Geophysical Surveys as Landscape Archaeology

2003 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Kvamme
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Surface Inspection ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Geophysical Surveys ◽  
Feature Discovery ◽  
A Site ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Recent advances in technology and practice allow geophysical surveys in archaeology to produce maps of subsurface features over large areas and in potentially great detail. It is shown through a series of case studies from two regions in North America that archaeo-geophysical surveys can produce primary information suitable for the study of site content, structure and organization, for examining spatial patterns and relationships, and for directly confronting specific questions about a site and the past. Because large buried cultural landscapes can now be revealed, it is argued that an alternative perspective on regional or landscape archaeology may be possible because space can be viewed in terms of tens of hectares as opposed to the tens of square meters typical of archaeological excavations. Moreover, by placing focus on such buried features as dwellings, storage facilities, public structures, middens, fortifications, trails, or garden spaces that are not commonly revealed through most contemporary surface inspection methods, a richer view of archaeology, the past, and cultural landscapes can be achieved. Archaeo-geophysical surveys can also play an important role in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) contexts as feature discovery tools for focusing expensive excavations, thereby reducing the amount needed and lowering costs. Their utility is weighed against shovel test pits as a primitive and costly form of prospecting.

scholarly journals The Scarecrow as Part of Polish Rural Cultural Landscapes

Agriculture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 496
Author(s):  
Karol Król
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Literature Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Site ◽  
Local Traditions

Diverse historical, cultural landscapes can be found in many parts of the world, and also in rural areas. They are a challenge for interdisciplinary research. One of the gradually disappearing components of rural cultural landscapes in Poland is the scarecrow. The objective of this paper was to analyse the role of the scarecrow in the Polish rural cultural landscape today. The field research was aimed at determining whether the scarecrow can be seen in Polish rural areas, and if yes, what the circumstances and its forms are. A site visit yielded copious photographic records of rural areas. The investigated area was selected following a literature analysis and analysis of environmental and economic conditions on the regional level in Poland. The visit demonstrated that although scarecrows are part of the cultural landscape of the Polish countryside, they are slightly more modest in their appearance than in the past. Scarecrows are placed in small, family-owned agricultural holdings that have time to uphold local traditions.

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.

MONARCHS, TRAVELLERS AND EMPIRE IN THE PACIFIC'S AGE OF REVOLUTIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Sujit Sivasundaram
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Global History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The Pacific Ocean ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Site

AbstractThe Pacific has often been invisible in global histories written in the UK. Yet it has consistently been a site for contemplating the past and the future, even among Britons cast on its shores. In this lecture, I reconsider a critical moment of globalisation and empire, the ‘age of revolutions’ at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth century, by journeying with European voyagers to the Pacific Ocean. The lecture will point to what this age meant for Pacific islanders, in social, political and cultural terms. It works with a definition of the Pacific's age of revolutions as a surge of indigeneity met by a counter-revolutionary imperialism. What was involved in undertaking a European voyage changed in this era, even as one important expedition was interrupted by news from revolutionary Europe. Yet more fundamentally vocabularies and practices of monarchy were consolidated by islanders across the Pacific. This was followed by the outworkings of counter-revolutionary imperialism through agreements of alliance and alleged cessation. Such an argument allows me, for instance, to place the 1806 wreck of the Port-au-Prince within the Pacific's age of revolutions. This was an English ship used to raid French and Spanish targets in the Pacific, but which was stripped of its guns, iron, gunpowder and carronades by Tongans. To chart the trajectory from revolution and islander agency on to violence and empire is to appreciate the unsettled paths that gave rise to our modern world. This view foregrounds people who inhabited and travelled through the earth's oceanic frontiers. It is a global history from a specific place in the oceanic south, on the opposite side of the planet to Europe.

scholarly journals The elusive parasite: comparing macroscopic, immunological, and genomic approaches to identifying malaria in human skeletal remains from Sayala, Egypt (third to sixth centuries AD)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvie Loufouma Mbouaka ◽  
Michelle Gamble ◽  
Christina Wurst ◽  
Heidi Yoko Jäger ◽  
Frank Maixner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Rapid Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Pathological Changes ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Site ◽  
Capture Sequencing

AbstractAlthough malaria is one of the oldest and most widely distributed diseases affecting humans, identifying and characterizing its presence in ancient human remains continue to challenge researchers. We attempted to establish a reliable approach to detecting malaria in human skeletons using multiple avenues of analysis: macroscopic observations, rapid diagnostic tests, and shotgun-capture sequencing techniques, to identify pathological changes, Plasmodium antigens, and Plasmodium DNA, respectively. Bone and tooth samples from ten individuals who displayed skeletal lesions associated with anaemia, from a site in southern Egypt (third to sixth centuries AD), were selected. Plasmodium antigens were detected in five of the ten bone samples, and traces of Plasmodium aDNA were detected in six of the twenty bone and tooth samples. There was relatively good synchronicity between the biomolecular findings, despite not being able to authenticate the results. This study highlights the complexity and limitations in the conclusive identification of the Plasmodium parasite in ancient human skeletons. Limitations regarding antigen and aDNA preservation and the importance of sample selection are at the forefront of the search for malaria in the past. We confirm that, currently, palaeopathological changes such as cribra orbitalia are not enough to be certain of the presence of malaria. While biomolecular methods are likely the best chance for conclusive identification, we were unable to obtain results which correspond to the current authentication criteria of biomolecules. This study represents an important contribution in the refinement of biomolecular techniques used; also, it raises new insight regarding the consistency of combining several approaches in the identification of malaria in past populations.

