Precious People: Indigenous Medical-Spiritual Relations in the Archaeology of Maya Childhood

The objective of the present research is to explore the concept of sustainability in construction by examining indigenous construction practices followed in various regions of India, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that promote safe, resilient, and environmentally friendly human settlements. This study aims to investigate indigenous construction practices that have been used for generations and assess their applicability in the present context. Through the collection of qualitative data from participants, the study seeks to develop a theoretical model of sustainable construction that incorporates region-specific indigenous practices. As Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) lends itself useful for such theory development, we have used it as the methodology for data collection, analysis and model development. CGT enables in-depth inductive analysis of qualitative data. Data have been gathered through interviews and conversations as primary sources, supplemented by secondary sources. The study primarily focuses on key parameters such as construction materials and techniques, labour, economic considerations, and region-specific indigenous practices related to sustainable construction. This study develops a theoretical model that integrates indigenous practices with contemporary practices, and thus endeavours to bridge the past and present, offering a blend of traditional wisdom and contemporary relevance. It aims to inspire customers, architects, and engineers to reconnect with their cultural heritage and embrace local knowledge in construction practices, which have demonstrated sustainability over thousands of years. Findings from the study pave the way for better environmental management through sustainable indigenous construction practices.

Rural people and places have deep histories that provide insight into present situations and future potentials. Archaeological and ethnohistorical research in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico, reveal a high degree of rural demographic and economic development associated with an intensive and productive agroecosystem during the century before the Spanish conquest of AD 1521. What made this possible, here and in many respects in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica generally, were political and economic institutions rather distinct from Old World experience. The case illustrates that there are alternative paths of rural development.

Representing both a barrier and a corridor between the Eurasian and Asian continents, the Caucasus has constituted the setting for various socio-economic transformations throughout prehistory. The transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age in the Northern Caucasus is a period characterised by a shift from pastoral lifeways in the steppe to sedentary lifestyles in the high mountains, and the change from hierarchical to egalitarian societies. In this context, this book provides basic scientific research on social inequality, demography, oral health, and diet of humans that lived between 2200-1650 BCE in the central North Caucasian foothills. Due to the outstanding preservation of its archaeological and human remains, the cemetery Kudachurt 14 represents a hitherto missing link for a transformative period in this region. Archaeologically, the heterogeneity of the burial remains appears as a melting pot of different cultural phenomena, but showing strong typological affiliation to the so-called North Caucasian culture of the high mountain area. Furthermore, biological and ritual evidence confirms often-stated gender concepts and expression of differences in social status. Individuals suffered from poor oral health due to the occupational use of their teeth and high caries prevalence occurred among both adolescents and adults. Together with information from C and N stable isotopes, the data provide evidence for early agricultural practices in a mixed subsistence economy. While social inequality is prominent in the burial context, it is not displayed in oral health and dietary trends. This indicates rather similar living conditions for individuals from different socio-ritual statuses. The presented doctoral research delivers the first comprehensive data collection and investigation that combines burial, osteological, palaeopathological, and stable isotope information, and achieves a connection between the living and the dead in this time and place.

Resumo Este artigo discute meus esforços durante várias décadas de pesquisa para compreender a interação entre letramento escolarizado, diversidade linguística e desigualdade social. Inspira-se em tradições semióticas e marxistas para investigar a diversidade linguística e a desigualdade social em contextos europeus e norte-americanos contemporâneos. Enfocando especialmente as práticas de racialização e a dinâmica das aulas, os argumentos apresentam estudos iniciais sobre línguas de minorias e escolaridade que contribuem para e contextualizam um estudo recente sobre a política federal de educação, experiências de escolarização de imigrantes e hierarquia linguística. Esse estudo baseia-se em pesquisa sociolinguística e etnográfica com famílias e comunidades migrantes multilíngues e comunidades no norte do estado de Nova Iorque, com foco específico na experiência de crianças com repertórios multilíngues e políticas linguísticas monolíngues na escolarização (COLLINS, 2012). Examinando a política e os debates federais sobre educação e comparando os processos de interação em sala de aula, que envolvem diferentes grupos etnolinguísticos, identifico dois “efeitos de Estado” (TROUILLOT, 2001), conforme eles operam em diferentes locais institucionais. Defendo que tais efeitos são maneiras como os Estados contemporâneos tentam regular aulas globalizadas e dinâmicas raciais. Ao moldar sujeitos educacionais cujas características sociais e linguísticas – e especialmente as suas características de classe – são obscurecidas e empregadas em categorizações relacionadas à escola e em processos de comunicação centrados na escola, tais efeitos contribuem para a reprodução hegemônica das desigualdades sociais, linguísticas e educacionais (HYMES, 1996; MENKEN, 2008).

JenniferShermanDividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American DreamUniversity of California Press, 2021, 284 p., $85.00

Rethinking the use of ‘vulnerable’

This paper examines changes that has occurred in the Nigerian textile from its cradle and the influence it had on both contemporary and Indigenous textile practice. Indigenous textile practice in South West of Nigeria has evolved over the past years. This study is an attempt to evaluate contemporary indigenous textile in Nigeria, to understand the difference between the two terms contemporary and indigenous. There is the need to exploit the potential of indigenous textile practice. Therefore, to understand the contemporary evolution that has affected it is important. The aim of this paper therefore, is to investigate contemporary indigenous textile practice evolution in South West of the county. The research used historical method in analysing the evolution of contemporary indigenous textile practice in south west Nigeria. Findings and conclusions were made that the South West has a very rich heritage of contemporary indigenous textile practice which is culturally unique, and this study will act as a stimulus to textile designers, textile cottage industry, students, art historian, and art scholar

This paper examines changes that has occurred in the Nigerian textile from its cradle and the influence it had on both contemporary and Indigenous textile practice. Indigenous textile practice in South West of Nigeria has evolved over the past years. This study is an attempt to evaluate contemporary indigenous textile in Nigeria, to understand the difference between the two terms contemporary and indigenous. There is the need to exploit the potential of indigenous textile practice. Therefore, to understand the contemporary evolution that has affected it is important. The aim of this paper therefore, is to investigate contemporary indigenous textile practice evolution in South West of the county. The research used historical method in analysing the evolution of contemporary indigenous textile practice in south west Nigeria. Findings and conclusions were made that the South West has a very rich heritage of contemporary indigenous textile practice which is culturally unique, and this study will act as a stimulus to textile designers, textile cottage industry, students, art historian, and art scholar

Recent archaeological and ethnographic research has made known the pre-Conquest and contemporary settlement patterns of the Teotihuacán Valley. Similar data for the intervening post-Conquest period are not available. Most archaeologists have restricted their research to the pre-Conquest period, and the documents do not contain pertinent detailed information on settlement patterns.To resolve this problem I propose the application of archaeological methodology to sites located and identified through ethnohistoric research. My preliminary results in the area southeast of Otumba suggest that the method is feasible and productive. I also explore the theoretical implications of the data recovered from dated archaeological deposits for which the relevant sociocultural factors are known.

Human Biology and Social Inequality: 39th Symposium Volume of the Society for the Study of Human Biology: Simon Strickland and Prakash Shetty, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. 346pp., $74.95 (cloth)

Reviewed by: Technology and Tradition in Mesoamerica after the Spanish Invasion: Archeological Perspectives ed. by Rani T. Alexander Edward (Ted) Beatty (bio) Technology and Tradition in Mesoamerica after the Spanish Invasion: Archeological Perspectives Edited by Rani T. Alexander. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. Pp. 304. How should we understand and interpret the history of technology in post-conquest, colonial, and postcolonial Latin America? How did individuals and communities draw on both indigenous practices and European introductions as they pursued production and consumption through the long colonial and into the modern era? How did these practices vary across locality and region, and across time, in non-linear fashion? This fascinating edited volume offers a set of nine superbly focused studies by a talented group of archeologists examining the history of technology in Mesoamerica. They do not simply present conventional histories of the conquest of indigenous technology through European artefacts, techniques, and practices, nor straightforward stories of diffusion and progressive movement toward a saturation of European-influenced technique. Themes of transfer, hybridization, and transculturation are pervasive. They vividly illustrate the varied landscape of surviving indigenous practices, of local agency in the partial adoption of new practices, and how available technologies were embraced, adopted, and adapted, repurposed, and sometimes simply ignored in local settings. The authors probe “invisible transitions and apparent continuities” (p. 91) and are as equally interested in obsolescence as in innovation. These were rarely binary choices or patterns but varied in degree, by household, community or region, and shifted over time depending on the changing nature of external linkages and local conditions. This attention to local agency and context for explaining patterns observed in the archeological records runs through nearly all the chapters, ranging from the late fifteenth to the nineteenth century, situated in central and southern Mexico, Belize, and El Salvador. Several examples illustrate these themes. Iron imported from Spain or made locally by Spanish blacksmiths did not quickly replace stone tools. Chapter two examines survival and change in the obsidian tool manufactures of central Mexico in the century after the conquest, driven by the relative price of metal and the expertise to fashion tools. In ceramics and building materials (chapters four, five, and eleven), production techniques and styles drew from European (not just Spanish) and indigenous traditions. Patterns of material and technique choices can be traced over space and time, but also varied by household, “spotty and idiosyncratic” (p. 190) within the broader trends. Even the industrialization of cacao, indigo, sugar, and henequen production in response to rising Atlantic demand in the nineteenth century illustrates borrowing, adaptation, and hybridity when seen through the archeological record of specific sites (chapters eight, nine and ten). As demand for henequen (sisal) fiber grew dramatically [End Page 967] in the mid-nineteenth century, initial efforts to automate de-fibering methods by U.S.-based inventors failed. It was Mexican mechanics who designed and over three decades refined the first viable decorticizing machines. Technological change looked very different in the nearby cacao and indigo districts: Spanish commercial agents could easily assert control over processing and distribution networks, seen here in the excavated remains of those physical sites. European conquest eventually produced a radically transformed technological landscape in Mesoamerica, but more provocative and diverse than expected in these chapters. Historians of technology will find the introductory and concluding chapters (by Rani T. Alexander and Anthony P. Andrews, respectively) extremely useful syntheses of this book’s central issues and arguments. The entire volume benefits from effective leadership and editing by Alexander and her colleagues: intellectually wide-ranging but also tightly focused, coherent, and consistent in its presentation across chapters. The volumes’ contributors, all archeologists, drawn from universities in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, do an admirable job of writing for nonspecialist audiences. Most are familiar with the theoretical literature in the history of technology and cite it as relevant; the work of archeologist Michael Schiffer provides an important touchstone throughout. The authors are consistently attuned to questions of behavior, society, and culture, but are firmly rooted in the material and historical record of their subjects. This is a superb volume and should be a valuable reference for historians of technology. Edward...

