Laying Claim to Authenticity: Five Anthropological Dilemmas

The introduction to this special collection examines five dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. These relate to 1) the expectation of a singular authenticity “deep” in oneself or beyond the surface of social reality, 2) the contradictions emerging from the opposition of authenticity with inauthenticity, 3) the irony of the notion of invention of tradition (which deconstructs, but also offends), 4) the criteria involved in the authentication of the age of objects (with a consideration of their materiality), and 5) authenticity’s simultaneity, its contemporaneous multiple conceptualizations in context. I argue for a perspective on the study of authenticity that acknowledges the simultaneous co-existence of more than one parallel manifestation of authenticity in any given negotiation of the authentic

The Emberá, tourism and indigenous archaeology: "rediscovering" the past in Eastern Panama

En este artículo nos referimos al interés de los Emberá (un grupo indígena Amerindio) en adquirir conocimientos de los restos materiales del pasado - como fragmentos cerámicos coloniales y prehispánicos - que se encuentran fácilmente en el Panamá Oriental. Situamos el interés de los Emberá (y su deseo de aprender más del pasado) en el contexto del turismo indígena, que ha inspirado la articulación de nuevas narrativas sobre la historia e identidad de los Emberá. Adicionalmente, el descubrimiento accidental por los Emberá de restos materiales de períodos pasados ha instigado y facilitado la investigación arqueológica, un proceso que ha resultado en el intercambio recíproco de conocimientos entre los Emberá e investigadores académicos. Argumentamos aquí que esta relación recíproca puede contribuir a la descolonización de la arqueología, crear sinergias entre la antropología y la arqueología e incrementar la representación indígena en el turismo

The Platform of the Temple of Venus and Rome

The Temple of Venus and Rome at the Roman Forum was allegedly designed by the emperor Hadrian himself and was inaugurated in 135 AD. Its construction upon the Velia hill and precedent structures required an exceptional design and execution, including the provision of a massive 167x 100 m artificial platform. Distinct historical developments on the site like the Vestibule of Nero’s Golden House and the later construction of the medieval church and monastery of Santa Maria Nova as well as the Mussolinian operations of Sventramenti in the first half of the 20th Century have influenced the construction and altered the presentation of the platform. This paper intends to discuss the strategy, design, construction and current condition of this example of a lesser-known field of Roman structural technology. Foundations and platforms of this kind can offer invaluable information on the function of a temple, its history and structural performance, but theirs study is often neglected

Hybrid masonry shell technology in the work of Idelfonso Sánchez del Río

Idelfonso Sánchez del Río is a less known pioneer of reinforced concrete shells in Spain who through his career designed and patented ribbed construction systems for large spanning slabs and vaults and in particular shell enclosures using a hybrid system of concrete and masonry infills. The module called “dovela-onda” or wave-voussoir was made of large ceramic blocks forming a short barrel with flanges at the edges. This paper aims to discuss the technical innovations of this system and assess its structural efficiency. The design and construction process will be studied through literature published by Sánchez del Rio and surveys of two case studies in Oviedo (Spain), the Sports Hall (1977) and a warehouse in Granda. In order to assess their structural efficiency, his own calculation process will be verified by thrust line analysis and Finite Element spatial elastic modelling. The FE model allows the failure mode and the distribution of the loads to be assessed, and gives further insight to the behaviour of the scheme and the design and construction process

Solidarity dilemmas in times of austerity: Auto-ethnographic interventions

This article introduces an autobiographical analytical tool that aims to elucidate the complexity and interweaving of opposing ideological positions as these emerge in the field and during writing ethnography. The technique introduced makes visible the split of the author’s identity in to two; between that of a hard and soft Marxist, where each authorial Self resonates with a particular local perspective. The split and those who have stimulated it—the real life protagonists in the field—are reanimated and embodied through the self-mirroring representational lens of graphic ethnography. Overall, the article provides an experimental exercise in reflexive Marxist anthropology, which, apart from ethnographic innovation, engages with the ambivalence and co-dependence of competing arguments about the ethics of humanitarian solidarity in austerity afflicted Greece. It is argued that local arguments about solidarity are co-constituted through pragmatism and productive self-critique in times of protracted austerity