bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Massenet and Wagner: Bridling the influence
Authors: Huebner Steven
Published: August 2008

By a stroke of coincidence the critic Théodore de Wyzewa found himself sitting next to Jules Massenet during a performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth in August 1886. Massenet's behaviour made a deep enough impression on Wyzewa for him to share it with readers of Le Figaro several years later. ‘He quivered feverishly, became short-breathed, and his large, sombre eyes sparkled in the dark. And when the opera was over, I heard him say to someone in the corridors of the theatre “Ah! I am anxious to return to Paris to burn my Werther!”’ Wyzewa published his piece on the day of Werther's Paris première. In a city where Wagner stagings had recently become all the rage, this was hardly a ringing endorsement; but Wyzewa had a more important point. Massenet provided a prime example of an ill that had descended on French composers, all too many of whom had sacrificed native qualities in vain, sterile imitations of Wagner. Pale beside the ‘enchanted treasure of dream and fantasy’ (‘le trésor enchanté du rêve et de la fantaisie’) in Wagner's textures, such imitations had taken on a merely formulaic character.
Schoenberg's early Wagnerisms: Atonality and the redemption of Ahasuerus
Authors: Brown Julie
Published: August 2008

When we young Austrian Jewish artists grew up, our self-esteem suffered very much from the pressure of certain circumstances. It was the time when Richard Wagner's work started its victorious career, and the success of his music and poems was followed by an infiltration of hisWeltanschauung, of his philosophy. You were no true Wagnerian if you did not believe in his philosophy, in the ideas ofErlösung durch Liebe, salvation by love; you were not a true Wagnerian if you did not believe inDeutschtum, in Teutonism; and you could not be a true Wagnerian without being a follower of his anti-Semitic essay,Das Judentum in der Musik, ‘Judaism in Music’. … You have to understand the effect of such statements on young artists.
Of women, sex and folly: Opera under the Old Regime
Authors: Cowart Georgia
Published: August 2008

Conservative writers in seventeenth-century France tended to agree that the morals of women were degenerating, though they disagreed as to whether the cause was the excessive strictness or the leniency of husbands. We would perhaps characterise the change more as a newly found sense of freedom and self-confidence that allowed women, however tentatively, to contest the double standard of the age. The new morality was seen in fashions that bared progressively more of the neck, shoulders, breasts, ankles and legs, revealing new erotic frontiers; in a relaxation of the taboo against female swearing and coarse language; in an epidemic of female gambling; and in scandalous reports of women's over-indulgences in the sensual pleasures of food, drink, nicotine and sex.
Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and the power of ‘music’
Authors: Rosand Ellen
Published: August 2008

What is music in opera? In Monteverdi's Orfeo, his first opera, music is arguably the protagonist, whether La Musica in the prologue, whose ritornello guides Orfeo to and from the Underworld, or embodied in the legendary singer himself, who uses his musical prowess to charm the guardians of Hell. In Il ritorno d'Ulisse, however, there is no such protagonist, no single embodiment of musical power. In the largest sense, of course, and in contrast to straight drama – the plays of Euripides, Shakespeare or Calderon may have some music in them but are essentially spoken – all of Il ritorno d'Ulisse, all of most operas, is music. But in Monteverdi's sense (and in the librettist Badoaro's), that music is divided into ‘speech’ and ‘song’ – or, speech-like and musical utterances.
Verdi and the Parisian boulevard theatre, 1847–9
Authors: Sala Emilio
Published: August 2008

A number of scholars have drawn attention to the importance of Parisian popular theatre for an understanding of Verdian dramaturgy, especially in the operas leading up to Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. According to Giovanni Morelli, in Paris, Verdi frequented the popular theatre not for the sake of participating in the active milieu of Romantic cultural thought (Milanese circles had adequately fulfilled that need), but in order to mingle with a typical metropolitan theatre audience in the venues dedicated to the dissemination of a watered-down, middlebrow form of Romanticism.
The twilight of the true gods: Cristoforo Colombo, I Medici and the construction of Italian history
Authors: Zoppelli Luca
Published: August 2008

In little more than a year, between October 1892 and November 1893, the Italian operatic repertory acquired two ambitious and monumental works, similar in their choice of a national–historic subject and in their dramatic form: Alberto Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo and Ruggero Leoncavallo's I Medici. After a few revivals scattered over several decades, both disappeared from circulation, and recent productions have confirmed doubts about their stageworthiness, notwithstanding some convincing passages (particularly in Colombo) and the enormous investment of intellectual and historical reflection that had attended their birth. Ideological motivations determined the musico-dramatic structures of the two operas, and are closely related to the failure of their projects.
Mozart and the Theater auf der Wieden: New attributions and perspectives
Authors: Buch David J.
Published: August 2008

