Fragmentation of the Body: Comestibles, Compost or Customary Rite?

NoOne of the most inimical ways to debase a people is to declare them cannibals - eaters of their own kind. The association between cannibalism and immorality, depravity, and base iniquity has contributed to the long-term interest in the behaviour. It has become a commonplace pejorative applied to exotic peoples, enemies, and strangers - sometimes and, more innocuously perhaps, to titillate fascination and, more sinisterly and more often, to dehumanise another group. Tuzin (1983, 62) characterises the Ilahita Arapesh's (of northeastern New Guinea) attitude towards the cannibalism of the downstream Sepik, "... as an amused, faintly condescending interest that is morally neutral in tone...'and that those who engage in such consumption are described as an 'another kind of man'. The apparent relativism of this statement, although lacking in obvious contempt or fear, provides the basis upon which difference could be accentuated to justify actions at another time or under different circumstances. The use of the term 'cannibalism' among both Europeans and non-Europeans (see Strathern 1982, Rumsey 1999) to make a people less than human - with real social and political consequences for those so-labeled - prompted Arens (1979) to deny that the behaviour had ever been practised. Others have argued that it did occur upon occasion in a number of circumstances and for a variety of reasons

Widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early Neolithic farmers

The pressures on honeybee (Apis mellifera) populations, resulting from threats by modern pesticides, parasites, predators and diseases, have raised awareness of the economic importance and critical role this insect plays in agricultural societies across the globe. However, the association of humans with A. mellifera predates post-industrial-revolution agriculture, as evidenced by the widespread presence of ancient Egyptian bee iconography dating to the Old Kingdom (approximately 2400 BC). There are also indications of Stone Age people harvesting bee products; for example, honey hunting is interpreted from rock art in a prehistoric Holocene context and a beeswax find in a pre-agriculturalist site. However, when and where the regular association of A. mellifera with agriculturalists emerged is unknown. One of the major products of A. mellifera is beeswax, which is composed of a complex suite of lipids including n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and fatty acyl wax esters. The composition is highly constant as it is determined genetically through the insect's biochemistry. Thus, the chemical 'fingerprint' of beeswax provides a reliable basis for detecting this commodity in organic residues preserved at archaeological sites, which we now use to trace the exploitation by humans of A. mellifera temporally and spatially. Here we present secure identifications of beeswax in lipid residues preserved in pottery vessels of Neolithic Old World farmers. The geographical range of bee product exploitation is traced in Neolithic Europe, the Near East and North Africa, providing the palaeoecological range of honeybees during prehistory. Temporally, we demonstrate that bee products were exploited continuously, and probably extensively in some regions, at least from the seventh millennium cal BC, likely fulfilling a variety of technological and cultural functions. The close association of A. mellifera with Neolithic farming communities dates to the early onset of agriculture and may provide evidence for the beginnings of a domestication process