Musical flutes constructed from bird bone and mammoth ivory begin to appear in the archaeological record from around 40,000 years ago. Due to the different physical demands of acquiring and working with these source materials in order to produce a flute, researchers have speculated about the significance—aesthetic or otherwise—of the use of mammoth ivory as a raw material for flutes. I argue that biological signaling theory provides a theoretical basis for the proposition that mammoth ivory flute production is a signal (...) of increasing social differentiation in Upper Palaeolithic human life. (shrink)

According to pluralism about some concept, there are multiple non-equivalent, legitimate concepts pertaining to the ontological category in question. It is an open question whether conceptual pluralism implies anti-realism about that category. In this article, I argue that at least for the case of music, it does not. To undermine the application of an influential move from pluralism to anti-realism, then, I provide an argument in support of indifference realism about music, by appeal to music archaeological research, (...) via an analogy with Adrian Currie’s indifference realism about species licensed by paleobiological research. (shrink)

This essay reviews Iain Morley’s The Prehistory of Music, an up-to-date and authoritative overview of recent research on evolution and cognition of musicality from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. Given the diversity of the project explored, integration of evidence from multiple fields is particularly pressing, required for any novel evolutionary account to be persuasive, and for the project’s continued progress. Moreover, Morley convincingly demonstrates that there is much more to understanding musicality than is supposed by some theorists. I outline Morley’s review (...) of the archaeological and ethnographic literature, and then go on to critique his assessment of philosophical and evolutionary theories, offering some alternative perspectives that might better benefit his project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek PoetryFrederick T. GriffithsRichard Hunter. Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xii 1 207 pp. Cloth, $54.95.To locate Theocritus on the evolving map of third-century culture, Richard Hunter forgoes mapmaking itself in favor of the scattered “sites” found in seven nonbucolic mimes, hymns, and erotic poems. He introduces these lively and learned essays with the (...) observation that “too often ‘Hellenistic poetry’ is treated as an entity in which the whole is easier to grasp, and in some ways more interesting, than the parts” (x). Theocritus’ Nachleben deepens the distortion: “Concentration on Theocritus’ ‘bucolic poems’ has tended to obscure the fact that the range and variety of his poems are very characteristic of the poetic milieu of the period” (20). Successive chapters find Theocritus crossing paths with Apollonius Rhodius, Aratus, Herodas, and Callimachus. As ever, all roads lead back to Homer, but Hunter pointedly directs our view elsewhere. Different as they are, Helen (Idyll 18), Hiero II (16), the Alexandrian housewives (15), the Dioscuri (22), and three languishing paederasts (12, 29, 30) commonly witness to the third century’s interest in the “song culture” of the archaic age, an age with many centers and patrons, a “rich tapestry of poetic forms” (p. 2), and a performance culture not overshadowed by the dramatic festivals of Athens.Philology’s erstwhile handmaiden, archaeology, presides as a tenth Muse both over Theocritus’ learned “recuperation” of archaic song and, at another level, over Hunter’s revival of these underappreciated Idylls. Even “the poems themselves dig deeply into a (real or constructed) archaic world for much of their matter and their form” (196). The figure of science gestures to his seamless [End Page 468] integration of papyrology, dialectology, and metrics and inevitably digs up artifacts with more cultural residue than some “intellectual exercise divorced from any meaningful social or ideological context” (11). Hunter undermines the “ivory tower” currently under siege by Alan Cameron and others. The book’s signal contribution comes, however, from questions of “performative context” (4) that may betray the trope. “Musical archaeology” (101) creaks in describing Theocritus’ “rescue” of archaic musical forms. “Locating the Site” (chapter 1) in fact excavates performance and dialect more than anything else. What Hunter’s gritty “archaeology” importantly is not is the stale, library-bound trope of “aetiology.” His introduction proceeds (“Toward Theocritus,” 1–13) via the Fragmentum Grenfellianum and Heracles’ nursery (24.1–9) rather than from Callimachus’ Aetia, which as a project does not figure in these six essays. It is Philitas and, less conventionally, Erinna and Asclepiades who pave the way for Theocritus (“The Poetic Context,” 14–28). Chapter 1 ends with an important survey of “the languages of Theocritus” (28–45), which can be recommended to students and general readers as an introduction to literary dialects in Theocritus, here presented with rare sensitivity to their literary use.Were Hunter starting from “life and times” rather than “site,” familiar topics would at once impose themselves: patronage, religion, the pandectic hexameter, and the elite appropriation of “subliterary” forms. These obligations are agreeably distributed over the five chapters of readings, or perhaps one might better say, “five performances.” For Hunter never marches through an Idyll from end to end but instead selects, restages, and defamiliarizes key passages against the backdrop of, inter alia, recently recovered papyri, hieroglyphic decrees, Old and New Comedy, instrumental performance, meditations on mimesis and mummification, and snatches of Alcman or Theognis not already fossilized in commentary. Of what should be a conventional ag ¬ n between thumos and reason in Idyll 12 he observes: “The irony of the poem lies in the fact that it is the speech of the thumos which is then characterized by an appeal to reason, whereas the lover hectors his thumos like a comic father lecturing his wayward son” (182). We were not expecting Terence: “Cf. perhaps Ter. Ad. 685–95.” With his sharp ear, timing, and fluency in all ages of Greek and Roman verse, Hunter has more than enough fresh insights to hold the attention of both generalists and Theocriteans.“‘All the Twos’: Idyll 22” (chapter 2) works from astute... (shrink)