Öffers kam Mozart zum Schack, um ihn zu einem Spaziergang abzuholen, und während Schack derselbe ankleidete, setzte sich Kapellmeister Mozart an dessen Schreibtisch und komponirte hier und da ein Stück in desselben Opern; daher in des Schack Opern mehrere Stellen von Mozarts eigener Hand und Genie vorkommen.
Nella festa tutto? Structure and dramaturgy in Luciano Berio's La vera storia
Authors: Osmond-Smith David
Published: August 2008

Stories, whether true or calculatedly false, have played at best an ancillary role in the evolution of Berio's approach to musical theatre. Indeed, to find a straightforward example of story-telling in his output, one would have to go back some twenty years from La vera storia to his previous collaboration with Italo Calvino, Allez Hop (1959), an ironic parable narrated in mime. But as soon as subsequent commissions offered Berio the resources of the human voice, he turned away from the seductions of a central narrative core, and instead built his vision of the potential of musical theatre around a more allusive and multi-layered conception. Narratives are still skeletally present – for instance, in Passaggio (1962), which employs the barest outlines of a scenario, spelt out explicidy only at the end, as a frame on which to hang a complex web of poetic and theatrical imagery, or indeed Opera (1970), with its intertwining myths of the ancient and modern worlds evoked through concentrated imagery, but not acted out. But the narrative twists and turns that are the chief pleasure of the story-teller – and the chief impetus behind the lyric outbursts of the operatic tradition – were no longer his concern.
Of sounds and images
Authors: Berio Luciano
Published: August 2008

Siena 1880. During his penultimate trip to Italy, Richard Wagner stayed for nearly two months in the neighbourhood of Siena. He was completing the orchestration of Parsifal, and went one day to visit the cathedral. Hardly had he got inside when he dissolved into tears, exclaiming ‘this the Temple of the Grail’. And indeed, if you look at the stage designs for the third act of Parsifal as they were prepared for the first performance at Bayreuth in 1882, you will find that the Temple of the Grail does in fact open on to a fairly faithful reconstruction of the interior of this city's exceptionally beautiful cathedral.
What recitatives owe to the airs: a look at the dialogue scene, Act I scene 2 of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie – version with airs
Authors: Verba Cynthia
Published: August 2008

The oft-cited observations of Italian librettist Carlo Goldoni as he described his first visit to the Académie Royale de Musique in 1763 are usually presented with an emphasis on what Goldoni missed. Accustomed as he was to eighteenth-century Italian opera, he could not hear a single aria in the French opera: “I waited for the aria … The dancers appeared: I thought the act was over, not an aria. I spoke of this to my neighbor who scoffed at me and assured me that there had been six arias in the different scenes which I had just heard. How could this be? I am not deaf; the voice was always accompanied by instruments … but I assumed it was all recitative.”
The writing of exoticism in the libretti of the Opéra-Comique, 1825–1862
Authors: Lacombe Hervé
Published: August 2008

Considerations of exoticism and particularly of orientalism in opera seem to focus, either explicitly or implicitly, on generalities – even when scholars have looked at only a few isolated works taken almost exclusively from ‘serious’ or ‘great’ repertories. However, in order to understand this complex phenomenon in its contemporary context, it is necessary to work from a knowledge of the extraordinary diversity of ‘exotic’ opera.
Making a spectacle of oneself: French Revolutionary opera by women
Authors: Letzter Jacqueline
Published: August 2008

Recent research in French Revolutionary culture has revealed that women composers and librettists gained access to the opera stage in unprecedented numbers in late eighteenth-century France. Although the number of women constituted still only a fraction of the total number of composers and librettists, it was an explosion as compared with earlier periods. In the fifty years between 1770 and 1820, there were five times as many women writing opera as all the women combined in the 125 years since the beginning of opera in France in 1645. This increased number of female-authored operas constituted a sufficient critical mass for some of these works to be singled out as great successes; indeed two of them, Julie Candeille's (1767–1834) libretto and music for Catherine, ou la belle fermière, and Constance de Salm's (1767–1845) libretto for Sapho (with music by J.-P.-E. Martini), ranked among the ten most-performed dramatic works in Paris during and just after the Terror, in 1793 and 1795, respectively. This article examines the ideological context in which these works were received, and asks, why, despite (or because of) the success of their works, women composers and librettists were often perceived by critics and the public as radical and subversive, especially when the messages they chose to include in their operas could be interpreted as feminist. This attitude is not surprising when one considers that the period of greatest success of female-authored opera (and of women's public activism), 1793–95, coincided with the height of the Jacobin authorities' repression of women. Despite this climate, women composers and librettists of the 1790s were surprisingly vocal in protesting their continuing exclusion from the many advantages brought about by the democratization of the institution of opera and society. This article is part of a continuing investigation by feminist scholars into the controversial meaning of the Revolution for public women, bringing nuance to earlier conclusions that women were excluded from public life during the era of the Revolution.
Correction
Authors: McClatchie Stephen
Published: August 2008

