bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Animals in the Portal
Authors: Fridberg Diana N.
Published: October 2024

This chapter contains the analysis of zooarchaeological materials recovered from a single context at the urban core of El Perú-Waka’. This context, termed the Cuartito, seems to have function as an artificial underground ritual ceremonial space. The assemblage recovered there reflects the activities inside this space, including a large collection of vertebrate faunal material. The material ranges from deer to crocodile, iguana, rabbit, a large felid, and even portions of a motmot bird. Altogether, the zooarchaeology of this space suggests the usage of the space as a kind of underworld portal, or possibly a hunting shrine, or as an accessible place for the usage of wahy animal spirits.
An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France
Authors: McRae Joan E.
Published: October 2024

The fifteenth century literary debates in France focused on two polemical works: Le Roman de la Rose by thirteenth-century poets Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun and La Belle Dame sans Mercy by fifteenth-century royal secretary and poet Alain Chartier. Launched through a series of letters exchanged in chancery circles, the controversial issues were taken up by a wider breadth of society to include churchmen, lawyers of the Parlement, and members of the royal court. At issue was the proto-feminist challenge to the traditional status and reputation of ladies, especially in matters of love but also in society. Christine de Pizan, in the debate of the Rose, led the way in insisting that an author has a responsibility to offer the reader moral and useful exempla, not misogyny. Yet when Alain Chartier’s Belle Dame questioned the traditional love rhetoric of her lover as duplicitous, her actions were reckoned as injurious to ladies and courtiers alike. The proliferation of proto-feminine poetic responses inspired by the Belle Dame Quarrel sought to reinterpret and rewrite his poem as pro-lady or pro-lover. The rights of a woman in love and her power to accept or deny a lover’s request evolved into broader considerations in the subsequent Querelle des femmes, in which women demanded greater power in relationships, in education, in society, and in politics.
The Two Debates
Authors: McRae Joan E.
Published: October 2024

Although we have no evidence that Christine and Alain knew each other, we find correspondences in their relationships (particularly Jean de Castel), subject matter, and some manuscripts that unite their works under a general theme of morality. Both the Debate of the Rose and the Quarrel of the Belle Dame focus on the importance of exemplum, whether the negative example of the foolish lover or that of the recalcitrant lady. Also central to both debates is the effect of literature on morality. Initiated with letters, the controversies are further developed through literary texts that exploit the issues, giving their authors motivation to challenge misogyny or to promote a positive reputation, and thus fame, for themselves. Perceived as the foundation to the Querelle des femmes, the debate of the Rose and the quarrel of the Belle Dame sans Mercy serve as proto-feminist literary expressions that evolve into the broader issues considered in woman question.
Introducing the Nervous Landscape
Authors: Bailey Megan M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter introduces L’Hermitage, a plantation that existed in western Maryland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the past, L’Hermitage was host to a French-Caribbean family, the Vincendières, and a large enslaved workforce. Today, vestiges of L’Hermitage remain on the landscape, which is now part of Monocacy National Battlefield, a site that commemorates a Civil War battle under management by the National Park Service. Archaeology and historical research revealed more information about the lesser-known history of Monocacy and introduced a new narrative to public interpretation of the site.
L’Hermitage
Authors: Bailey Megan M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter applies Denis Byrne’s concept of the nervous landscape to L’Hermitage Plantation. Byrne identifies a nervous landscape as a place where spatial discipline is imposed by a colonial power, but marginalized people find gaps in which to exercise autonomy. A spatial analysis of L’Hermitage reveals that the Vincendières exercised a great deal of control over the landscape so it adhered to strict measurements and symmetry and maximized surveillance of spaces occupied by enslaved people. By controlling the architecture and landscape, the Vincendières could actively attempt to suppress any challenges to their authority by their enslaved workers. Still, while the Vincendières employed several techniques designed to maintain control over their enslaved workers, the enslaved individuals found spaces where they could exercise agency. Through use of yard space, forming relationships with local residents, and running away, among other forms of resistance, the enslaved population at L’Hermitage challenged the Vincendières’ power over their bodies and landscape.
Monocacy National Battlefield
Authors: Bailey Megan M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines what L’Hermitage has become in the present day: the Best Farm, a component of Monocacy National Battlefield and a site of tourism, education, and preservation. This chapter is primarily an ideological analysis of the ways in which the excavation of the L’Hermitage slave village highlighted a more complicated narrative for Monocacy National Battlefield’s public interpretation of its history, one that dealt with slavery and oppression. Now interpreted primarily as a site of Civil War conflict, the plantation past is mostly erased from the national battlefield landscape. The focus on the Civil War historically supported consistent narratives and ideologies promoting commemoration of patriotic devotion, heroism, and sacrifice. However, the ongoing research on the L’Hermitage slave village introduced another aspect of history that had been previously unaddressed. The additional interpretation of the Best Farm landscape as a site of slavery threatened the park’s primary narrative about the battlefield, as well as deeply ingrained national narratives that honor war and military sacrifice.
Garbology and the Archaeology of Trash
Authors: Caraher William R.
Published: October 2024