The paper is an ethnographic account of women migrant sugarcane cutters and their negotiations for survival in a labour market shaped by neoliberal forms of agriculture and embedded patriarchal structures, as well as of their agency over their bodies. The investigation explores the invisibility of structural violence perpetuated by systems rooted in social inequalities, injustices, and coercion. This violence is legitimized and rendered “natural” through conceptualizations of structural violence (Galtung, 1969; Farmer, 2004). Such an investigation deconstructs the dominant narrative of the neoliberal regime, which is ostensibly equated with a free and competition-driven market. This market, however, thrives not by reducing economic and social inequalities but by managing and furthering them. Drawing on Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony (1971) and Althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatuses (1971), the paper illustrates how dominant discourses and institutions normalize and render this structural violence invisible. The victims of such structural violence are left with very little or no agency over their bodies and minds, as revealed in their silences and denials.

With the increased digitisation of society comes an increased concern about who is left behind. From societal causes to the impact of everyday actions, The Digital Disconnect explores the relationship between digital and social inequalities, and the lived consequences of digitisation. Ellen J. Helsper goes beyond questions of digital divides and who is connected. She asks why and how social and digital inequalities are linked and shows the tangible outcomes of socio-digital inequalities in everyday lives. The book: Introduces the key theories and concepts needed to understand both ‘traditional’ and digital inequalities research. Investigates a range of socio-digital inequalities, from digital access and skills, to civic participation, social engagement, and everyday content creation and consumption. Brings research to life with a range of qualitative vignettes, drawing out the personal experiences that lay at the heart of global socio-digital inequalities. The Digital Disconnect is an expert exploration of contemporary theory, research and practice in socio-digital inequalities. It is also an urgent and impassioned call to broaden horizons, expand theoretical and methodological toolkits, and work collectively to help achieve a fairer digital future for all.

Iron has played an important role within East African pastoralist societies for many hundreds of years, yet the means by which iron was produced or obtained by these communities has not been thoroughly documented. The bulk of our understanding is presently based on a limited number of ethnographic and artefact studies, which have tended to focus on the functional and symbolic nature of iron objects themselves. We argue that the research presented here provides the first opportunity to add to this narrow knowledge base by reconstructing the iron production technologies of pastoralist communities in Laikipia, Kenya, using an archaeometallurgical approach. Seven furnaces and one iron-production refuse area were excavated at two discrete workshop sites in Laikipia, central Kenya, that date to the second half of the second millennium AD. The recovered archaeometallurgical materials were analysed using optical microscopy, SEM-EDS and ED-XRF. These techniques revealed that the smelting technologies in question were complex and sophisticated and that they utilised titania-rich black sands and lime-rich charcoal. Whereas the technical approach and raw materials were found to be similar at both sites studied, there was striking stylistic variation in furnace design for no apparent functional reason, which might suggest nuanced differences in the socio-cultural affiliations of the smelters who worked at these sites. This paper explores some of the possible reasons for these differences. In particular, by integrating archaeological data with existing ethnographic and ethnohistoric research from the region, we discuss the technological choices of the smelters and what this might tell us about their identities, as well as considering how future research should best be targeted in order to develop a greater understanding of the organisation of production within pastoralist central Kenya.

The volume – the second special issue of “Anthropos” – is a déjà-lu anthology of ten articles of various authors, written in English and German, concerning sexuality and gender in various cultures of the world that were published in this journal between 1970 and 2013. It covers a broad spectrum of topics, including homosexuality and transvestitism in Siberian shamanism; cultural construction of gender in connection with female cannibalism in New Guinea; reproduction of gender differences in contemporary Spain; ethnic identity and sex in Nigeria; Balinese ideas and practices connected with sex; and transnational intimate relations in the globalized world. The volume is intended as a contribution to the ongoing discussion on human sexuality by providing insights based on ethnographical and ethno-historical research. With contributions by Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, H. E. M. Braakhuis, Jane Tapsubei Creider, Chet A. Creider, Sabine Dinslage, Andrew Duff-Cooper, Alison Gourvès-Hayward, Barbara Grubner, Rudolf Leger, Catrien Notermans, Darius J. Piwowarczyk, Karen A. Porter, Béatrice Sommier, Anne Storch, Ilka Thiessen, Kerstin Tiefenbacher and Patricia Zuckerhut.