Jairo Moreno adapts the methodologies and nomenclature of Foucault’s "archaeology of knowledge" and applies it through individual case studies to the theoretical writings of Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau, and Weber. His conclusion summarizes the conditions—musical, philosophical, and historical—that "make a certain form of thought about music necessary and possible at the time it emerges." Musical Meaning and Interpretation—Robert S. Hatten, editor.

Cognitive archaeologists infer from material remains to the cognitive features of past societies. We characterize cognitive archaeology in terms of trace-based reasoning, which in the case of cognitive archaeology involves inferences drawing upon background theory linking objects from the archaeological record to cognitive features. We analyse such practices, examining work on cognitive evolution, language, and musicality. We argue that the central epistemic challenge for cognitive archaeology is often not a paucity of material remains, but insufficient constraint from (...) cognitive theories. However, we also argue that the success of cognitive archaeology does not necessarily require well-developed cognitive theories: Success might instead lead to them. (shrink)

Visual representation of instruments and musical practice has long been integral to the study of the iconology and archaeology of early music. Critical to any assessment of such evidence is an understanding of the authority of the artist, and his/her knowledge and degree of participation in musical culture. Contemporary sources reveal that music played a variety of roles in the lives and public perception of the Renaissance artists. Its most tangible manifestation was that of the artist-musician, of (...) whom Leonardo da Vinci is one of the best-known examples. An association with courtliness was one of several markers of status conferred by musical practice. This chapter investigates the domestic setting of the artist, whether in a courtly environment or in a republic, to develop themes of the social elevation of the artist, entertainment and performance, as well as creativity. (shrink)

Summary This contribution contains a critical re-assessment of the earliest archaeological material originating from the Valley of the Muses, i.e. archaic vessels and figurines, two examples of hydriai allegedly linked with the Muses, and an iconographic testimony. In the current historiography, these sources are still considered to confirm the archaic, or even earlier, origin of the cult of the Muses at the foot of Mount Helicon. An analysis of testimonies is complemented with an overview of a broader cultural context (i.e. (...) the musical agones, the Muses and nymphs and the emergence of the cult of poets/intellectuals); this enables us to assess the sources and chronological considerations. Conclusions drawn from the re-assessment of testimonies are of key importance not only to the dating of the cult of the Muses at this site, but also to our assessment of the phenomenon of the cult of these goddesses in the Greek world in general. (shrink)

This book endeavours to pinpoint the relations between musical, and especially instrumental, practice and the evolving conceptions of pitch systems. It traces the development of ancient melodic notation from reconstructed origins, through various adaptations necessitated by changing musical styles and newly invented instruments, to its final canonical form. It thus emerges how closely ancient harmonic theory depended on the culturally dominant instruments, the lyre and the aulos. These threads are followed down to late antiquity, when details recorded by Ptolemy permit (...) an exceptionally clear view. Dr Hagel discusses the textual and pictorial evidence, introducing mathematical approaches wherever feasible, but also contributes to the interpretation of instruments in the archaeological record and occasionally is able to outline the general features of instruments not directly attested. The book will be indispensable to all those interested in Greek music, technology and performance culture and the general history of musicology. (shrink)

Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy grew out of an interdisciplinary conference on the Upper Palaeolithic, “Digging Deeper: Archaeological and Philosophical Perspectives”, held on Miami Beach, Florida, in December 2017. The previous decade had seen increasing numbers of publications on topics of interest to both philosophers and archaeologists, so the time was ripe for a conference which served to generate constructive dialogue between researchers from both disciplines. Themes discussed included art, music, the mind, symbols, mortuary practices, and archaeological methodology. (...) This volume draws from several contributors to that conference as well as other leading researchers at the forefront of the intersection of archaeology and philosophy. Its scope is expanded from the Upper Palaeolithic to archaeological research in general—adopting a broad conception inviting many perspectives from philosophy and interdisciplinary evolutionary studies to the table—and is organized by topics into four sections: Theory and Inference; Interdisciplinary Connections; Cognition, Language and Normativity; Ethical Issues. (shrink)

Stibbard-Hawkes challenges the link between symbolic material evidence and behavioural modernity. Extending this to non-human species, we find that personal adornment, decoration, figurative art, and musical instruments may not uniquely distinguish human cognition. These common criteria may ineffectively distinguish symbolic from non-symbolic cognition or symbolic cognition is not uniquely human. It highlights the need for broader comparative perspectives.

This is an attempt to describe and explain so-called timbre-based music as a special system of musicking, communication, and psychological and social usage, which along with its corresponding beliefs constitutes a viable alternative to “frequency-based” music. Unfortunately, the current scientific research into music has been skewed almost entirely in favor of the frequency-based music prevalent in the West. Subsequently, whenever samples of timbre-based music attract the attention of Western researchers, these are usually interpreted as “defective” (...) implementations of frequency-based music. The presence of discrete pitch is often regarded as the structural criterion that distinguishes music from non-music. We would like to present evidence to the contrary—in support of the existence of indigenous music systems based on the discretization and patterning of aspects of timbre, rather than pitch. This evidence comes mainly from extensive ethnographic research systematically conducted in eastern European and Asian parts of Russia from the 1890s. It involved the efforts of thousands of specialists and was coordinated by dozens of research institutions, and it has included not just ethnomusicology but linguistics, philology, organology, archaeology, anthropology, geography, and religious and social studies. Much of the data has not been translated into Western languages. Timbre-based tonal organization (TO) differs from that based on frequency in its personal orientation: musicking here occurs primarily for oneself and/or for close relatives/friends. Collective music-making is rare and exceptional. The foundation of timbre-based music seems to have vocal roots and rests on “personal song”—a system of personal identification through individualized patterns of rhythm, timbre, and pitch contour, utilized like a “human voice”—whose sound enables the recognition of a particular individual. The instrumental counterpart of the personalized singing tradition is the jaw harp tradition. The jaw harp is the principal musical instrument for at least 21 ethnicities in Russia, who occupy over half the territory of the country. The evolution of its TO forms the backbone for the development of timbre-based music art. Here, we provide the acoustic, socio-cultural, geographic, and chronological overview of timbre-based music. (shrink)

This book traces the profound impact of technical media on the sound of music, asking: how do media technologies shape sound? How does this affect music? And how did it change what we listen for in music? Based on the information theoretical proposition that all transmission channels introduce noise and distortion, the argument accounts for the fact that technologically reproduced music is inherently shaped by the technologies that enable its reproduction. The media archaeological assessment of this (...) noise of sound media developed in the book draws from a wide range of sources, both theoretical and historical, conceptual and technical. Together, they show that noise should not be understood as unwanted by-effect but instead plays a foundational role in shaping the sonic contours of technologically reproduced music. Over the course of five chapters, the book sketches a broad history of the problem of noise in sound recording, looks at specific analog and digital noise-related technologies, traces the ideal of sonic purity back to key developments in nineteenth century acoustics, and develops an analysis of the close interrelation between noise and the temporality of sound. This relation, it argues, is central to the way in which recorded sound and music resonate with listeners. Ultimately, this media specific analysis of the noise of sound media thereby greatly enriches our understanding of the way in which they changed and continue to change the sonorous qualities of music, thus offering a new perspective on the interaction between music, media and listeners. (shrink)

An archeology of auditory surveillance combined with an analysis of representations of spying in works of literature, music, and film that provide philosophical reflections on the drives that animate listening: the drive for mastery and the death drive.

