Late Historic Times Research Articles

Prehistoric Adaptation, Identity, and Interaction Along the Northern Gulf of California

ABSTRACT Archaeological investigations have been conducted along the northern coast of Sonora, Mexico where over 60 prehistoric middens have been identified around Bahía Adair and the town of Puerto Peñasco. The middens include low densities of pottery, chipped and ground stone tools, and some shell tools and ornaments, as well as molluscs, fish bones, crab claws, sea turtle bones, terrestrial animal bones, and charred plant remains. Radiocarbon dates indicate nearly continuous use of the coast from as early as 4,000 BC through late historic times. Pottery types found are associated with the Patayan, Hohokam, Trincheras, and the Ancestral Comcaac cultures. These middens were created by peoples occupying the western Papaguería who interacted extensively with neighboring groups in California, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico. The Areneños (Sand Papago or Hia ced O’odham) occupied the area in historical times and their subsistence, settlement, and interaction patterns can be used as a model for prehistoric groups.

The Concept and Utilization of Swastika ‘Hooked Cross’ on Islamic Artefacts

‘Swastika’ is an equilateral hooked cross, it is one of the symbols that became popular to several nations of different cultures since prehistoric times. This symbol was associated, or rather, became symbol for some religious beliefs and spiritual concepts in some ancient civilizations. It has been extensively transmitted among several nations. Such prevalence proves the popularity that hooked cross ‘Swastika’ had attained, however, this caused the difficulty in determining its place of origin. Some historical studies suggested India as ‘Swastika’s’ homeland by the end of the Bronze Age, since it was predominantly a religious symbol of Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. The spread of Buddhism religion which held the hooked cross ‘swastika’ as a holy symbol, led to the emergence of swastika in China and Japan as symbol of prosperity. However, others, due to some evidences, pointed out to Mesopotamia, land of the oldest known civilization on universe, which later became a cultural center extended from the Near East to Central Europe, and in Asia it had widespread and reached as far east as China. In addition, hooked cross had been contemporary to ancient Egyptian civilization. This had been assured by the discovery of a rock drawing in the western desert of Upper Egypt. In late historical times, precisely, the Byzantine empire, hooked cross was also in use. Furthermore, it was in use in the Coptic art as well. Hooked cross ‘Swastika’ continued to be used in ancient historical eras; contributed in their arts, and till the modern era. In addition, the widespread of ‘Swastika’ resulted in being associated with several terms; Gammadion cross or Crux Gammata, Hakenkreuz, Fylfot (fower foot), Wan in china, Manji in Japan, Tau cross, and Thor’s hammer. In addition, each society used Swastika in a distinct fashion; it sometimes symbolized the Sun, good fortune, fertility, religious beliefs, etc. Through this stretched history, hooked cross’s symbolism had radically changed, especially in the 1st half of the 20th century A.D, after being chosen as symbol for the blossoming Nazi party founded by Adolf Hitler in Germany. Since then, the ‘Swastika’ had been effectively detached from its past, Germanized and reinvented as a symbol of German purity and supremacy. This paper enclosed a briefed history of the hooked cross ‘Swastika’ since its emergence, with stating the diverse thoughts of its place of origin. This is succeeded by the symbolism of the hooked cross ‘Swastika’ and the changes happened lately. The final point is the outline of applying hooked cross ‘Swastika’ in Islamic Art, this is supplemented by some chosen Applied artefacts demonstrating this. This paper aims at:- Illuminating on one of the most unique symbols with differ meanings and argumentative as well. - Focusing on themes of association between different nations on vast areas since very ancient times.- Deducing the Islamic art’s tendency to admitting decorative elements of several cultures, if there is no conflict with Islamic faith.- Hinting that absolute facts or concepts are not exist, and symbols – such as ‘Swastika’ are liable to multiple changes.