In my review of Frederic Spotts' Bajreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival (this journal, 7 [1995], 277–84), differing editions of a key text led me to claim that many more citations were incorrect than was actually the case. Although diis does not affect my basic point about the inadequacy of the citation style in general, I apologise to Dr Spotts for the confusion.
The politics of opera in late seventeenth-century London
Authors: Hume Robert D.
Published: August 2008

To what degree does late seventeenth-century English opera contain politics? Some recent critics have assumed that political commentary conveyed by allegory is a pervasive feature of ‘Restoration’ masques and operas. Is this true? Quite a few political interpretations of particular works have been published but no one has systematically enquired to what extent allegory and/or ideology was presumed to be built into operas mounted in late seventeenth-century London. Theoretical statements of the time about opera are scant and contradictory, their authors disinclined to take up political issues. Some of the political content is glaringly obvious (the allegory in Dryde'ns and Grabu'sAlbion and Albanius); some of it is sharply disputed. How should we read a work like Dryden's and Purcell'sKing Arthur? Is it essentially a muddled adventure story? An expression of British nationalism rising above current politics? A piece of covert Jacobite propaganda?
Remaking a cultural icon: Phèdre and the operatic stage
Authors: Norman Buford
Published: August 2008

The age of Louis XIV was an age of contrasts. It was fond of spectacle and ostentation, typified in the great fêtes of Versailles, yet it is rightly known as ‘l'époque classique’, characterised by order and decorum. Its greatest playwright was Jean Racine, whose eleven tragedies had only the barest of sets, presented one action in one place during a maximum of twenty-four hours, chose subjects from history or mythology that featured only mortal characters in easily believable situations, relegated violence and other unseemly behaviour to the wings and to descriptions (récits), and used a limited, noble vocabulary to explore the depths of the human condition and to create poetry of extraordinary beauty. However, in 1673, during the peak of Racine's career, Quinault and Lully created French opera (tragédie lyrique), which, while also using a limited, noble vocabulary, featured spectacular sets and costumes for each act, allowed subplots (even comic ones in the first three operas), staged battles, storms and divine interventions, eschewed historical characters, and presented simpler situations and characterisations in order to leave time for music and dance.
Experimental methods for environment and development economics
Authors: EHMKE MARIAH D. , SHOGREN JASON F.
Published: August 2008

Many poor countries remain trapped in a cycle of poverty and environmental degradation. Understanding how people react to existing and proposed solutions most likely can be improved using the methods of experimental economics. Experiments provide researchers a method to test theory, look for patterns of behavior, testbed economic institutions and incentives, and to educate people. Herein we explore how experimental economics has been used and could be used to help guide decision making to increase prosperity without overexploiting the resource base and environmental assets needed for basic survival.
Level of adherence to the Mediterranean diet among children from Cyprus: the CYKIDS study
Authors: Lazarou Chrystalleni , Panagiotakos Demosthenes B , Matalas Antonia-Leda
Published: August 2008

Background

The Mediterranean diet (MD) prototype is widely used as an educational tool in public health programmes; few studies, however, have been conducted on the adherence of children to this diet.

Objective

To evaluate the quality of Cypriot children’s diet by assessing the degree of adherence to the MD.

Methods

A national cross-sectional study among 1140 children (mean age = 10·7 (sd0·98) years), using stratified multistage sampling design, was conducted in primary schools of Cyprus. Dietary assessment was based on a 154-item semi-quantitative FFQ and the two supplementary questionnaires (a Food Groups Frequency Questionnaire and a Short Eating Habits Questionnaire). Adherence to the MD was assessed by the KIDMED index. The association between the frequencies of consumption of various food groups and the level of adherence to the MD (poorv. averagev. good KIDMED score) was also evaluated. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to adjust for potential confounders.

Results

Only 6·7 % of the sample was classified as high adherers of MD, whereas 37 % had a poor KIDMED score. Multiple logistic regression analysis has shown that children with at least an average KIDMED score were more likely to eat frequently seafood and fish, legumes, nuts, bread, fruits, leafy vegetables, olives, low glycaemic index foods and unrefined foods. Effect size of associations was from medium to high.