The last third of the twentieth century was a time of great change within the humanities, as new directions of study and intense interest in methodology challenged traditional approaches in even the most conservative fields and found practical expression in the growth of institutional structures intended to foster innovative and interdisciplinary approaches. One of the results of this academic self‐consciousness was an increased interest in the history of scholarship. Stephen Dyson has attempted to provide a history of classical archaeology (...) as it emerged in the United States, placing individuals and institutions in the context of American culture from the eighteenth century to the present. The aim is a good one, but the book is flawed in conception and execution.Dyson follows a generally chronological organization, at the same time stressing several major themes: academic and para‐academic programs and institutions, professional organizations, the practice of archaeological fieldwork, and museums. Each receives sharp criticism, for the most part based on accusations that the discipline is dominated by the “power brokers” of “the Establishment” , whose “elite private connections” enforce conservative practices and “stiffle [sic] intellectual innovation” .It is not clear for whom the book is intended. The professional audience is already familiar with the criticisms of its institutions and practices and has heard them voiced more convincingly. A subheading like “The Met Hot Pot and the Antiquities Trade” suggests that a more general audience is intended, but if that is so, the nonspecialist reader will be hindered by an insufficient explanation of the scope and aims of the discipline and by the absence of a key to the abbreviations used in the bibliography.Dyson cites some archival materials and has made extensive use of published sources such as diaries, reports, and obituaries. For the most part, however, his treatment seems to derive from secondary syntheses such as encyclopedias, institutional histories, and general accounts of historical periods. This reliance results in sometimes conflicting generalizations. The book lacks the kind of intellectual focus that characterizes, for example, Suzanne Marchand's Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 .The exclusive focus on the “ruling elite” in the archaeological United States leaves many questions inadequately discussed. For example, the relationship between science and the humanities is a central interest for our time, but the uneasy attempts by archaeologists to make their discipline “scientific” are only alluded to , and the discussion of governmental funding for archaeology by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities is cast in terms of the machinations of “the ruling elite in the humanities” .Dyson's approval is reserved for the “New Archaeology” of the late 1950s and for academic programs that favor its anthropological approaches and promote new methods in fieldwork instead of emphasizing excavation and the teaching of Greek and Latin . Yet the limitations of survey archaeology are a topic of current discussion; nor does it seem unreasonable that scholars of the classical cultures should be able to read the texts.The book is filled with small errors that cumulatively cast doubt on its reliability. For example: H. F. DeCou was murdered on 11 March 1911 on page 78, but on 10 March on page 79; “Eric Sjoqvist” and “Kurt Weitzman” ; Charles Waldstein “changed his name from Waldstein to Walton” and is inaccurately quoted. (shrink)

Recent neuropaleontological research suggests that the parietal lobe has increased in size as much as the frontal lobes in Homo Sapiens over the past 150,000 years, but has not provided a neuropsychological explanation for the evolution of human socialization or the development of religion. Drawing from several areas of research, (i.e., neurodevelopment, neuropsychology, paleoneurology, cognitive science, archeology, and anthropology), we argue that parietal evolution in Homo sapiens integrated sensations and mental processes into a more integrated subjective “sense of self”. This (...) enhanced self advanced prosocial traits (e.g., increased empathy, greater social bonding, enhanced theory of mind capacities), promoting more effective socialization skills (e.g., parenting, group cooperation). Conversely, when this enhanced sense of self became inhibited, powerful experiences of self-transcendence occurred. We believe these potent selfless experiences became increasingly sought after though ritual means (e.g., music, dance, vision quests, spirit travel), providing the foundations for the development of shamanism and religion. (shrink)

