Merit and placement in the American faculty hierarchy: Cumulative advantage in archaeology

If faculty placement in the American academic hierarchy is by merit, then it correlates with scholarly productivity at all career stages. Recently developed data-collection methods and bibliometric measures test this proposition in a cross-sectional sample of US academic archaeologists. Precocity-productivity near the point of initial hire-fails to distinguish faculty in MA- and PhD-granting programs or among ranked subsets of PhD programs. Over longer careers, on average archaeologists in PhD-granting programs outperform colleagues in lower programs, as do those in higher-ranked compared to lower-ranked PhD programs, all in the practical absence of mobility via recruitment to higher placement. Yet differences by program level lie mostly in the tails of productivity distributions; overlap between program levels is high, and many in lower-degree programs outperform many PhD-program faculty even when controlling for career length. Results implicate cumulative advantage to explain the pattern and suggest particularism as its cause.

Archaeology and contemporary death: Using the past to provoke, challenge and engage

While death is universal, reactions to death and ways of dealing with the dead body are hugely diverse, and archaeological research reveals numerous ways of dealing with the dead through time and across the world. In this paper, findings are presented which not only demonstrate the power of archaeology to promote and aid discussion around this difficult and challenging topic, but also how our approach resulted in personal growth and professional development impacts for participants. In this interdisciplinary pilot study, archaeological case studies were used in 31 structured workshops with 187 participants from health and social care backgrounds in the UK, to explore their reactions to a diverse range of materials which documented wide and varied approaches to death and the dead. Our study supports the hypothesis that the past is a powerful instigator of conversation around challenging aspects of death, and after death care and practices: 93% of participants agreed with this. That exposure to archaeological case studies and artefacts stimulates multifaceted discourse, some of it difficult, is a theme that also emerges in our data from pre, post and follow-up questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The material prompted participants to reflect on their biases, expectations and norms around both treatment of the dead, and of bereavement, impacting on their values, attitudes and beliefs. Moreover, 87% of participants believed the workshop would have a personal effect through thinking differently about death and bereavement, and 57% thought it would impact on how they approached death and bereavement in their professional practice. This has huge implications today, where talk of death remains troublesome, and for some, has a near-taboo status-'taboo' being a theme evident in some participants' own words. The findings have an important role to play in facilitating and normalising discussions around dying and bereavement and in equipping professionals in their work with people with advanced illness.

Reestablishing rigor in archaeological parasitology

Archaeological parasitology originated in the mid-twentieth century with interdisciplinary teams of specialists directed by archaeologists. The goals of such studies were detailed analyses of dietary, medicinal, and environmental factors that shaped the patterns of infection. By the 1970s, a cadre of unique coprolite analysts was trained to analyze macroscopic and microscopic remains for integrated reconstructions of the cultural determinants of parasitism. During these first phases of research, diagnostic rigor was maintained by direct training of specialists in parasitology and archaeology sub-disciplines including archaeobotany and archaeopalynology. Near the end of the twentieth century, however, "paleoparasitology" was defined as a separate field focusing on defining parasite distribution through time and space. Ironically, this focus resulted in an increase in misdiagnosis, especially prominent after 2000. Paleoparasitology does not explicitly include other specialized studies in it research design. Thus, dietary, environmental and medicinal inferences have been neglected or lost as samples were destroyed solely for the purpose of parasitological analysis. Without ancillary archaeological studies, paleoparasitology runs the risk of separation from archaeological context, thereby reducing its value to the archaeologists who recover samples for analysis.

Architecture as animate landscape: circular shrines in the ancient Maya lowlands

In this study, I develop a theory of landscape archaeology that incorporates the concept of “animism” as a cognitive approach. Current trends in anthropology are placing greater emphasis on indigenous perspectives, and in recent decades animism has seen a resurgence in anthropological theory. As a means of relating in (not to) one's world, animism is a mode of thought that has direct bearing on landscape archaeology. Yet, Americanist archaeologists have been slow to incorporate this concept as a component of landscape theory. I consider animism and Nurit Bird-David's (1999) theory of “relatedness” and how such perspectives might be expressed archaeologically in Mesoamerica. I examine the distribution of marine shells and cave formations that appear incorporated as architectural elements on ancient Maya circular shrine architecture. More than just “symbols” of sacred geography, I suggest these materials represent living entities that animate shrines through their ongoing relationships with human and other-than-human agents in the world.

The Ayala Mazar-Xiaohe culture: new archaeological discoveries in the Taklamakan desert, China

This article, accompanied by colour photos, records the author's recent archaeological expedition in the Taklamakan Desert. His advance northwards along the now mostly sand-covered beds of the Keriya River proved to be a march backward through time, from the Iron Age city of Jumbulakum to the early Bronze Age necropolis of Ayala Mazar. The artifacts he found are contemporary with, and similar to Chinese discoveries at Xiaohe. This proves that Xiaohe was not an isolated case and provides evidence for a whole culture based on some sort of fertility cult. The remains also suggest that some, at least, of the peoples concerned had Indo-European affiliations.

Stories, skulls, and colonial collections

The essay explores the hypothesis of colonial collecting processes involving the active addition of the colonial context and historical past to museum objects through the production of short stories. It examines the emergent historicity of collections through a focus on the "histories" that museum workers and colonial agents have been attaching to scientific collections of human skulls. Drawing on the notions of collection trajectory and historiographical work, it offers an alternative perspective from which to approach the creation of singular histories and individual archives for objects in collections.

