Archaeologies-Journal of the World Archaeological Congress最新文献

China’s Song Dynasty (960–1279 ad) was a prosperous period of economic development and cultural exchange. The economic and cultural prosperity also promoted the development of the brewing industry, and alcohol consumption became a fad. Based on the archeological materials related to the alcohol culture of the Song Dynasty (including image materials, such as tomb murals, temple murals, grotto statues and surviving paintings, and excavated drinking vessels), the type, texture, and decorative pattern of drinking vessels have characteristics that are unique for the time, and the purpose and methods of alcohol consumption and brewing in the Song Dynasty are unprecedentedly diverse. Alcohol trade, drinking customs, and the banquet culture at that time reflect the influence of the alcohol culture and its penetration into every household, further manifesting as cultural integration with other ethnic groups (the Khitan and Jurchen). By exploring a distant ancient society through alcohol from an archeological perspective, this paper focuses on the utensils, patterns, functions, customs, and accompanying cultural exchange phenomena associated with alcoholic beverages in the Song Dynasty in China.

In archaeology, the methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation, at least in the most traditional and hegemonic currents, are marked by the idea that the world is composed of individual entities, each one with specific and separated properties. In order to question this model, I will use the concept of Diffraction proposed by Haraway and Barad, to understand how different encounters over time actualized Theban Tomb 123, located in the plain of Sheikh Abdel Qurna, in Luxor, Egypt. The first encounter to be analysed is the encounter between Amenemhet with TT123 in the Pharaonic period (1479–1425 BC). The second involves encounters between TT123 with Qurnawis, a community that between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries used the pharaonic tombs on the West Bank of Luxor as housing. Finally, I will analyse the encounters between archaeologists with TT123. Thinking about these different encounters shows us that this space that archaeologists call TT 123, rather than being a fixed materiality, is a transitory materiality and meeting point of different ontologies.

After development over two millennia of Neolithic monumental architecture (enclosures & long barrows) in Central Europe, the 3rd Millennium BC seems to bring a hiatus in the creation of such monuments. The cult and worship moved to natural shrines (Corded Ware) and became invisible in the archaeological record. However, in the last decade, some new forms of Bell Beaker ritual constructions were discovered in Bohemia and Moravia. Two such features were discovered during large scale excavations at Hostivice, west of Prague in 2011 and 2013. The first consisted of a rectangular setting of large postholes with a large internal pit containing scatters of cremated (animal?) bones and fragments of decorated beakers. The second structure consisted of large circular postholes surrounding a pit which contained a votive offering of four stone wristguards carefully set in a square arrangement. In 2015, unprecedented evidence of a Bell Beaker ritual site was discovered at Brodek in Central Moravia. An unusual long rectangular passage structure defined by alignments of postholes and a ‘shrine’ consisting of four grave-like pits containing a variety of votive offerings, but no visible indications of human burial, were discovered. The sacrificial deposits were probably inserted into the features during a series of successive offering events. These previously unknown types of monument suggest a greater complexity of funerary and ritual construction in the region of non-megalithic territory.

The purpose of the study is to compare the structural and semantic elements of the two ancient cultures of painted pottery—Yangshao and Trypillia. A comparative and analytical method was used. The study has established the similarity of these two cultures. The number of similarities between the two cultures cannot be explained exclusively by the similarity of the worldviews of ancient grain growers, but also by the cultural exchange between geographically distant territories. These data can serve as a basis for further comparisons of different cultures and help a wide range of experts: historians, archaeologists, geographers, and culturologists.

This article analyzes paired stone monuments on Hawai‘i Island and O‘ahu as gendered. Archaeological and ethnographic contexts are provided. Differing knowledge systems collided from the moment of contact, oversimplifying female space and worship into rigid Western binaries and overlooking the variability of agency. A critical re-reading of the sources demonstrates instead great variability in form and function of religious sites, male and female gods and worship practices, and protocol among chiefs and commoners. The argument is developed that balance is reflected on the Hawaiian built landscape through the variability in the way people designed and used their spaces, diverging from stated ideals but without subverting the system. Similar gender-free agency is reflected in contemporary Hawaiian notions of mana and ea loosely translated as “flowing life forces” and “breath” which fill Hawaiian land/‘āina and wahi kūpuna with life and pulse in their living descendants. The conclusions highlight parallel collaborative projects in other parts of the world to bring to attention that Hawai‘i takes part in a global resurgence of Indigenous knowledge systems.

A form of activist archaeology is undertaken by conducting critical feminist intersectional research to promote social justice in representations of America’s heritage on historical markers in Detroit and surrounding Wayne County, Michigan, USA. This research substantially alters and expands intersectionality theory to analyze androcentrism, racism and ethnocentrism in historical markers. These biases are addressed with more inclusive information about (1) historical power dynamics between social groups and (2) accomplishments of minorities and women. More inclusive information in historical markers provides social justice for people who were marginalized in the past, and may inspire people working to decrease inequalities and oppressions today.

This special thematic issue includes some of the papers presented in two symposia on intersectionality theory and research that were presented at annual conferences of the Society for Historical Archaeology in 2017 and 2018. This introduction provides the historical context of the development of intersectionality theory, and the development of research and theorizing of intersectional identities and power dynamics in historical archaeology. Articles in this issue provide innovative theorizing and research that go beyond Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory, which analyzes the erasure and invisibility of the identity of Black women by intermeshed racism and sexism in the legal system administering anti-discrimination law.