The Aesthetic Animal answers the ultimate questions of why we adorn ourselves, embellish our things and surroundings, and produce art, music, song, dance and fiction. It is written in a lively and entertaining tone, with beautiful color illustrations. This must-read presents an original and comprehensive synthesis of the empirical field, synthesizing data from archeology, cave art, anthropology, biology, evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Anthony J. Palmer, “A Philosophical View of the General Education Core”Nico SchülerAnthony J. Palmer's paper is not only an interesting one but it also continues an absolutely necessary discussion on the general education core curriculum for American undergraduate students. Initially, Palmer summarized the global conditions with which we are presently confronted. This discussion led him to the re-examination of the general education core at the undergraduate level. (...) The goal of such education should be to "prepare students to develop a world where haphazard processes be minimized.... To accomplish that goal, the student must be enabled to integrate a wide variety of facts and ideas, theories, and applications that will become holistic in substance and unified in practice." More specifically, he then focused on the general education courses for music education students and finally, since the current concept is failing in presenting integrated knowledge, he proposed a new philosophy of the general education core. This new philosophy contains three steps: (1) cultivating personal qualities, (2) understanding multiculturalism, and (3) understanding the complexities of humanity itself and its relationship to the earth. [End Page 198]This philosophy is intriguing and does indeed deserve a broad discussion. To start that discussion, I would like to raise several fundamental issues. First, such a philosophy of general education cannot exist as a pure philosophy of the undergraduate general education core (nor can it specifically focus on music students). The ultimate goal of such a philosophy must be to turn toward the general education core of all levels of education, especially beginning with the youngest age groups. A student, educated according to existing philosophies up to age eighteen, will have the hardest time in suddenly connecting the various areas and fields of study in a globalized worldview. The reasons for this problem are cultural. At eighteen, students are culturally so formed that a new cultural opening is hardly possible. The philosophy should, instead, focus on the spiral that professors stimulate: our graduates are the teachers of the next generation, some of whom become teachers and will educate the following generation, and so on. Palmer's goal can, in my opinion, only be reached if we first focus on the general education of all ages, and then stimulate a slow but continuous change throughout the next generations. This change may exploit the cultural open-mindedness of students of all ages within the educational and cultural limitations that were set by their previous education. Indeed, such cultivation in early adulthood can benefit our university students, as Palmer states, but cultivation at such a late stage is limited.Second, the philosophy suggested by Palmer may be hard to realize practically. All mass media would work against such a realization. The organization of classes is, with our current commercialized course offering system, impractical in terms of Palmer's suggestions. Academic units within universities generate money through large general education classes. Who would pay for smaller classes? (I am not speaking about the small, private liberal arts colleges that Palmer mentions but about public colleges and universities, many of which are very large.) If general education were to be moved to a newly created academic unit, as Palmer suggests, who would reimburse the academic units that would lose the credit hours? How could we create the additional classes that would be needed to bring all the areas together that he suggests (music, art, religion, myth, history, language, philosophy, psychology, paleontology, archeology, anthropology, biology, and zoology)? In addition, some of his philosophy is based on Carl Roger's view of personal relationships, which parents as well as teachers have to establish. But how are the parents of our students to establish such relationships? And who is going to educate the parents? American culture itself would certainly be an obstacle for the realization of such an educational philosophy. Furthermore, how do we select the students who are unsuccessful in becoming self-initiated learners? How do we identify those who are not well-read? Should they not be removed? Much of the current educational system is based on the assumption that all, or most, [End Page 199] students are very talented. Realizing Palmer's philosophy would mean... (shrink)

This biography of the court scholar Xun Xu explores central areas of intellectual life in third-century China — court lyrics, music, metrology, pitch systems, archeology, and historiography. It clarifies the relevant source texts in order to reveal fierce debates. Besides solving technical puzzles about the material details of court rites, the book unfolds factional struggles that developed into scholarly ones.

In Homer’s account of the adventurous journey of Odysseus, the song of the sirens was so appealing and tempting that it lured sailors to their deaths. Warned by the goddess Kirke, Odysseus overcame the trap by plugging his crew’s ears with wax. An archaeo-acoustical research expedition undertaken by members of Humboldt University Berlin made sound propagation experiments at the supposedly historical scene at the Galli Islands where it’s said that the sirens originally sung. At the site we broadcasted both synthetic (...) signals and natural voices via loudspeakers in the direction Odysseus most probably should have approached the Siren’s island. Subjective listening as well as objective acoustic analysis of the recorded signals revealed evidence for a combination of site-specific acoustic effects, which may explain the nature and origin of the song of the sirens in Homer. The local arrangement of the three islands deforms the acoustic signals by amplification and by changes in timbre. Two female singers from the Berlin State Opera were asked to sing differently pitched musical intervals to be tested in the Li Galli environment. The experiment evinced that the first overtones would be merged by the echo of the rocks; yet when singing pure thirds and less consonant intervals, which yield higher orders in the overtone series, the voices appear recognisable as being two. As a result, and particularly because Homer stresses the number of exactly two sirens several times, the evidence of our research supports the musicological theory for a rather early existence of enharmonic tunings and most prominently a two-part polyphonic singing of Greek songs. Given that the rocky formation of the Galli Islands most likely didn’t change during the geological tick of just 2,700 years, we conclude that there has been a real acoustic basis for the myth reported by Homer and that a “song of the Sirens”, most probably based on natural voices, was transformed by the particular acoustic conditions of the landscape in such a way that signals were amplified and sent out in one concrete direction. Based on these results, we continue to discuss further leading acoustic theories that offer new insights into the mythology and which were essential to motivate our expedition in the first place. After all, the question remains open what kind of beings the first emitters of the song might have been. (shrink)

