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Authors:J. A. Baird, Zena Kamash, Rubina Raja Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. During the Syrian conflict, ongoing since 2011, Palmyra became notorious for the destruction and looting of its Roman-period remains, giving rise to many narratives of what Palmyra’s future should bring, often without attention to how we have come to know its past. This article explores that past through a key period—the French Mandate—when European archaeologists categorically reshaped the site, culminating in the relocation of the site’s population from mudbrick houses in and around the Temple of Bel to a new, military-built town north of the original. We examine the site immediately prior to that transformation through contemporary archaeological diaries from 1924 to 1928, written by Danish archaeologist Harald Ingholt. Through his diaries, it is possible to reconstruct the complexity of knowledge production at the site, which disrupts the authorized discourses of archaeological discovery with important consequences for how we understand the contribution of local inhabitants to scientific knowledge. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2023-02-02T05:21:49Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221144013
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Authors:Andrew M. Bauer, Peter G. Johansen Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. This paper considers the intersections of memorialization practices and politics throughout a period of emergent social differentiation during the Neolithic and Iron Age periods in the Deccan region of southern India. Rather than focus on how mortuary architecture and grave assemblages might correlate with the status, rank, or class of the deceased individuals—as has often been suggested—we place emphasis on how mortuary practices and the production of megalithic places contributed to the establishment and maintenance of social collectives among living communities. More specifically, we identify at least two modes of political practice associated with megalithic production in prehistoric South India: one related to the constitution of collectives of labor and shared consumption activities involved in the process of making monuments; and a second related to the material legacy of monuments in constituting cultural and historical places of social affiliation. In making these arguments about the social significance of megalithic places, we also critically consider new materialist and posthumanist theoretical frameworks in archaeology. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-12-14T02:15:57Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221138580
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Authors:Stephanie C Martin Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. The critical role of material objects for migrants in resettlement contexts is well established, but less work has been done to investigate the role of materiality in shaping migrants’ experiences and lives in transit. This paper provides insights into the materiality of migration journeys in the eastern Mediterranean with an approach situated at the intersection of ethnography and archaeology. A focus on items migrants carried, kept, and valued, as well as items lost or gained during their journeys, is used to investigate the importance of material objects in transit, behaviors and experiences of migration journeys which may be otherwise unseen, and the ways in which migration restructures relationships between people and objects. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-12-12T07:16:45Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221144754
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Authors:Sevil Baltalı Tırpan First page: 235 Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. Community archaeologies should emerge from an awareness of the ways in which archaeological praxis is embedded with multiple pasts, subjectivities, materialities, and national and transnational histories. This longitudinal archaeological ethnography explores the lived experiences, perceptions of the past, and relationship to archaeology and archaeologists amongst villagers residing near the Kerkenes site in Turkey after attempts by the project to develop heritage awareness, a sustainable local economy, and collaborative management of the site within the community. However well-intentioned, considerable challenges to closing the gap in understanding between archaeologists and locals can arise when the efforts of archaeologists become entangled in larger socio-political frameworks beyond their control. Villagers have experienced being dehumanized as Muslim migrant workers in Europe and were Islamic-based nationalist supporters of the conservative Erdoğan regime. The archaeologists’ heritage-making practices inadvertently triggered symbolic associations of the project with the colonial endeavor. Locals produced counter-narratives about the site as a decolonizing response. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-06-01T09:49:54Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221102911
