For an anthropology and archaeology of freedom

‘Freedom’ has been characterised as a ‘weird, Western concept’ of little relevance to a broader understanding of human societies. Accordingly, it is sometimes suggested that anthropology, and its sister discipline of archaeology, have had little to say about freedom. Drawing on a collaboration with the late David Graeber, and reflections on the anthropology of A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, I will argue to the contrary that an ethnography of freedom – with its main locus in the colonial milieu of 17th-century North America – lies close to the disciplinary foundations of anthropology, and also has something to say about the modern development of our supposedly weird, supposedly Western concept

“Many seasons ago”: slavery and its rejection among foragers on the Pacific coast of North America

Anthropologists have traditionally classified foragers on the Pacific coast of North America into two major culture areas, characterized by strikingly different social and ethical systems. These are “California” and the adjacent “Northwest Coast.” Foragers in the northern part of California exhibit many elements of Weber's “Protestant ethic,” such as the moral injunction for community leaders to work hard, seek spiritual purpose by introspection, and pursue monetary wealth while avoiding material excess. By contrast, the social organization of Northwest Coast foragers bears comparison with that of courtly estates in medieval Europe, where a leisured class of nobles achieved status through hereditary ranking, competitive banquets, dazzling aesthetic displays, and the retention of household slaves captured in war. Remarkably, the coexistence of two such clearly opposed value systems among foragers inhabiting adjacent parts of the Pacific littoral has excited little interest in anthropologists, historians, or archaeologists to date. We consider the implications, which cast doubt on some key orthodoxies concerning the nature of culture areas, modes of subsistence, and political evolution. We argue that the political creativity of foraging peoples has been severely underrated

THE LATER PREHISTORY OF THE SHAHRIZOR PLAIN, KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ: FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS AT GURGA CHIYA AND TEPE MARANI

The Shahrizor Prehistory Project has targeted prehistoric levels of the Late Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic 4 (LC4; Late Middle Uruk) periods at Gurga Chiya (Shahrizor, Kurdistan region of northern Iraq), along with the Halaf period at the adjacent site of Tepe Marani. Excavations at the latter have produced new dietary and environmental data for the sixth millennium B.C. in the region, while at Gurga Chiya part of a burned Late Ubaid tripartite house was excavated. This has yielded a promising archaeobotanical assemblage and established a benchmark ceramic assemblage for the Shahrizor Plain, which is closely comparable to material known from Tell Madhhur in the Hamrin valley. The related series of radiocarbon dates gives significant new insights into the divergent timing of the Late Ubaid and early LC in northern and southern Mesopotamia. In the following occupation horizon, a ceramic assemblage closely aligned to the southern Middle Uruk indicates convergence of material culture with central and southern Iraq as early as the LC4 period. Combined with data for the appearance of Early Uruk elements at sites in the adjacent Qara Dagh region, this hints at long-term co-development of material culture during the fourth millennium B.C. in southeastern Iraqi Kurdistan and central and southern Iraq, potentially questioning the model of expansion or colonialism from the south.</jats:p

How 'dynasty' became a modern global concept : intellectual histories of sovereignty and property

The modern concept of ‘dynasty’ is a politically-motivated modern intellectual invention. For many advocates of a strong sovereign nation-state across the nineteenth and early twentieth century, in France, Germany, and Japan, the concept helped in visualizing the nation-state as a primordial entity sealed by the continuity of birth and blood, indeed by the perpetuity of sovereignty. Hegel’s references to ‘dynasty’, read with Marx’s critique, further show how ‘dynasty’ encoded the intersection of sovereignty and big property, indeed the coming into self-consciousness of their mutual identification-in-difference in the age of capitalism. Imaginaries about ‘dynasty’ also connected national sovereignty with patriarchal authority. European colonialism helped globalize the concept in the non-European world; British India offers an exemplar of ensuing debates. The globalization of the abstraction of ‘dynasty’ was ultimately bound to the globalization of capitalist-colonial infrastructures of production, circulation, violence, and exploitation. Simultaneously, colonized actors, like Indian peasant/‘tribal’ populations, brought to play alternate precolonial Indian-origin concepts of collective regality, expressed through terms like ‘rajavamshi’ and ‘Kshatriya’. These concepts nourished new forms of democracy in modern India. Global intellectual histories can thus expand political thought today by provincializing and deconstructing Eurocentric political vocabularies and by recuperating subaltern models of collective and polyarchic power.PostprintPeer reviewe