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. This trajectory of lectures tracks a select number of challenging contemporary proposals for the evolution of crucially important aspects of human personhood. These are aspects (...) that were all of great significance for Darwin: the evolution of cognition, the evolution of imagination, music and language, the evolution of morality, and the evolution of the religious disposition. (shrink)

Closed-form ceramic rattles are found throughout the southern Levant. Previous interpretations of these rattles focused primarily on their connection to music and the funerary cult. They overlooked the fact that rattles existed in household contexts, which links them to families and children. This study reassesses the ceramic rattles using an interdisciplinary approach centered on the family. It draws specifically upon household archaeology, anthropology, and sensory studies. It is suggested here that the ceramic rattles of the southern Levant had (...) a dual function. The sound of rattles could quiet children while simultaneously warding off the spirits that were provoked when children cried. In doing so, the rattles would protect the child, and in turn the family unit. While the present study reassesses the ceramic closed-form rattles popular within the southern Levant, it has implications for further research on the other forms of rattles, such as open-form rattles and sistra, found throughout the ancient Near East. (shrink)

Fran Brearton: Robert Graves and The White Goddess Joyce Hill: Authority and Intertextuality in the Works of Ælfric Michael Pennington: Barnardine's Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare's Detail David Womersley: Dulness and Pope Terence Cave: Montaigne Lord Moser: The Future of Our Universities Alexander Murray: The Inquisition and the Renaissance Robert Bagley: The Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory Edwin Cameron: Patents and Public Health: Principle, Politics and Paradox Mervyn King: What Fates Impose: Facing Up to Uncertainty Dominic Lieven: Empire, History (...) and the Contemporary Global Order Joan Oates: Archaeology in Mesopotamia: Digging Deeper at Tell Brak Timothy Besley: The New Political Economy Richard Gray: 'They Worship Death Here': William Faulkner, Sanctuary and Hollywood Lord Sutherland: Nomad's Progress James Piscatori: Imagining Pan-Islam: Religious Activism and Political Utopias. (shrink)

An aesthetic and epistemological departure from ocular centrism has occurred in the wake of current technological evolutions and the posthuman turn. The sonic exploration of the more-than-human takes artists and philosophers beyond anthropomorphism to reveal the hidden patterning of life forms and yet-unfathomed universes. The conflation of nature with culture is one shift that takes place when thinking with sounds and rhythm and studying our environments. On an ontological level, a reordering of subject and object occurs when encountering the reciprocal (...) relationship of sounding. What if culture is actually nature? How does technology connect with botany, and what does it mean to engage the environment with the expanded tactility of the ear? This essay observes current inter-species practices in sound art by revisiting philosopher Susanne Langer’s theory of an embodied and embedded mind. Her “new key” in philosophy emphasizes music as a dynamic sound-pattern to conceptualize a semiology of artistic forms that renders human feeling in regard to non-human antecedents. This serves as a tool to trace the preconceptual substrata of mind, leading us through process-oriented studies of nature and psychophysical affect. Thinking with Langer involves the interconnection of natural systems, behavioural patterns, and human expression, which emerges in art. (shrink)