This chapter connects the origins of the archaeology of contemporary America with William Rathje’s famous Garbage Project at the University of Arizona. This project began in 1973 when Rathje and his students started to document household trash in Tucson, Arizona, as a window into contemporary consumption patterns. Their work drew upon both late-twentieth-century political and environmental concerns for trash as well as archaeology’s long history of interest in discarded objects as a source for our understanding. The chapter concludes with some more recent work on the archaeology of contemporary garbage and shows how the archaeology of trash is both part of and informs the experience of American consumer culture.
Music, Media Archaeology, and Digital Experiences
Authors: Caraher William R.
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers the archaeology of music, media, and video games. The archaeology of contemporary music includes work documenting historic venues and recording sites associated with music production. It also includes the study of objects like vinyl records that preserve evidence for the consumption and circulation of music. In this way, the archaeology of the contemporary world has parallels with the field of media archaeology. The late-twentieth-century rise in digital devices, manufactured abroad and dependent on rare minerals to function, traces the global consequences of American media consumption. Finally, the archaeology in and of video games, known as archaeogaming, demonstrates how digital technologies produce new, ephemeral, and distinctively American experiences.
Long-Term Perspectives on Sustainability, Resilience, and Change on the Island of Barbuda
Authors: Perdikaris Sophia , Grouard Sandrine , Boger Rebecca , Bain Allison , Jallon Anaëlle , Gonzalez Edith , Ibrahimpasic Emira
Published: October 2024

The island of Barbuda in the Lesser Antilles has seen various waves of human occupation over the last 4,000 years. European colonization of the island began around 1628 and left a significant impact on Barbuda’s environment, though, unlike other islands, sugar cane was never grown on Barbuda. The Colonial Period thus represents a reorganization of the landscape through agricultural practices, the introduction of new animal and plant species, and land subdivision. After emancipation (1834), the people of Barbuda maintained sustainable fishing and farming practices and demonstrated resilience despite extreme climatic and weather events (hurricanes and droughts), and ongoing exploitative Colonial economic and political structures. Today, for the first time, Barbudans are at risk of losing their sustainable resilience, with irreversible cultural losses and devastating ecological restructuring. This chapter explores change in the pre-Columbian time period through the study of different cultural horizons combining archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnobotany, archival documents, ethnography, and environmental science to explore the longue durée in a transdisciplinary perspective from the first peopling to the end of the prehistoric period with reference to the unprecedented effects of the Anthropocene.
Archaeology and the Emergence of Customary Resource Management in Southern Vanuatu
Authors: Flexner James L. , Bedford Stuart , Valentin Frédérique , Williams Robert N. , Horrocks Mark , Philip Iarowai , Elena Denise , Kuautonga Takaronga
Published: October 2024

Over the last 3,000 years, the ancestors of contemporary Ni-Vanuatu developed a wide range of adaptations to their island environments for managing soils, water, and vegetation in gardens, as well as marine resources in the sea. They did so by using diverse strategies, including seasonal or periodic resource restrictions, complex exchange networks, and a chiefly political economy focused on the redistribution and sharing of resources. Island archaeology offers a valuable perspective on the emergence of these adaptive systems, as it can provide a long-term sense of when particular practices emerged or disappeared, and how they changed through time. Traditional systems of environmental management, learning, and adaptation held within the umbrella term kastom remain vital for the continued lives of Ni-Vanuatu today and into the future. Kastom provides an alternative and more locally appropriate framework compared to the etic concepts of vulnerability and resilience that dominate conversations about island life in the Anthropocene.
Culture on the Rock(s)
Authors: Wolff Christopher B.
Published: October 2024

There is a long history of abandonment of the island of Newfoundland by its Indigenous peoples. The Maritime Archaic were the first to colonize Newfoundland, situated in North America Subarctic islands, around 6,500 years ago and the first to abandon it around 3,000 years later; however, their reason for leaving remains largely unknown. Because it took place when there were no other cultural competitors on the island, it presumably was significantly influenced by environmental changes during that period. The surrounding marine environment was changing due to decreasing ocean temperatures and increasing distribution and duration of sea ice, and the island’s interior has never been economically viable over the long term. Newfoundland Archaic groups persisted for millennia but ultimately were unable to sustain their way of life on the island and abandoned it for the mainland where there were more economic opportunities away from the coast. This research relies on environmental proxy data from regional sea cores, biogeography of marine and terrestrial resources, and archaeological data from Maritime Archaic sites to better understand and provide a historical ecology for the context and processes associated with their resilience and their eventual abandonment of the island. This chapter will also discuss how knowledge of these processes impacts our interpretations of subsequent abandonments of the island, the challenge of sustainability by its peoples, and their relationship with environmental change.
Norse Persistence and Resilience in Iceland
Authors: Zori Davide , Erlandson Jon M.
Published: October 2024

