Giving Voices (Without Words) to Prehistoric People: Glimpses into an Archaeologist's Imagination

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 338-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Tringham
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Gyorgi Ligeti ◽  
Cultural Baggage

This article describes a path to addressing the discomfort that I and many of my braver colleagues have had, when putting words into the mouths and heads of prehistoric actors, knowing that these words say more about us than they do about prehistory. Yet without such speech, how are we archaeologists and the broader public to imagine the intangibles of the deep past (emotions, affect, gender, senses)? Moreover, such words create a misleading certainty that conceals the ambiguities of the archaeological data. Are there alternative options to verbal and vocal clarity when creating imagined fictive narratives about the past? With inspiration from composer Györgi Ligeti, from linguists and experimental psychologists, and from ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) performers, I explore the emotive power of vocal non-verbal interjections and utterances that have more universality and less cultural baggage, using them in three diverse re-mediations of digital media from three prehistoric archaeological contexts in Europe and Anatolia.

Real or Imagined Confusion in Ethnohistorical Research? A Rejoinder to Thurman

1988 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-326
Author(s):  
Charles E. Orser
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Missouri River ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Narrow View

Recently, Melburn D. Thurman has argued that my handling of the James Mackay manuscript, an early 19th-century account of Plains native groups, is unsound. Many of Thurman's criticisms, specifically those concerning the date of the document, the details of Mackay's experience on the Missouri River, and the intent of my original article, stem from misrepresentation and misunderstanding. Thurman has refused, for example, to accept that my essay was a test of the document using archaeological data associated with the Arikara. In addition, Thurman portrays a narrow view of the past and a rather unique understanding of ethnohistorical methods. In this response to Thurman, I restate many of the points in my original article and provide an alternative perspective for studying the past.

Does Advertising Serve as a Signal? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Mobile Search

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 1529-1564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navdeep S Sahni ◽  
Harikesh S Nair
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Exposure Group ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Improved Outcomes ◽  
Asian Cities ◽  
Experience Good

Abstract We develop a field experiment that assesses whether advertising can serve as a signal that enhances consumers’ evaluations of advertised goods. We implement the experiment on a mobile search platform that provides listings and reviews for an archetypal experience good, restaurants. In collaboration with the platform, we randomize about 200,000 users in 13 Asian cities into exposure of ads for about 600+ local restaurants. Within the exposure group, we randomly vary the disclosure to the consumer of whether a restaurant’s listing is a paid-ad. This enables isolating the effect on outcomes of a user knowing that a listing is sponsored—a pure signalling effect. We find that this disclosure increases calls to the restaurant by 77%, holding fixed all other attributes of the ad. The disclosure effect is higher when the consumer uses the platform away from his typical city of search, when the uncertainty about restaurant quality is larger, and for restaurants that have received fewer ratings in the past. On the supply side, newer, higher rated and more popular restaurants are found to advertise more on the platform; and ratings of those that advertised during the experiment are found to be higher two years later. Taken together, we interpret these results as consistent with a signalling equilibrium in which ads serve as implicit signals that enhance the appeal of the advertised restaurants to consumers. Both consumers and advertisers seem to benefit from the signalling. Consumers shift choices towards restaurants that are better rated (at baseline) in the disclosure group compared to the no disclosure group, and advertisers gain from the improved outcomes induced by disclosure.

Reply to Skousen and Aiuvalasit: On the Primacy of Archaeological Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-205
Author(s):  
A.J. White ◽  
Samuel E. Munoz ◽  
Sissel Schroeder ◽  
Lora R. Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
Horseshoe Lake ◽  
Alternative Hypotheses

Skousen and Aiuvalasit critique our article on the post-Mississippian occupation of the Horseshoe Lake watershed (White et al. 2020) along two lines: (1) that our findings are not supported due to a lack of archaeological evidence, and (2) that we do not consider alternative hypotheses in explaining the lake's fecal stanol record. We first respond to the matter of fecal stanol deposition in Horseshoe Lake and then address the larger issue, the primacy of archaeological data in interpreting the past.

The Past Is Prologue: Preserving and Disseminating Archaeological Data Online

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-207
Author(s):  
Edward Schortman ◽  
Ellen E. Bell ◽  
Jenna Nolt ◽  
Patricia Urban
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past

scholarly journals Avatars, Monsters, and Machines: A Cyborg Archaeology

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
The Past

As digital practice in archaeology becomes pervasive and increasingly invisible, I argue that there is a deep creative potential in practising a cyborg archaeology. A cyborg archaeology draws from feminist posthumanism to transgress bounded constructions of past people as well as our current selves. By using embodied technologies to disturb archaeological interpretations, we can push the use of digital media in archaeology beyond traditional, skeuomorphic reproductions of previous methods to highlight ruptures in thought and practice. I develop this argument through investigating the avatars, machines, and monsters in current digital archaeological research. These concepts are productively liminal: avatars, machines, and monsters blur boundaries between humans and non-humans, the past and the present, and suggest productive approaches to future research.

