Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Feasting emerges from the pages of this book as far more than gustatory and social diversions from daily work routines. Instead, feasting in tribal societies plays a critical role in village social, ...
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Feasting emerges from the pages of this book as far more than gustatory and social diversions from daily work routines. Instead, feasting in tribal societies plays a critical role in village social, political, and economic dynamics. Alliances are brokered by feasts, debts created, political battles waged, and large amounts of food are produced. A main argument of the book is that feasting has been one of the most important forces in creating cultural changes since the end of the Paleolithic. Enormous pressures are created by feasts and their promoters to increase food and prestige item production to achieve social and political goals. The domestication of plants and animals probably resulted from such feasting pressures. This volume documents the dynamics of traditional feasting and the ways in which the bewildering array of feasts benefits hosts. It argues that people’s abilities to marry, reproduce, defend themselves against threats and attacks, and to defend their interests in village politics all depend on their ability to engage in feasting networks. As such feasting in these societies has important survival and fitness consequences. To be excluded from feasting networks means to be subject to attack from social predators, in some cases leading to enslavement.Less
Feasting emerges from the pages of this book as far more than gustatory and social diversions from daily work routines. Instead, feasting in tribal societies plays a critical role in village social, political, and economic dynamics. Alliances are brokered by feasts, debts created, political battles waged, and large amounts of food are produced. A main argument of the book is that feasting has been one of the most important forces in creating cultural changes since the end of the Paleolithic. Enormous pressures are created by feasts and their promoters to increase food and prestige item production to achieve social and political goals. The domestication of plants and animals probably resulted from such feasting pressures. This volume documents the dynamics of traditional feasting and the ways in which the bewildering array of feasts benefits hosts. It argues that people’s abilities to marry, reproduce, defend themselves against threats and attacks, and to defend their interests in village politics all depend on their ability to engage in feasting networks. As such feasting in these societies has important survival and fitness consequences. To be excluded from feasting networks means to be subject to attack from social predators, in some cases leading to enslavement.
Ronald Hutton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780300197716
- eISBN:
- 9780300198584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300197716.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
The monumental forms of Early to the Late Neolithic include round ceremonial enclosures and circular settings for the burial of human remains. In Ireland, the developed passage grave or passage tomb ...
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The monumental forms of Early to the Late Neolithic include round ceremonial enclosures and circular settings for the burial of human remains. In Ireland, the developed passage grave or passage tomb consists of a large round mound, entered by a long passage of megaliths leading to a stone-built chamber. Neolithic inhabitants also built the largest chambered long barrow causeway enclosure and cursus and the largest henges: the Avebury henge, Marden and Mount Pleasant Henges, and the Durrington Walls. About two miles and southwest of Durrington is the most famous prehistoric monument in the world: Stonehenge.Less
The monumental forms of Early to the Late Neolithic include round ceremonial enclosures and circular settings for the burial of human remains. In Ireland, the developed passage grave or passage tomb consists of a large round mound, entered by a long passage of megaliths leading to a stone-built chamber. Neolithic inhabitants also built the largest chambered long barrow causeway enclosure and cursus and the largest henges: the Avebury henge, Marden and Mount Pleasant Henges, and the Durrington Walls. About two miles and southwest of Durrington is the most famous prehistoric monument in the world: Stonehenge.
Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased ...
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The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased family members. There is also considerable variability in economics, sociopolitical organization, and feasting within the Torajan area. This chapter discusses and tries to explain some of this variability, from low level transegalitarian villages in poor mountainous areas to the proto- or real chiefdom levels of the valley bottoms where paddy rice produces major surpluses. The corporate kindred with its ancestral house as the center of ritual and feasting activities is a distinctive feature of Torajan societies. Slavery was very developed, and secondary burials were strongly associated with elites in order to provide enough time to amass as much wealth as possible for proper funeral feasts. Why funeral feasts feature so prominently in Southeast Asia tribal societies is discussed. Other feasts were hosted by households, reciprocal work groups, lineages, corporate kindreds, villages, districts, and village alliances.Less
The villages in Tana Toraja, Sulawesi, host some of the most lavish feasts in Southeast Asia, especially for funerals or memorials. In addition megaliths were raised for the wealthiest deceased family members. There is also considerable variability in economics, sociopolitical organization, and feasting within the Torajan area. This chapter discusses and tries to explain some of this variability, from low level transegalitarian villages in poor mountainous areas to the proto- or real chiefdom levels of the valley bottoms where paddy rice produces major surpluses. The corporate kindred with its ancestral house as the center of ritual and feasting activities is a distinctive feature of Torajan societies. Slavery was very developed, and secondary burials were strongly associated with elites in order to provide enough time to amass as much wealth as possible for proper funeral feasts. Why funeral feasts feature so prominently in Southeast Asia tribal societies is discussed. Other feasts were hosted by households, reciprocal work groups, lineages, corporate kindreds, villages, districts, and village alliances.