The Norse colonized Iceland approximately 1,150 years ago (~AD 870) and their descendants have lived there ever since. From Iceland, Viking Age settlements were established in Greenland and on the eastern shores of North America, but these colonies failed. In Iceland, in contrast, the Norse and their descendants survived substantial climatic changes and natural disasters, anthropogenic impacts to terrestrial and marine ecosystems, pandemic plagues, and major religious, political, economic, and technological changes. We review the archaeology and history of Viking Age and Medieval Period Iceland to examine how humans survived and sometimes thrived on this North Atlantic island and what might be learned from their resilience. The well-being of Iceland’s people varied through time, depending on their relative isolation or integration with European neighbors, their independence vs. subjugation by other Scandinavian powers, and their ability to adapt to everchanging environmental and sociopolitical conditions. Ultimately, Icelanders survived by relying on a mix of farming and fishing, maintaining contact and trade with neighboring countries, avoiding despotism, major wars, and military obligations, and balancing cultural conservatism and innovation. Today, Iceland is one of the most prosperous nations in the world, and the persistence and resilience of Icelandic peoples for more than a millennium offers important lessons for modern societies facing similar challenges of sustainability today.
Zooarchaeological Data
Authors: Delsol Nicolas
Published: October 2024

In this chapter, we detail different aspects of the faunal analysis that place the cattle archaeological remains in their zooarchaeological context. After a discussion on the quantification units used in this study (Number of Identified Specimens [NISP], and Minimum Number of Individuals [MNI]), this section introduces the faunal remain tallies for each collection (Puerto Real, Mexico City, Antigua Guatemala, Merida). These data highlight the diversity of the composition of the different collections. Although cattle constitute one of the main species found at these sites, some other taxa were found in abundance, such as caprines in Mexico City, mud turtles in Puerto Real, and pigs in Antigua and Mérida. Other local animals, although scarce, found in some collections reveal some information on the indigenous wild fauna as well as the remaining harvesting practices in certain regions: fish and reptiles in Puerto Real, aquatic fowl in Mexico City for example.
Exploring the Origins of Postcolumbian Cattle
Authors: Delsol Nicolas
Published: October 2024

This section examines the origins and trajectories of post-Columbian cattle populations using ancient DNA analysis. The study analyzes the mitochondrial genome of 21 bovine remains from the sites of Puerto Real, Mexico City, and Merida. The results of this study reveal that the colonial bovine populations were more diverse than previously thought: early colonial populations (Puerto Real) belonged to as single haplogroup while in later periods the haplogroup diversity appears to be higher. Most animals were imported from Europe, but the data suggest also a potential African origin of a reduced number of animals, at least starting at the beginning of the 17th century. The analysis provides invaluable information on the maternal lineages of the first colonial cows.
An Introduction to Jean Bodel
Authors: Ramey Lynn T.
Published: October 2024

This book explores the life and works of Jean Bodel, an influential author who lived in twelfth-century Arras, France. A versatile poet, playwright, and epic writer who established new genres such as fabliaux and the mystery play, Bodel remains relatively unknown to Anglophone audiences. Lynn Ramey offers translations and summaries of works never published before in English while delving into Bodel’s historical and cultural context. After a brief introduction to the poet, Ramey highlights the stimulating and cosmopolitan environment of Arras, considering the influence of the Crusades and social movements in shaping Bodel’s works. Next, Ramey provides an extensive survey of all of Bodel’s known writing across his prolific career by genre, from his most well-known work, The Play of Saint Nicholas (Le Jeu de saint Nicolas), to his final piece, Farewell (Les Congés), which offers important insight into his diagnosis of leprosy toward the end of his life. Ramey translates several pieces including pastourelles, fabliaux, and selections from the Song of the Saxons (Chanson des Saisnes). The book also includes information on Bodel’s sources, a chronology, and a glossary. With much of the existing scholarship on Bodel only available in French, this book bridges a gap in knowledge of the poet and serves as a useful resource for both students and specialists. An Introduction to Jean Bodel allows a broader audience to engage with the writer’s wide-ranging work and contributions to literary history.
Fabliaux
Authors: Ramey Lynn T.
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the fabliaux, amusing medieval tales that showcased the less refined side of human behavior often featuring peasants, the bourgeois class, and clergy. Fabliaux seem contradictory to the religious emphasis of the period, but explicit language and scandalous narratives, such as those in the work of William of Aquitaine, were not uncommon. Although scholars debate whether fabliaux targeted the nobility or the non-noble classes, these tales cut across the echelons of medieval society. Fabliaux were not necessarily equated with scandal at that time; authors like Bodel wrote without shame across various genres. The chapter provides a chart for locating the manuscripts of Jean Bodel's fabliaux, found throughout France and Germany. It also addresses the problem of translation. A guide to locating English translations of the works is provided, as well, along with original translations of works not previously rendered into English.
Sources and Influences
Authors: Ramey Lynn T.
Published: October 2024

