A Life Less than Ordinary: The Schooner Ocean (1821–1865)

The East Winner Bank Shipwreck takes its name from the southern sandbank on Hayling Island near Portsmouth, UK. Examination of the wreck indicates a 19th-century carvel-built vessel. The sandbank is an active environment, meaning the wreck is rarely exposed to its full extent. Discussed here is work completed on the site before and during the social-distancing restrictions imposed by COVID-19. Documentary sources and previous detailed surveys suggest a possible identification for the wreck. The site appears to be an example of an everyday 19th-century coastal trading vessel, rarely explored archaeologically in the UK, with potential to contribute to discussions of the maritime technologies and maritime cultural landscape of regular folk. The investigation represents an excellent example of combining historical and archaeological data sets to further the interpretation of both sources, revealing details about the ship and its lasting impact on this stretch of coastline.

Evolution of the Kandyan Vina of Sri Lanka with Special Reference to the Contemporary Usage

The string instrument, the Kandyan vina (Uḍaraṭa Vīṇā), once portrayed in the book by John Davy as “Venah”, shares close resemblance with the Coconut shell fiddle instruments in India, in terms of their inherent form, structure, cultural peculiarities and playing posture. Such similarities serve to confirm that the prototypic musical instrument – the Kandyan vina, originated from the Coconut shell fiddle instruments of India. According to sources, the prototype instrument of the Kandyan vina arrived with the gypsy groups who migrated to Sri Lanka from Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu during the Kandy period of 1600-1750 AD. Since then, until 1980-1990 AD, the prototype instrument was developed by the influence of the Western musical instruments and musical intelligence, available material, creative methods inherent in the aristocratic, villagers, beggars, Veddas, and gypsy communities. Therefore, the rise of the Kandyan vina is proven to have originated within Sri Lanka as a unique native string instrument. Research objectives of this study are: firstly, to re-introduce a native string instrument according to its true historic trails; secondly, a modern Kandyan vina is constructed using the modified knowledge discovered through exploring the ancient Kandyan vina instruments; and thirdly, to assimilate knowledge of a musical instrument based on its historical literature and archaeological data from an Archaeomusicological perspective. With this in mind, Frescoes/murals, artefacts, legal documents and primary books were used as the primary sources, while journal articles and secondary books were used as secondary sources.

Natural and climatic conditions in the south-east of Western Siberia and development of ethnocultures of the Ket’ River region (5th c. BC — 17th c. AD)

The paper presents the analysis of the natural and climatic conditions of the Early Iron and Middle Ages in the archaeological region of Priketye (Ket’ River region; Verkhneketsky district of the Tomsk Oblast, middle taiga) based on the available archaeological data and spore-and-pollen diagram of Maksimkin Yar, 58°30'N, 86°48'E, 100–150 m.a.s.l. (Blyakharchuk, 2012). The chronology of the archaeological sites and monuments covers a large time span — from the Neolithic to the late Middle Ages, including the time of the arrival of Russian farmers into the area. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the dynamics of the natural environment during the existence of the archaeological cultures of the indicated time interval using paleopalynological data from a nearby spore-and-pollen section, as well as to demonstrate the capabilities and advantages of complex paleoecological-archaeological research in the taiga zone of Western Siberia (middle course of the Ket’ River near the Maksimkin Yar village) previously not covered by such studies. The material and source of the archaeological data com-prised collections and archives of exploratory and stationary excavations of the archaeological sites from the area in the vicinity of the Maksimkin Yar village. Paleopalynological (spore-and-pollen diagram) and paleoecological (botanical composition of peat) data were obtained and published by one of the authors earlier (Blyakharchuk, 2012). In this work, comparative historical and statistical methods of the analysis of archaeological data were employed, along with two paleoecological methods (spore-and-pollen analysis and analysis of the botanical com-position of peat) with respective statistical processing of the numerical data from these analyses. The pa-leoecological block of information is presented graphically in the form of a spore-and-pollen diagram built on the basis of the paleopalynological data and two radiocarbon dates covering the studied time interval. The Bacon software was used to calibrate the radiocarbon dates and to date each sample. The studies have shown that the climate change in the boreal forest zone of Western Siberia influenced the lifestyle and economic activities of the population of the Priketye area. Correlation of the climatic and cultural events of the studied area with neighboring southwestern, southern, and southeastern regions showed their synchroneity with the dynamics of the hydrocli-mate on these territories. During the Iron Age and after the end of the late Middle Ages, there was a synchronous increase in humidity, both in the steppe zone and in the forest zone. In the Bronze Age and during the high Middle Ages, the steppe zone was humid, but less atmospheric precipitation fell out in the forest zone. These fluctuations in the moisture content are well correlated with the 500–600-year hydrological cycles in the steppe zone, identi-fied by geochemical indicators of the steppe Shira Lake in Khakassia (Kalugin et al., 2013, p. 251). Changes in the hydroclimatic conditions in the forest and steppe zones had different effects on the local cultures and could stimulate either their rise or decline, as well as migrations.

