Diverse Artifacts Research Articles

Economics of Convention: Sympathy and Social Norms as Mirrors to One Another in the Process of Non-Price Coordination

Market exchanges are widely believed to rely on an overlap of interest, this paper argues that many market exchanges actually rely on a broader agreement between buyer and seller. The broader agreement includes the moral justification of the exchange and the associated norms of propriety. To arrive at this broader agreement markets rely on systems of non-price coordination. These non-price coordination systems, or orders of worth as we call them, can be thought of as emergent orders just like the price system is an emergent order; they are sources of justification that can be drawn upon to warrant the worth of diverse artifacts and the legitimacy of trading them. We show that Adam Smith’s theory of sympathy offers conceptual means for analyzing the emergence of such orders. To make sense of the emergence and functioning on these orders we draw on Smith's organon and link it with contemporary work in economic sociology by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot. We demonstrate how our theoretical framework can further our understanding of justifying exchanges of contested goods with two illustrative cases: contemporary art and surrogate motherhood.

The Matter of Space: Bodily Performances and the Emergence of Boundary Objects During Multidisciplinary Design Meetings

Prior research has identified the importance of embodied action in establishing representational infrastructure during disruptions in interdisciplinary work. This study expands on such research by examining meetings of interdisciplinary museum design teams—including educators, designers, researchers, and museum professionals. In these meetings, the museum space (exhibition room) emerges as a boundary object as it is presented through diverse material artifacts including floor-plans and mock-ups. The authors’ analyses identify and describe bodily and discursive practices of place-making and place-imagining that the participants perform as they attempt to maintain continuity across these shifting material forms and occasions.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE CADES POND CULTURE IN NORTH-CENTRAL FLORIDA: THE RIVER STYX SITE (8AL458)

The River Styx site was an important Middle Woodland ceremonial center in north-central Florida that included a horseshoe-shaped earthen embankment, a burial mound containing only cremations, and diverse nonlocal artifacts. The site was recorded more than forty years ago but a report was never written. This article presents a summary of excavation results at River Styx and analysis of the pottery assemblage based on archived notes and collections at the Florida Museum of Natural History. From the pottery assemblage, 24 vessel lots, consisting of mostly partially reconstructed vessels, are described in terms of form, surface treatment, and mineralogical constituents characterized by petrographic analysis. The provenance of each vessel is inferred, and more than half of the analyzed assemblage is judged to be nonlocal.

The Making of an Internal Frontier Settlement: Archaeology and Historical Process in Osun Grove (Nigeria), Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries

The historical, material, and spatial processes that defined the formative settlement practices in Early Osogbo (southwest Nigeria), a seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century frontier community, is the subject of this article. I use different datasets, including the spatial layout of the site, the archaeological depositional sequence, diverse artifact categories, and oral historical sources to engage Igor Kopytoff’s Internal African Frontier thesis. In this article, I argue against Kopytoff’s conceptualization of the frontier as a conservative space that relied on innovations from the metropolis. Instead, I demonstrate that Early Osogbo was a dynamic formative settlement in an internal Yoruba regional frontier whose material life was not a mere copy of a metropolis’s. Instead, this emerging community was characterized by diversity, complexity, experimentation, and newness that resulted from local forces of migration, frontier social networks, and regional exchange systems involving several spheres of interstitial frontiers and multiple metropolises. Contrary to the metropolis-frontier pattern of migration that informed Kopytoff’s Internal African Frontier thesis, Early Osogbo was originally created by frontier-frontier migrations before it became a site for intermetropolis contestation. The article underscores the need to bring conceptual clarity to the study of frontier processes, arguing that different historical contexts, migration patterns, and regional political frameworks produced different kinds of frontiers such as crossroads, boundary, colony, and cultural frontiers. The archaeological profile of Early Osogbo demonstrates that the settlement was a crossroads frontier community.

Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas

Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas

An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body (review)

Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. 208 pp. Human beings make images. prehistoric cave paintings to digital photographs, succession of artifacts attests to this remarkably sustained human activity. Indeed, it might be said that as an activity unique to our species, making images makes human beings. The traces we have leftover time in form of images constitute subject of history of art. But might they not also be within purview of anthropology? This position is underlying premise of Hans Belting's An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, published originally in Germany as Bild- Anthropologie in 2001 by Verlag Wilhelm Fink, Munich. Prompted in part by increasing technological basis of in our age, Belting sets out to establish an anthropological perspective as way to avoid risk of reducing images to mere artifacts of technology (15). He predicates his undertaking on specific definition of image. Whereas we commonly consider as something that can be seen, Belting broadens parameters to allow images different identity. Spanning the boundary between physical and mental existence (2), may live in work of art without necessarily coinciding with it. Belting defines this way in order to extend our consideration beyond artifacts produced by specific media to encompass those images-dreams, imaginings, personal perceptions-that we generate corporeally. His central proposition is that and ground every attempt at picture-making (3). Belting conceives of medium as material or tangible transfer point of images. Images rely on media to be manifest, but, in his terms, they are not reducible to their technical support. When he states pictures have always been dependent on given medium, whether it was lump of clay or smooth wall of cave, Belting makes conventional observation. However, he wants to differentiate his use of word medium to specify something that conveys or hosts an (18). Furthermore, Belting includes our bodies within his definition of medium; because they process, receive, and transmit images, they qualify as a living (5). This allows him to into consideration memory, dreams, and imagination. His argument requires that division between internal and external representation- images in world and images in our minds-be erased: images exist in unceasing interaction between physical and mental. His focus on and medium enables him to link diverse artifacts whose relations would otherwise remain obscure, such as coat of arms dating from 13th century and early portraits painted on panels. For Belting, these pictorial forms both take place of body (63), albeit in different ways, with coat of arms signifying genealogy and portrait specific individual within genealogical heritage. While it is intriguing to see heraldic as likeness, we are more likely to accept portrait as depiction of person because of historical shiftfrom an emblematic to an iconic reference to body. Renaissance artists who produced representations of singular individuals present us with living image of incarnate, historical entities, by which Belting intends more than just body, but Self. Belting's study of relation between and death forms core of book. Tracing historical instances of embodiment of dead, Belting explores contradiction between presence and absence, inherent to images but also underlying mysterious divide between life and death. Here he makes his most convincing case in support of position that From an anthropological perspective...embodiment in an image...testifies to an age-old urge to transcend, by means of image, boundaries of space and time that confine human body (61). …

War of 1812 Buttons from Fort Johnson and Cantonment Davis, Hancock County, Illinois

AbstractRecent archaeological investigations at Fort Johnson and Cantonment Davis, two War of 1812–era American military posts in Hancock County, Illinois, uncovered a diverse artifact assemblage that includes a wide array of button types. Of the 318 recovered buttons, 68 percent exhibit military insignias, including those attributed to the infantry, army general service, riflemen, artillery, light artillery, and dragoons. In addition to describing the assemblage, what these buttons can and cannot tell us regarding the occupations of the two military posts is discussed.

Intermediaries: reflections on virtual humans, gender, and the Uncanny Valley

Embodied interface agents are designed to ease the use of technology. Furthermore, they present one possible solution for future interaction scenarios beyond the desktop metaphor. Trust and believability play an important role in the relationship between user and the virtual counterpart. In order to reach this goal, a high degree of anthropomorphism in appearance and behavior of the artifact is pursued. According to the notion of the Uncanny Valley, however, this actually may have quite the opposite effect. This article provides an analysis of the Uncanny Valley effect from a cultural and gender studies perspective. It invites readers to take a closer look at the narratives that influence the production of anthropomorphic artifacts. The article starts with a short introduction of the idea of the Uncanny Valley and gives a brief overview of current artifacts. Following this, a semiotic view on computer science is proposed, which in a further step serves as an epistemological grounding for a gender-critical rereading of the Turing test. This perspective will be supported by analyzing a classic story of user and artifact—E.T.A. Hoffmann’s narration of Olimpia. Finally, the special character of anthropomorphic artifacts is discussed by taking Freud’s concept of “Das Unheimliche”, as well as theories of identity formation into consideration, closing with a plea for a more diverse artifact production.

