{"title":"Beyond the Longhouse: On the Heterogeneity, Spatiality and Temporality of Scandinavian Iron Age Households","authors":"Grethe Bjørkan Bukkemoen","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000313","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The last 20 years have seen growing attention in Scandinavian archaeology towards the study of the Iron Age household. The aim of this paper is to challenge the conceptions of what the household is and argue for the potential in approaching households as heterogenous, emergent assemblages, with an untapped potential in diachronic and spatial studies. Inherent in the vast archaeological record of the Scandinavian Iron Age is a capacity for broader perspectives to explore household processes’ duration and change. Drawing on theoretical insights from the Communities of Practice (COP) framework and assemblage-based thinking, the paper accentuates the household as a key arena for learning, knowledge and identity formation and a heterogeneous unit bound up in changing spheres of interaction. Household practices, or the shared repertoire of households, represent analytical mechanisms that allow for the study of variation, continuity and recalibration, thus providing essential entry points to studies of social processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143049972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Maya Enlightenment: Towards a Post-Postclassic","authors":"Panos Kratimenos","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000374","url":null,"abstract":"<p>While increased focus in recent decades has been paid to conceptions of time in archaeological interpretation, comparably less attention has been afforded to the way in which we ourselves conceive of time in the construction of chronologies to periodize the past. In this paper, I focus on the tripartite chronology utilized by scholars of the Precolumbian Maya as a case study to explore the potential of a critical approach to archaeological chronologies and periodizations. By examining the chronology's origins and the intellectual histories which underpin it, I demonstrate that the issues at stake are more than questions of temporal accuracy but, rather, matters of reflexivity. Through a process of ‘sublimation’, problematic assumptions and mentalities upon which periodizations were originally constructed are obscured in contemporary usage, leading to the perpetuation of outdated tropes and a conceptual path dependency in narratives of the past. Conversely, appreciating the arbitrary nature of chronological demarcations and treating such frameworks as negotiable and open to revision is a powerful tool in opening up new interpretive possibilities to the narration of the past.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"150 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143049973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Zoroastrian Cave as Heritage for the Long-Term Preservation of Identity and Social Cohesion of This Minority Community","authors":"Hamid Azizi Bondarabady, Majid MontazerZohouri","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000209","url":null,"abstract":"Zoroastrians are one of Iran's religious minorities, who managed to survive pressures and adversities during many centuries after the rise of Islam. Despite threats and dangers, this minority always tried to resist the pressures and maintain their identity and social cohesion with some measures. Aqda Cave is one of the examples of material culture left by the Zoroastrians, which can be very helpful for a better understanding of the preservation of their identity and social cohesion over time, a heritage that, based on the assessment of social values, can be effective in the sense of identity, sense of place and sense of belonging of this community. The presentation and preservation of this cultural heritage with the help of Zoroastrians will provide a foundation to acknowledge their rights and construct a respectful character for this minority group. Consequently, the preservation of this heritage could be an attempt to respect cultural diversity, heritage rights and equity as the factors of inclusive social development and world peace.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142869898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Di Hu, Víctor Felix Vásquez Sánchez, Teresa Esperanza Rosales Tham, Katherine L. Chiou, Rob Cuthrell, Kylie E. Quave
{"title":"Food and Labour under Imperial Rule: Unravelling the Food Landscape of Transplanted Workers (mitmaqkuna) in the Inka Empire","authors":"Di Hu, Víctor Felix Vásquez Sánchez, Teresa Esperanza Rosales Tham, Katherine L. Chiou, Rob Cuthrell, Kylie E. Quave","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000258","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Inka empire's expansion incorporated diverse cultural and ecological elements in microcosmic representations of their empire. Imperial practices included the resettlement of communities from various regions into labour enclaves near Inka ceremonial, administrative and economic hubs. This degree of imperial control might suggest a limitation on Inka subjects’ freedom to integrate non-local food resources into their diets. Employing starch grain analysis from stone tools, we seek to identify the range of plant food sources and examine the extent to which the Inka imposed constraints on inter-community interactions and the exchange of comestibles. Focusing on a translocated labour force residing near the Inka provincial centre of Vilcashuamán, our findings reveal the consumption of a variety of edible plants originating from multiple, occasionally distant, ecological regions. The results indicate that, in contrast to the restrictions on trade of other commodities as recorded in ethnohistorical accounts and previous archaeological research, the exchange of edible plant species among the subjugated peoples may have been less regulated. This study demonstrates how food landscapes potentially served as loci of resistance to the Inka empire's manipulative cosmopolitanism.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142601933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Textiles and Staple Finance in the Near East and the Southern Levant","authors":"Alex Joffe","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000283","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Textiles have long been recognized as a key feature in the economic and social development of early complex societies. Many comparative dimensions, however, remain unexplored, including within the ancient Near East. Unlike contemporary societies in Syria and Mesopotamia, wool was not used as a staple finance good in the Early Bronze Age southern Levant (<span>c.