Symbols Of Rank Research Articles

The Philosophy of Keris Design in Malay Civilization

Keris has been recognised as a Malay weaponry tool alongside spear (tombak), sword (pedang), dagger (badik), rust (kelewang), kerabit, and many others. Its status as Malay defence tool has been elevated to the highest level in Malay civilisation, rendering it superior to others due to its function, its refined philosophy and high value of aesthetic arts. Keris is not a strange culture in the communities of the Malay Archipelago as it is symbolic to the Malay supremacy and sovereignty since a long time ago. The function of a keris has experienced a lot of changes, from the early creation of the weapon to an amulet, an idolised heritage, an epitome of family ties, a mark of good deeds, a symbol of rank or degree to item of arts and souveniers. It embodies various Malay philosophies and civilisation values. The uniqueness of keris is explained in the physical and non-physical forms by the owner or blacksmith. Frey (2010) states that keris is the most significant epitome of culture for the Malay community. Due to its significance, it also displays the dignity and status of the Malays as a civilised nation. The men will not be out of their homes without a keris, as they would be seen as naked without it. Despite the keris having various looks and styles due to the different locations and borders, ethnic groups, but the core and function remain the same. In general, it is not only a mere weapon or part of the whole ensemble, but it goes beyond that. It is a hallmark of Malay integrity and identity, in which contains various philosophies of Malay civilisation. The writer will discuss the history and background of keris, the parts of a keris, and the philosophy behind the function and role in Malay civilisation in this article.

Auspicious Symbols of Rank and Status

Auspicious Symbols of Rank and Status

Not only the Golden Gate? A newly discovered fragment from the decoration of the castle chapel portal in Althaus (Starogród) as a contribution to the identification of ceramic sculpture in the Teutonic Order's State in Prussia

The paper features new observations on ceramic architectural detail and ceramic sculptural elements, the most common types of finishing brick buildings in the Ordensland during the 13th and first half of the 14th centuries. It presents an unpublished fragment which came to light as a result of the archaeological excavations in Starogród conducted in Kulmerland (Chełmno land) in the context of the project Castra Terrae Culmensis (2017), namely the fragment of a portal (?) sculpture of an unknown Saint. It is a minor discovery of small size, but compared to other preserved artwork of this type from around 1300 from the Teutonic Order’s castles of Marienburg (today Malbork), Elbing (Elbląg), Thorn (Toruń), and Graudenz (Grudziądz), it is of great “causative power” in terms of revising our knowledge of types, manufacturing techniques, and above all, the actual layers of meaning with regard to figural decorations in the oldest Teutonic Order’s strongholds in Prussia. As a result, ceramic architectural sculpture can be considered a phenomenon of much wider range than has previously been accepted. The emphasis regarding its condition can be moved from the exceptional symbol of rank and power toward genius loci of architecture from the first phase of construction campaigns undertaken by the Teutonic Order in Prussia.

The Cultural History of the Corset and Gendered Body in Social and Literary Landscapes

This study centers on the significance, uses and changes of the corset in the Western culture and literature through a study of body politics, culture and fashion. The emplacement of corsetry in the West as an undergarment goes back to 1600s. Research shows that the study of corsetry is important as the corset has been a permanent, pervasive, popular object preferred mostly by women from different classes, sometimes by men and even children since the Middle Ages. Moreover, it is important to notice how the corset has gone beyond its use value and has become first a symbol of rank and elegance, then of female oppression and victimization and finally a symbol of sexual empowerment and feminine rebellion in contemporary time. Popular critics of the field state that the corset today is far beyond its earlier restrictive usages and negative meanings as the garment today has become a favored item in fashion industry and preferred by celebrity icons all around the world. The corset at present is an outerwear, art object and ideological construct. So, what makes the corset so popular and everlasting? The study on corsetry yields to a critique of Western culture from socio-political perspective as well as through body politics and gender studies. In that respect, this work aims to explore how corsetry in past and contemporary time exists as an essential part of patriarchal ideology, influencing social and literary landscapes and borrowing from the beauty aesthetics, thus creating the idealized feminine of each century.

