Anthropology

In this paper we examine prehistoric coastal settlement patterns in the San Juan Islands, Washington by integrating dating work with erosion studies, accumulation rate analysis, and paleoenvironmental data. Dating work draws on previously published radiocarbon dates from big sites and new radiocarbon dates from both big and small sites. We find that an increase in abundance of sites at 650-300 cal BP is amplified but not created by site destruction caused by coastal erosion. We hypothesize that prehistoric peoples established more permanent settlements on the San Juan Islands after 650 cal BP during a wetter climate regime. By calculating accumulation rates for shell midden sites and considering climate change and access to freshwater, we test this hypothesis and discuss differences between temporal patterns in the San Juan Islands and southwestern British Columbia.

Central place foraging models are used to investigate assemblage variability at two Paleoarchaic (terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene) dacite quarries in the central and eastern Great Basin. Our analyses focus specifically on biface reduction and how varying degrees of reduction relate to the costs of transporting the resulting products upon departing the quarry. Our results suggest that when the distance to be traveled to a residential base is great, reduction will proceed further at the quarry than if the residential base is fairly close. Further, a residential site assemblage will consist of bifaces at later stages of reduction than its associated quarry.

Die Sprachensituation in der Ukraine ist widersprüchlich: Auf der einen Seite sind die meisten Menschen zweisprachig
– des Ukrainischen wie des Russischen mächtig – und es ist üblich, in Unterhaltungen beide Sprachen
zu verwenden; auf der anderen Seite birgt der Status der offiziellen Sprachen einigen Sprengstoff. Dieser Artikel
untersucht die historischen Ursprünge dieses Widerspruchs und den Einfluss des Kriegs auf die derzeitige Sprachwahl
der Menschen. Außerdem wird das Phänomen der russischsprachigen ukrainischen Patrioten – die von der
russischen in die ukrainische Sprache überwechseln – untersucht sowie die ausdrucksstarke Praxis des bojovyj
surzhyk, bei der nichtstandardisierte russisch-ukrainische Mischsprachen als Kampfkunst eingesetzt werden.

Language is a key element in negotiations of power and identity, from interpersonal relations to the definition of large sociopolitical units. In this dissertation I examine the role that language has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of modern nations, through a case study of Ukraine. I focus on ideologies of language, including beliefs about language in general and attitudes towards particular linguistic usages, to discover how boundaries are drawn onto linguistic variability. The ways in which people ascribe correctness, purity, prestige and power to various linguistic forms reveal how language categories, namely “Ukrainian” and “Russian,” and their associated national identities, are constructed and manipulated in the process of nationbuilding.
    The findings presented are based on two years of fieldwork in Ukraine in 1991-92 and 1994-95, consisting of a language attitude (matched-guise) test, survey, participant observation, taped interviews, and archival and media research. The test and survey were administered to 2,000 respondents in three regions of Ukraine, Lviv, Kyiv, and Dnipropetrovsk. The test documented unconscious attitudes toward Ukrainian, Russian, and English languages, including varieties with non-standard pronunciations of Ukrainian and Russian. The survey gathered information on education, ethnic background, language use, and conscious language ideologies.
    I have found that there has been a general shift in language use and ideology, with Ukrainian (the official state language since 1990) used more widely and accorded greater prestige than during the Soviet period. This is a striking change given the long history of Russian language domination, which led Ukrainian to be widely regarded as a backward peasant language. I argue that the availability of English as an international language, as an alternate to Russian, facilitated the displacement of Russian by Ukrainian in many spheres. I also examine the language varieties that “mix” or “blend” Ukrainian and Russian, referred to by the general term “surzhyk,” and the social conditions that fostered their development. These nonstandard forms have received much negative attention in daily discussions and in the media. I conclude that destabilized linguistic hegemony has led to widespread contestation of linguistic correctness as a key element in the negotiation of status and identity.

Linguistic conversion is the choice that some Ukrainians have made to categorically change their everyday linguistic practices, to speak only Ukrainian in all contexts. In a country where most people are at least passively bilingual in Ukrainian and Russian, this move has more symbolic than practical implications for day‐to‐day communication. This symbolic significance is key as the issue of language choice has been central in debates about Ukraine’s policies and its cultural and political orientation. Linguistic conversion is an assertion of agency through active construction of one’s personal identity, which has the potential to shift the overall linguistic landscape and narratives of belonging in the country. This article draws on life‐story interviews as well as published accounts of linguistic conversion of people of both Russian and Ukrainian ethnic descent to examine the circumstances and motivations that have led them to make the choice to speak only Ukrainian. Their stories illuminate the factors shaping ideologies of national belonging in Ukraine.