Brian Hayden
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824856267
- eISBN:
- 9780824873059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824856267.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given ...
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The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given the intimate association of megaliths and feasting in the Torajan area, we focused considerable attention on the feasting traditions of Sumba, especially as they related to megaliths. The megaliths are also associated spatially and behaviorally with ancestral corporate lineage houses. The logic of megalithic construction is discussed together with benefits sought by hosts for sponsoring feasts. The range of major feasting types is described.Less
The most active and still vibrant megalithic tradition in Southeast Asia is probably found in Sumba. Given the importance of megaliths and their interpretation in prehistoric archaeology, and given the intimate association of megaliths and feasting in the Torajan area, we focused considerable attention on the feasting traditions of Sumba, especially as they related to megaliths. The megaliths are also associated spatially and behaviorally with ancestral corporate lineage houses. The logic of megalithic construction is discussed together with benefits sought by hosts for sponsoring feasts. The range of major feasting types is described.
Kelsey Jackson Williams
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- April 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198809692
- eISBN:
- 9780191846960
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809692.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter turns towards artefacts, tracing the sudden rise in interest in prehistoric sites and monuments across Scotland during this period. It shows that cutting-edge approaches to the study of ...
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This chapter turns towards artefacts, tracing the sudden rise in interest in prehistoric sites and monuments across Scotland during this period. It shows that cutting-edge approaches to the study of material as diverse as Roman forts and ancient megaliths could interact with older syncretist theories of knowledge and human origins to produce surprising, sometimes radical, reinterpretations of the distant past. Archaeologists and writers as diverse as the opera singer-turned-antiquary Alexander Gordon and the freethinker John Toland used these ancient monuments as telescopes through which to glimpse an almost unimaginable antiquity, one which could exert a dramatically destabilizing effect on present-day hierarchies of culture and geography.Less
This chapter turns towards artefacts, tracing the sudden rise in interest in prehistoric sites and monuments across Scotland during this period. It shows that cutting-edge approaches to the study of material as diverse as Roman forts and ancient megaliths could interact with older syncretist theories of knowledge and human origins to produce surprising, sometimes radical, reinterpretations of the distant past. Archaeologists and writers as diverse as the opera singer-turned-antiquary Alexander Gordon and the freethinker John Toland used these ancient monuments as telescopes through which to glimpse an almost unimaginable antiquity, one which could exert a dramatically destabilizing effect on present-day hierarchies of culture and geography.
Piotr Migoń
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199273683
- eISBN:
- 9780191917615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199273683.003.0012
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Physical Geography and Topography
Perhaps the most characteristic of all minor landforms on exposed granite surfaces approaching horizontality are flat-bottomed or, less commonly, hemispherical hollows ranging in diameter from ...