Conclusion

Higher adherence to MD is associated with better diet quality in children. The MD prototype may thus represent a useful educational tool for promotion of healthy eating habits in children.
Stereotypes and Big Brothers. An Anglo-German Perspective on Dutch Archaeology
Authors: Härke Heinrich
Published: August 2008

Dutch archaeology has been a strange omission in the recent bout of introspection of various national traditions of archaeology in Europe. Jan Slofstra's paper is, therefore, a welcome and important addition to the critical self-reflection of our subject. Writing the social history of one's own discipline in one's own lifetime implies comments, and perhaps even judgements, on the work of one's colleagues, teachers and students, most of whom are still alive. By necessity, it also puts one's own work in the context of a still existing, scholarly community. In other words: Slofstra has been an active participant in the processes which he analyzes. Such an analysis would normally call for an observer's perspective, but under the circumstances such a detachment is hard to achieve, and perhaps impossible.
Another Participant's view on Dutch Archaeology in Postwar Times
Authors: Kooijmans Leendert P. Louwe
Published: August 2008

In my opinion, Slofstra's description of the recent developments in Dutch archaeology can be characterized as a rather subjective narratio of a small episode in the history of science by a participant observer. It is only in the last sentence of his paper that he – rather obligatorily – acknowledges his position. Primarily, the article is a compilation of personal experiences, memories and convictions based on a thorough study of the literature, but lacking interviews with the principal characters. It is very much a private account, even to such an extent that it would not be difficult for anyone involved in Dutch archaeology to point out the author. The paper tells us as much about Slofstra as about the history of archaeology and presents a very personal view on the development of our discipline: the disqualification of the cultural-historical approach persisting into the eighties, the myth of the deliverance by the ‘Historical-Anthropological Approach’, together with the uncritical reiteration of the greatness of Van Giffen, and the ‘conspiracy scenario’ towards the ‘academic establishment’ which can retard everything except demographical processes.
The cultural biography of urnfields and the long-term history of a mythical landscape
Authors: Roymans Nico
Published: August 2008

In modern Western culture, thinking and attitudes related to the landscape are dominated by a rational-economic and profane perception of space. We are so familiar with this that we tend to attach a universal, absolute character to this way of thinking. However, research undertaken within various social disciplines in the last decennia increasingly emphasises the specific cultural character of this Western line of thought. The profanisation, rationalisation and commodification of space appear to be processes belonging to the general development of Western culture since the Renaissance, and in particular since the Enlightenment. If we wish to gain insight into the ordering and meaning given to space in other cultures, we have to distance ourselves from these specific Western values. The landscape is not a simple objective fact; each culture has its own specific pair of glasses, through which the surrounding physical space is named, ordered and interpreted. The classification of space and the attachment of meanings to it are therefore pre-eminently cultural constructs. According to Lemaire (1970, 14), space and the perception of space in a culture are not a feature of minor importance, but they express the identity of that culture in a privileged way; if one wants to grasp a culture in its real dimension, one should look to identify the perception and organisation of its space.
Social Dimensions of Domestic Architecture
Authors: Haagsma Margriet J.
Published: August 2008

The study of architecture in relation to the social organization of space is a popular field of research within the discipline of anthropology and other social sciences. In archaeology, it has not played a significant role, although in recent years a number of publications have appeared and clearly the interest of archaeologists in this area of research is growing (Kent 1990; Samson 1990; Richards and Parker Pearson 1994).
On magdalenian mobility and land use in north-west Europe
Authors: Rensink Eelco
Published: August 2008

Investigations into the upper palaeolithic settlement history of Europe have made significant advances over the past decades in several fields. As a result of the reappraisal of old collections and the excavation of ‘new’ sites, an extensive data set has become available which can be used to study aspects of the organization of palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. The improvement of absolute and relative dating methods has provided the archaeologist with a more solid chronological framework. Additionally, innovations in archaeological theory and methodology have led to the exploration of new directions of inquiry. This paper focuses on a well-known example of these new directions: the study ofregionalsettlement-subsistence systems of palaeolithic groups, incorporating the systematic evaluation of archaeological data recovered from substantial areas. A growing number of archaeologists dealing with the upper palaeolithic record and active in various regions throughout Europe is currently engaged in this particular form of analysis (Audouze 1992; Hahn 1987; Julien 1987; Straus 1986; Weniger 1987, 1989).
The Desirable and the Possible
Authors: Audouze Françoise
Published: August 2008

Rensink advocates in favour of a renewed regional approach where the region is not just a collection of known sites. This approach, where the landscape is not considered as being around a site but as including sites, has given very rich results where it has been applied to later periods. But, the impact of man on the environment is quite negligible during the Palaeolithic and gcoarchaeological data cannot provide information about settlement organization in this period as it can in later Prehistory. Using settlements of the same chronological phase to create a kind of typology of settlements has proved useful in order to assess the functional variability of sites within a given region but is certainly a poor substitute for a real region study (Audouzeet al.1988).
Keeping Up with the Magdalenian
Authors: Gamble Clive
Published: August 2008