The Cultural History of the Corset and Gendered Body in Social and Literary Landscapes

This study centers on the significance, uses and changes of the corset in the Western culture and literature through a study of body politics, culture and fashion. The emplacement of corsetry in the West as an undergarment goes back to 1600s. Research shows that the study of corsetry is important as the corset has been a permanent, pervasive, popular object preferred mostly by women from different classes, sometimes by men and even children since the Middle Ages. Moreover, it is important to notice how the corset has gone beyond its use value and has become first a symbol of rank and elegance, then of female oppression and victimization and finally a symbol of sexual empowerment and feminine rebellion in contemporary time. Popular critics of the field state that the corset today is far beyond its earlier restrictive usages and negative meanings as the garment today has become a favored item in fashion industry and preferred by celebrity icons all around the world. The corset at present is an outerwear, art object and ideological construct. So, what makes the corset so popular and everlasting? The study on corsetry yields to a critique of Western culture from socio-political perspective as well as through body politics and gender studies. In that respect, this work aims to explore how corsetry in past and contemporary time exists as an essential part of patriarchal ideology, influencing social and literary landscapes and borrowing from the beauty aesthetics, thus creating the idealized feminine of each century.

Eiserne Klappstühle aus Kaiserzeitlichen Bestattungen der Einheimischen Elite in Pannonien

The study discusses the burials containing folding iron chairs of indigenous elite in NE-Pannonia. Folding iron chairs have been recovered from forty-two richly furnished burials dating from the 1st–3rd centuries AD in the European border provinces of the Roman Empire, from Britain to Thrace. Most Hungarian and international scholars agree that these chairs were symbols of rank and that the graves containing folding chairs of this type were the burials of municipal magistrates. The author rejects the interpretation that the chairs indicated the status or office of the deceased, suggesting instead that these chairs had been part of instrumenta balnei and/or toiletry sets. His arguments are based on the analysis of the currently known elite burials with iron chairs (listed in Appendix I), the position of the chairs in the grave and their occurrence together with bathing paraphernalia, as well as on various depictions.

Pacific Jewelry and Adornment (review)

