Playing Games with Tito:Designing Hybrid Museum Experiences for Critical Play

This article brings together two distinct, but related perspectives on playful museum experiences: Critical play and hybrid design. The article explores the challenges involved in combining these two perspectives, through the design of two hybrid museum experiences that aimed to facilitate critical play with/in the collections of the Museum of Yugoslavia and the highly contested heritage they represent. Based on reflections from the design process as well as feedback from test users, we describe a series of challenges: Challenging the norms of visitor behaviour, challenging the role of the artefact, and challenging the curatorial authority. In conclusion, we outline some possible design strategies to address these challenges

The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe

Letter from Michael L. Galaty to Emmett L. Bennett Jr., August 14, 1999

Galaty sends Bennett's draft back with notes.Classic

Letter from Michael L. Galaty to Emmett L. Bennett Jr., February 24, 1998

Galaty requests Bennett submit his foreward draft by March.Classic

Petrographic Analysis of Ceramics and Clay from Angamuco, Michoacán

A key goal in the study of ancient artifacts is determining their provenance. Such information can provide insight into the production and consumption of artifacts, but may also inform discussions about local political economies. This study uses optical petrography to evaluate the tempers in ceramic samples and raw clays from Angamuco, located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán. Angamuco was occupied before and throughout the development of the Purépecha Empire (1350–1530 CE) and is thus an important case study for understanding the impacts of political change on urban landscapes and ceramic production and manufacture. We identify seven ceramic temper groups and four clay groups. The ceramic samples almost exclusively match local clays. Angamuco appears to have been relatively self-sufficient in pottery production throughout the occupation sequence. While we did identify some temporal and spatial variation in ceramic production and consumption, pottery technologies and techniques of manufacture appear to have remained relatively stable over long periods of time. Our data point to multiple small-scale producers, who focused on local clays and tempers, generating numerous, complex paste recipes. The results of this analysis contribute to our understanding of ceramic production processes at Angamuco and may be compared to provenance studies in Western Mexico and elsewhere

Fort, Tower, or House? Building a Landscape of Settlement in the Shala Valley of High Albania

This article presents the results of archaeological, (ethno-)historic, and ethnographic research in the Shala River valley of northern Albania. We argue that through time and in different periods of occupation - Middle Palaeolithic, Iron Age, Late Medieval, and Modern - the valley's residents have met similar challenges of extreme geography and a harsh environment differently, in particular by interacting in different ways and at different levels of intensity with the outside world. These shifts caused changes in population, settlement, and socio-political organisation that are reflected strongly in the local landscape and built environment. Population, settlement, and socio-political organisation did not hold constant, but were influenced by external forces, despite the seeming isolation of the valley and its occupants. This article demonstrates how thin material and documentary records can be greatly enhanced through carefully integrated, interdisciplinary studies of settlement, home construction, and neighbourhood expansion and abandonment. We present select results drawn from an on-line database and GIS, along with photos, drawings, and audio recordings of transcribed interviews. An interactive system of blogs allows the authors to direct readers to additional sources of data, and readers to tell authors and other readers how they have accessed and displayed these data, and with what results