The northern Magdalenian, as Rensink so clearly points out, has outstripped the efforts of ethnoarchaeologists to provide descriptive models of how it was organized. Perhaps with hindsight this was always going to be case since the models of land use and mobility which have been developed in the past thirty years were always more at home in the caves and abris of the southern Magdalenian. Here it was possible to describe assemblages as curated or expedient without having to worry too much about variation within sites, such as that now revealed by the complex settlement archaeology of say Verberie or Gönnersdorf. The only added complication in the southern Magdalenian was the cave art, but that could always be treated separately, and may have to be if the 30,000 bp plus dates for the new Ardèche cave are found to spill over into the Dordogne. I therefore agree with Rensink that we must become our own ethnographers of the Magdalenian rather than constantly trying to fit our patterns to those derived from a particular actualistic study. But in this respect it must be remembered that Binford, one of the suppliers of such models, has always warned against working towards definitions; the belief that by naming an assemblage as curated we have done a good archaeological job. Far from it. All we have achieved is a congratulatory nod towards our own descriptive systems. If we are to understand the palpable variation in the archaeological record then we must understand contexts and the conditions for their use which causes patterning in what was left behind. This requires a focus on what we mean by magdalenian society rather than concentrating solely on the properties of the adaptive system.
Pushing the Envelope
Authors: Murray Tim
Published: August 2008

I want to devote most of my comments on Rensink's interesting article to the issues raised by his review of current thinking about the Magdalenian of north-western Europe, rather than make detailed observations about the sites referred to in the text. I am particularly interested in ascertaining (as well as I can in such a limited space) the value of a concentration on the analysis of lithic raw materials as a way out of the theoretical morass he believes we have collectively become enmired in. In the course of doing all this I will advance a very simple proposition: that our salvation will spring from a comprehensive revaluation of the phenomenology of upper palaeolithic archaeological records, conducted against a background of concerted exploration of the presuppositions which currently pass for archaeological theory in this domain. Obviously salvation is not going to be easy to achieve, as witnessed by Rensink's brave but unsuccessful tussle with the problem of modelling magdalenian mobility. My central point is that given the magnitude of the task before us we should not expect early success, rather we should continue the process of reevaluation which he has begun.
Monumental Indifference?
Authors: Herzfeld Michael
Published: August 2008

Odermatts's discussion of the changing responses of theAbbasantesito the fate of the local nuragic monuments adds important new insights to the emergent literature on the politics of national and regional heritage. I intend my remarks as suggestions for expanding the argument – and perhaps the research – beyond the promising start made here. This timely topic and Odermatts's refreshingly critical perspective deserve no less.
Cultural identity and regional archaeological projects
Authors: Fotiadis Michael
Published: August 2008

To place ‘regional projects’ and ‘cultural identity’ next to each other in the title of a conference session is extraordinary, indeed baffling: questions of cultural identity have hardly ever been addressed in conjunction with a regional project. In fact, many of us who were attracted to regional research some time ago saw in it an opportunity to escape from the quest for identity which, in the form of ethnogenetic concerns, had dominated the practice of archaeology since 1900 and to explore instead issues of an entirely different nature: adaptation to the natural and social environment, economic rationality and its long-term effects on such adaptation, the formation of hierarchical polities, and the like.
The Transformation of Landscape and Religious Representations in Roman Gaul
Authors: Derks Ton
Published: August 2008

This essay starts from the initial presupposition that the landscape is more than the proverbial backcloth to human action found so often in archaeological writing. It is not just the natural feature of the environment putting important constraints on human behaviour, as a popular ‘naturalist’ tradition in archaeology would like to have it, nor is it simply a cultural construction of human conceptions about the world, as its ‘culturalist’ counterpart is advocating (cf. Descola and Pálsson 1996, 2-3). Rather the landscape is doubly-faced, consisting of a foreground actuality of every-day existence and a background potentiality of an imagined timeless ideal (Hirsch 1995). The phenomenal and the imagined landscape are alternately perceived and inextricably intertwined, in that people continuously seek to realize in ordinary life the ideals of an imaginary existence. The ways in which they imagine the world may thus heavily bear on the appearance and organization of the landscape they live in. This is true for all societies in past and present. But while in the modern west the ideals have up to a point a secular character, in all other societies, including those of Roman Gaul, the imagined landscape takes the form of a cosmology.
Interesting Times…
Authors: Alcock Sue
Published: August 2008

The Chinese curse – ‘May you live in interesting times’ – has unquestionably fallen upon those involved in landscape studies, as many papers previously published in this journal attest. Derks' contribution adds an attractive case study, drawn from the Roman world rather than from the more frequently visited prehistoric periods, to this ferment. Derks reviews recent interpretive arguments, before turning to the landscapes of northern Gaul: landscapes in the plural, for in his study area Derks teases out the existence of two zones which develop in distinctly different ways. His major achievement is to divert explanations for this development from the more usual channels of thinking, such as pondering economic and ecological variables, or categorizing areas as ‘Romanized’ or ‘non-Romanized’. His addition of social values and cosmological principles as ‘filters’ helping to determine the trajectories followed by these two zones is bold and, whether or not one agrees with the details of his arguments, his basic contention – that such elements are just as vital as imperial policies and environmental conditions in determining the creation of provincial landscapes – cannot be challenged. I predict that within five years a wide variety of such locally sensitive, landscape-based case studies will be available from across the Roman world, leading to fresh analyses of provincial variability within the empire and to cross-regional comparisons no longer strictly determined by administrative boundaries.
Beyond Relativism?
Authors: Raven Diederick
Published: August 2008