A child's house: social memory, identity, and the construction of childhood in early postclassic Mexican households

Despite the recent attention given to the archaeology of childhood, households continue to be treated by archaeologists as the product of adult behavior and activities. Yet children shaped the decisions and motivations of adults and influenced the structure and organization of daily activities and household space. Further, children's material culture serves to both create and disrupt social norms and daily life, making children essential to understanding broader mechanisms of change and continuity. Thus, archaeologists should reconceptualize houses as places of children. This research brings together multiple lines of evidence from the Early Postclassic site of Xaltocan, Mexico, including ethnohistory, burials, and figurines to reconstruct the social roles and identities of children and to problematize our understanding of households. I argue that thinking of houses as places of children enables us to see that children were essential to daily practice, the construction and transmission of social identity, and household economic success.

Lived spaces in history: a study in human geography in the context of Sangam texts

There has been considerable research work on early South India, particularly early Tamilakam, using archaeological, epigraphical and literary sources. Earlier, studies on early Tamilakam was almost exclusively based on the early Tamil texts, called as heroic or bardic poetry. However, a wealth of material has been generated by archaeological exploration, that have unearthed a mass of material from paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic and the iron age megalithic, bordering on the early historic ages. A number of Tamil Brahmi label inscriptions have also been discovered. However, the largest number of archaeological finds have been megalithic burial sites and habitation sites are only in the process of being discovered. There are also difficulties in corroborating archaeological and epigraphic material with the enormous corpus of early Tamil texts. As a result, there is a tendency to dismiss the early Tamil texts as not conducive to historical analysis. The present article argues that we will still be able to use the material of the early Tamil texts using the tools provided by human geography, and suggests a methodology for making use of the literary material for further explorations in the early history of Tamilakam.

The Romans and ritual murder

The Roman abhorrence of human sacrifice presented by ancient literary sources stands in contrast to the frequency of rites requiring the death of a human being performed by the Romans during the Republic (509-44 BCE). After examining the ways our sources talk about ritual murder, especially as it was practiced by foreign peoples and subversive or tyrannical elements within Roman society, this discussion turns to the issue of the forms of ritual murder performed by the Romans. Of these various rites, the only one clearly identified by them as human sacrifice, that is, as an offering to the gods of a human life, is the live interment of Gauls and Greeks. Other forms of ritual murder-the burial of unchaste Vestal Virgins and the drowning of hermaphroditic children-were not, in Roman opinion, sacrifice. This distinction made the disposal of Vestal Virgins and hermaphrodites acceptable.

Vernon Lee in the Vatican: the uneasy alliance of aestheticism and archaeology

From the 1800s onward, aesthetic critics attempted to free the study of ancient Greek art from the frameworks of institutional education and professionalized criticism. In this process, aestheticism entered an uneasy alliance with archaeology, a discipline that was likewise challenging traditional modes of classical learning practiced in public schools and the old universities. In "The Child in the Vatican" (1881), Vernon Lee -- writing under the influence of Pater and from a position of cosmopolitan female amateurism -- examines the uses of archaeological science in the study of classical art. Her analysis of the sculptures of the Niobe Group at once relies on the archaeological method and asks readers to doubt scientific approaches to art that dim the sublime power of the art object.

Comparing Norse animal husbandry practices: paleoethnobotanical analyses from Iceland and Greenland

The popular view of the Norse settlement across the North Atlantic describes colonies with similar subsistence practices being established from the Faroe Islands in the west to L'Anse aux Meadows in the east. The importance of plant resources to the Norse animal husbandry strategies implemented by settlers upon arrival are not well established, nor are the changes these strategies underwent, eventually resulting in different cultural solutions to varying environmental and social factors. This paper compares archaeobotanical samples from two Icelandic archaeological sites, Svalbarð and Gjögur, and one Greenlandic site, Gården Under Sandet (GUS). Results of this comparison suggest that heathland shrubs were an important fodder resource for caprines in both Iceland and Greenland while apophytes ("weedy taxa") were part of the cattle fodder in Greenland. Further, the results indicate that mucking out of cattle barns to provide fertilizer was likely practiced at the GUS site in the Western Norse settlement of Greenland.

Animal husbandry and agricultural improvement: the archaeological evidence from animal bones and teeth

Agricultural historians have long been aware that a major increase in productivity and output characterised the so-called ‘agricultural revolution’. Usually, however, this has been measured by indirect means: the fact, for example, that English farmers were able to feed some 3 million more people in 1700 than in 1540, and almost 20 million more in 1880 than in 1750. Since mouths were fed without recourse to massive imports -which would have had significant economic implications for the industrial revolution -and since these increases in output were achieved while the agricultural labour force was in steep relative decline, the obvious implication is that productivity was increasing. Measuring such changes has proved complex, partly because data were not collected in a systematic fashion prior to the 1870s, and partly because such evidence as we have relating to prices and rents hardly represents an adequate proxy for productivity. In general terms, the best material has been for the grain acreage, particularly for wheat and barley.

Symmetrical osteoporosis (spongy hyperostosis) in a prehistoric skull from New Mexico

Fragments of an Anasazi skull (Pueblo II-III) from New Mexico are described. Lesions of symmetrical osteoporosis were found and their anatomical and roentgenographic characteristics are discussed. The term symmetrical osteoporosis has led to confusion with the unrelated disease osteoporosis and should be replaced by the designation spongy hyperostosis.

Lead in the bones of prehistoric lead-glaze potters

In 1932 Haury described lead-glaze pottery from the Southwest. In view of his report, it appeared desirable to find out whether the makers of such pottery suffered from lead poisoning. A series of 46 bone specimens from Kinishba, where lead-glaze pottery was made, and a control series of 33 specimens from Point of Pines, where such pottery is not known to have been made, were screened by X-ray and by X-ray diffraction. The 11 most promising specimens were then analyzed by atomic absorbtion spectrophotometry. Lead was found in quantities believed to be below the toxic range; concentrations in the control series from Point of Pines were, with few exceptions, higher than in the experimental series from Kinishba.