scholarly journals Cultural Transform di Situs Benteng Putri Hijau

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (27) ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Stanov Purnawibowo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past

AbstractArchaeology not only describing about the past, but also present. The form of cultural transformation process which describe the process of archaeological record disposition in the post-depositoanal factors, one of example form describe from present. Cultural transformation of archaeological record was found in Benteng Putri Hijau site. Precipitation position of archaeological data and stratigraphy can give information about cultural transformation data and contexts remain found in archaeological deposition.

scholarly journals Desafios do contemporâneo na ficção de Lídia Jorge / Challenges of the Contemporary in the Fiction of Lídia Jorge

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (61) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Maria Graciete Besse
Keyword(s):  
Human Vulnerability ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
The Future ◽  
Portuguese Society

Resumo: Desde O dia dos prodígios (1980) até Estuário (2018), a obra ficcional de Lídia Jorge percorre diferentes lugares, experiências e memórias para desenhar uma cartografia da vida precária e interrogar incansavelmente as sombras que se escondem nas dobras do tempo, sabendo que “escrever sobre o passado é sempre uma proposta de futuro”. A partir de alguns conceitos fundamentais de Agamben, o objectivo deste estudo é analisar como o olhar iluminador da romancista se debruça sobre o arcaico e o contemporâneo, para resgatar do silêncio os contornos mais sensíveis da realidade, oferecendo-nos um testemunho notável sobre a vulnerabilidade humana e interpelando-nos para uma reflexão estimulante sobre a importância da literatura na transformação do mundo.Palavras-chave: Lídia Jorge, Agamben, romance, sociedade portuguesa, ética.Abstract: From The Day of Prodigies (1980) to Estuary (2018), Lídia Jorge’s fictional work traverses different places, experiences and memories to draw a map of precarious life and tirelessly interrogate the shadows that hide in the folds of time, knowing that “writing about the past is always a proposal for the future.” From some fundamental concepts of Agamben, the objective of this study is to analyze how the illuminating look of the novelist focuses on the archaic and the contemporary, to rescue from the silence the most sensitive contours of reality, offering us a remarkable testimony about human vulnerability and questioning us for a stimulating reflection on the importance of literature in the transformation of the world.Keywords: Lídia Jorge, Agamben, novel, portuguese society, ethic.

scholarly journals The Ten Commandments of the Residency Interview

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-64
Author(s):  
Warren Heymann ◽  
Annette Reboli
Keyword(s):  
Medical School ◽  
Plastic Surgery ◽  
Medical Schools ◽  
Medical Degree ◽  
The Past ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Ten Commandments

Medical school is a stressful enterprise. The days of getting a medical degree and knowing that you will practice in any specialty you desire have become folklore of the past. The number of residency positions available to medical school graduates has not kept pace with the increased number of new medical schools and students. Every discipline is now competitive but the problem is particularly acute for the most competitive programs, such as plastic surgery, orthopedics, otolaryngology, and dermatology.

Enslavement and Everyday Life: Living with Slave Raiding in the North-Eastern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott MacEachern
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Social Proximity ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Economic Process

The northern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon have been a focus of slave raiding for the past five centuries, according to historical sources. Some captives from the area were enslaved locally, primarily in Wandala and Fulbe communities, while others were exported to Sahelian polities or further abroad. This chapter examines ethnohistorical and archaeological data on nineteenth- and twentieth-century slave raiding, derived from research in montagnard communities along the north-eastern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. Enslavement and slave raiding existed within larger structures of day-to-day practice in the region, and were closely tied to ideas about sociality, social proximity and violence. Through the mid-1980s at least, enslavement in the region was understood as a still-relevant political and economic process, with its chief material consequence the intensely domesticated Mandara landscape.

Birthdays, anniversaries, and temporalities: Or how the past is represented as relevant through on-this-date media

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 1663-1679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Exact Date ◽  
Media Institutions

This article explores the mediatization of birthdays and anniversaries through the concept of “on-this-date” media as a way to understand the representation and circulation of media content that occurred in previous years, on that exact date. Drawing on journalism studies and mediated memory work, I argue that past events are made relevant and then irrelevant through a frame of on-this-date media. By juxtaposing Facebook Birthdays and Memories with the Associated Press’s “Today In History” feed, I analyze the multiple temporalities at work across analog and digital media platforms. Drawing on Keightley’s zones of intermediacy, I examine how time is mediated through the textual, technological, and social aspects of media, in sometimes conflicting ways. Thus, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of mediatization by examining how media institutions structure, organize, and represent mediated temporalities.

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