Originally my involvement with the stimulating Lampeter Archaeology Workshop paper (hereafter LAW for short) would have been restricted to just another anonymous referee report. However the editors changed their plan and asked me to write a short commentary. I agreed to this change of plan so what follows is basically an expanded version of my initial remarks. (Parenthetically, I belief this format is far better than the old fashioned style referee system were referees can hide behind the protective shield of anonymity.)
On the Relativity of Relativism
Authors: Veit Ulrich
Published: August 2008

The ideas which scientists use to present the known and to advance into the unknown are only rarely in agreement with the strict injunctions of logic or pure mathematics and the attempt to make them conform would rob science of the elasticity without which progress cannot be achieved. We see: facts alone are not strong enough for making us accept, or reject, scientific theories, the range they leave to thought istoo wide; logic and methodology eliminate too much, they aretoo narrow. In between these two extremes lies the ever-changing domain of human ideas and wishes. (Feyerabend 1975, 303)
Relativising Relativism
Authors: Hodder Ian
Published: August 2008

I very much welcome both the medium and the message of the Lampeter seminar article. Fear of the ‘unscientific’ unknown has long prevented an adequate discussion of relativism in archaeology. Anxiety about the relativist abyss in which ‘all pasts are equal’ has thwarted efforts to evaluate alternatives to ‘objective science’. The dialogical style of the article opens up the debate on relativism without imposing rigid and narrow perspectives. The message itself is greatly enhanced by the helpful distinctions between ontological, epistemic and moral relativism.
Place-Names in Context
Authors: Fellows-Jensen Gillian
Published: August 2008

The aims of Andrew Fleming's paper on medieval Swaledale have been to establish the degree of stability of the pattern of settlement there and to demonstrate the value of a comprehensive approach to the study of political geography and settlement history. Restrictions of space, however, have led to the omission of a treatment of agricultural activities and readers might not realise how little both the pattern of settlement and agricultural practices have changed in the course of time.
Who's come a long way, baby?
Authors: Knapp A. Bernard
Published: August 2008

How ‘progressive’ have archaeologists been in the progress made on gender studies during the 1990s? All archaeologists, male and female, must accept the need to theorize gender, and to rethink accordingly their traditional research priorities. Feminist theory is essential for the study of gender in archaeology because it has paid closer attention to gender as an analytical category than any other body of theory, and at the same time made important links within and between disciplines. Most male archaeologists have been recalcitrant if not loathe to focus on gender as a key concept in archaeological theory, even though writers treating ‘masculinity’ in the social sciences and literary theory have been active in this field for over a decade. This study discusses masculinist reactions to feminism and suggests that ‘masculinist’ approaches are derivative of feminist scholarship. Perhaps the most important contribution of masculinist scholarship has been to insist upon the existence of divergent, multiple masculinities, and by extension femininities, as opposed to binary oppositions or ideal types. The study of men and masculinities, of women and femininities, involves consideration of social and gender issues that should not become the exclusive domain of either women or men – the goal is an archaeology informed by feminism, one that looks critically at theories of human action and allows archaeological data to challenge existing social theory.
Who's come a long way, dr. knapp?
Authors: Treherne Paul
Published: August 2008

Knapp's paper deserves recognition not only for its contribution to the burgeoning discourse on gender archaeology, but for enriching discussion with a masculinist vocabulary drawn from wider sources within and outside the academy. Despite the well-intentioned and sympathetic discussion, however, one must ask whether we are any better informed from the paper as to what a masculinist approach to archaeology might look like.
Oh my Goddess!
Authors: Meskell Lynn
Published: August 2008

This paper suggests that the goddess movement is becoming increasingly intertwined with mainstream archaeology, an illustrative case being Çatalhöyük. This is another salient example of the public's avid consumption of archaeology and its multivalent imagery. Yet there are additional, fundamental issues of a more philosophical nature to consider. For example, feminist practitioners might consider interrogating the very ontological bedrock on which goddess narratives are layered. They reinforce three pervasive dualisms which feminists have sought to dispel: nature:culture, mind:body, reason:emotion. Additionally, masculinist theorists might find many of the underlying concepts sexist against men, since they seek to highlight and restore the primacy of women. Despite the positive overtones of the movement, I argue that it is often reactionary, anti-feminist and it essentialises the roles of women and men.
The luxury of abundance
Authors: Fontijn David , Van Reybrouck David
Published: August 2008