Becoming Classical Artemis: A Glimpse at the Evolution of the Goddess as Traced in Ancient Arcadia

<p>This paper is concerned with the evolution of the goddess Artemis in Ancient Greek religion from prehistoric till late historic times. In the related studies, still there is no certainty as to the beginning of worship of Artemis in Ancient Greece and her original concept. Moreover, Artemis’ appearance in the early historic period with the features of the prehistoric Mountain-Mother-Goddess, the Mistress of Animals, the goddess of lakes, the goddess of trees, the goddess of birth and child-care, on the one hand, and as a virgin-huntress who presented rudimentary traits of bear-goddess and deer-goddess, on the other, raises questions whether Artemis originally had all these hypostases or acquired them gradually through assimilation with different goddesses. This paper argues that the concept of Artemis as attested during the historic period was the result of its long development, which consisted of two major phases. Originally, Artemis was a goddess of wild animals and herself was imagined as a bear and a doe. Perhaps, from the beginning, she was regarded as a guardian of sacred rules and a punisher for inappropriate religious behavior. Gradually, Artemis was identified with the old universal goddess of nature and received from her connection with mountain-tops and lakes, responsibility for plant growth and fertility in general, obligation to protect childbirth, etc.. In this paper, the evolution of the concept of Artemis is traced on the basis of her cults practiced in Arcadia, one of a few areas of Ancient Greece where ethno-cultural continuity remained unbroken from prehistoric to late historic times.</p>

XVII amžiaus Žagarės miestiečių avalynė

Straipsnyje, remiantis archeologiniais duomenimis, apžvelgiama XVII–XVIII a. Lietuvos periferijos miestelių avalynė. Kaip tipinės miestiečių avalynės pavyzdžiai detaliai pristatomi ir analizuojami XVII a. avalynės radiniai, aptikti Žagarės miesto archeologinių kasinėjimų (archeologas Ernestas Vasiliauskas) metu. Aptikti du pusbačiai ir trys klepės iki šiol yra vieninteliai informatyviausi miestiečių avalynę reprezentuojantys archeologiniai radiniai, surasti ne Lietuvos reikšmingiausių senųjų prekybos miestų teritorijoje, o periferijos miesteliuose. Radiniai autoriaus konservuoti ir restauruoti, aptartos tokio pobūdžio radinių konservavimo ir restauravimo problemos, siekiant maksimaliai išsaugoti jų informatyvumą tolesniam įvairiapusiam pažinimui. Ištirta radinių konstrukcija ir medžiagiškumas, atskleista avalynės gamybos technologija. Radiniai palyginti su to laikotarpio Vakarų Europos analogais.

Human impact on the vegetation of South Wales during late historical times: palynological and palaeoenvironmental results from Crymlyn Bog NNR, West Glamorgan, Wales, UK

Palynological and palaeoenvironmental analyses of Crymlyn Bog, a lowland fen in South Wales, reveal insights into the effects of documented industrial activity on the landscape during the last c. 500 years. The pollen and palaeoenvironmental profiles suggest that a predominantly wooded landscape in which some agriculture but little industrial activity took place, occurred between the sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. Significant increases in heavy metals, spheroidal carbonaceous particles and SIRM are coincident with rapid and substantial industrialization of the Lower Swansea Valley from the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, although the pollen evidence suggests that the vegetation of the area was dominated by birch-hazel woodland. The pollen profile suggests that large-scale woodland clearance, that was perhaps caused by increased land-use pressure adjacent to the mire, occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time, decreases in the profiles of copper, zinc and lead reflect the decline of non-ferrous metal smelting in the Lower Swansea Valley. The spheroidal carbonaceous particle and SIRM profiles from Crymlyn Bog do not correspond with the national trends depicted in such profiles from elsewhere in the British Isles, probably because of the dominance of locally derived industrial pollution. The apparent integrity of the copper, lead and SIRM profiles suggest that fen peat is an eminently suitable, and thus much under-used, medium from which to reconstruct palaeoenvironmental and industrial histories. Limitations in the use of the zinc, and the SCP and pollen profiles as palaeoenvironmental indicators and dating tools respectively are demonstrated by the lack of correspondence between their profiles and documented historical land-use records.