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Authors:Sam Holley-Kline First page: 255 Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. In this paper, I examine a case of dispossession that made land belonging to Indigenous Totonac residents of San Antonio Ojital part of the archaeological site of El Tajín. To do so, I examine the failure of a 2016 claim made to Mexico’s Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos. Rather than this being a case of purpose-driven dispossession or an unintended consequence of well-meaning policies, I trace the ultimate causes to multicultural recognition, 19th-century land reforms, and the expansion of archaeological research in El Tajín. Liberal land reforms brought a private property regime into being through enrollment and inscription, and Totonac landowners around El Tajín used the regime to their benefit. As El Tajín expanded though excavation, archaeologists and landowners used the private property regime’s conception of space to address conflicts in El Tajín. The resulting pragmatic accommodations would ultimately fail landowners when an archaeological megaproject came in. Ultimately, I argue for an historical and contextual understanding of archaeology and land tenure to understand the discipline’s diverse relationships with dispossession. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-07-08T06:25:04Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221112608
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Authors:Sanja Vucetic First page: 277 Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. This paper explores how replicated erotic art decorating terracotta lamps constructed sexual ideology in Roman provinces. Lamp imagery, through semantic combination of elements, generated sexual discourse in which certain bodies and actions visually articulated boundaries of ideal and non-ideal sexualities and associated practices. Mould-made replication helped sexual disc-reliefs communicate consistent ideas about sexuality, aiding cultural cohesion throughout the globalising empire. Lamp portability helped these ideas reach large audiences across vast geographies. Provincial communities, through selection of these objects, however, redefined Roman sexual discourse locally. The greatest difference is discernible between the Latin and Greek locales. In the Latin sites disc-reliefs generate meaning through idealised and dwarf symplegmata, whereas in the Greek East they do so through portrayals of idealised symplegma, mythological rapes, and bestiality. The paper demonstrates the plurality of provincial sexualities, the regional bases for their formation, and their implication in broader Roman colonial discourses. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-06-28T12:56:27Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221109955
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Authors:Matthias Hoernes First page: 296 Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. In the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, Sicily saw migratory movements to and on the island, new power relations, and intercultural interconnections. In this environment, new communities emerged, existing communities were reconfigured and both were challenged to negotiate their lifeworlds. Drawing on concepts of community, locality and resilience, this paper examines how local communities in southern Sicily formed, consolidated their cohesion and demonstrated resilience, by taking a closer look at two sites and their burial grounds. Castiglione di Ragusa was located in a culturally diverse microregion, and yet the community maintained a steady consistency in burial practices and assemblages, while the community of Butera merged vessel depositions, cremations and differential body treatment in unique funerary conventions. The paper concludes that both communities mobilised social practices, material culture and cultural knowledge to create localised differences and built on these differences to forge and maintain a sense of belonging and boundedness. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-07-20T12:20:42Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221114016
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Authors:Thembi Russell First page: 317 Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print. Iron Age studies in South Africa are dominated by Huffman’s (1982, 1986, 1993, 2001) ethnographically derived Central Cattle Pattern model, which identifies the cattle-based bridewealth institution of South Eastern Bantu-language speakers by the spatial distribution of specific archaeological features. The idea of the spatial expression ‘on the ground’ of a variety of symbolic codes was Adam Kuper’s (1980, 1982) interpretation of predominantly Swazi ethnography. Surprisingly, Kuper’s work has never been interrogated and consequently his misunderstanding of the ethnography was carried into the Central Cattle Pattern and interpretations of the last 1600 years of Iron Age, farmer archaeology in southern Africa. Two particular features, burials and subterranean grain storage pits, and their relationship to cattle-kraals are explored. Because cattle are central to the Central Cattle Pattern, much archaeological attention has been given to looking for evidence of cattle at archaeological sites, either by dung, bones or cattle-kraals. The paper presents the views of contemporary Swazi, Xhosa and Mfengu people that suggest the symbolic importance of cattle-kraals; in the extreme they may not reflect the presence of livestock at all, yet their persisting presence demonstrates the continuing importance of cattle, real or imagined. Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2022-08-09T11:18:58Z DOI: 10.1177/14696053221117467
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Abstract: Journal of Social Archaeology, Ahead of Print.
Citation: Journal of Social Archaeology PubDate: 2019-07-07T12:28:36Z DOI: 10.1177/1469605319858449
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