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Perhaps the most characteristic of all minor landforms on exposed granite surfaces approaching horizontality are flat-bottomed or, less commonly, hemispherical hollows ranging in diameter from 15–20 cm to a few metres. They are known under a variety of local names, such as Opferkessel in German, pias in Spanish, vasques in French, or gnamma, which is an Aboriginal word occasionally used in Australia (e.g. Twidale and Corbin, 1963). In English, these superficial features are collectively described as weathering pits. They are not unique to granite, but are also abundant in sandstone and occur in other lithologies too. A remarkable flatness of floors of many shallow pits is reflected in another name present throughout the literature, namely that of a ‘pan’ (e.g. Twidale and Corbin, 1963; Fairbridge, 1968; Dzulynski and Kotarba, 1979). However, and despite a more accurate reflection of the form, the term ‘pan’ for weathering pits has fallen into disfavour, apparently because an identical name is used to describe much larger, closed topographic depressions within low-angle surfaces in arid lands. The majority of weathering pits are either closed features or there is a narrow outlet in the form of a channel trending away from the pit (Plate 4.1). Another type is an ‘armchair pit’, which grows into the rock surface from the side of an outcrop. These are hemispherical and wide open. At many localities pits may coalesce to form extensive networks, or else they are joined by channel-like features. Weathering pits in granite show a wide range of dimensions. Hollows in excess of 10 m long and 3 m deep have been reported, and the largest ever described is probably one in Australia, measuring 18.3 × 4.6 × 1.8 m (Twidale and Corbin, 1963). Unfortunately, there are very few systematic measurements of large populations of pits, and this severely restricts any attempts to generalize about the size of pits. Goudie and Migoń (1997) provided such a data set for two outcrops in the central Namib Desert. An interesting observation is that weathering pits in this arid area are much larger than their counterparts in humid temperate latitudes.
Less
Perhaps the most characteristic of all minor landforms on exposed granite surfaces approaching horizontality are flat-bottomed or, less commonly, hemispherical hollows ranging in diameter from 15–20 cm to a few metres. They are known under a variety of local names, such as Opferkessel in German, pias in Spanish, vasques in French, or gnamma, which is an Aboriginal word occasionally used in Australia (e.g. Twidale and Corbin, 1963). In English, these superficial features are collectively described as weathering pits. They are not unique to granite, but are also abundant in sandstone and occur in other lithologies too. A remarkable flatness of floors of many shallow pits is reflected in another name present throughout the literature, namely that of a ‘pan’ (e.g. Twidale and Corbin, 1963; Fairbridge, 1968; Dzulynski and Kotarba, 1979). However, and despite a more accurate reflection of the form, the term ‘pan’ for weathering pits has fallen into disfavour, apparently because an identical name is used to describe much larger, closed topographic depressions within low-angle surfaces in arid lands. The majority of weathering pits are either closed features or there is a narrow outlet in the form of a channel trending away from the pit (Plate 4.1). Another type is an ‘armchair pit’, which grows into the rock surface from the side of an outcrop. These are hemispherical and wide open. At many localities pits may coalesce to form extensive networks, or else they are joined by channel-like features. Weathering pits in granite show a wide range of dimensions. Hollows in excess of 10 m long and 3 m deep have been reported, and the largest ever described is probably one in Australia, measuring 18.3 × 4.6 × 1.8 m (Twidale and Corbin, 1963). Unfortunately, there are very few systematic measurements of large populations of pits, and this severely restricts any attempts to generalize about the size of pits. Goudie and Migoń (1997) provided such a data set for two outcrops in the central Namib Desert. An interesting observation is that weathering pits in this arid area are much larger than their counterparts in humid temperate latitudes.
Piotr Migoń
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780199273683
- eISBN:
- 9780191917615
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199273683.003.0018
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Physical Geography and Topography
An analysis of granite landscapes would not be complete if the modifying human factor were ignored (Godard, 1977). Over the millennia humans have used the resources provided by granite, whether in ...
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An analysis of granite landscapes would not be complete if the modifying human factor were ignored (Godard, 1977). Over the millennia humans have used the resources provided by granite, whether in a solid or weathered state, taken advantage of the spatial configuration of granite landforms, or mimicked natural granite features for various purposes. The combination of rock outcrops, regolith-mantled surfaces, and soil characteristics has acted as a significant constraint on many human activities, especially in the past. Hence many granite areas have very specific histories of human impact. The monumentality of many granite landforms has inspired fear, awe, and spiritual experience, whereas in the modern era the distinctiveness of many granite terrains has become a magnet for tourism. Each of these activities has left its imprint on granite landscapes, to the extent that some of them easily fall into the category of ‘cultural landscapes’, while in others, man-made features have evidently overwhelmed the natural configuration of the land. In this closing chapter of the book a few aspects of human transformation on natural granite landscapes will be briefly addressed. The coverage, and particularly the selection, of examples are by no means exhaustive, and the historical context has not been explored. The intention is rather to review some of the most characteristic relationships between humans and granite landscapes and to show that the characteristics of natural granite landforms dictate very specific adjustments, uses, and strategies of landscape change. Therefore, extensive referencing has also been avoided. The middle and late Neolithic in western Europe (3500-1700 BC) was a period of extraordinary construction activity using local and imported stone. It was not limited to granite lands, but the availability of durable monumental stone was certainly important. Therefore, uplands and rolling plains underlain by granitoid rocks abound in a variety of megalithic structures, including standing stones, stone circles and rows, passage tombs, simple dolmens, burial mounds (cairns), and stone enclosures. Extensive assemblages of Neolithic monuments occur on the Alentejo plain in southern Portugal, in western Spain, in Brittany, France, and on the uplands of south-west England, from Dartmoor through Bodmin Moor, Carnmenellis to Land’s End.
