Resource Control and the Development of Political Economies In Small-Scale Societies: Contrasting Prehistoric Southwestern Korea and the Coast Salish Region of Northwestern North America
by Colin Grier and Jangsuk Kim
Cyclical Cultural Trajectories: A Case Study From The Mesa Verde Region
by Fumiyasu Arakawa
Molle Beer Production In A Peruvian Central Highland Valley
by Lidio M. Valdez
Disconnected From The “Diaspora”: Japanese Americans and the Lack of Transnational Ethnic Networks
by Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda
Book Reviews
Resource Control And The Development Of Political Economies In Small-Scale Societies: Contrasting Prehistoric Southwestern Korea and the Coast Salish Region of Northwestern North America
Colin Grier
Department of History, Kyung Hee University, Seoul
Jangsuk Kim
Department of History, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea
KEY WORDS: Archaeology, Korea, Northwest Coast, Households, Intensification, Political Economy
ABSTRACT: The emergence of formalized leadership, institutionalized political hierarchies, and elite control over resources are key areas of study in relation to the emergence of complex societies. In this paper we consider these developments in two areas of the world: the Coast Salish region of the precontact Northwest Coast of North America and prehistoric southwestern Korea. On the Northwest Coast, increasing house size through time reflects an increasingly central role for households in orchestrating production and consumption. In southwestern Korea, houses and households expanded similarly with the adoption of dry farming agriculture. However, with the subsequent adoption of intensive, wet rice agriculture, houses shift to small, single-family structures and storage moves to external features. We contrast these case studies, attributing the divergent trends to distinct historical trajectories of household organization and differences in the scale at which resources were controllable. Analysis of these regions illuminates key factors in the development of political systems in small-scale societies.
Cyclical Cultural Trajectories: A Case Study From The Mesa Verde Region
Fumiyasu Arakawa
New Mexico State University & Crow Canyon Archaeological Center
KEY WORDS: Cultural evolutionary models, Incipient social hierarchy, Migration, Mesa Verde (CO), Ancestral Pueblo
ABSTRACT: In this study, models of cultural evolution are used to examine one of most intensively studied archaeological areas in world: the central Mesa Verde region of southern Colorado (USA). I work back and forth between models in this case study to tease out new insights into culture change in the Mesa Verde region and to suggest ways that models of culture change can be improved. The results of a new research program, the Village Ecodynamics Project, are presented here and provide the most recent and refined account of settlement in the central Mesa Verde region. The study concludes that many factors contributed to culture change in the region, and it suggests that one factor has been overlooked in previous studies: the development of incipient social hierarchy. This study argues that the development of social inequality needs to be added to the mix of factors that produced culture change, especially immigration from the region during the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This study suggests that evolutionary models emphasizing cyclical change are more appropriate than unilinear models. A model of cyclical change that highlights the dimensions of demographic scale and the emergence of hierarchical social organization best describes the cultural trajectory of the Mesa Verde region.
Molle Beer Production In A Peruvian Central Highland Valley
Lidio M. Valdez
Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
KEY WORDS: Fermented beverages, Central Andes, Schinus molle, Molle beer, Indigenous peoples, Ethnography, Archaeology
ABSTRACT: Early accounts left by the Spaniards acknowledge that fermented beverages produced from a variety of products were consumed at the time the Inka Empire flourished in the Andean region. One of these beverages, called molle aqa (molle beer), was made from the berries of the molle tree. However, molle beer is seldom included in scholarly discussions concerning the production and consumption of fermented beverages. In contrast to the attention given to maize beer production, there are no substantial ethnographic accounts reporting the processes that involve the making of molle beer. Likewise, archaeologically, it is uncertain how far back in time this beverage was produced and consumed, although it is frequently asserted that maize beer consumption predated the Inka Empire. Here I report on the production of molle beer in the Peruvian central highlands valley of Ayacucho and discuss the implications for the identification of molle beer production in archaeological contexts. This analysis illustrates that the archaeological signature of molle beer production overlaps significantly with that of maize beer, a situation that has likely prevented the identification of molle beer in archaeological contexts. A detailed description of the process of molle beer making has the potential to provide scholars with the necessary tools to identify fermented beverages other than maize beer.