This chapter investigates the literary and cultural influences on Jean Bodel’s work, including Classical Greek works such as Ovid’s poetry and Aesop’s fables, biblical and religious sources such as the Carmina Burana, and contemporary vernacular authors such as Chrétien de Troyes. His legacy is also explored.
Black Education in the Shadow of Apollo
Authors: Odom Brian C.
Published: October 2024

In a speech given in 1963, Alabama A&M University President Dr. Richard D. Morrison proclaimed that the rise of the Space Age and the rapid development of the aerospace industry in Huntsville, Alabama provided black students with an opportunity to enter a new career field on equal terms with whites. Over the decade, Morrison exploited several opportunities offered by the space program in Huntsville, including research grants, cooperative programs, excess equipment, and technical expertise, to create a new diverse technical curriculum that included computer sciences, physics, and advanced math programs. By the end of the decade those cooperative programs with federal agencies and prominent institutions, including MIT, Vanderbilt, and the Marshall Space Flight Center, created several important opportunities for University graduates. This paper explores how Morrison accomplished the development of an integrated educational program at the University all while maintaining a moderate position on civil rights and race relations imposed on him by state funding agencies.
Local Aerospaces
Authors: Jumaniyazov Arslan
Published: October 2024

Political rivalry and aerospace competition propelled the United States and the Soviet Union to invest heavily in their respective space programs. This chapter surveys one aspect of that rivalry in space history: how local communities received and impacted these national programs at two major launch centers. Jumaniyazov investigates local responses to the rise of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach, Florida, and the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan. The focus is on how each “federal” government developed their launch centers, based on variations of modernization theory and policy, in relatively poor and peripheral regions: the American south and the Soviet east.
“Put Us on Display”
Authors: Margolis Emily A.
Published: October 2024

“There is no place in the United States for youngsters to go to in order to keep up with the missile development,” lamented Walter V. Linde to the Huntsville-Madison County, Alabama Chamber of Commerce in 1958. He believed Huntsville, Alabama, epicenter of the U.S. Army’s missile research and development program, should provide a place to learn about American efforts in space. Linde proposed a museum of spaceflight and rocketry to fulfil this perceived obligation to the nation. Linde recognized the potential of space age and aerospace tourism to transform the economy of his town and spent the next twelve years advocating for a space museum and enlisting the most prominent Alabamians and Alabama institutions in his cause. Diverse stakeholders saw in this project a means to further their individual and institutional agenda, which often had little to do with spaceflight itself. This essay locates the origins of the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, which showcases research from the US Army Redstone Arsenal and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, at the intersection of popular culture, post-war heritage travel, political necessity, the civil rights struggle, and southern industrial expansion.
Space City USA
Authors: Adan Drew
Published: October 2024

This chapter traces the ill-fated history prospective theme parks, including Space City USA, in Huntsville, Alabama. Today, the land surrounding Lady Ann Lake outside of Huntsville, Alabama is now the site of the Edgewater housing development, and only a handful of inconspicuous vestiges of the park can be seen around the owners association complex. However, in the late 1950s, Space City USA was touted as “the fabulous theme park of the South.” From initial fundraising and planning in 1959 to bankruptcy and liquidation in 1967, Space City USA appeared to be a promising venturing following the national trends demonstrated by other national theme parks. In the same period, Huntsville witnessed an economic boom following the development of small business across the region and the Marshall Space Flight Center. The region also saw the development of the US Space and Rocket Center, which demonstrated a direct connection to NASA and Dr. Wernher von Braun, the figurehead of the popularization of space travel. This oversight led to the construction of This study uses archival resources held by UAH and private collectors to place the Space City story in the context of Huntsville's rise to prominence and the growing pains of a nascent space related tourism industry.
Introduction
Authors: Fernández L’Hoeste Héctor , Poblete Juan
Published: October 2024