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An analysis of granite landscapes would not be complete if the modifying human factor were ignored (Godard, 1977). Over the millennia humans have used the resources provided by granite, whether in a solid or weathered state, taken advantage of the spatial configuration of granite landforms, or mimicked natural granite features for various purposes. The combination of rock outcrops, regolith-mantled surfaces, and soil characteristics has acted as a significant constraint on many human activities, especially in the past. Hence many granite areas have very specific histories of human impact. The monumentality of many granite landforms has inspired fear, awe, and spiritual experience, whereas in the modern era the distinctiveness of many granite terrains has become a magnet for tourism. Each of these activities has left its imprint on granite landscapes, to the extent that some of them easily fall into the category of ‘cultural landscapes’, while in others, man-made features have evidently overwhelmed the natural configuration of the land. In this closing chapter of the book a few aspects of human transformation on natural granite landscapes will be briefly addressed. The coverage, and particularly the selection, of examples are by no means exhaustive, and the historical context has not been explored. The intention is rather to review some of the most characteristic relationships between humans and granite landscapes and to show that the characteristics of natural granite landforms dictate very specific adjustments, uses, and strategies of landscape change. Therefore, extensive referencing has also been avoided. The middle and late Neolithic in western Europe (3500-1700 BC) was a period of extraordinary construction activity using local and imported stone. It was not limited to granite lands, but the availability of durable monumental stone was certainly important. Therefore, uplands and rolling plains underlain by granitoid rocks abound in a variety of megalithic structures, including standing stones, stone circles and rows, passage tombs, simple dolmens, burial mounds (cairns), and stone enclosures. Extensive assemblages of Neolithic monuments occur on the Alentejo plain in southern Portugal, in western Spain, in Brittany, France, and on the uplands of south-west England, from Dartmoor through Bodmin Moor, Carnmenellis to Land’s End.
Thomas Nail
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190618643
- eISBN:
- 9780190618681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190618643.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter develops a theory of the border structure of the fence. The fence introduces the first major kinopolitical divisions into the flows of the earth. It divides the earth from itself and ...
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This chapter develops a theory of the border structure of the fence. The fence introduces the first major kinopolitical divisions into the flows of the earth. It divides the earth from itself and creates the first social borders between people. However, the border regime of the fence is no mere relic of the past. Once it was invented by early humans, it persisted throughout history wherever we find the social practice of cutting up the body of the earth and compelling it into a centripetal accumulation: corrals that hunt down and capture disjoined flows (dragnets, manhunts, kettling); palisades that erect defensive stake structures to protect a kinetic stock (houses, plots of land, military limits); and megalith practices of verticality and directional signage that mark the boundaries of a territory (road signs, memorial sites, sacred sites).Less
This chapter develops a theory of the border structure of the fence. The fence introduces the first major kinopolitical divisions into the flows of the earth. It divides the earth from itself and creates the first social borders between people. However, the border regime of the fence is no mere relic of the past. Once it was invented by early humans, it persisted throughout history wherever we find the social practice of cutting up the body of the earth and compelling it into a centripetal accumulation: corrals that hunt down and capture disjoined flows (dragnets, manhunts, kettling); palisades that erect defensive stake structures to protect a kinetic stock (houses, plots of land, military limits); and megalith practices of verticality and directional signage that mark the boundaries of a territory (road signs, memorial sites, sacred sites).