Bridging Legends and Science: Field Evidence of a Large Tsunami that Affected the Kingdom of Tonga in the 15th Century

The pre-colonial history (i.e. before the 16th century) of Tonga and West Polynesia still suffers from major gaps despite significant scientific advances in recent years, particularly in the field of archaeology. By the 14th century, the powerful Tu’i Tonga kingdom united the islands of the Tongan archipelago under a centralised authority and, according to tradition, extended its influence to neighbouring island groups in the Central Pacific. However, some periods of deep crisis were identified, e.g. in the mid- 15th century, marked by an abrupt cessation of inter-archipelago migration on the deep seas in the Pacific, significant cultural changes, and a decrease in accessible natural resources. The origins of these disturbances are still debated, and they are usually assigned to internal political problems or loss of external influence vis-à-vis neighboring chiefdoms. However, the hypothesis of a major natural disaster was rarely suggested up to now, while field evidence points to the occurrence of a very large tsunami in the past, including the presence of numerous megablocks that were deposited by a “red wave” (or peau kula, which also mean tsunami in the Tongan language) according to a local myth. Drawing on a body of new evidence from sedimentary signatures and radiocarbon dating of charcoal and marine bioclasts, geomorphology, and sedimentology, in support of previously published archaeological data, we argue that a large tsunami inundated large areas of Tongatapu island in the mid-15th century with runup heights up to 30 m, and that the Tu’i Tonga kingdom was severely impacted by this event. We also discuss the likely sources of this tsunami.

Historical Necropolises of Tsarevokokshaysk According to Archaeological Data

The article considers such type of archaeological monuments of Tsarevokokshaysk as historical necropolises. On the territory of the city, the Voskresenski, Entry into Jerusalem, Tikhvin and Troitski historical necropolises have been archaeologically studied. These archaeological sites cover the period from the foundation of the Tsarev town on Kokshaga River to the beginning of the 20th century and they are the burial place of both residents of the town and the surrounding villages. Brief information about historical necropolises, their localization, dating, a brief description of the main features of monuments, funeral rites and inventory are presented.

Archaeoichthyological Research of Settlements of the Golden Horde Period of the Saratov Volga Region

The article presents a study of fish remains from the Bagaevka settlement with the involvement of the results of identifications of fish remains from other settlements in the region of the Golden Horde city Ukek, functioning in the second half of the 13th – 14th century. The purpose of the work was a comprehensive analysis of the remains of fishes from the Bagaevka settlement, as a large Golden Horde rural settlement of Ukek region, including species, quantitative, dimensional and age composition of the fishes on the basis of the archaeoichthyological collection and interpretation of the obtained results taking into account archaeological data. The 19 species of fishes were determined from bone remains and scales, the main species of which were large-sized: Russian sturgeon, Beluga, Starred sturgeon, Catfish and Zander. The predominance of large-sized species indicates that fishing was carried out on the Volga. The identified dimensional-species composition of fishes (large species with a large body weight), as well as the discovered fishing equipment, directly indicate the presence of collective fishing of the inhabitants of the Bagaevka settlement. Cutting and processing of all incoming fish was carried out on the territory of the settlement. Fishing in this settlement, as well as throughout the Saratov Volga region, has already acquired the features of a specialized subsidiary farming.

The Pilgrimage Concept in the Caribbean?

Espenshade (2014) has argued that pre-Columbian major ballcourts/plazas on Puerto Rico, particularly with rock art, could be considered special religious places. He proposes that these precincts were being transformed from locations of communal social and ceremonial activities integrating diverse population segments to increasingly restricted-to-religious functions as shrines or pilgrimage centers serving a greatly reduced local population by the end of the pre-colonial period. The extent of incorporation of pre-colonial late phase plazas into a formal pilgrimage round for the Puerto Rico island will be examined employing archaeological data from both the Greater and Lesser Antilles. We conclude that while Espenshade’s particular argument for enclosures-as-pilgrimage sites may or may not be appropriate, simply raising the issue prompts a wider consideration of the region’s ritual structure involving rock art and non-rock art sites.