Črno sonce v beli glavi

Ignacij Knoblehar (1819–1858) worked as a Catholic missionary in southern Sudan, in particular among the Bari people. He sent regular reports home about his work and many newspapers also published his letters. Above all, he became known when he sailed beyond 4° north latitude. He was the first European to carry out systematic measurements of the White Nile and his discoveries were reported in both Europe and America. While he lived there, Slovenians became acquainted for the first time in their history with a part of Africa. In 1850 he brought a large collection of diverse artifacts from the Nilotic peoples back to Ljubljana. These artifacts are preserved in the Slovene Ethnographic Museum today, and part of the collection was put on display in a temporary exhibition entitled “Sudan Mission 1848–1858” at the museum in May 2009. The arrival of a number of African children in Ljubljana arguably constituted the highpoint of this early Slovenian contact with Africa. Missionaries bought the children at a slave market and brought them back to Europe with the intention of training the boys to be priests and the girls to be nuns. However, the plan fell through because the children all died of pneumonia and tuberculosis. The public baptism of the African children and the relationship of the general public to them in the mid-nineteenth century helped shape stereotypical representations of Africans as well as certain forms of racial discrimination that are still present today.

Črno sonce v beli glavi

Ignacij Knoblehar (1819–1858) worked as a Catholic missionary in southern Sudan, in particular among the Bari people. He sent regular reports home about his work and many newspapers also published his letters. Above all, he became known when he sailed beyond 4° north latitude. He was the first European to carry out systematic measurements of the White Nile and his discoveries were reported in both Europe and America. While he lived there, Slovenians became acquainted for the first time in their history with a part of Africa. In 1850 he brought a large collection of diverse artifacts from the Nilotic peoples back to Ljubljana. These artifacts are preserved in the Slovene Ethnographic Museum today, and part of the collection was put on display in a temporary exhibition entitled “Sudan Mission 1848–1858” at the museum in May 2009. The arrival of a number of African children in Ljubljana arguably constituted the highpoint of this early Slovenian contact with Africa. Missionaries bought the children at a slave market and brought them back to Europe with the intention of training the boys to be priests and the girls to be nuns. However, the plan fell through because the children all died of pneumonia and tuberculosis. The public baptism of the African children and the relationship of the general public to them in the mid-nineteenth century helped shape stereotypical representations of Africans as well as certain forms of racial discrimination that are still present today.

Documenting the Quick and the Dead: A Study of Suicide Case Files in a Coroner's Office

In keeping with recent critiques of literature on the body and the life course, the argument of this paper is that social identities can, to a certain extent, be constructed post-mortem and in the absence of a living body. The authors make this case with reference to a sociological autopsy study of a hundred suicide case files in a coroner's office in a medium-sized British city. The research draws on ethnographic approaches to the study of documents. There is discussion of some of the diverse artefacts in the coroners’ files: medical reports, witness statements and suicide notes. The identity work revealed in these sources is as much about the living as the dead and is especially bound up in the process of avoiding blame.

Visualisation of Native Surfaces by Two-Step Molding

Abstract One of the most important tasks of microscopy is to provide information about structures in their natural state. Since most life science microscopy procedures require fixation, dehydration, drying, and sectioning, diverse artefacts are unavoidable. It is also possible to dehydrate the water content of a specimen by freeze-drying. However, even relatively stable surface structures are changed during such treatments. Methods of liquid substitution and freezing-substitution show good results for biological specimens with a waxy solid coverage (Ensikat and Barthlott, 1993) and soft specimens in a mechanically deformed state (Gorb et al., 2000). However, all these methods have certain restrictions for some types of specimens. For example, there are numerous biological surfaces covered with secretory fluids. Some specimens bear solid waxy coverings, which can be partly dissolved and washed out in organic solvents, such as ethanol, acetone, or propylenoxide. Often one would like to visualise dynamic processes (growth, deformation, or crystallisation) under environmental conditions, but at the high resolution in the SEM.