The introduction is divided into four sections. The first part is concerned with the theorizing of humor as a cultural activity. The second one deals with the internet as a media space and locus for trans-individuation and social cocreation. Part three brings these issues to the Latin American context, while part four introduces the contents of this volume. On the whole, our volume studies the role of humor on the internet in Latin American productions, from memes to YouTube videos to Instagram posts and beyond. We are interested in the significance of web-based discourses and narratives in the context of local, national, regional, transnational, and global cultural production, commercial ventures, material culture, audiences, education, government policy, and community practices. If the internet has been an extraordinarily effective medium for social exchanges, and if it has redefined what counts as a social exchange, then we have come to conclude that humor is one of the things that circulate the most throughout internet-based cultures.
Political Cartoons and Memes
Authors: Collado Alejandra
Published: October 2024

Political memes are units of meaning constructed based on hegemonic discourses, cultural references, and a sense of humor. As other manifestations of criticism—such as political cartoons—they re-signify the discourse of power in political satire. This chapter compares these two humorous expressions and criticisms of political figures. Through the application of Marshall McLuhan’s tetradic model of media effects, it is possible to consider that political cartoons and political memes are artifacts that have continuity between them. Individually, they also have the ability to intervene in their environment even as they are influenced and modified by it, reaffirming themselves as extensions of our popular and political culture. In addition, this chapter deploys Bakhtin’s carnival to understand the ways in which political discourse changes places in the digital public square.
Cutting through Layers of Brazilian Humor
Authors: Paulino Bueno Eva , Marques de Souza Fábio
Published: October 2024

The essay focuses on the uses of humor in Brazilian culture to not just make fun of politicians but also to help shape politics in the country. After making a brief review of uses of animals in the past, the essay then pauses to examine more recent uses of the internet through the figures of “Bode Gaiato” and Concessa, created for Facebook and Youtube users (respectively), but circulated through other media. No subject is off limits for both Bode Gaiato (which appropriately uses the image of a goat and his family and friends), and Concessa, who appears as a woman of the countryside and dispenses advice and reflections on domestic and international politics.
La Pulla
Authors: L’Hoeste Héctor Fernández
Published: October 2024

Launched in 2016 out of El Espectador, Colombia’s oldest newspaper, La Pulla (The Taunt) is a satirical vlog operated by five journalists (with María Paulina Baena and Juan Carlos Rincón as anchors). La Pulla’s online persona regularly channels national rage on a variety of topics: corruption, the excesses of both the Left and the Right, homophobia, lack of access to a safe abortion and/or same-sex adoption, etc. As a result, it earned the Simón Bolívar National Prize for Journalism and has over a million subscribers on YouTube. As part of its national coverage, La Pulla runs specials titled “La Pulla Regional,” in which it lambasts the excesses of many a provincial political dynasty. While the videos make valid points, they fail to acknowledge the team’s complicity in countrywide exclusionary dynamics, ratifying centralism, and regionalism. In a country as geoculturally fragmented as Colombia, this lack of self-awareness allows La Pulla to abet historic injustice, ultimately substantiating Bogotá’s brand of humor as the decisive arbiter in the normative application and interpretation of regional identity paradigms. In customary Bogo-centric fashion, La Pulla keeps mistaking the capital for the country, appropriating the right to name others, and upholding the dominant hegemony.
Space Policy for the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Whitman Cobb Wendy N. , Frazier Derrick V.
Published: October 2024

This book provides readers with the first comprehensive overview of major space policies in the United States and a framework through which to analyze them. It examines all facets of space policy—civilian, military, and commercial—and presents this material accessibly for use by readers at multiple levels, from undergraduate courses to government practitioners making and implementing policy. The first section offers a history of space exploration, focusing on the US within a global context. The second section looks at the actors and institutions involved in setting space policy in a government based on the separation of powers, including the president, Congress, NASA, and the Department of Defense. The book concludes with chapters on the different sectors of space policy, as well as questions this field will face in the future. As policymakers and business leaders become increasingly aware of the everyday systems that depend on space technologies, such as communications, mapping, and weather monitoring, and as space becomes a more visible arena for commercial competition, potential humanitarian gain, and military threats, Space Policy for the Twenty-First Century helps students and professionals navigate the complexity of space as a policy area.
Post–Cold War Space History
Authors: Whitman Cobb Wendy N. , Frazier Derrick V.
Published: October 2024

Picking up where chapter 2 left off, chapter 3 brings space history and space policy to the early 2020s. In that time, developments in multiple areas of space—military, civilian, and commercial—accelerated. While the Soviet Union was no longer a main driver of US space policy, this chapter emphasizes that military and national security needs still played a major role in what the United States did in space including new cooperative ventures with Russia such as the International Space Station. This chapter also examines the rise of commercial space actors who, while not creating new technology, innovated in how the technology was built and used to set the groundwork for increased activity in space and new participants over the past decade. Finally, the chapter revisits the idea of competition in the space domain as space competition between countries has once again become important, this time in the form of China.
Military Space and the Intelligence Community
Authors: Whitman Cobb Wendy N. , Frazier Derrick V.
Published: October 2024