Disconnected From The “Diaspora”: Japanese Americans and the Lack of Transnational Ethnic Networks
Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
KEY WORDS: Diasporas, Transnationalism, Ethnic minorities, Japanese diaspora, Nikkei, Japanese Americans
ABSTRACT: Recent scholarship often assumes that peoples of Japanese descent scattered throughout the Americas (the Nikkei) are one of the world’s diasporas. This paper argues that dispersed ethnic groups should not be considered diasporic unless they have maintained social connections with each other across national borders as members of a transnational ethnic community. By using the Japanese Americans as a case study, I analyze how they are no longer really part of a “Japanese diaspora” because they have generally lost their social connections to the Japanese homeland over the generations and do not have sustained transnational relations with other Nikkei communities in the Americas either. In contrast to newer diasporas consisting of first generation migrants, I suggest some older “diasporas” that have become assimilated and incorporated into their respective host countries are no longer really diasporic but have simply become ethnic minorities which operate in a national context.
Book Reviews
Kathleen R. Gibson: The Evolution of Language, by W. Tecumseh Fitch
Pamela Innes: A Grammar of Creek (Muskogee), by Jack B. Martin
Marcia Mikulak: White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity, by Mary Bucholtz
Pierre Minn: Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics, Erica Bornstein and Peter Redfield, eds.
Roberto Barrios: Disaster Culture: Knowledge and Uncertainty in the Wake of Human and Environmental Catastrophe, by Gregory Button
Noel B. Salazar: Going First Class? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement, Vered Amit, ed.
Alfonso Morales: The New Entrepreneurs: How Race, Class, and Gender Shape American Enterprise, by Zulema Valdez
John R. Welch: Indigenous Peoples and the Collaborative Stewardship of Nature: Knowledge Binds and Institutional Conflicts, by Anne Ross, Kathleen Pickering Sherman, Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Henry D. Delcore, and Richard Sherman
Roberto J. González: Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora, by Junaid Rana
Marc D. Perry: Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness, by Nitasha Tamar Sharma
Nile Green: The Dream in Islam: From Qur’anic Tradition to Jihadist Inspiration, by Iain R. Edgar
John Schaefer: Girls of the Factory: A Year with the Garment Workers of Morocco, by M. Laetitia Cairoli
Luis Alberto Borrero: European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, before and after Darwin, by Anne Chapman
Lynn A. Meisch: Folk Art of the Andes, by Barbara Mauldin
Stephen Stuempfle: Funky Nassau: Roots, Routes, and Representation in Bahamian Popular Music, by Timothy Rommen
Patrick Staib: Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair-Trade Markets, by Sarah Lyon
Jonathan N. Maupin: Mexican Community Health and the Politics of Health Reform, by Susanne Schneider
Philip E. Coyle: Huichol Territory and the Mexican Nation: Indigenous Ritual, Land Conflict, and Sovereignty Claims, by Paul M. Liffman
Allan K. McDougall: Three Fires Unity: The Anishnaabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands, by Phil Bellfy
Thomas W. Killion: Bridging the Divide: Indigenous Communities and Archaeology into the 21st Century, Caroline Phillips and Harry Allen, eds.
April Nowell: Prehistoric Rock Art: Polemics and Progress, by Paul G. Bahn
Jeffrey Quilter: Beyond Wari Walls: Regional Perspectives on Middle Horizon Peru, Justin Jennings, ed.
Margaret A. Jackson: A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock, by Carolyn Dean
Matthew Liebmann: Handbook of Postcolonial Archaeology, Jane Lydon and Uzma Z. Rizvi, eds
Paul White: Mining Archaeology in the American West, by Donald L. Hardesty
Mark A. Giambastiani: The Great Basin: A Natural Prehistory,by Donald K. Grayson
E. James Dixon: Northwest Coast: Archaeology as Deep History, by Madonna L. Moss
Judith Francis Zeitlin: Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas, Matthew Liebmann and Melissa S. Murphy, eds.
Celeste Marie Gagnon: The Bioarchaeology of the Human Head: Decapitation, Decoration, and Deformation, Michelle Bonogofsky, ed.