The last decade has witnessed a significant increase in the number of comprehensive syntheses on Irish prehistory, both in terms of academic textbooks and popular accounts. The present review essay finds that these syntheses are highly convergent in terms of theme, scope, and theoretical underpinnings. Although large-scale migrations are rejected as explanations for culture change, Ireland is still perceived as the receptacle for foreign ideas and overseas inventions, whereby imports are not just introduced but also perfected in Ireland. We argue that a similar attitude can be noted in the perception of the history of Irish prehistory. This convergence and absence of overt polemics are explained by referring to the small size of the Irish archaeological community. The increase in syntheses is accounted for by a number of empirical preconditions, the theoretical climate of opinion, the institutional expansion of the discipline, the public impact of a rapidly changing natural and political landscape and the notion of an Irish identity.
To build and to abandon
Authors: Gerritsen Fokke
Published: August 2008

This article argues that the notion of cultural biography presents a key to understanding the social and cultural practices that created archaeological records of domestic architecture, as it brings the close and dynamic relationships between a house and its inhabitants to the fore. To do so it presents a case study of the construction, habitation and abandonment cycles of late prehistoric farmsteads in the southern Netherlands. After discussing typical biographies of farmhouses and the way these are affected by a transformation from a ‘wandering’ to a stable settlement pattern, the perspective is broadened through a comparison with burial practices. These witness a roughly contemporaneous shift from monumental and communal to short-lived and dispersed cemeteries. Finally, it is suggested that we view these contrasting patterns in terms of a transformation of the perception of farmsteads as places in the landscape and land tenure practices.
Merits and limits of the biographic approach
Authors: Vellinga Marcel
Published: August 2008

In a well-known paper on ‘the cultural biography of things’, Kopytoff (1986) shows that the application of meaning to ‘things’ is of a processual rather than a fixed nature. Mainly focusing his attention on commodities, Kopytoff demonstrates that, like people, ‘objects’ such as slaves, cars, huts and paintings have a social life of their own. The biographies that may be drawn up of the lives of these objects may provide insight into the complex whole of political, economic, moral and aesthetic practices, values and relationships prevalent in the societies in which they are produced, used and discarded.
Abandoned but not forgotten: Gerritsen on the domestic lifecycle
Authors: Nevett Lisa
Published: August 2008

The subject of Gerritsen's paper and the way in which it is presented invite comment on three main aspects: firstly, his theoretical stance, secondly the methodology he uses and thirdly, his conclusions regarding the farmsteads which he seeks to understand. Since my own specialism lies well outside the area and period with which his paper deals, I shall focus my discussion on the first two aspects.
Sacralising the Past
Authors: Hamilakis Yannis , Yalouri Eleana
Published: August 2008

The paper discusses the religious undertones classical Greek heritage is vested with in Greece. Drawing on the argument that nationalism and religion need to be seen as similar cultural systems, we show that classical antiquities have become powerful emotive icons for performances of national memory in the process ot imagining thetoposof the Hellenic nation. This process is open to all social actors and not simply to State bureaucrats and intellectuals. We offer an explanation of this phenomenon by examining the position of antiquity in the construction of the imagined community of the Hellenic nation, as well as the ways by which Orthodoxy and classical antiquity became enmeshed in the formation of Hellenic national identity.We finally explore some of the implications that this phenomenon has for archaeology as a discipline and as social practice.
Multiple readings of the same Golden Age
Authors: Diaz-Andreu Margarita
Published: August 2008

The increasingly voluminous literature on nationalism and archaeology published in recent years is providing archaeologists with a firm basis to self-analyse the connection of their endeavours to the socio-political context of which they are imbued. Yet, the work undertaken is not beyond criticism, as the authors make clear in their introduction. Most studies, including this one, approach the topic adopting a historiographical perspective. Yet, trying to summarise two hundred years of politics and archaeology in a few thousand words is not an easy task. It makes it necessary to simplify usually very complex processes into seemingly neat sequences of events. In addition, writing for an archaeological audience does not make things easier. Most archaeologists have an understandable lack of knowledge on the complexities of the political aspect of the argument, a problem aggravated in the case of discussions of countries other than the one most of the readers are more familiar with. A detailed analysis of the intricate political context is simply unattainable and although references to other analytical works are often provided, it is difficult for authors to avoid giving the impression of adopting an objectifying position and a positivistic approach. Despite Hamilakis and Yalouri's awareness of this problem (p.115), on occasion their account falls precisely into the latter category (especially in the section ‘Imagining the nation in modern Greece’). As someone who has often been faced with this problem in my various publications on the relationship between archaeology and nationalism in Spain, I am still convinced of the validity of offering general overviews, despite the risks entailed. It is only after producing an intelligible outline, as they in fact have done, that it is possible to undertake a deeper and more sophisticated analysis of more concrete issues related to the connection between archaeology and nationalism.
The Construction of Meanings in Museums
Authors: Crooke Elizabeth
Published: August 2008