While NASA is dominant in civilian space policy, in military space policy the Department of Defense and the intelligence community take center stage. This chapter identifies the major entities responsible for carrying out military space policy including individual military services, the National Reconnaissance Office, and other supporting intelligence agencies. The chapter also highlights and discusses the major strategy and policy documents that help structure military space programs and operations like the National Security Strategy. Attention is also paid to the creation of the US Space Force and the arguments both for and against its establishment.
International Politics and National Security Space Policy
Authors: Whitman Cobb Wendy N. , Frazier Derrick V.
Published: October 2024

Chapter 11 examines the role that international politics and international relations play in how the US approaches national security and military space policy. Drawing from the theories of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, it highlights the varying conceptions of how the space domain should and is utilized by the United States. It ends with a consideration of the major policy challenges in the near future including the rise of China, changes in the international landscape, and possible policy responses.
Major Issues in US Space Policy
Authors: Whitman Cobb Wendy N. , Frazier Derrick V.
Published: October 2024

The final chapter considers major questions for US space policy in the near future. The previous chapters have described a situation in space that is quickly changing: many government agencies and actors are involved, commercial companies are quickly challenging established routines and space norms, and more people around the world can access space more cheaply than ever before. All of these developments mean that major policy challenges lie ahead. This chapter identifies several, including space debris, the creation of international norms of behavior, the rise of China in space, and the potentials for US space leadership in the future. As such, this chapter demonstrates how many of the ideas and concepts previously discussed can be applied proactively in thinking about policy challenges and how they might be solved and by whom.
Necrontology
Authors: Whitridge Peter , Kleist Mari
Published: October 2024

Mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology increasingly recognize that the mortuary record indexes not only past societies’ understandings of death but also a wider set of experiences and practices bearing on an extended life course and ontology more broadly. The process of “being-toward-death,” the experience of dying, a community’s participation in this process and subsequent handling of the corpse, the ongoing relations of the living with the material remains, the memory traces of the deceased in a burial cairn, and the local biologies illuminated by bioarchaeology, all constitute elements of a “necrontology” that was a core component of the culturally figured life course. Here the mortuary records from two parts of the Inuit world—northern Labrador and Southwest Greenland—are characterized in terms of their implications for such a necrontology of Inuit groups. While there appear to have been pan-regional patterns, idiosyncratic mortuary treatments also occur, warranting that archaeologists revisit, in appropriately community-sensitive ways, a record increasingly threatened by climate change.
The Materiality of Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon
Authors: Júnior Avelino Gambim
Published: October 2024

This chapter employs relational taxonomies and relational ontologies, which are nonrepresentational, to consider Amazonian Indigenous ethnographies from ancient Amazonia. This chapter is particularly interested in ethnographic data related to the native peoples of the Amazon and the Guianas, and the widely spread notion of body construction and Indigenous notion of person. This case study focuses on data obtained from the archaeological site of Curiaú Mirim I, a prehistoric Indigenous village with human burials located in the left margin of the mouth of the Amazon River in Amapá, northern Brazil. The materials recovered there suggest from a relational perspective the possibility that for this group the dead should not be forgotten and were a part of everyday life. This approach can only progress if we abandon, or at least relax, the tensions between rigid dichotomies like subject and object, cultural and biological, life and death in the remains of the dead. In doing so, this chapter contextualizes the data in a tangle of objects and people, human and non-human, their substances and agencies brought into relation examination. This chapter speaks to research interests in social bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and relational taxonomy.
Introduction
Authors: Burrows Geoff G.
Published: October 2024

The introduction outlines the central argument and evidence used in the book. It explains that the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration was a hurricane disaster recovery program that became a became a catalyst for modernization and colonial reform through the construction of New Deal public works. This section offers a background of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to legislative changes that made Puerto Ricans birthright U.S. citizens in 1917. The Introduction addresses the unsolved dilemma of being both colonial subjects and U.S. citizens and the outsized role of the status question (independence versus statehood) in Puerto Rican politics. This section also includes an explanation of the book’s key terms and a discussion of the limits of the federal archive.
San Felipe, San Ciprián, and the Election of 1932
Authors: Burrows Geoff G.
Published: October 2024

Chapter 1 examines two major hurricanes that struck Puerto Rico at the onset of the Great Depression and the politics of natural disaster relief as it existed during the Spanish and U.S. colonial eras before the New Deal. While the hurricanes contributed to the political tensions of the decade, emerging plans for relief invited a more federal approach to local recovery efforts. This chapter analyzes the environmental history of San Felipe and San Ciprián while noting how they ravaged the infrastructure of the island, severely depressed the agricultural economy, and increased some of the island’s most dangerous threats to public health. This chapter also provides a brief analysis of insular politics during the early 1930s, particularly the election of 1932 and the great period of labor unrest that followed, including the large strike wave of 1933 and 1934.
The Current State of (Mississippian) Women
Authors: Briggs Rachel V. , Harle Michaelyn S.
Published: October 2024