Reviewed by: Pacific Jewelry and Adornment Donald H Rubinstein Pacific Jewelry and Adornment, by Roger Neich and Fuli Pereira. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8248-2882-8; 190 pages, maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. US$33.00. One would expect a publication on Pacific jewelry and adornment to be an attractive production, and this book is indeed beautifully designed and printed. Over 240 high-quality photographs embellish the book and illustrate a splendid array of objects from around the Pacific. Many of the objects are dramatically photographed against a black background; all the pieces are very well lit to reveal fine details of workmanship and materials. In some cases backlighting is also used to good advantage to show off the translucence of jade or turtle-shell finery. Additionally, over 40 photographs taken in situ, some from as early as the 1880s and others quite recent, show Pacific Islanders wearing personal adornments. The objects are all from the collection of the Auckland Museum, [End Page 473] and the photographs are from both the Auckland Museum and the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Following an introductory essay, the book is divided into five chapters, each devoted to a geographic-cultural region. A brief two-page note on the collections follows the main chapters. For a region as diverse and vast as the Pacific Islands, writing an introductory twenty-page essay that contextualizes jewelry and adornment within local cultural systems of meaning without indulging in truisms and overgeneralizations is a difficult challenge. Roger Neich succeeds well. He addresses the cultural diversity of the Pacific at the outset and provides a very brief overview of Pacific prehistory, from its ancient Pleistocene beginnings at least 40,000 years ago with settlement of New Guinea, Australia, and Near Oceania, to the more recent expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples, the development of the Lapita cultural complex around 3,500 years ago, and the settlement ofthe wider Pacific. Neich situates jewelry broadly within Pacific Islanders' beliefs in a "vital spiritual energy, a life force that animates the universe" (14). He makes the point that objects of personal adornment serve as more than mere decoration, by focusing this energy and providing people some control over its power. Alluding further to the semiotic function of jewelry and adornment, Neich describes the "message of the materials" (17). The rarity of certain materials such as varieties of seashell or pearl shell, or the difficulty of working very hard materials into ornaments, gave some materials enormous value and a central role in systems of currency. Neich gives particular attention to the widespread connection between jewelry and currency, especially in areas of Melanesia and Micronesia where shell disc currency was in use. Without proposing an overarching theory of Pacific jewelry, he suggests a continuum in the connection between currency and ornament, from one extreme where the object is purely one of wealth or economic value, to another "where the aesthetic value is paramount and any commercial value is minimal or obsolete" (27). More culturally specific to Pacific Islanders' world, Neich points out the "close connection between fishhooks and ornament throughout much of the Pacific" (25), and the deep cultural significance of ornaments made from fishhooks or parts of them or imitations of them. He also discusses the use of jewelry as symbolic protection in warfare or against sorcery, or jewelry worn as "charms, talismans and amulets" to protect against evil or to help seduce the opposite sex (29). Neich describes how Pacific jewelry marked social status, or functioned as symbols of rank and leadership or markers of clan membership, or functioned as heirloom objects embodying ties to ancestors whose preserved body parts (hair, teeth, bones, fingers, skull) might serve as personal ornaments for surviving kin. Following the introductory essay, the five main chapters serve as regional galleries of areas throughout the Pacific, exemplifying through photographs and descriptions of objects many of the points made in the introductory essay. Each chapter begins with a one- or two-page overview of the geography, history, cultural emphases, social organization, [End Page 474] and systems of trade in the area. Chapter 1, Micronesia, includes objects predominantly from Kiribati, undoubtedly owing to the colonial...

Symbols of rank, leadership, and power in traditional cultures

Headmen, chiefs, kings, and emperors, the titled leaders of numerous traditional cultures in the Pacific Islands, sub-Saharan Africa and lowland South America, wear necklaces of large canines from the most powerful and ferocious animals in their respective environments. These formal badges of office symbolize their power, leadership, rank and authority in society. This generalized theme is predicated on the thesis that a leader's power is equivalent to that of the animal from which the teeth were extracted; that is, cultural man has borrowed a model from nature on which to base his power. The fact that humankind uses this same conceptual model in numerous places around the world indicates that the human mind functions in much the same way everywhere. Regarding the method used in this work, in each example presented, the presence of a visual image is considered fundamental to the overall process of gathering documentary evidence in support of this thesis. In each instance too, published data are used to confirm the title, culture, place, and, where possible, the name of the individual wearning the tooth necklace, and the circumstances under which it was worn. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Bronze Age Economy and Ideology: Central Europe in Focus

Abstract The deposition of huge amounts of copper and bronze items is one of the major changes in ritual which distinguishes the European Bronze Age from previous and later periods. A macroeconomic approach has been chosen for characterizing two transitional phases in Central Europe: The beginning of Early Bronze Age and the formation of Late Bronze Age civilization. Both are characterized by new features on two levels: ritual practices and the organisation of exchange. The general acceptance of copper and bronze for a variety of new functions (medium of exchange, symbols of rank, votive offerings) promoted increased demand. Regional response led to technological progress in sulphide copper smelting which expanded continuously. A crash of the Early Bronze Age cultural system in the eastern part of Central Europe is suspected to have completely altered the situation. The following second phase brought a new cultural network and changed the attitude towards bronze. It promoted an incipient economy of demand...