During three decades of Ukraine’s independence, Ukrainian has held the official status as the country’s sole state language, but there have been significant shifts in the legally designated statuses and uses of other languages. Language regulation has been contentious, and there has been much complexity, ambiguity, and contradiction in language laws. The aim of this paper is to present an overarching view of the trajectory of language regulation since 1989, by examining the languages that are named and the language categories that are listed in Ukraine’s key language laws. References to languages by name include terms such as Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Ukrainian Sign Language. Language categories refer to aspects of sociopolitical status, such as state language, minority language, language of international communication, and language of European Union countries. Omissions, when particular languages are not named, or when a language category implies exclusion of certain languages, are also significant. This analysis compares the laws of 1989, 2012, and 2019, which focus specifically on language regulation, along with the language regulating portions of the 1996 Constitution. While much has been written on language politics in Ukraine, this analysis presents a lens through which to view the major shifts in language law. While there are some consistent features across all four documents examined, terms that are unique to given laws highlight key shifts in ideologies of language regulation.

Ukrainians responded to Russia’s full-scale invasion not only militarily, but also with an explosion of creativity on the linguistic and cultural fronts, in the form of wartime songs, sayings, art, jokes, and memes. I view this rapid cultural production as a cultural immune response, and consider how it functioned as a defense against the cultural and ideological threats that Russia presented along with its military invasion. I focus on three key threats in Russian propaganda: the denial of Ukraine’s existence, the insistence that Ukrainian and Russian are the same, and depictions of Ukrainians as weak and demoralized. These threats were countered by three themes in Ukrainian social media: the affirmation of Ukrainian existence, the assertion of Ukrainian distinctiveness, and the celebration of courage and resilience in the face of assault. The Russian aggression, instead of disrupting Ukrainian identity, prompted a consolidation and renewed vigor in Ukrainianness. Social media amplified the power of this burgeoning cultural resistance. The digitally circulating memes helped to construct a community that is imagined as bound and yet is pervasive and boundless, including its displaced and diasporic members. An effect of the cultural explosion was the creation of unity across status, class, region, age, gender, and language in Ukraine, and with Ukrainians in diaspora. (This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.)

Mainland Southeast Asia is surrounded by Middle Pleistocene archaeology in India, South China and Indonesia, but has surprisingly little to show for itself. A survey of dispersed reports on evidence of hominin activity in mainland Southeast Asia shows how this region fits into the great arc of human dispersal from Africa to Australia. Hominin–mammal associations are an important indicator of hominin evolutionary change. Mainland Southeast Asia is identified as significant because it is a geographically intermediate zone between two different hominin populations, one to the north in China and one to the south in Java. Current hominin evidence from Middle Pleistocene sites in mainland Southeast Asia is used to evaluate three models of major hominin movement and migration. The first model describes the Chao Phraya River basin as the main conduit for the movement of hominins into the region. The second model holds that hominins moved into the region from China via east Vietnam. The third model has hominins approaching the region from the west, along the coast of South Asia and Myanmar. Current evidence does not robustly support any model and continuing testing of the models' hypotheses is required

Data collected from the Hamersley Plateau over the last four
decades are examined for patterns in the archaeological record. Data relating to the timing of the archaeological appearance of
backed artefacts, seed-grinding technology and rock art are
currently too few to indicate major cultural changes with certainty. Increases in numbers of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites on the Hamersley Plateau are evident in the late Holocene. This can be interpreted as a pattern of cultural change or natural decay in datable material. I conclude that taphonomic bias is the most important variable in the distribution of the radiocarbon date sample from the Hamersley Plateau. That said, further accumulation of dates and data may show archaeological changes in the Hamersley Plateau that represent local expressions of broader trends in the Australian semi-arid and arid zones.

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) peaked in Australia around 18,000 BP. At this time, many previously-occupied archaeological sites in the northwest quarter of the Australian continent show signs of abandonment or reduced occupation. Previously-reported evidence from the inland Pilbara on LGM activity is ambiguous and has been interpreted to mean both abandonment and continuous occupation. Excavations at Millys Cave have revealed the first unambiguous evidence for human occupation in the inland Pilbara during the LGM. Stone artefact data from Millys Cave indicate that the occupants exploited a smaller territorial area during the LGM compared with later periods, but did not substantially alter their land-use system. Population size probably changed very little but social networks and aggregation activities were reduced during the LGM.

Archaeological work on Aboriginal sites in the inland Pilbara has been going on for over 30 years. The purpose of this paper is to show that the research themes currently driving consulting work in the inland Pilbara are in need of updating and to suggest some future directions.

Our understanding of variation in the technology of flaked stone artefacts from mainland Southeast Asia during the terminal Pleistocene and Holocene periods has improved little since they were originally labelled “Hoabinhian” in 1932. Chronological and geographical variation has been described in terms of typological differences, but there are few anthropological explanations of lithic diversity and change. An analysis of an experimentally produced Hoabinhian assemblage is undertaken here to show which flake variables are significant indicators of assemblage reduction intensity. The results show that recording the presence of overhang removal, interior platform angle, and percentage of dorsal cortex will provide robust data on the extent of assemblage reduction. A new method for detecting assemblage variation based on the location of dorsal cortex on flakes is also presented and experimentally verified. These methods are designed to take advantage of the typical geometry and reduction patterns of Hoabinhian assemblages. These findings provide another tool to build anthropological explanations of Hoabinhian archaeology.