Though our understanding of the late precontact and early post–European contact Mississippian societies continues to develop, one important point has become clear—during this precontact period, Indigenous women were active, vital members of their societies, shaping (and shaped by) what we have come to call the Mississippian phenomena. This chapter explores the various and multi-faceted nature of what it meant to be a “Mississippian woman” by synthesizing past and present gendered research on Mississippian women. This chapter frames the research presented within this volume as allied with research in Indigenous feminism, which strives to remove Western ideas of gender from the interpretation and understanding of non-Western societies.
Cooks, Cooking, and Cooking Pots
Authors: Briggs Rachel V.
Published: October 2024

Cooking and cooking pots are far too often thought of as inert cultural materials, shaped by biology, economy, and polity. However, this chapter proposes that cooking and cooking pots have generative power and can create new lifeways and social realities. Focusing on the early history of the Mississippian center of Moundville, located in west-central Alabama, this chapter explores how women, through the everyday practice of cooking dishes such as hominy, created the social identity that was the foundation of Moundville by exploring the gendered pattern of material culture through the Moundville I phase.
The Life Course of Women in Upper Tennessee Valley, Dallas Phase Communities
Authors: Harle Michaelyn S. , Betsinger Tracy K. , Sullivan Lynne P.
Published: October 2024

A more holistic understanding of the roles of women in Mississippian societies can be gained by viewing their roles as not simply static, but as a continuous process. This chapter examines multiple lines of bioarchaeological and mortuary data from multiple fourteenth- through sixteenth-century Late Mississippian, Dallas phase communities in the Upper Tennessee River Valley. Following bioarchaeology and the conventions of life course analysis, the data enable an examination of the life experiences of these women at different intersections in their lives, pertaining to issues of identity, morbidity, labor, caregiving, motherhood, and prestige. The findings are juxtaposed with ethnohistorical accounts of early historic tribal communities in the region, as a way to highlight points of continuity of women’s roles from the Mississippian period through the period of European contact.
Matrilineal Kinship Networks and Late Mississippian Politics in the Upper Tennessee Valley
Authors: Sullivan Lynne P.
Published: October 2024

This chapter uses ceramic data on whole pots found in 79 burial contexts from 18 communities across East Tennessee, together with the spatial distribution of mortuary contexts both within communities and across the region, to reveal patterns of Mississippian kinship, grieving, and social relatedness during the region’s Dallas phase. Similarities in ceramic technology and style are the result of communities of practice made up of women potters across Southern Appalachia. Mortuary data sets offer the added complexity of patterns of grieving and mourning. Using formal network analysis, the chapter explores the structure of local interaction networks across eastern Tennessee. Comparisons are made by the relative positions of men, women, and children within their social worlds, specifically, the potential structures of kinship networks and communities of mourning. The chapter offers insight on gender and age-specific social roles, highlighting the scales at which particular communities were evident and the ubiquity of cross-cutting relationships materialized through the widespread interactions of Mississippian women potters.
Where Women Work
Authors: Gougeon Ramie A.
Published: October 2024

Analyses of three Late Mississippian house floors from the Little Egypt site (9Mu102) were undertaken to discern discrete activity areas used by women and men. Areas were identified by seeking patterns of spatially co-occurring artifact types associated with specific activities, activities frequently correlated strongly with a specific gender in cross-cultural ethnological studies. Women’s activities dominated the assemblages and occupied the most space in all three houses. This model of household activity areas mirrors findings across the southern Appalachian region but does little to understand the social aspects of production within multigenerational, matrilineal, and arguably matrifocal households. This chapter is a further consideration of the gendered uses of space through the lens of taskscapes, those arrays of related activities performed by social actors, to interrogate the experiences of being a Mississippian woman in a domestic house.
Women and Power at Joara, Cuenca, and Fort San Juan
Authors: Rodning Christopher B. , Briggs Rachel V. , Beck Robin A. , Fritz Gayle J. , Lapham Heather A. , Moore David G.
Published: October 2024

During the mid-sixteenth century, Late Mississippian women actively engaged in personal and diplomatic relations with Spanish explorers who traversed the Carolina Piedmont. From the Lady of Cofitachequi to Guatari Mico, the public leadership roles of Native women are well attested by historical sources. Yet written accounts are less useful for understanding how Native women also shaped these encounters through foodways and daily practice. Research at the Berry site, location of the Native town of Joara, and Fort San Juan, founded by Juan Pardo, offers new insights into how the actions and activities of Mississippian women shaped the course of the colonial encounter that unfolded at this short-lived fort and provides some insights for how one might better understand the role of women within Late Mississippian societies.
Transmaterialities
Authors: García Christina M.
Published: October 2024