New World Civitas, Contested Jurisdictions and Intercultural Conversation in the Construction of the Spanish Monarchy

Jurisdictional frontiers were created, contested, and negotiated among a wide range of actors, including native Americans and Europeans, with reference to the cities founded in Castilla del Oro (roughly present-day Panama). This research deals, first, with the reshaping of the concept of a city in the New World, based on its inhabitants' sense of civitas. It analyses, secondly, the creation and redefinition of jurisdiction during political conflicts and, third, the construction and maintenance of jurisdiction through local relations with indigenous populations described as "conversation". The analysis of the creation and preservation of local jurisdictions allows for an interpretation of the complexities involved in the configuration of political power and political space from below in the territories claimed by the Spanish Monarchy.Art Empir

Predynastic Art

“Predynastic art” describes a range of visual imagery and ornamental forms attested in Egypt and Lower Nubia from c.4000 - 3300 BCE. The known corpus comprises a rich variety of figural and non-figural designs, often applied to functional objects that were widely available, such as cosmetic palettes, ceramic vessels, and combs. Free-standing figurines are also known, as are occasional examples of large-scale painting and sculpture. Such images were a pervasive feature of Egyptian social life prior to the formation of the dynastic state, when elaborate personal display appears to have become a prerogative of elite groups

Exploring connections: a new fieldwork collaboration at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak)

The site of Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak) in northern Israel has long been recognized as one of the most important Bronze Age urban centres in the region and has been excavated several times over the last seventy years. The Institute of Archaeology has joined a new project of research and excavation of the site, organized by the University of Tel Aviv. Here David Wengrow, the director of the UCL team, describes the 2009 season

Comparative animal art of the Neolithic Fertile Crescent and Nile Valley A long-term perspective on early state formation

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DN053433 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Gods and Monsters: Image and Cognition in Neolithic Societies

Images have long been accorded a privileged role in the interpretation of prehistoric ritual and belief systems. For Jacques Cauvin, they formed the basis of an argument that the origins of agriculture in the Neolithic Near East were contingent upon a conceptual revolution in hunter-gatherer societies : the ‘ birth of the gods’. The present article considers more recent efforts to incorporate perspectives from cognitive psychology into the interpretation of Neolithic imagery, with particular emphasis upon the interpretation of composite fi gures, comprising incongruous elements of human and/ or animal anatomy. Was ‘ the birth of the gods’ also, in any sense, ‘ the birth of monsters’, and if not, then to what kind of ‘ cultural ecology’ do these strange composites belong ?On a longtemps attribué aux représentations un rôle privilégié pour interpréter les rites et systèmes de croyances préhistoriques. Pour J. Cauvin, elles ont constitué le point de départ d’un débat selon lequel les origines de l’agriculture au Néolithique du Proche-Orient étaient liées à une révolution conceptuelle dans les sociétés de cueilleurs-chasseurs, la naissance des divinités. L’article examine les recherches récentes qui s’attachent à intégrer les approches fondées sur la psychologie cognitive dans l’interprétation de l’iconographie néolithique, en mettant l’accent sur les représentations composites comprenant des éléments de l’anatomie humaine et animale. La naissance des divinités était-elle aussi, dans un certain sens, celle des monstres et sinon à quelle sorte d’écologie culturelle appartiennent ces étranges créatures composites ?Wengrow David. Gods and Monsters: Image and Cognition in Neolithic Societies . In: Paléorient, 2011, vol. 37, n°1. Néolithisations : nouvelles données, nouvelles interprétations. À propos du modèle théorique de Jacques Cauvin. pp. 153-163