Search results
- Title
- Anarchism and the archaeology of anarchic societies: Resistance to centralization in the Coast Salish Region of the Pacific Northwest Coast
- Author(s)
- Bill Angelbeck (author), Colin Grier (author)
- Date
- 2012
- Abstract
-
Throughout human history, people have lived in societies without formalized government. We argue that the theory of anarchism presents a productive framework for analyzing decentralized societies. Anarchism encompasses a broad array of interrelated principles for organizing societies without the centralization of authority. Moreover, its theory of history emphasizes an ongoing and active resistance to concentrations of power. We present an anarchist analysis of the development of social power, authority, and status within the Coast Salish region of the Northwest Coast.
Coast Salish peoples exhibited complex displays of chiefly authority and class stratification but without centralized political organization. Ethnographically, their sociopolitical formation is unique in allowing a majority of "high- class" people and a minority of commoners and slaves, or what Wayne Suttles described as an "inverted-pear" society. We present the development of this sociopolitical structure through an analysis of cranial deformation from burial data and assess it in relation to periods of warfare. We determine that many aspects of Coast Salish culture include practices that resist concentrations of power. Our central point is that anarchism is useful for understanding decentralized (or anarchic) networks-those that allow for complex intergroup relations while staving off the establishment of centralized political authority.
- Subject(s)
- Archaeology, Anarchism, Societies, Decentralization in government, Social power, Resistance to government, Slaves
- Department
- Anthropology
- Title
- The erased pharaoh
- Author(s)
- Camille Blain (author)
- Date
- 2019
- Abstract
-
Douglas College student research essay submitted as partial requirement for Anthropology 2112 course. Faculty sponsor to submit this essay to DOOR: Dr. Laurie Beckwith.
Modern bias is a huge obstacle within archaeology, due to the nature of studying the far away past by people born in the near present. The understanding of gender is heavily effected by modern bias, and often researchers interpret gender of the past in the same way that they understand it today. Gender is a social construct with many connotations of what it means to be feminine and to be masculine, and those connotations have seemingly always looked different as well as the conceptualization of gender in general. Matić (2016) argues that Ancient Egypt has been interpreted as having a binary understanding of gender, but recently feminist and queer theories have begun re-interpreting gender in Ancient Egypt outside of that binary theory. He ultimately argues that evidence for a ‘third gender’ in Ancient Egypt is scarce, but that it still did not function exactly like today as he cites, among other instances, the warrior goddess Neith who is said to be two thirds male and one third female. Gender can also be represented differently in death, as men were sometimes seen as the regenerative sex, and it is conjectured that if women wanted to be reincarnated they needed to be represented as a man once buried (Cooney, 2010). Moreover, in ancient Egyptian law men and women of the same status were treated as mostly equal, as women could own property, and try or be tried in court (Tyldesley, 2012). Yet, the role of women is still under appreciated in modern literature such as Tyldesley’s (2012, pp. 5) characterization of believing that the man was not in total control of his household as a “naive” belief.
- Subject(s)
- Archaeology, Feminist archaeology, Women--Egypt--History, Excavations (Archaeology)--Egypt--Valley of the Kings, Pharaohs, Queens--Egypt