This book investigates the relationships between gestures and artefacts theoretically and historically, by analyzing different phenomena stemming from a variety of fields such as robotics, archaeology, gesture studies, anthropology, philosophy, and gestural practices like choreography, music performance, and composition. It underlines how embodiment and technology change the interplay between maker and artefact over time and appeals to students and researchers in these fields. Its goal is to enable the reader to understand that the recurring topics and questions as (...) well as multi-level similarities are by no means accidental, but can best be understood if one pays attention to the intertwinements of materiality and cognition, praxis and techne. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne MayorAlison KeithAdrienne Mayor. The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. xiv + 519 pp. Cloth, $29.95.Adrienne Mayor is a historian of classical folklore and ancient science and the author of several books whose subjects lie at the intersection of classical myth and ancient history (...) with archaeology and the history of science: an exploration of monsters and heroes in the repertoire of classical myth as a response to the discovery of fossils in The First Fossil Hunters (Princeton 2000); a wide-ranging collection of evidence for biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs (New York: Overlook Press, 2003); and a sympathetic biography of Mithradates VI Eupator of Pontus in The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton 2009); as well as an investigation of indigenous North Americans’ accounts of fossils, in Fossil Legends of the First Americans (Princeton 2005). Like her earlier volumes, The Amazons brings together an extraordinarily wide array of evidence, uncovered through prodigious research across such diverse fields as classical mythology, ancient history, and contemporary archaeology of the central Asian steppes, and the results are presented with her trademark narrative brio. As with these earlier volumes, moreover, Mayor has an agenda in The [End Page 174] Amazons: here she seeks the historical reality that lies behind the ancient Greek myths of barbarian warrior women; and she finds it in the recent archaeological discoveries of female warriors interred on the central Asian steppes from the Caucasus to western China.Mayor sets out her premise in a prologue that takes its bearing from the myth of Atalanta, whom she dubs “the Greek Amazon” (1–13): her project is to investigate where the Greeks might have encountered real women warriors like Atalanta, capable of besting men in footraces, on the battlefield, and in the hunt. Her study falls into four parts: Part 1 (17–59) asks, “Who were the Amazons?” and identifies ancient Scythia, with its many horse-riding and horse-herding nomadic tribes, as the homeland of the Amazons. Part 2 (63–246) surveys the archaeological and scientific evidence for female warriors among the nomadic tribes of the central Asian steppes in prehistoric and historic times. In this section, Mayor considers the evidence afforded by the bones of buried nomad warriors misidentified as male (because of the weaponry and horses accompanying the burial) when they were originally excavated but recently recognized as female as a result of newer scientific techniques of examination (chap. 4); the body armor found in the steppe graves, in a discussion which has recourse to comparative ethnography, yielding a rich history of breast suppression (chap. 5); the tattooing practices of the historical nomadic tribes of the steppes in relation to the iconography of Amazons’ tunics and leggings on classical vase paintings (chap. 6); ancient accounts of Amazons’ dress (chap. 7), including their partiality for trousers (chap. 12), sexuality and reproduction (chap. 8), drugs, dance and music (chap. 9), hunting technologies (chap. 11), weapons and warfare (chap. 13), all in relation to the archaeological and historical evidence of steppe women’s practices in these arenas. She even presses into service ethnolinguistics in order to argue that the names of the Amazons can be traced back to a common origin in the Eurasian steppes (chap. 14; cf. Appendix of Names of Amazons and Warrior Women in Ancient Literature and Art from the Mediterranean to China). In Part 3 (249–353), Mayor turns back to “Amazons in Greek and Roman Myth, Legend, and History.” Here she retells the most famous Amazon myths, of Hippolyte and Heracles [sic] (chap. 15), Antiope and Theseus (chap. 16), Penthesilea and Achilles (chap. 18), and the Athenian Amazonomachy (chaps. 17, 19); and classical accounts of their historical counterparts—the dalliance of Thalestris and Alexander the Great (chap. 20) and the love of Hypsicratea and Mithradates (chap. 21). Part 4 (358–429) abandons the Hellenocentric perspective of Part 3 to investigate the evidence for Amazonian women “Beyond the Greek World... (shrink)

Research on language evolution is an established subject area yet permeated by terminological controversies about which topics should be considered pertinent to the field and which not. By consequence, scholars focusing on language evolution struggle in providing precise demarcations of the discipline, where even the very central notions of evolution and language are elusive. We aimed at providing a data-driven characterisation of language evolution as a field of research by relying on quantitative analysis of data drawn from 697 reviews on (...) 255 submissions from the Joint Conference on Language Evolution 2022 (Kanazawa, Japan). Our results delineate a field characterized by a core of main research topics such as iconicity, sign language, multimodality. Despite being explored within the framework of language evolution research, only very recently these topics became popular in linguistics. As a result, language evolution has the potential to emerge as a forefront of linguistic research, bringing innovation to the study of language. We also see the emergence of more recent topics like rhythm, music, and vocal learning. Furthermore, the community identifies cognitive science, primatology, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, and genetics as key areas, encouraging empirical rather than theoretical work. With new themes, models, and methodologies emerging, our results depict an intrinsically multidisciplinary and evolving research field, likely adapting as language itself. (shrink)