The museum is a construct; the collections and the physical building are enclosed by a structure, invisible to the eye, which is created by the context in which the museum is being viewed. The nature of that structure will depend on the viewer; he or she will make his or her own meanings. Reinhard Bernbeck, in his paperThe exhibition of architecture and the architecture of an exhibition, has investigated how the Pergamon Museum can simultaneously mean different things to different people, according to their cultural perspective. What is at the core of this is the political and social nature of museums, and one of the most dominant aspects of this is the demonstration of power. This determines how the museum collects, interprets and displays both the objects and itself, and is related to both Bernbeck's colonial and postmodern readings of the museum, as well has his discussion of ‘pragmatist’ and ‘purist’ approaches to museums in general. Though his paper is based on a case study of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, the issues he raised are applicable to museums elsewhere. In this response to his paper, I am going to look at what this demonstration of power reflects about what museums mean and how they function and relate Bernbeck's evaluation to museum development I am most familiar with, that in Ireland.
Theory and tradition in German archaeology
Authors: Sommer Ulrike
Published: August 2008

‘All quiet on the western front’ (Härke 1991) for years on end, and now, suddenly two theoretical works out of Germany, one of them even of handbook-character – what's happening? Is the enmity towards theoretical discourse of mainstream German archaeology (Eggert and Veit 1998, 11) finally abating?
Eating money
Authors: Pearson Mike Parker
Published: August 2008

This paper develops a case study of animal exploitation in Androy, in southern Madagascar, to demonstrate the exchange and depositional processes by which animal bones can eventually end up in the ground. It examines the central role of cattle as symbol, currency and foodstuff in Tandroy life and explores some of the contexts and complexities of livestock exchange and slaughter. The results of this case study are used to suggest that standard archaeological calculations of minimum numbers (MNI) from individual sites may not always provide reliable information about livestock numbers in subsistence economies, and that the nutritional value of certain species might be the least important of their attributes. The complex exchange patterns of animals at Tandroy funerals, and the ways that their gifting and sacrifice define and reinforce social roles, identity and position, are key aspects of the social changes by which the powerful can become poor and the enslaved wealthy.
O Menino do Lapedo
Authors: Trinkaus Erik , Zilhão João , Duarte Cidália
Published: August 2008

The emergence of modern humans during the Late Pleistocene and the phylogenetic fate of the northwestern Eurasian Neandertals have been closely linked to our perceptions of the behavior and abilities of those late archaic humans, the Neandertals. In the past several years, several lines of evidence, including radiometric dating of archeological assemblages, taphonomic analyses of faunal remains, stable isotope analysis of Neandertal remains, the dating of late Neandertal remains, considerations of initial Upper Paleolithic associations and chronologies, and reassessments of Neandertal to early modern human phylogenetic relationships have tended to minimise the perceived behavioral differences between the Neandertals and early modern humans across Europe. Into this context, the discovery of an earlier Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) early modern human child's skeleton at the Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Lapedo Valley, Portugal with distinctive Neandertal features provides further support for the de-dehumanising of the Neandertals. Its anatomical evidence for population blending when early modern humans spread into southern Iberia after 30,000 B.P. indicates that the behavioral differences between the local Neandertals and in-dispersing early modern humans were subtle and did not preclude them from regarding each other as human.
Roman narratives
Authors: Laurence Ray
Published: August 2008

The narrative structure of Roman archaeology places a particular emphasis on the acculturation of the newly conquered provinces. This ‘process’ known as Romanisation has been found wanting by many commentators on Roman archaeology. Although rejected, it can still reappear and influence the narrative structure of many studies. Reference is deliberately made to the publications of the ‘Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference’ to highlight the revision of the usage of ‘Romanisation’ by British scholars during the 1990s. The paper identifies the cultural assumptions underpinning the revisionist views of Romanisation and the key problem of a narrative based explicitly or otherwise on textual evidence. Here, an attempt is made to account for the uniqueness of Roman archaeology as practiced in Britain – in comparison to that of prehistory or medieval archaeology. The paper suggests that there is a need to move on from Romanisation to alternative narrative forms drawing on recent revisionist agendas within the social sciences.
Story-telling in Roman archaeology
Authors: Revell Louise
Published: August 2008

It is a rare opportunity to be invited to comment upon two papers at the same time: the temptation is then to either search for common threads, or to directly compare them. Individually, both Slofstra and Woolf offer an interesting perspective on the process of Romanisation in Gaul and the Rhine delta, but taken together, they become a dialogue on how we tell the story of Romanisation: the problems and conventions inherent within it. Both Slofstra and Woolf are telling the story of cultural change. Although they take opposing stands on whether to call this Romanisation or not, essentially it is the same story, and it requires the same techniques for telling it. As change, it can be viewed as a process taking place over time, and which therefore requires a temporal framework, and (like all good stories) a beginning, a middle and an end. These are not unproblematic, and the choices made (or in some cases enforced) are not without consequence.