Emily Mark-Fitzgerald
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318986
- eISBN:
- 9781781380949
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Discontinued
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318986.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter surveys a range of community commemorations in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada and the United States that constitute smaller scale, vernacular counterparts to officially ...
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This chapter surveys a range of community commemorations in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada and the United States that constitute smaller scale, vernacular counterparts to officially sanctioned (and nationally scaled) monumental projects. Whether navigating volatile commemorative geographies marked by sectarian divisions; editing and refashioning traditional monumental forms like the high cross or megalithic stones; or indulging in fictive melodrama through bronze figurative groups – diasporic monuments reveal a surprising continuity with nineteenth-century methods of visualising Famine, substituting the heroic for the ugly, optimism for despair, sentimentality for horror. Adopting a transnational approach, the survey and case studies of this chapter demonstrate how Famine memorials bear a striking resemblance to one another and share a repetitive, often romanticized visual vocabulary, as well as strong threads of interconnection that bind monuments across three continents to one another. Though the rallying cry ‘Remember the Famine’ unites these memorials, their form indicates that questions of what diasporic Famine memory actually is and why it should be remembered remain far from consensual.Less
This chapter surveys a range of community commemorations in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada and the United States that constitute smaller scale, vernacular counterparts to officially sanctioned (and nationally scaled) monumental projects. Whether navigating volatile commemorative geographies marked by sectarian divisions; editing and refashioning traditional monumental forms like the high cross or megalithic stones; or indulging in fictive melodrama through bronze figurative groups – diasporic monuments reveal a surprising continuity with nineteenth-century methods of visualising Famine, substituting the heroic for the ugly, optimism for despair, sentimentality for horror. Adopting a transnational approach, the survey and case studies of this chapter demonstrate how Famine memorials bear a striking resemblance to one another and share a repetitive, often romanticized visual vocabulary, as well as strong threads of interconnection that bind monuments across three continents to one another. Though the rallying cry ‘Remember the Famine’ unites these memorials, their form indicates that questions of what diasporic Famine memory actually is and why it should be remembered remain far from consensual.
Klaus Rheidt
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- June 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780190690526
- eISBN:
- 9780197647011
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190690526.003.0011
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, History of Art: pre-history, BCE to 500CE, ancient and classical, Byzantine
The production and, most especially, the transportation of very large stones were always opportunities for spectacle in preindustrial times. The Egyptian obelisks in Rome as well as the Thunder Stone ...
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The production and, most especially, the transportation of very large stones were always opportunities for spectacle in preindustrial times. The Egyptian obelisks in Rome as well as the Thunder Stone of St. Petersburg are outstanding examples of phenomenal efforts against gravity undertaken by Roman emperors or by Catherine the Great to demonstrate that imperial power and skilled engineering were at an apex. The largest ashlar blocks ever placed into a wall were set up in Baalbek, Lebanon. To move those megaliths, some 500 to 1,000 tons in weight, and to put them into place required highly experienced stone masons and complex machinery—a considerable technical challenge accompanied by spectacular scenes of transportation. Are the Baalbek megaliths, as well, witnesses of Roman power in the Levant? Or does the use of very large stones merely follow a structural rationale? This chapter aims to position the megalithism of Baalbek between design and construction and between skilled workmanship, architectural expression, and imperial power.Less
The production and, most especially, the transportation of very large stones were always opportunities for spectacle in preindustrial times. The Egyptian obelisks in Rome as well as the Thunder Stone of St. Petersburg are outstanding examples of phenomenal efforts against gravity undertaken by Roman emperors or by Catherine the Great to demonstrate that imperial power and skilled engineering were at an apex. The largest ashlar blocks ever placed into a wall were set up in Baalbek, Lebanon. To move those megaliths, some 500 to 1,000 tons in weight, and to put them into place required highly experienced stone masons and complex machinery—a considerable technical challenge accompanied by spectacular scenes of transportation. Are the Baalbek megaliths, as well, witnesses of Roman power in the Levant? Or does the use of very large stones merely follow a structural rationale? This chapter aims to position the megalithism of Baalbek between design and construction and between skilled workmanship, architectural expression, and imperial power.