Space, Time and Documents in a Refrigerated Warehouse

In a refrigerated warehouse, workers organize distribution and exchange of frozen seafood by the spatial and temporal arrangement of loads. Using videotapes of workers' activities and interviews, this paper investigates how workers organize space, time and artifacts in the activity of frozen seafood distribution and exchange, and how organized space, time and artifacts systematize workers' multiple courses of actions and give direction to them. Particular attention is paid to how the workers use artifacts such as various documents and computers as part of their practices, because the activity of distribution and exchange in this workplace is regarded as the activity of organizing space and time with various artifacts in multiple contexts. Through the analysis of situated literacy of using artifacts, it was shown that the activity of using artifacts is always embedded in multiple contexts. At the same time, diverse artifacts organize multiple contexts of work. Thus, there is the reflexive interaction between the artifacts and the contexts.

"THERE SEE INDUSTRY AND WEALTH COMBINED"

June Sprigg and David Larkin; Photographs by Michael Freeman. Shaker Life, Work, and Art. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1987. 272 pp. Illus. Robert P. Emlen. Shaker Village Views: Illustrated Maps and Landscape Drawings by Shaker Artists of the Nineteenth Century. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987. ix + 198 pp. Illus. The Shakers must be about the best-documented sect among the communal religious Utopians of nineteenth-century America. Certainly they left the greatest number of diverse artifacts, buildings and records. Books and articles exist on their communities, religious beliefs, buildings, work, food, art, songs, dress and on the manifold experiences of the Shakers themselves as they lived through millenarian, spiritualist and quietest phases of their movement. Much of this material has appeared since the publication in 1977 of Mary L. Richmond's two volume Shaker Literature: A Bibliography. These books are handsome additions to that literature which will continue to grow because of the museums now thriving at former and still active Shaker settlements in Sabbathday, Maine; Canterbury, New Hampshire; Hancock and Harvard, Massachusetts; Mount Lebanon and Old Chatham, New York; and Shakertown and Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Both volumes are nicely designed and well printed on glossy paper which shows their illustrations to advantage. The text by Sprigg and Larkin provides an introduction to the Shakers and their world which is brief, clear and readable, although occasionally a bit repetitive. Those who have read much on Shakerism will find here little that is new save the approximately 200 color photographs by Michael Freeman and the five by others and used with their permission. These were mostly taken at the eight locations listed above, but a few are of objects and manuscripts elsewhere in private collections. These sunny pictures give a somewhat idealized view of their subjects, as they clarify the text and give substance, tone and beauty to the account of people who sought grace in clean designs, as well as in lives dedicated to their communities and to their God. They are also images with a wider relevance, since the Shakers shared objects, techniques and skills, standards and an appreciation for elegant and useful things with the nineteenth-century culture from which many were recruited and to which they all belonged. Freeman's pictures remind this New Englander of just how much the Shakers had in common with the craftsmen and farmers among whom they lived and whose material culture they shared even while refining it.

Mechanism of Action and Possible Sites of Synthesis of Nerve Growth Factor

This chapter compares the effects of nerve growth factor (NGF) on general growth with those on differentiation and considers the possible role of NGF as a macromolecular messenger between effector cells and innervating neurons, reaching its site of action in the perikaryon by retrograde axonal transport. It is now established that NGF is taken up selectively by specific nerve terminals and is transported retrogradely to the perikaryon in smooth membrane compartments, some of which have been seen to fuse with lysosomal structures. As there is no evidence that intact NGF leaves these membrane-limited compartments, it is improbable that the NGF-mediated regulation of microtubule and microfilament assembly or the regulation of the synthesis of specific proteins results from a direct interaction of NGF with the corresponding nuclear or cytoplasmic structures. The chapter also discusses diverse artifacts hindering the reliable determination of endogenous levels of NGF in blood and tissues. It highlights the possibility of another factor or factors representing alternatives to NGF.