</span> 3700–2000 <span>bce</span>) since the landscape could not permit adequately scaled production. In larger cultural regions wool was produced at vast scales and helped underpin royal institutions. But without a non-perishable, high-volume and high-value commodity like wool, staple finance in the southern Levant was restricted to seasonally produced grain, wine and oil, primarily used in exchange for local labour. Moreover, without wool there was little need in the southern Levant for the administrative and security technologies used elsewhere, namely seals and sealing, and later, writing. This limited the development of complex institutions and cognitive abilities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142601936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neighbours of the Apsaros Fort. Local Tribes on the Black Sea Coast during the Principate","authors":"Radosław Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000271","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the second half of the first century <span>ce</span>, the Romans built a fort at the mouth of the river Apsaros on the coast of Colchis. A Roman garrison was stationed there also in the second century and first half of the third. One of the reasons for fortifying the estuary of the river, given by both Pliny the Elder and Arrian, was the immediate vicinity of the kingdom of Iberia. Both Roman authors also described the local tribes living on the coast between Trebizond and Apsaros and further north. One wonders whether they were the indigenous population of the region and what kind of a relationship they had with the Roman Empire. This study searches for answers to these questions in the preserved written sources and in the archaeological record.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142601935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Maya Ajawtaak and Teotihuacan Hegemony c. 150–600 ce","authors":"Trenton D. Barnes","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000234","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study considers the role played by Teotihuacan in the emergence of the office of the Classic Maya <span>ajawtaak</span>, or ‘lords’. I argue that the synthesis of this office at the site of Tikal was influenced by the building of Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent between about 180 and 230 <span>ce</span>. Prior to and in concert with this building's construction, Teotihuacanos orchestrated the sacrifice of an estimated 200 or more individuals, some number of whom resided beyond the Basin of Mexico before burial. Osteological traits consistent with origins in the Maya region are present among these sacrifices. The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent features mirror and obsidian icons, which later grew to prominence in the self-presentations of the <span>ajawtaak</span>. I note that around the time of this monument's construction, Tikal's obsidian corpus changed in ways that paralleled similar, earlier changes that had occurred to obsidian procurement strategies at Teotihuacan. I conclude that from about 200 <span>ce</span>, some Classic <span>ajawtaak</span> observed the religion that cohered with the building of Teotihuacan's Temple of the Feathered Serpent. The <span>ajawtaak</span> occupied a unique positionality in Early Classic Mesoamerica that was neither essentially Teotihuacan nor essentially Maya, but a dynamic syncretism of the two ethnicities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142574363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond Urban Hinterlands. Political Ecology, Urban Metabolism and Extended Urbanization in Medieval England","authors":"Ben Jervis","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000210","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drawing on insights from contemporary urban theory, this contribution questions where medieval urbanization took place. It is proposed that urbanization is a process which extends beyond towns and cities, which are merely a representation of a more expansive and transformative process. Through discussion of building stone, grain production, salt extraction, woodland management and mineral exploitation, it is argued that medieval urbanization was generative of political ecological relations which challenge prevailing understandings of the rural/urban divide and re-frame urbanization as a metabolic process. The discussion utilizes contemporary concepts of ‘extended urbanization’, ‘urban metabolism’ and ‘political ecology’ to re-frame perceptions of medieval–urban relations and the notion of urban hinterland.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142574362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Water Regimes and Infrastructures: A Transhistorical Archaeology of the Desaguadero River, Bolivia","authors":"Scott C. Smith, Maribel Pérez Arias","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000246","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article uses tensions over the construction of a flow-regulation infrastructure built to control outflow from Lake Titicaca into the Desaguadero River, on the border between Peru and Bolivia, as a case study to explore the ways that relationships to water emerge and are contested. We argue that a nuanced understanding of tensions arising from this infrastructure requires us to recognize the long-term history of how the river accumulated practices, meanings and materials. Adapting the work of Arturo Escobar, we use the concept of ‘water regime’ to think about how engagements with the river are based in different spatiotemporal frameworks that have developed transhistorically and come into tension around the materiality and dynamism of the river itself.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142574364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Long Does a Memory Last? Bayesian Chronological Modelling and the Temporal Scope of Commemorative Practices at Aeneolithic Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan","authors":"Ilia Heit","doi":"10.1017/s0959774324000192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774324000192","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper the history of one house and a human burial in the prehistoric settlement of Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan, serves as a case study for the use of Bayesian chronological modelling to approach the reach of past memories. The method combines relative and absolute chronological data and aims not only at a more precise and robust chronology of past events, but also allows estimations of duration of particular processes. However, chronological models must be constructed with care, since the prior archaeological information significantly affects the output. The comparison of three alternative models for the Aeneolithic settlement of Monjukli Depe shows that prior information in modelling has a considerable impact on duration estimates for periods of the settlement history. The modelling chronology for Monjukli Depe allows the tracing of commemorative practices at a generational scale—the memory of Monjukli Depe House 14 was transmitted over several generations of inhabitants long after the house destruction. It is clear that houses possessed a great value in the social life of the settlement since local building histories were remembered over a long time.</p>","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142536452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}