Drawing from Karen Barad’s deployment of transmateriality and quantum field theory, and more broadly from critical animal studies and poststructuralism, this chapter explores the reconfiguration of human-animal forms and the undoing of classificatory systems in Cuban literary studies and Cuban visual culture. It takes as it primary examples Severo Sarduy’s novelCobra (1972) and the contemporary artwork of Roberto Fabelo. The author analyses how Sarduy and Fabelo both subvert representational techniques that presume unmediated access to the “natural” world. In so doing, both writer and artist unsettle the secure boundaries of the human and its attendant nationalisms. Bringing into conversation thinkers from new materialism and poststructuralism, two theoretical camps often treated as mutually exclusive, the chapter argues that Sarduy and Fabelo demonstrate how performative (un)doings of social constructs, be that gender or species identity, are imbedded in lived material relations. Specifically, regarding Sarduy, the author also considers the ethics of a baroque ecology, the indistinction it produces between life and death and its implications for biopolitics.
Inhuman Writings
Authors: García Christina M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter considers the relationship between writing and becoming-nonhuman in Ena Lucía Portela’s El pájaro: pincel y tinta china (1999) and Antonio José Ponte’s La fiesta vigilada (2007). Both Cuban novels feature characters deemed futureless and abandoned; their means of surviving abject conditions are at once the source of nonhuman becomings and a practice of writing. A critical question that guides this chapter is how a literary or visual piece might do the work of protesting “inhuman” or “dehumanizing” conditions, concerns shared with thinkers in posthumanism and ecology. At the same time, this chapter also rejects a Eurocentric humanism or the discourse of human rights, which have often been deployed in the service of neocolonial interests and exclusive models of subjectivity. Posing a strong critique of biopolitics, El pájaro and La fiesta depict state institutions, a hospital/psychiatric ward, and a nursing home, respectively, in which individuals are treated as disposable bodies, left to die, or experimented on like laboratory rats. Rather than disavow the assimilation to animals, the chapter explores how Portela and Ponte elaborate a theory of artistic creation as parasitic and ecologically imbedded and, as such, render inoperative the logic that would justify the exploitation of some bodies for the benefit of others.
The Body Politic and Immunitary Spaces
Authors: García Christina M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter interrogates the politics of incorporation through an analysis of queer friendships in Ena Lucía Portela’s novel Cien Botellas en una pared (2010), and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s seminal film Fresa y chocolate (1993). Adopting the biological and political trope of immunity, this chapter considers the politics of friendship and hospitality in relation to the dynamic exchanges between host-organisms and their environments. Scholars in Cuban literary studies and Cuban film studies have rightly critiqued literary and filmic attempts to neutralize the oppositional charge posed by marginalized figures to the Revolution’s narrative of progress. However, through inoculation’s aporetic logic, the author argues that consumable representations of queer figures inadvertently affirm what they aimed to deactivate. In the desire to incorporate the figure of the homosexual, to immunize itself against the poison of the Revolutions’ error—its persecution of gay citizens—these representations necessarily corrupt the integrity of the body politic. Ultimately, following queer studies, the chapter offers alternative ways of thinking community:departing from the notion of human exceptionalism and its willingness to sacrifice for future ends, community here is imagined as ecology, a shared vulnerability and difference.
The Legal Handling of Digital Accessibility: a Comparison of Evaluation and Policy Approaches in Federal-Level Cases in Brazil and the United States
Authors: Mateus Delvani Antônio , Da Silva Fábio Aparecido Cândido , Rigatto Silvia Helena , Da Silva Tiago Silva , Parreira Júnior Paulo Afonso , Souza Maurício Ronny de Almeida , Freire André Pimenta
Published: October 2024

Countries in the Global South still have less well-established procedures and resources to enact public policies and surveillance of digital accessibility. This paper presents a comparative study on the legal handling of digital accessibility in one country in the Global North and one in the Global South – the United States and Brazil. The study analyzed federal-level procedures handled by government surveillance bodies concerning public and private organizations, involving 26 cases in Brazil and 124 in the United States. The results showed that most cases in Brazil were finalized based on automated accessibility evaluations and with little evidence of long-term actions for sustained accessibility. All cases analyzed from the United States resulted in settlement agreements leading to medium to long-term initiatives, which covered continuous verification of conformance to accessibility standards and, in many cases, demanded inspections by accessibility specialists and tests with users with disabilities. The paper discusses the implications of including effective accessibility evaluation methods and long-term solutions in legal cases.