidity during transitions from the Sub-Boreal to Sub-Atlantic Period (ca. 9–8th century BC) and from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age (ca. 13–14th century AD). The two periods coincided with Scythian Cultural expansion across the steppe landscape of Central Asia and rise of the Mongol Empire, respectively. These temporal coincidences are interpreted as causally related, where temperature fall and glacial advance may have forced the pastoral nomadism to southward migration. Coeval wetness and southward migration of steppe landscape in Central Asia were beneficial for these cultural expansions, which spanned the Eurasian arid and semi-arid zone westward. Therefore, during the historical period when productivity was underdeveloped, although expansions of pastoral nomadism were closely related to internal social structures, climate change was possibly the most critical controlling factor for sustainability development and collapse.

Resolution and the detection of cultural dispersals: development and application of spatiotemporal methods in Lowland South America

Inferring episodes of expansion, admixture, diffusion, and/or migration in prehistory is undergoing a resurgence in macro-scale archaeological interpretation. In parallel to this renewed popularity, access to computational tools among archaeologists has seen the use of aggregated radiocarbon datasets for the study of dispersals also increasing. This paper advocates for developing reflexive practice in the application of radiocarbon dates to prehistoric dispersals, by reflecting on the qualities of the underlying data, particularly chronometric uncertainty, and framing dispersals explicitly in terms of hypothesis testing. This paper draws on cultural expansions within South America and employs two emblematic examples, the Arauquinoid and Tupiguarani traditions, to develop an analytical solution that not only incorporates chronometric uncertainty in bivariate regression but, importantly, tests whether the datasets provide statistically significant evidence for a dispersal process. The analysis, which the paper provides the means to replicate, identifies fundamental issues with resolution and data quality that impede identification of pre-Columbian cultural dispersals through simple spatial gradients of radiocarbon data. The results suggest that reflexivity must be fed back into theoretical frameworks of prehistoric mobility for the study of dispersals, in turn informing the construction of more critical statistical null models, and alternative models of cultural expansion should be formally considered alongside demographic models.