Single Greaves in the Late Helladic Period

It has been universally assumed that metal greaves recovered from Late Bronze Age contexts were worn in pairs, one on each leg, and pictorial evidence supports paired protection in the case of what are probably organic leggings of leather or cloth. There are indications, however, that bronze greaves were worn on only one leg before the 12th century B.C., perhaps functioning as a symbol of rank or status, rather than actually intended to protect the shin. Later parallels for the burial of warriors with only one greave exist, and evidence for the use of "uni-lateral" armor can be found in equipment used by Roman gladiators, who often wore greaves, shoulder-protectors, and arm-guards on only one side.The use of single greaves in Mycenaean Greece, along with other examples of "unilateral" armor such as the single arm-guard from Dendra, lends weight to the suggestion that a great deal of what survives of Mycenaean military equipment was worn as much or more for symbolic reasons as for protection.

Selako Male Initiation

The detailed description and analysis of religious rituals is the very stuff of ethnography. Moreover, in a world still enriched by a few traditional societies not yet enmeshed in the universalistic world religions, we should not neglect present opportunities to explore a diversity that will be unavailable to later generations, who will wonder at our lack of foresight. Detailed examination of rituals that are fast disappearing should be a primary task of the anthropologist. Boas recognized this almost a century ago and made it a key justification of his program for American Indian ethnography, but modern anthropology neglects what in the past has been seen as a principal task of ethnography. The ritual the Selako Dayak call basunat is of central importance in their culture.1 Basunat accomplishes the all-important status transformation of boys into adult men. It expresses and reaffirms the Selako construction of the nature of the world and the Selako place in the world. The symbolism of basunat ritual informs our understanding of the essential differences Selako make between maleness and femaleness. Through the ritual boys are made aware of those qualities that separate boys from men and males from females. Basunat allows a statement of the household's position in village society and provides an important opportunity to enhance or maintain the household's rank in the society at large. Selako culture is rich in ritual performance, but there are few rituals more intense, dramatic, or expensive than basunat. Our understanding of the basunat ritual derives from both the symbolic and social domains. Attention to the social context in which the actors move illuminates the meanings of the ritual itself and the symbols of rank and position that the actors manipulate. Our concern with symbolism leads us to look for binary oppositions and to relate those oppositions to other symbolic formulations in Selako culture. Turner (1964) directs us to look for the ways in which ritual moves boys into men and transforms society. Following Geertz (1965) we attend to how ritual symbols encapsulate world view or ethos and organize the lives and behavior of actors.

Powwow Dancing and the Warrior Tradition

This paper provides an ethnographic description of the Plains Indian Snake Dance as it is performed at the Woodlands Six Nations Powwow at Oshwegan in Ontario. The Snake Dance is now part of the Pan Indian repertoire. As suchit has been widely diffused throughout Native North American Nations. The acceptance of the pow wow tradition into Woodlands culture represents a remarkable process of politicization, rather than acculturation which will be discussed briefly in this paper. Originally a warriors dance the choreographic motif metaphorically traces the life of a snake, from birth to nesting, and shedding of its skin, through to death which is symbolized by the warriors leap into the ne2ct life over a stick placed across the dancers path. This euphoric and energetic clima2r to the dance is reminiscent of the traditional Plains Indian Warriors cry as he entered battle. Today is a good day to die ! Only the Earth lasts foreverl (Velie, 1979, 192) The dance is now performed equally by both men and women on the powwow circuit. As in most Native dance traditions the dancers are ornately adorned. Men carry symbols of rank and objects of war, while women are draped in furs, feathers and shawls and frequently carry fans. The clothing of the dancers denotes ethnic groups, and competitive categories. This paper will provide an introduction to Pan Indianism and the relationship of this political-spiritual movement to the powwow tradition as it is currently celebrated at Six Nations Indian Reserve,l home to appro2rimately 7,000 permanent residents of the Iroquois Nation.2 The performance traits and 1 The terms Reserve (Canada) and Reservation (USA) are both used in this paper in keeping with the official terminology employed by the federal government systems in Canada and the USA to demarkate treaty lands set aside for Native Peoples. 2 Six distinct groups live at Six Nations, they also constitute the Iroquois Nation: Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora. They are also called the Long House People. Prior to European contact they occupied what is now, New York Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania and Ontario.