Shawnee Convergence: Immigrant Indians in the Ozarks

FOR MANY YEARS A FRONTIER was understood to be simply a boundary between two or more societies with different cultures. When one side was characterized as native, the complementary understanding was that an inevitable decline and absorption of the weaker group would occur. In recent years, however, a much more complex understanding of the dynamic process in the confrontation of two societies has emerged. Central to the new vision is the replacement of a linear frontier by the image of a zone of interaction in which creative energies are released among the participating social groups, leading to new and possibly unique cultural formations. These complex phenomena are frequently referred to as occurring in the middle ground, a spatial and experiential metaphor with much greater utility than frontier.' The Ozarks area of Arkansas and Missouri in the early nineteenth century is an excellent candidate for analysis as a middle ground, for it became for several decades home to a number of different Native American groups. The accounts of Territorial Arkansas, with its political dramas enacted by white Americans with strong personalities, create the illusion that the progress from Louisiana Purchase to territory to statehood within the modem boundaries was inevitable, even planned. The reality, however, is that for its first few decades, the land that is now Arkansas was the stage for a number of imaginative experiments, some of which, if realized, Quatawapea or Col. Lewis, a Shawnee leader who settled in Arkansas and encouraged other Shawnees to do likewise. From Thomas McKenney and James Hall, The Indian Tribes of North America (1836-1844; 1933). Courtesy, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville. would have left a quite different social structure behind. From the still unplumbed 1805 plan of Aaron Burr until the 1828 treaty in which the who had relocated from their eastern homeland to Arkansas (the Cherokees West) returned the Ozarks to the United States, there were players on the scene who imagined quite different futures for the region. The story of the West is fairly familiar to many people.2 The Shawnees were also in the Arkansas middle ground in this period, but their story is less well known, probably because the records are so sparse. Bits of evidence left behind in the documents allow the outlines of this story to emerge, however, and even raise the tantalizing-but ultimately unverifiable-possibility that one Indian leader envisioned a future for Arkansas that included the establishment of a Shawnee nation in the Ozarks. The Shawnees were in Arkansas from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the 1830s, when they moved on to Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The Ozarks region was truly international during that period. Not only was the area between the White and the Arkansas Rivers officially the Cherokee Nation from 1817 to 1828, these western were joined by Delawares, Kickapoos, Peorias, Miamis, Weas, Piankashaws, Michigameas, and Muskogees. The Shawnees-the focus of this study-were centered at Shawnee Town on Crooked Creek, a settlement that was later reoccupied by Anglo-Americans and renamed Yellville, county seat of Marion County. The background of the Shawnees is complicated, but a brief outline of their history here will help place the Arkansas story in context. Among the various groups of Native Americans in the Eastern Woodlands, the Shawnees stand out as unique in several ways. They claimed a great antiquity, for their traditions said that they were separated from the Leni Lenape (Delaware) in ancient times. No student of the Shawnees has seen fit to challenge this tradition and that closeness was certainly manifest in late historic times as the Shawnees and Delawares participated jointly in many ventures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even if the story is untrue, the Shawnee oral tradition is important, for it argues that they saw themselves as one of the significant players in the complex history of the Eastern Woodlands from ancient timeS. …

The Middle Columbia Cremation Complex

Cremation pits were discovered in the Yakima and Snake River valleys and on the Columbia at Wahluke and at The Dalles before 1927. Recently one has been described from the John Day region in Oregon by Cressman (1950). The cremation complex which the pits represent appears in the late prehistoric period and was undoubtedly widespread and important in the cultural development of the region. In the Dalles-Arlington area, at least, it lasted into historic times. Recent evidence associates the cremation complex with Sahaptin groups inhabiting the region above The Dalles until late historic times. This new evidence controverts an earlier theory, largely based on ethnological traditions, that the Salish were the early inhabitants of the area. The finding of burials below the cremation level at Sheep Island (i.e., a stratified burial site) has particular bearing on the problem.