scholarly journals The two-sided spectacle at the border: Frontex, NGOs and the theatres of sovereignty

2021 ◽  
pp. 136248062110078
Author(s):  
Katja Franko
Keyword(s):  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Coast Guard ◽  
The Past ◽  
Southern Mediterranean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
A Site ◽  
Previous Scholarship

The Southern Mediterranean border has in the past decade become one of the most deeply contested political spaces in Europe and has been described as a site of the border spectacle. Drawing on textual and visual analysis of Twitter messages by two of the most prominent actors in the field, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, and the humanitarian and medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, the article examines the split nature of the Mediterranean border which is, among others, visible in radically different narratives about migrants’ journeys, border deaths and living conditions. The findings challenge previous scholarship about convergence of humanitarianism and policing. The two actors are waging a fierce media battle for moral authority, where they use widely diverging strategies of claiming authority, each of which carries a particular set of ethical dilemmas.

scholarly journals “Man-as-Nation”: Representations of Masculinity and Nationalism in Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior II

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110335
Author(s):  
Tingting Hu ◽  
Tianru Guan
Keyword(s):  
Gender Representation ◽  
Male Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
National Power ◽  
A Site ◽  
Chinese Films

Through an in-depth analysis of gender representation in the box office record-breaking Chinese movie Wolf Warrior II, this study interrogates how the male body is used as a site for the projection of Chinese national power. Furthermore, it illustrates a revival of patriotic pride in China through a contemporary reading of cross-genre action-military films. Developing Shuqin Cui’s notion of “woman-as-nation,” which understands on-screen female victimization in Chinese films as signifying the past suffering of the nation, this study proposes the new concept of “man-as-nation” to explain how the masculine virtues of male protagonists in Chinese films signify the nation’s rejuvenation and strength. Framing male virtue into the paradigms of wu (武), as martial valor, and wen (文), as cultural attainment, this article argues that masculinity has come to symbolize China’s enhanced comprehensive power and to embody its ideological orientation in both global and domestic domains.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

Revisiting Trauma: Wounds Seen and Unseen in Canadian and Indian Prison Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-30
Author(s):  
Lavanya Dalal
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Prison Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Site

Trauma Studies and Prison Narratives have emerged over the past few decades as the most significant fields in the humanities. There has been a significant discussion regarding the psychological effects of incarceration; however, literature examining prison as a site of trauma is unusual. Focusing on Iftikhar Gilani's My Days in Prison (2005) and Yvonne Johnson and Rudy Wiebe's Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman (1998), the article analyzes how prison narratives represent prison as a violent space that inflicts trauma in its characters. These prison narratives represent Yvonne Johnson, the prisoner in Stolen Life, and Gilani as victims of acute psychological trauma faced due to the sheer viciousness of the prison system. The article also concentrates on how the prison experience is both similar and different in Canada and India.    

scholarly journals DE-CENTERING CHINESE HISTORY

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-201
Author(s):  
John E. Herman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Chinese Perspective ◽  
Qing History ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
Seismic Impact

What would Chinese history look like if we were to examine it from the perspective of the peoples living along China's periphery? How might a non-Chinese perspective challenge the dominant themes in Chinese historiography, themes which represent Chinese history as a linear narrative arising from the Central Plain and its original inhabitants, the Han Chinese? If, for example, we rely solely on Chinese sources to tell us about Chinese-Jurchen/Manchu relations during the first half of the seventeenth century, we will have privileged Chinese sources, affirmed the authority of the Chinese perspective, and suppressed voices that might offer an alternative perspective. Only an aggressive deconstruction of such “authoritative” Chinese texts can expose biases and logical inconsistencies, unpack cultural tensions that demand more rigorous scrutiny, and tease out into the open silenced voices from spaces buried deep in the text. Those historians who engage in such a methodological approach, however, run the risk of being accused of applying fanciful postmodernist conjecture or presentist interpretations to the past. This is why the recent (since the 1980s) addition of Manchu language sources to our examination of Qing history (1636–1912) has had such a seismic impact on the field.

Excavation Sample Size: A Cautionary Tale

1993 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis H. O'Neil
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Resource Management ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Sampling Strategies ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
Sampling Fraction ◽  
Small Sample Sizes ◽  
A Site ◽  
Management Work

Frequently, only five percent or less of a midden site is excavated for environmental-analysis purposes before it is turned over to the bulldozers for destruction. Such exceptionally small sample sizes have become accepted in cultural-resource-management work as adequate for gaining a good understanding of the chronology and cultural activities at a site. This assumption was tested by the author with a 63 percent excavation sampling fraction from a southern California midden. The data indicate that a far-from-complete understanding of a site may result from small sampling fractions and that more carefully designed sampling strategies and statistical manipulation of the data may not overcome this problem.

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