Fragments of first order logic, I: universal Horn logic

Let L be any finitary language. By restricting our attention to the universal Horn sentences of L and appealing to a semantical notion of logical consequence, we can formulate the universal Horn logic of L. The present paper provides some theorems about universal Horn logic that serve to distinguish it from the full first order predicate logic. Universal Horn equivalence between structures is characterized in two ways, one resembling Kochen's ultralimit theorem. A sharp version of Beth's definability theorem is established for universal Horn logic by means of a reduced product construction. The notion of a consistency property is relativized to universal Horn logic and the corresponding model existence theorem is proven. Using the model existence theorem another proof of the definability result is presented. The relativized consistency properties also suggest a syntactical notion of proof that lies entirely within the universal Horn logic. Finally, a decision problem in universal Horn logic is discussed. It is shown that the set of universal Horn sentences preserved under the formation of homomorphic images (or direct factors) is not recursive, provided the language has at least two unary function symbols or at least one function symbol of rank more than one.This paper begins with a discussion of how algebraic relations between structures can be used to obtain fragments of a given logic. Only two such fragments seem to be under current investigation: equational logic and universal Horn logic. Other fragments which seem interesting are pointed out.

Undecidable properties of finite sets of equations

Though equations are among the simplest sentences available in a first order language, many of the most familiar notions from algebra can be expressed by sets of equations. It is the task of this paper to expose techniques and theorems that can be used to establish that many collections of finite sets of equations characterized by common algebraic or logical properties fail to be recursive. The following theorem is typical.Theorem. In a language provided with an operation symbol of rank at least two, the collection of finite irredundant sets of equations is not recursive.Theorems of this kind are part of a pattern of research into decision problems in equational logic. This pattern finds its origins in the works of Markov [8] and Post [20] and in Tarski's development of the theory of relation algebras; see Chin [1], Chin and Tarski [2], and Tarski [23]. The papers of Mal′cev [7] and Perkins [16] are more directly connected with the present paper, which includes generalization of much of Perkins' work as well as extensions of a theorem of D. Smith [22]. V. L. Murskii [14] contains some of the results below discovered independently. Not all known results concerning undecidable properties of finite sets of equations seem to be susceptible to the methods presented here. R. McKenzie, for example, shows in [9] that for a language with an operation symbol of rank at least two, the collection of finite sets of equations with nontrivial finite models is not recursive. D. Pigozzi has extended and elaborated the techniques of this paper in [17], [18], and [19] to obtain new results concerning undecidable properties, particularly those of algebraic character.

Undecidable properties of finite sets of equations

Though equations are among the simplest sentences available in a first order language, many of the most familiar notions from algebra can be expressed by sets of equations. It is the task of this paper to expose techniques and theorems that can be used to establish that many collections of finite sets of equations characterized by common algebraic or logical properties fail to be recursive. The following theorem is typical.Theorem. In a language provided with an operation symbol of rank at least two, the collection of finite irredundant sets of equations is not recursive.Theorems of this kind are part of a pattern of research into decision problems in equational logic. This pattern finds its origins in the works of Markov [8] and Post [20] and in Tarski's development of the theory of relation algebras; see Chin [1], Chin and Tarski [2], and Tarski [23]. The papers of Mal′cev [7] and Perkins [16] are more directly connected with the present paper, which includes generalization of much of Perkins' work as well as extensions of a theorem of D. Smith [22]. V. L. Murskii [14] contains some of the results below discovered independently. Not all known results concerning undecidable properties of finite sets of equations seem to be susceptible to the methods presented here. R. McKenzie, for example, shows in [9] that for a language with an operation symbol of rank at least two, the collection of finite sets of equations with nontrivial finite models is not recursive. D. Pigozzi has extended and elaborated the techniques of this paper in [17], [18], and [19] to obtain new results concerning undecidable properties, particularly those of algebraic character.