In a series of three articles, presented at the Goshen Annual Conference on Science and Religion in 2015, with the theme ‘Interdisciplinary Theology and the Archeology of Personhood’, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen considers the problem of human evolution – also referred to as ‘the archaeology of personhood’ – and its broader impact on theological anthropology. These Goshen Lectures explore the potentiality that the history of human evolution provides bridge theories to theological anthropology and thus to a positive and constructive (...) way of appropriating Darwinian thought for a public, interdisciplinary Christian theology. Lecture One tracks a select number of contemporary proposals for the evolution of aspects of human personhood. These aspects were of significance for Darwin: the evolution of cognition; the evolution of imagination, music and language; the evolution of morality; and the evolution of the religious disposition. The article acknowledges the close ties to hominid ancestors and focuses on the emergence of human distinctiveness, consciousness and personhood, and the propensity for religious awareness and experience. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field (...) is intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics. Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution. (shrink)

This article examines geographies of decolonization and the Cold War through a case study in the making of archeological knowledge. The article focuses on an archeological dig that took place in Egypt in the period between the July 1952 Free Officers’ coup and the 1956 Suez crisis. Making use of the notion of the ‘boundary object’, this article demonstrates how the excavation of ancient Egyptian remains at the site of Mit Rahina helped to constitute Nasserist revolutionary modernity and its relationship (...) to wider, post-Second World War political geographies. The dig took place as a result of an Egyptian–American collaboration designed to institute the possibility of archeology taking place along the lines of the Point Four modernization program promoted by the United States. The article discusses how this situation not only engendered contention surrounding the role of the international ‘experts’ appointed to run this excavation work, but also – and as a result – helped to constitute the monumental visual and material shape that archeological evidence relating to the Egyptian past could now take. Egypt’s revolution sat within wider Cold War political struggles, yet the ‘ground-up’ realities of this relationship helped to constitute the sort of past (and future) monumentality proposed by Nasser’s government. (shrink)

This book starts from the premise that methodology has always dominated archaeology to the detriment of broader social theory.

This article provides a substantive discussion of the relevance of the history of archeology to the history of science. At the same time, the article introduces the papers contained in this special issue as exemplars of this relevance. To make its case, the article moves through various themes in the history of archeology that overlap with key issues in the history of science. The article discusses the role and tension of regimes of science in antiquarian and archeological practices, and also (...) considers issues of scale and place, particularly in relation to the field. Additionally, the piece attends to issues of professionalization and the constitution of an archeological public, at the same time as discussing issues of empire, colonialism, and the circulation of knowledge. Meanwhile, enriching discussions within and beyond the history of science, the article discusses the history of archeology and its relationship with museums, collecting, and material culture and materiality. Finally, the piece discusses the relationship of the history of archeology with wider discussions about scientific ethics. In conclusion, the article questions whether we should speak of ‘the history of archeology’ at all. (shrink)

Two contrasting approaches to the genesis of the Luzūmiyya rhymed in Ṭasmu serve as entry points into Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s double-rhymed diwan, Luzūm mā lā yalzam. The first takes the seventh/thirteenth-century litterateur Ibn al-Qifṭī’s account of the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd’s Mosque of Damascus excavations, which was read before al-Maʿarrī, as the inspiration for the poem. This reading elicits the metaphorical connection, through the ubi sunt topos of the Arabic nasīb, between the extinct Arab tribe Ṭasm and the long-lost civilization unearthed (...) in Damascus, and, further, the high irony with which the poem predicts the ineluctable annihilation of Islam itself. The second reading interprets the poem as the product of the extreme double-rhyme strictures al-Maʿarrī has imposed on himself—here the rhyme in -smu. The use of Ṭasm/ṭasm inexorably drives the poem from the lore of tribal extermination to the lexical and motival world of the nasīb. (shrink)

: In the early twentieth century, psychoanalysis tries to investigate a specific logic of the appearance and the incident of what is taken to be unintended in everyday communication and human behavior. What before hardly seemed to be worth systematic research, now becomes a privileged field, in which the meaningful signs of a hidden and unwelcome past appear. For representing this new field of research Freud often makes use of archaeological metaphors. But in quoting the knowledge and the techniques of (...) archaeology, he evokes imaginary landscapes of a reappearing human past, which is not depraved and repressed but glorious and precious. This contradiction or gap between the character of analytical objects and their representation gives reason for an 'archaeological' investigation of psychoanalysis itself. To this end one of the heroes of nineteenth century archaeology, Heinrich Schliemann, will be confronted with two little works of Rudolf Virchow, in which he follows up the astonishing idea of an archaeology of refuse. Relating treasure troves and rubbish dumps it can be asked whether 'archaeological' practices in the late nineteenth century constituted a type of historical knowledge which runs counter to contemporary historicism and is crucial not only for Freud but also for today's theoretical reflections on archaeological perspectives in cultural studies. (shrink)