Before Bagan: Using Archaeological Data Sets to Assess the Traditional Historical Narrative | ပုဂံမတိုင်မီကာလ၏အစဉ်အလာသမိုင်းအဆိုအမိန့်များကို ရှေးရောင်းသုရတသ နပညာှပ်ဆိုင်ှာအချက်အလက်များအသုံးပပု၍ဆန်းစစ်ပခင်း

What we know about Bagan derives almost exclusively from historical sources – namely retrospective chronicles, inscriptions, and changing architectural styles. To date, archaeological excavations have played a limited role in augmenting or challenging this traditional narrative. This is unfortunate, because small scale excavations within Bagan’s peri-urban settlement zone, and within the walled and moated “royal city,” have demonstrated considerable knowledge about the city’s past. This is especially true for the Pre-Bagan phase (600-1044 CE). This presentation documents what we think we know about the time “before Bagan,” using the established sources, and assesses this narrative using information from contemporaneous excavation levels. ပုဂံခေတ်ယဉ်ချေးမှုအခြျာင်းျို သမိုင်းအေေျ်လျ်မေားဖြစ်သည့် အစဉ်အလာရာဇဝင်မှတ်တမ်းမေား၊ ချောျ်စာမေား၊ နှင့် ခဖပာင်းလဲလာေဲ့သည့်ဗိသုျာပုံ စံမေားမှသာလေင် သိြျရသည်။ နှစ်သျ်တမ်း သတ်မှတ်ရန်အတွျ် ခရှးခောင်းသုခတ သနဆိုင်ရာတူးခြာ်ခလ့လာမှုမေားသည်အစဉ်အလာအဆိုအမိန့် မေားျို ခဝြန်စစ်ခဆးရန် (သို့) ဖပင်ဆင်ြျရန် လုံခလာျ်မှုမရှိြျခသးခေေ။ ပုဂံမမို့ရိုး၊ ျေုံးဧရိယာနှင့် မမို့အစွန်အြေ ားခနရာမေားတွင်ခလ့လာေဲ့သည့် အနည်းငယ်မျှခသာ စမ်းသပ်တူးခြာ်ခလ့လာမှုမေားျ ပုဂံမမို့၏အတိတ်ျာလျို သိရှိနိုင်ခစရန် ရုပ်လုံးခြာ်ြပခနြျသည်။ ပုဂံမမို့ဖပမတိုင်မီျာလ (၆၀၀-၁၀၄၄ စီအီး)နှစ်သျ်တမ်းတွျ်ေေျ်မှုအခဖြမေားရရှိေဲ့သည်။ ယေုတင်ဖပမည့် စာတမ်းမှာ ပုဂံခေတ် မတိုင်မီျာလအခြျာင်းအရာမေားျို ခရှးခောင်းသုခတသနပ ညာရပ်ဆိုင်ရာတူးခြာ်မှုရလဒ်မေားနှင့် အစဉ်အလာအဆိုအမိန့်အေေျ်အလျ်မေားျို စစ်ခဆးအသုံးဖပုလေျ် မည်ျဲ့သို့ခတွးခတာသိရှိလာနိုင် ခြျာင်းျို တင်ဖပမည်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။

Teaching Socio-Cultural Anthropology In Albania: Bringing Together Professional Training And Active Citizenship

Anthropology in Albania has been addressed mainly during the last two decades or so. Previously, the most common research agendas focused on the explorations of folklore and ethnography and indeed the venue that carried out research was the Institute of Folk Culture. As a consequence, teaching has been narrowly treated through the perspective of the folkloric and ethnographic studies, mostly the exotic and narrative terms. Currently, various tenets of anthropology are taught in the departments of Humanities and Social Sciences such as in History, Archaeology and Culture Heritage, and Sociology. In this paper, I discuss the benefits of anthropology as a core subject in the curricula of the Bachelor program of Archaeology and Culture Heritage. Three main aspects are considered: first, the extent to which social and cultural anthropology contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of human behaviour in a timeless perspective. Due to the state of preservation, and the nature of the archaeological data, scientific analysis and investigations are often extremely limited. The theoretical and methodological tenets, as well as particular case studies treated from cultural anthropology play an indispensable role in this endeavour. Second, I deal with the impact of social anthropology in the student background and how its concepts and methodological tools can contribute to a better understanding of a society in action and transition. To what extent can we employ anthropology to help understand and analyse how tradition and modernity combine? Third, by drawing a survey completed by a selected group of students, I discuss how studying anthropology facilitated the student involvement in the professional context as well as strengthened their critical thinking skills and fostered active citizenship